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Supreme Court agrees to hear GOP primary funding dispute
The South Carolina Supreme Court says it will hear a case that threatens to mess up South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary.
In a lawsuit filed late Monday, four counties claimed the state does not have the power to run a party’s primary. At issue is a new agreement this year where the state will pay $680,000 (about half of the primary’s costs), and the GOP will pick up the rest of the tab for “legitimate” expenses. However, the state Elections Commission has not yet determined what a “legitimate expense” is.
Beaufort, Chester, Greenville, and Spartanburg county officials are afraid they will not get fully reimbursed for the costs of running the election. “We have questions on what are legitimate expenses and who makes that determination,” Greenville County Elections Commission director Conway Belangia said, “We don’t have anybody involved in those discussions. The counties have been excluded from that.”
All four counties are named in the lawsuit, which claims local governments should not be forced to run a private political party event. The suit also claims the South Carolina Elections Commission cannot run the primary without an explicit state law. The state GOP and Democratic parties are also named in the suit.
However, the Commission and South Carolina Republican Party say the agency does have authority under two budget provisos passed by the General Assembly earlier this year that give the Commission permission to use certain funds specifically for the presidential primary. Legislators overrode a veto by Governor Nikki Haley to keep that language in the budget.
Attorney General Alan Wilson backed up the agency earlier this year in a brief, saying a law passed to fund the 2008 primary could also apply in 2012.
County officials are worried some expenses, such as voting machines and overtime pay for poll workers, might not be covered by the agreement. The suit estimates all 46 counties paid $966,000 in 2008 that was not reimbursed.
SCGOP Executive Director Matt Moore said the party is willing to help out, but will not write blank checks. “We’re not going to pay for new computers, new roofs for buildings, and those kinds of things,” he said.
Moore said the state funded both the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries for the first time in 2008 because new federal election laws made it too expensive and legally risky for the parties to do it.
The Supreme Court did not schedule a hearing on the case, but said any documents are due next week.
Moore said, if South Carolina loses the lawsuit, legislators have promised party officials they would change state law when they return to session next January. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Image and text provided by University of Hawaii at Manoa; Honolulu, HI
TUESDAY, MARCH 19, i : 1918.'JRAWAIIAJJ -GAZETTF.SEMI-WEEKLY,3r.'l. IV,-i-,I.-1 'iiiis iihiiijnciiv oruiwKaiser and' Army Lprtis Would' immediately , Annex Baltic' Provinces But Government andReichstag Would TemporizeCAUCASUS WUaTrEFUSETO RECOGNIZE TREATYObject's To SiirVder of landsand Wiir Deal With Turkey Oi' rect To SecufS. Peace TermsThat Are More AcceptableWASHINGTON. March 16(Associated Press) Already, the day following the ratificatioii of the Brest-Utovsk treaty by the A II -.Russian congress ofSoviets at Moscdto various actions in (icrruany arc quarrelingover the disposition of the plunder obtained through the treaty,the great Baltic provinces. This i. told in an official despatch issuedfrom here last night., WANT ANNEXATIONSerious differences between tingovernment and the general staffhave arisen in Berlin, is the information upon which this despatch "was based. The KaUnhimself., von Hindenburg and vorHertfing are demanding the immediate annexation of that country which is relinquished by Rus.sia under the treaty. The government is inclined to temporizeIn this the majority of the rciclistag are with the government aiu'the socialists are claiming thpeople of the provinces should bgiven a voice in the deciding o:. their own dextiny.CAUCASUS OBJECTSThe Caucasus declines to rccogttize the Brest-I.ttovsk treatydespatches from I'ctrngrad las'night announced. Its governmen'has issued a statement refusingto endorse the treaty and the surrender of Kars. Bartmim amArdahan to Turkey asserting thait has a right to negotiate its owrtreaty and no other has a right tnegotiate for it. The statementsavs the Caucasus will deal witlTurkey direct and is now sendinga peace delegation to Trebizont:to negotiate for such a eace.UKRAINE OPERATIONSth the Ukraine military operations are still proceeding an'Bachmach, nortlna-t of Kiev, liarbeen, occupied. A Vienna despatch received in Amsterdam saithat negotiations f' r peace between the Ukraine and Kussi;have been opined at Kiev amthat if these be successful military operations in that sectiot: -Will sjieedily endN'tgotiat ions are progressingfavorablv for a reconciliation between ('icrtnanv and Poland, theWarsaw Kurjur PoNky is reirted to have announced, accordingtotJther despatches from Amsterdam. It asserts that a "new solutlon of the Polish situation is ttic announced shortly".''.Tne men emplov ed in the workfcnonS ol trie Austrian rtnlwavsTi'aAe gone on stride, refusing tobey military orders. The strikeare spreading to other factoriesCope'u''h'ageti despatches said.. seiw!LENTER ON PEACE PACTBEB" . Mari-h I "! i AMHocintedI'resSf-rldH utill hIiiiiiIh fur carryIIB nt the w i r iijaint the Teutons,pnf'ordhljf o well informed sourceaThe TtnaMi Jtiiiiiiiuiiin i.i'Hi e hus notfhanilwi Herhiii H nttitudc. A jjronolaent' diplomatist nv that the rumorstVt Serbia would make a sepnratfeacs ere untrue 1 Ik- I nit million ofv Inhabitant" t.ll persevere in theLEADING FINANClEkNEW YORK HOMEMOW YORK, Msrch'lV--( AssociatedPress) James Stillmnn, banker and oneof the leader in (lh worKl of finance,chairman of the boariT -'director" ofthe National CHy .Baikpf SeM-Ark,director in many other iusins 4uterprise iim lulling the Western I'nionTelegraph ('omonhy Mil' .number ofrailroads, died of heart disease at hishome on F.nst Seventy -second Streetlast evening.In the financial section of the NewYork Herald the following brief nkelrhof the )freat banker and leading flnancier uppeared only a few weeka o:Jamee Ht ill man, who habaen artivein Wall Htroet ainre the early '70 ,who known the gam of flnanre iu a (uperlative degree; who, like all nigmen. bna made many enemies and multittidcd of friends, aad who ilolighta intoth, in a Texas by accident. liereally coinea of Revolutionary "took,tiut in father aad Mother happened tolie viHiting iu Galveston,. Texan, Janua ry 9, ISiO, and thoir, sou finhracedthe oortunity to be born tlvere.When he was old enough to read thelrlorious history of the Lone StnrState's mairnifli'OBt fight for indsiK-u.deuce he was ilelightail at hi tore-tight in hcx-oming a Tetan. Ten himnlwaVH lieen proud of it, too. An thin Ii (.imply tho briefest possible sketch (of Mi1. Htillnisn and his csreer in the 'rinanrial world, it mar lie ae well toRAIDS BY ALLIESKEEPONFrench Retake Trenche LostTwo Weeks Ago. CanadiansRaid Sector and German RaidRepulsed American Casualties HeavyNEW YORK, March 16 ( AssociatedI'res routinuiug thevolley of keepng the (ierfliana on the Weictern frontio thoroughly occupied that they haveit tit opportunity to launch theirlire.-iteneil drive. Severn! Hiii-i-e.sHfulnida were undertaken liy the British 'm l Krenrh forces yesterday while nirii i I h and air encounters went forward.igorously. ..","..In the ('hampagna aec4oV two attacksiy the French are reported. An otTicial 'onimuuique from Pari lost night HailKrem-h forces regained a sector ofriMii hes near Moute f'arnillet which Ihe GennauH occupied on March and Itad ever since held. In this encounter -heytook forty-two prisoners and se- jtired two machine guua as their booty.The engagement closed with hand to ian.) lighting and several hundred Uer- Inans are reported to have been killed.Mie other French engagements was on ,he road west of Norcy where the j'rencH succeeded iu securing and reaming a foot hold in a small sector,'anadlans Make RaidIn the Lens sector, Loudon reported,Canadian troops made a successful raidin a Teuton position and took fourteeu iprisoners.Near i'asehendaele Of rinau forces attempted a raid but met with completeailure and suffereil considerable losses 'n their fruitlesn attack.Air Fleets BusyTremendous air liattlare takingiilaoe on the western trout, as the Tenoils ami the Allies struggle for airlupreniacy preliminary to the greatiffeasive which are expected.Witbiu the la si iweuty four hourshe British flyers have accounted forwen ty-four German planes. Five , ofhe British rliera are missing.Seven hundred lioiulis have beentrapped by the British on euemy bilUts, amniuiiition dimipx, aud railways.The Courtrai Ueniaiu railway haa beenme of the lurgets for the BritishHimbers.iattle In TurkestanNews comes from Turkestan of Moodvutiles fought there lietween the Soviettdhereuts uud the Turkestan natives,be caxuulties reaching lit 1,0111).leavy American LossesThe American uunualty lint receivedroiu General 1'ci'ahiiig at the war tielartment wan the longest yet. Jt williot be available in full Ik-fore tonight.,1'ouj'tei'u Americans arc dead and 4Hvouniied. 8ix coinuiissioued officers areimong the caMiialtics. They arci Lieut.tichiird Whitney, dead; Lieuta. LouisSV. Rons, John V. Appersou, William H.rjledeoe, (iiuuville M- iiurrow and William (J. PaUuey, wounded. ,Preparatinus on ttie part of Germanyto speedily launch the much advertisedand long delayed drive on tbe westernfront were told yeatuiday io (U'Apatohetfrom Amsterdam. Ueneral von iHindetiburg, in h i intcniew gives out byhim in Bcrl i i, p - ed as saying;"The Kui.nl powers have ahowam uniespnnsiv e attitude toward Otroaiiy's peace iateutious," he eaW'and the grcut otTcnnive must go on."Well iufiimiud otbriuls is neutral(uartc'rH recent Iy f told the AssociatedPress that (Jeruiauy iu prepared to lose:iOO,000 men to inaKe the blow on theest effective.Chief of .staff von l.udcuburg is aleeincited as saying "tbe euoaiy is welvouie tp attack. They will ftnd Geraiaay is ready." (icrmnny iow fljjlms,(iesi despatrliin said, to be atroiUfe-'in oisn power, gnu power aud munitions und supplies tlinn are the AUisW. 8 .The I'earl Hurl. or unval station itvery much hi need of experieuced foremen for handling section (nags .In theconstruction and maintenance of railrriml tracks in tins nrd.COLDS CAUSE hemcuesLAXATIVE BROMO O.UrNR removes tbe cuse. Used the world overto cure a cold In one day. Tby sLQUiie of H W. CKUVti i tu at& besMsuulurturtd by the i AKIS MEJJCINB CO.. St. Louis. U. S A.mmDIES AT HISOF mearv troubleWany that b has bee and ia a dlrecor trustee Or chairman or cresident ofmany baukvtrijt ccuupanlea, Insurance,1X&ZX'?:;that: for to giv tha list Id full wool. Ihe like publishing goodly Used financial directory., vBriefly, ha VM partner la the Armof Smith, Woodward A. Stll.man from1171 to 187S, had has sine thea bean apartner of the aneceodlng firm of Woodward It Stillmaa, oottoa ' eowiiaiimionmorchaata. ' Aad ia 1891 he waa electedpresident of the National hty Bank,which position he beki until he reeignedin January, 1009. Now he la the chairman of the bank's Board. rf Directors.lie ia a member of sixteen club amilias si ways been .considered .one of theIwaL groomed men la Wall Street.But Mr., Btlllman la something faritreoter than a financial power And manof affaire, for ainoe the war haa beenravaging .the world .fee haa doae muchtoward paying back to fraace the greatdebt .owing her staauae of Lafayette.He haa gv.n nUlmna of francs to thefatherless cfilWrea of member of theLegion,, oi Honor, there, has .worked.I naru to . rsuava .fTvitcn ..war oryuanaad the .widows of French soldiers, andhas given a great faria .residence overto honpital work and maintained it.He haa done much mors than that, but,the lint of,h4 charities must be curtailed here even as has been that pf hisfinancial activities. . 'JAPAN HEARS HERCITIZENSARENewV of uutrage By RussianMaximalists Fellows Closely OriThat Peace Trfeaty and MaySpeed txpeditionary ForceTOKIO, KafcavtrBpaolal toHawaii Bhiopo) BOsslaa llaximallita today 'atanghtetefi onehundred and fifty Japaneae atBlaroreatchenak t in tha Amarprovince on tha Zeya River wheretho Japanese were Employed tnand about the gold mine and intha ahlp building yards.Annoancenjent of tho news ofthis ontraga, corning at almost thosame time aa tha annotracementof tho ftrraomant of tho AJl-Rns-siantori eta o accept the peacetwtm offorod by Grormaay haaroused a greater fooling than everia favor of mobilising and aandtng a largo expeditionary forceinto Siberia aa speed. Iy aa poaalble. . . Demands for Immediate reprisals vgaiaat the MaxlmaUats arefreely irolcod. and tha aontimontttarimti. that Japan isnat takeadequate ' step to protect tholives of tta subjects.S-NO ASSISTANCE CANBE EXTENDED JAPANLONDON, March 16 (AssociateiPress) Denial ef the report issuedseme days ago that Prince Lvoff hadostabllshed a "Far Kastern Bnaaiaagovernment ' ' was received from Poking in a Reuter's agency despatch re;reive.) last niirht. The desnafarh aavtjj,, previous report was unfounded an 4probably referred to a eonresencewhich waa held by a number of prominent Russians in Peking in February.This conference was attended by thoBossian minister to China, Prince Kudacheff. The receipt of this message .banishes the hope of Japan securing any direct and organised support from th.Russians if that country shall send an,expedition into Siberia as it seems likely it will be found necessary to dosince the Brest Litovsk peace treatywan continued by the Russian congressat Moscow. 'It has developed that the ineasagof sympathy which was sent by President Wilson to tbe people of Russiathrough tbe Soviets was received twday before the opening of the aoaaioat Moscow aud su had not the effectthat prescutatiou might have had onthe day the treaty was considered.. M. Bysuinev, noted Bolsheviki .andalso representative in the Moscow oongsesa of syviets of all the professionalunions, has announced his. resignationfrom the Bolsheviki, l'etrograid despatches said.W. 8 8.FRANCE IS SAVING ALLEGAS0L1NPA It I M, March 10 - ( Associated Press)Numbri less warnings having provedineffective, Premier Ciemenceau hataken mure urgent steps to prevent government einplnves from wasting gasoline on pi t-oiimI or unnecessary automotile trips. He has given nn earnest ofwhat univ be e spec ted by decreeingthat tbe diirctor of the agriculturalservice vvlm use. I a machine for a tour,must pav nut i.f Ins n n pocket for tie"essence'' used ami the near and tearto the ti rcilt is even claimed that chiefs ef dopertinents, having automobiles at theirdisnosal. have sent the machines outduring U iui hours in searc.h. of oigrarettes and other private errand, usingup, as one Paris newspaper sarcasticallyremarks, thirty litres of gasoline in order that the chiefs ' messengers mayfind one package of tobacco.W. 8 8.RUMANIAN CABINET OUTWASHINGTON'. March 15 (Assoelated Press i - The department ofsln'e hns dv ii-i's that the Rumania ocabinet undei ! n-mier Averfsen has-ii'ne.l hi.. I tin. i M a r(,liisiaoii Is a.aking up a in IV nut'AMPLE AIRprotectionIS PROMISED') i v ' mUnited States To HaveEnough AmericanBuiltPJdiicistnFranceBy JiilyWASHINatON, Xarch la (Associated Press) On tie highest authority it ran be said that 'J' enough American .unit elrplaaeY will -be in Franceby July . next to Insure, the American'orces of protection , In whatever andn as many sectors as they may thenIje occupying. Yt This hseertion wasmade by Urowoll yesterday wnen nelaid before the house cifnmittee onnilitary affairs' a wase of data Ujionnvlatlon, at eraft buih and building'adlities for . such work at hand foi'he (overnuient and many other deails. His report was received with nhigh degree of satisfaction.Last month there were publishednumber of articles In various now-Hiispern to the effect that the flermani.were in eontfo-l of the air at the pointsvhere tho United States soldiers wereiccuuying positions. On this subjectSake- was at first silent and army offiers were similarly retieont. Neitheronflrination nor denial was at thatime ofiiciallv ffivon.latcr it waa atate.l that France nnd'mat Britain had, early iu the firstlays of the United Btatcs entry intohe war that they would be able tournish adequate aircraft protectionantil the United States was in the posiion to do this for itself. It was alsominted out that aviation experts hadid vised the use of tho types of mahi nos then in one by the Allies andvhich had proved their usefulness andhe United State should use its output,if aircraft, at leant until somethingequally good had been perfected, foitraining purposes only.The house 'committee was told howuanv American built planes were novu use at tho traiuing camp and whanieces has been achieved with th.Liberty Motor'. in applying it to aviation.Secretary Lane Asks PresidenTo Support Measure ToIncrease Efficiencyi WASHINGTON. March 16 (Associated- Press) Tunds are sought for theconduct of a1 eamnuiirn acainst illiteracy, and Secretary Lane of the department of interior has written to tnePresident askina h m to lend his supDort to a measure which is to be introduced to provide sufficient fund furthe "bureau of education.Secretary Lane pointed out in hitletter to Wilson that it has beea fonndthat in the first draft there were ineluded more than. 30,000 young menwho were illiterate. He said the firststep taken when funds are made availabb) would be to reacb those youngmen. The next step will be to reacheligible among the registrants beforethey are finally drafted into tne army.Lane urges his measure as one necessary to produce efficiency both amongthose io tbe army aud those who aredoias other necessary war work andwhom it is also designed to meet.w. a. a.GE!AT ENGLAND'S HEARSir Eric Geddes Urges Enlistment In Needed ServicesBRISTOL, March 16 (AssociatedPress) All British subject of fiftyyears of age or under were urged bySir Kric (ieddes to enter into somesort of service in the defense of theicouutry whether it be in actual military service, ammunition manufactureor other pursuit which is absolutelyossential to the winning of the war,He made an earnest appeal in a speechhere yetserday.Sir Kric declared that "undoubtedIy Germany will ftrike at the verheart of airland. What are yoa fioisia-vour country s defense nowi nnswill vou do theuf" he asked. lie saidthe time hail come when his hearersmost decide how they could beat helIn the conduct Of the war and thateach man must exMct to bear his paIn tbe necessary work.W. S. .STEVENBECOMES COD fISHERhT:.TTI.K, March 16 ( AssociatedPress; ( apt. H. O. Wick has purchased the schooner i'asen, once usedby Robert louls Stveu-on for biscruises iu the South Boas. This famousOld schooner is oow to go into thefishing, industry. Cnptain Wick saidyesterday he would sail in the Oaaco toAlaska tin end flshiug voyages.v. a. . - -VESSELS IN COLLISION;TWE'NTY-SIX MISSINGLONDON, Knglaad, March 15 (As... , . Iu.wiHf.iil I'ri'ftn 1 rweillV-SIX lieome rr,.;;.;,i,r ufu r a ' Collision between" ' . ,naval vchmcI mid the HrWlsb ""'Hathiiioic, off the Irish coast.FIGHT 1LUTERACVSON'S CASCO1YLIGI T SAVIiiG" "LLIS PASSEDNational, Chamber, of CommerceGives Fifty-two ReasonsWhy It Should Be LawWASfltjiOTON, March 18 U.soclated Pre) Th Daylight taring Billwe passed by th hona of represent-ves Vesterdav. Pravlonalv it had beenpassed by. fhe sen at find now goes tohe President for approval. It ipeeled as will Sl(Jn it at aa early date.Tne bin a it a passed both housespplie to the United tttatet mainlandmt not to it Paeitle Ocean possessions.ft 1 to beeome.effertive.at two o'clock. m ."pa the twentieth day after tbeMmVhl of the act y the President.t that time th clock In each timeqn of tho eountry will be yet forwardne nour.fifty-two BoaaontFifty-two important reasons for th!ttrompt passing of the Daylight Savingfill were given to congress, la vie reort of the committee on Daylight Havng of the United State Chamber of.wnsiprre.Expediting the training of the aaiowal fntoes. speeding . , up the protaction of the plant making war ratrial, iacrrastnff the production of tbeihinbnilrlinc yard theae are three im.nediat results of the daylight savingneasure emnhasuied a most importantfrom wiMtnry point of view.The sabstitntifra of a work hour athe Wffissing M the workinr day fora dark hour of artificial light at theend of tbe day brings advantages thatare solf-evwient in th mere statementeontinae the report. It will reHevrhe strain at tho time of greatest fati7ne. Improve working conditions, parHealfrrlv In Industrie whet accurateeyesight Is essentlnl, and materially cutdown te number -of rndostrrsl sectflentw which, as statistics show, have oc'urred most fronuently in the late njernonn. wnen Tinmsn eiricteniTy is ainw er.h: also these is lessened risk oflectdeirts in transportation and, local'ramc risnnitng. nv moving tne arterifton ru-h forward into daylight.All along tbe line dnyttrht savinsmean Increased ffReiencv rn the imnrnvement of th health, morals andsocial we'far of the twenty millionwerkers of the country. Working girl-will go home bv daylight. Pnr"r winswe a new hour to snend with their-hildren. , Wills for gas and electricMiirht will be cut down, and outdooreereaMmi will he atimnlnted. ThnosslHle Increased gardening production'hrouyh daylight saving is also a conideration.Saving of Xlgnt nd HeatDaylight saving means also an immediate reduction in the use of lightand heatj With its attendant eonservalion of coal, Mora than 1,500,000 tonsof eoal a year is tbe estimated savingeven if the measure is In effect onlyfor the shortest period that has beensuggested; and the saving in fuel oilis equally impressive, t . '. ''The savings would occur in both direct and indirest ways. The amount,of coal that will be saved if the clock'is moved ahead one hour would differwith tbe method ia which daylightsaving is used. Calculations computed for different periods, based .uponthe actual British experience In thesummer of 191(1, and modified by allow.,"nee for differences in latitude, give thefollowing savings in eoal for tbe United States:(11 Saving of 150 tioiirs of a yearlyaverage of l,.'t'J0 per year requiring artificial illumination in the V. S. i.e.hv daylight saving between second Sunday in April and last Sunday in Sepmber: In electricity for lighting. 6rti100 tons: in gas for lighting, 144,000tons. Total, K04 000 tons.(2) Saving of 190 hours from theyearly average (i.e., with clocksmoved ahead one hour between April1 and November .'10t; In electricityfor lighting, 8:1(1.000 tons; in gasfor lighting, IH.1,000 tons. Total, 1,019,000 tons.(:t) Saving of 198 hours from theyearly average (i.e., with clocks advanced one hour throughout year): Inelectricity for lighting, 871,000 tons;in gas for lighting, 190,000 tons. Total,1,0(11,000 tous.The saving iu coal ured for thesepurposes could lie represented approximately by the following percentages:(I)' With snviug of 150 hours;Amount of coal used for lightingthrough gas and electricity, approximatelv . 15,750,0(10 tons; amount .saved,804,000 tons; percentage saved, 5 percent. (t) With saving of 190 hours:Amount of coal used for lightingthrough gas and electricity, approximately, 15,7150,000 tons; amount saved.1.019,00(1 tons; percentage saved, 6.5percent.(:i) With saving of 168 hoursAuiuunt of coal used for lightingthrough gas and electricity, auproximatelv, 15,750,000 tons: amount saved,1,0(11,000 tons; percentage suved, 6.6percent.A Notable .ExampleTbHM figures do not iucluds tbesaving which would be obtained at isoluted plants and at elentric. powerplant which sell power for lightingTo be borne in mind too is th factthat the estimate has been made on abasis which assumes that the use ofelectric energy and gas for lighting isspread evenly over the country, whereas as a mutter of fact 57,000,000 electrie lights out of a total df 76,000,001in the country are in Mew England.Middle Atlantic nnd Northern OeutralXtatcs, where the advautagra of daylight saving will be most striking.The saving of coal through substitutiou of a morning hour of moderate,'illuminutiou for an evening hour ofmaximum use of electricity aud gasliuht saving will do two very Import-int savings in coal would be obtainedh'.r example, tnjin the CommonwealthIvIiMop Quniiany of Chicago. The- Phload of this company is needed forno more than one and a half hourdav. The average load ia les tlisiil AC... . .. , .. . . ,i.. l rriu. 1 I"nr 'rirciu nir iit-nii. -"ment and equipment to produce theI penk Is upward of niie-f uitn or tutI whole," nn.l equals fJ.-i.ttUNIMI. Dayligih saving vvil do two very lmporKills SellBecause"Wife Refuses' To Befiiurder-Plut Dticbypv.: A .'V'So Widow of Mike IMer, KemooHerdsman, Testifies Wheji,$lVeTells How Her HusbandPlanned To. Slay $oldierRefusal to aci ai a' decoy 'to get TrrsU Bald win, Company L Tlrit Infaatry, into a secluded aiiot In tho" glilehbelow the BTemoo, Farm, wear SctofleMItarraeks, whero he coitld be Shot byher hosba&d ia ascribed by Mrs.Minnie Miller, as the only eaooeof domewtie AeestUes between .herselfand Mike Mlltor, the herdamaa whoommitted uicide laet Monday moraing.Such was the atain subataaee of bettestimony given at coroner's Inqnestheld yestefaay, aeeordlntt w h temnhana renart caealirsd . from DenutVr - - . - r -, - - -. -. k am f , i. , TY ai 7-- ' Sw-lIlLBo conducted the Investiirstton. Thtorpner Jury ' returned a verdict ofSuicide. - ' 'Mrs. Miller, who .until her marriageoo February 22. was .Miu.Jdeyers, adaughter or lapt. Robert I'araerwas the chief wHnes it the inqnestMuch of her testimony era ourroboratey Vy k Mrs. Brown nd Mia Wannof Honolulu, .... ., , , , ... ,Evidence given at the Inquest tendedto trrove that Mr. "Mirier Ttr4 met Prbvate Bsldwia only two time mad thatshe and. her husband had had no senpus trouble during their three week ofmarried, life. , . , ' ,It was on Ike morninir of his suicide.when he, killed ne)f with a revolverwhich he, ha4 been, enryying tn hlioothe soldier, against whom he had takean insano ,and.. jealoua hatred, ne proto her that she lead Private Baldwin into; the guhi where he eoqld shootthe -enlisted ma and avoid detectionMrs. Miller testified, in effect. .Mrs.. Miller ,was intcnaing to leavefor Honolulu and hex hnaband euggeeted the plan ,to her on Monday morningnpfl jravovheir onfil her fel;urti fronjtown to make up her Mind to do as henaked, she aaid.The widow of the suicide testifiedthat aha hrttW TSftised to be a tsSTtT tsuch a foolhardy plan and so told herhusband. A few minutes after she aiso he shot . himself through the head.Miller t the time of his suicide ifsupppsed to have been sunering Tromtemporary Insanity, aecoming iouty Sheriff rlemer. There was ooiurndivntired at the innuest to snlistantiatfthe report that (Serroan hatred of theAmerican loldier was Miller's chiefreaaon for wanfing to kill PrivateRaldwin. the Waialua .deputy sherisavs."Tner was nt.ttimg snoin iirinmiifor Oermnn activities brought out at thrtnmieat. ether than that Miller wasborn in Gej-mnny," Plcmer explainedwhea questioned. ,.WILL TEACHTOkuerr in8the demand oAMEBrCAX-S0LOICTSLJn.t;(1 Stci andiGaiPA Wis. March 1 VAssoVlatid Press)Ifenorauee of .Trench, Which, balieeaa souroe of .many difficulties for theAmerican Soldier's i Pavi and otheicities, is thel subject of attention fron. , ' ! .k . If j . V..a, new rrenen sociexy , me awe rmusise a ITCtran-er. whieli is nrcaniwncn band ef volunteer interpreters, guidemd nUn a. flqmpreqeuai,ve system offree instruction. On ,tne .founderis MW, Pointaire, wife of the Frenchpresident. , , ,; w. a. O-TO -PECONSTFUCT RUINSMEXICO CITY. March 16 f Associated Press) The "ruins of Mftla, 'whii;)are situated in the Tlncolula district oftoo slate, oi v.raj(aca ana wqicn qnve ai.racted much .scientific attentton;, 'artp tie recontruiCteq by tb,e gojyepment.Tiee striking jnoitumen'tf of an ancientivilir'sjfon have een 'livqieetqrl t)y Pasor B'ouia. Mijiister ( of ment'o,Ivll erigineer, w-'lio 'has jirepnred 'a renort on the cost and means of recbndrnction.W. sDOWtUS VI UN tLANtWSJUNGTQM, ""ruh, IT'--(Assoelated Proas) Ve'ws has been receivehere that Paul Baer f Kort Wnynr-Indiana, with the Lafayette Flyin;Squadron iu France, has shot down(Vrwan -aeroplane. ..tant tlruucs for tbU and aim liar compauies. First, it will materially reduceLhe uhaU load vetiuieerl far rloaiastie Iand industrial lighting; second, it .willrT tr nsJrt r fT Mhours of natural light in plane of hav-tug it aiinultemcoua with the high leniands for artificial light, as it ia under present eonditions during manymonth of, the year.- In addition to. a .earing of voalamuuuting .to. buudreds of thousandspf ton, daylight snviiig, jf ill bo enable these vouipauios -to, ppatpooe nowinveaeiiient in quipuusn't to cary thepeak of the load, which would amountto millions uf dpllars. Thia postjioaemeut will come at a time whan, it isat the highest pjibHp iutercst to.avo:dall new financing that is 'possible. T1916 the tvuiiiiqouwaltb fdispn Coinpany had a 'generating Wuaoiiy, of:i60,000 kilowatts; at tb epd of )thud increased this to 452,680; and acordinal to plans made it, underiieoseat coudilops, ha'vw 'tq raise this t600,000 kilowatts by the ftqd of 1919.Such growth is not abnormal, andnay be said to "be typical of scoresof similar companies throughput thcountry.w. a. a. -A TAMELY KEOBSSrTT.Kvery family should be provldeil with'hnniberluin 's Pain Balm nt all times.' '.iIhh mav be cured In iiim-h less timewhen promptly treated. I,ame back,lame shoulder pal us in the side andchest and rheuaiatie pains are Some ofthe diseases for which It is especiallyvaluable. -Trysthi liniment and becomeacquainted with Its qualities aud -youivlll never wish to be without it. For.ale by all dim leys. Beaaun HuutbCo., Ltd., agent for Hawaii. Advt.Demand : Counter, Measures BeTaken Against Honana it naiCountry Acquiesce In DemandsMade 4Jpoti It For VesselsSEE DEFEAT AttEADivFORuSUBMARINE CAMPAIGNl Vessefs jArpveVlVrith-out consent of aetnenanas imirrediate RerisaJs From AUfesWonld Be Sodght -LONDON, MarcJi .lW(Asoaled Press) Throughoutthe Gernian Empire the press ofthe ou,itry in a ipwering rageat tlie tiJUmatum vvurch has beenpresented to .stib Nethcrlaarls bythe United States and Great Britain relative io tbe use of Dutchmerchant shipping in the 6ubma-nne danger xonet is reported nythe correspondent of, the Exchange Ttpgraph Service at Copenhagen. Comment on the ultimatum is. general and very bitter,he says. ,DEMAND REPRISALSFirst the German press takesexception to the offer of the United States to furnish grain in rctirn for shf'PFm8 now lying idle:n the ports of the United Statesjvith the pfoviso that such shiping may be used where tbx Uni'cd Stat es "and Gr eat Britain mayequirc. They demand that Holand shall reject tin's proposal'orthwitTv .and, declare that tovicjd to it w,ij,lj.e a breach tif ncuLrality with Germany. If theNetherlands government, shall ac-of theritaintiey demand that -the-German;6vernment 'take the most drastic counter measures against Holland.FORSEE DEFEATIt comes clearly home to theGermans through the press articles that the taking over of a million ton's, of Dutch shipping byhe United States and Great Britain will Undo a great part oflich success as Germany lias wonby means of its unrestricted submarine policy. They also pointout that if the Allies do this i;i.he case of Holland there is nothing to prevent their taking overmd compensating the owners the.hips of Denmark, Norway andSweden in the same, way. Theyall tile ultimatum little short ofi declaration of war against theneutrals of Northern 'Kurope andtrge them to stand united againstiiuh "aggressions and compulsion". If tlie 'Net'lierWds 'uhall notJ willingly acquiesce tbe pfejis -de-M quiring d tighten-ng up oi tne sunmaruic wiui.iv.iiicjvliich they claim has been cstabished. w. I 8.tviftjm-Twp. AKt COST IN PECEMBERt6H DOS, M.arch 16'-(Associated;css The )ern0 Xfitf'fi'f"",'ni "fHie irgenria Libera JitlirtrV, sfys the"leutral News, that during Des-emberwenty two Ocrinan submarines failedo rtturp to their basos.In order to counteract the alarmvhich tbi fart haircftainiicd in navalircles, the fierman. Admiralty issued utatnment sayisg moat of the .'missingiiiboiarines were sent to operate In dis's,ut waters, andnhopcH ace entertainedthat they will retnrnr .w, a. s.GUARDfTTOOKHOl M, March 15--(d',t'rnss) Home Americsiis re plavlug an OcJiMc nart with thr .. Kiroish"sed guards,' iircorditig to qews he'eIt Is sab) that the rnmpiajio'cr in chiefof these red- guards, a man named vt'eley, :with his father, fied to Aniertertfrom Finland and lived in the I'nitelStatsMi for severttin years 'o avi ILniprisonaieiit br'the Kus-iau ..o,,,,ities for the cirruliitiou nf ae. litmusiitorutuic.MEBlCAris,WEKTrVE1N FINLAND RED | {
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Pornstars: Kennedy Leigh (aka FTV Kennedy, Kenedy Liegh, Kennedi Leygh), Johnny Sins
Brazzers Network – DoctorAdventures: Kennedy Leigh is a diehard fan of football star Johnny Sins. When she finds out he’s injured himself, she concocts a plan to get herself into his hospital room to confess her love for him! Johnny may see right through her nurse disguise, but he’s not about to pass us some free teen sex!
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This website contains age-restricted materials.If you are under the age of 18 years, or under the age of majority in the location from where you are accessing this website you do not have authorization or permission to enter this website or access any of its materials.If you are over the age of 18 years or over the age of majority in the location from where you are accessing this website by entering the website you hereby agree to comply with all the Terms of Services.You also acknowledge and agree that you are not offended by nudity and explicit depictions of sexual activity.By clicking on the "Enter" button, and by entering this website you agree with all the above and certify under penalty of perjury that you are an adult. | {
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MSHTML SoC project summary
On Sun, 2005-10-02 at 15:25 +0200, Jacek Caban wrote:
> As Dimi suggested, I'm writing here a summary of my
> SoC project.
Thanks for taking the time to do so -- it has been
most informative.
> - More functionality of MSHTML: there are leaks in its
> functionality. Although I don't think edit mode is something
> we should really care, there are things like refresh or stop.
A detailed and explicit TODO listing all the known missing
bits on the Wiki page would be golden.
> - WebBrowser control implementation - when we have
> its true implementation, MSHTML will become truly useful
> and in most apps HTML pages should work out of box.
Ditto for this one, with maybe a plan of attack (if you
have one) and some effort estimate (if you know).
This is really cool stuff, keep up the good work!
--
Dimi Paun <dimi at lattica.com>
Lattica, Inc. | {
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Isn't that the normal product cycle for iPhones? The new one comes out, so the old one becomes the cheap one? The 5s comes out, so the 5 becomes the low-cost version? Right now I can go get a nice, cheap 4s since the 5 came out recently.
Why would I want to buy an iPhone that's even cheaper (crappier) than just buying last year's model?
The lol part is they still want to sell you an Iphone 4 for $450 off contract or a 4S for $550 off contract.
That's quite the racket they have going on over there.
Yeah, this is why this doesn't make sense. How much different is a stripped down iPhone 5 going to be from a 4 or 4S?
On one hand this could be all about marketing -- people rather have the iPhone 5L than the 4 because the model number is one digit greater, but at the same time, I don't think Apple would want to dilute the brand by introducing a new product that is clearly inferior to existing ones.
Enfenestrate:Isn't that the normal product cycle for iPhones? The new one comes out, so the old one becomes the cheap one? The 5s comes out, so the 5 becomes the low-cost version? Right now I can go get a nice, cheap 4s since the 5 came out recently.
Why would I want to buy an iPhone that's even cheaper (crappier) than just buying last year's model?
Enfenestrate:Isn't that the normal product cycle for iPhones? The new one comes out, so the old one becomes the cheap one? The 5s comes out, so the 5 becomes the low-cost version? Right now I can go get a nice, cheap 4s since the 5 came out recently.
Why would I want to buy an iPhone that's even cheaper (crappier) than just buying last year's model?
Robert Cringley has good insight into why and how it all comes back to the Chinese market: Link
thisone:Enfenestrate: Isn't that the normal product cycle for iPhones? The new one comes out, so the old one becomes the cheap one? The 5s comes out, so the 5 becomes the low-cost version? Right now I can go get a nice, cheap 4s since the 5 came out recently.
Why would I want to buy an iPhone that's even cheaper (crappier) than just buying last year's model?
Robert Cringley has good insight into why and how it all comes back to the Chinese market: Link
Well I use Mac/Linux...:I'm not sure how well it would sell, being that the whole point of owning an iPhone is so people know how much you spent on your phone. It wouldn't do to let people see you bought the cheap model.
...because nobody who uses an Apple product actually bought it because they liked it.
Well I use Mac/Linux...:I'm not sure how well it would sell, being that the whole point of owning an iPhone is so people know how much you spent on your phone. It wouldn't do to let people see you bought the cheap model.
Well I use Mac/Linux...:I'm not sure how well it would sell, being that the whole point of owning an iPhone is so people know how much you spent on your phone. It wouldn't do to let people see you bought the cheap model.
When you see someone with an iPhone, how quickly can you tell which model they have? The "cheap" one will probably look just like the new one. In fact, that may be exactly what the "cheap" one is: last year's model in this year's case.
Of course, as people start to figure that out, simply owning an iPhone won't be enough anymore. People will have to put some new piece of flair on their phone to show that they spent more.
jonny_q:Well I use Mac/Linux...: I'm not sure how well it would sell, being that the whole point of owning an iPhone is so people know how much you spent on your phone. It wouldn't do to let people see you bought the cheap model.
When you see someone with an iPhone, how quickly can you tell which model they have? The "cheap" one will probably look just like the new one. In fact, that may be exactly what the "cheap" one is: last year's model in this year's case.
Of course, as people start to figure that out, simply owning an iPhone won't be enough anymore. People will have to put some new piece of flair on their phone to show that they spent more.
styckx:jonny_q: Well I use Mac/Linux...: I'm not sure how well it would sell, being that the whole point of owning an iPhone is so people know how much you spent on your phone. It wouldn't do to let people see you bought the cheap model.
When you see someone with an iPhone, how quickly can you tell which model they have? The "cheap" one will probably look just like the new one. In fact, that may be exactly what the "cheap" one is: last year's model in this year's case.
Of course, as people start to figure that out, simply owning an iPhone won't be enough anymore. People will have to put some new piece of flair on their phone to show that they spent more.
You gotta love that since the phones get old so fast the older models tend to be found cheaper on craigslist than the newest ipod touch which typically has lower specs.
Then again why does the ipod touch still exist?
Because there are people who just want a media player; the fact that it can do almost everything that aniPhone can do except make phone calls is a bonus. That's why I bought one; it really is an iPad Mini(the 4G model is, anyway).
moothemagiccow:RaverRevolution: Get ready for your iphone 5 to be obsolete!!
You gotta love that since the phones get old so fast the older models tend to be found cheaper on craigslist than the newest ipod touch which typically has lower specs.
Then again why does the ipod touch still exist?
pre-teens (for now) and morons
Or people who don't want to pay for the internet twice(or more for a family), but still like to take advantage of the ubiquity of wifi, and need a toilet diddling device.Perhaps smartphone users, including me, are the morons.
StoPPeRmobile:Enfenestrate: Isn't that the normal product cycle for iPhones? The new one comes out, so the old one becomes the cheap one? The 5s comes out, so the 5 becomes the low-cost version? Right now I can go get a nice, cheap 4s since the 5 came out recently.
Why would I want to buy an iPhone that's even cheaper (crappier) than just buying last year's model?
Walmart has already made apple their biatch because for the last two weeks through this Saturday Walmart has been selling iphone 5s for 127 bucks.
Apple has to come out with a lower cost iphone because last years Android models that do everything the I5 does are zero dollars.
Samsung Skyrocket 16 gigs, nfc, 4g, expandable memory, removable battery. The only difference is proc speed, a few pixels, and a slightly newer bluetooth spec. Apple was only playing catch up, and they did not do that good a job.
theflatline:Walmart has already made apple their biatch because for the last two weeks through this Saturday Walmart has been selling iphone 5s for 127 bucks.
Apple has to come out with a lower cost iphone because last years Android models that do everything the I5 does are zero dollars.
Samsung Skyrocket 16 gigs, nfc, 4g, expandable memory, removable battery. The only difference is proc speed, a few pixels, and a slightly newer bluetooth spec. Apple was only playing catch up, and they did not do that good a job.
Enfenestrate:Isn't that the normal product cycle for iPhones? The new one comes out, so the old one becomes the cheap one? The 5s comes out, so the 5 becomes the low-cost version? Right now I can go get a nice, cheap 4s since the 5 came out recently.
Why would I want to buy an iPhone that's even cheaper (crappier) than just buying last year's model?
I think AT&T and Verizon is giving them grief about not having a cheaper LTE model. Both carriers have made a huge investment in LTE, and they can't leverage that investment by selling non-LTE iPhone 4 and 4S models to customers. Back in the day when they were the only popular smartphone in town, Apple could tell the carriers to go fark themselves, but when you have Android phones dominating the market and models like the Galaxy S3 rivaling the iPhone 5 for popularity, Apple suddenly has to play ball with the carriers again and give them the LTE phones that they want.
StoPPeRmobile:Mad_Radhu: Back in the day when they were the only popular smartphone in town
When was that?
2007 to 2009. Before Verizon launched the Droid, there really weren't any smartphones outside of Blackberry/Sidekick that really got the public excited the way the iPhone did. Prior to the iPhone, it was pretty rare for non-business customers to pony up for a premium smartphone, plus a data and texting plan. The iPhone basically moved a big chunk of the non-techie public from cheap Razrs that were just used for phone calls into more profitable plans for the carriers, which is why AT&T wanted it so badly and Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint were all trying to come up with iPhone killers. You could probably even argue that it wasn't really until the release of the Galaxy S phones in mid-2010 that the iPhone really had credible competition, so AT&T and Apple pretty much had that lucrative market of new smartphone users to themselves until then. | {
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This information was compiled from a database completed in 1994 with the help of an Indiana Heritage Research Grant. The full database contains some 48,000 names. All records "Indian Reserve" where was noted as the residence at the time of purchase were culled from the file and are listed here. | {
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Pharrell Williams, Moncler-Outerwear Collection
It looks like Pharrell has been working hard lately(pause) with his new outerwear line and a new N.E.R.D. album on the way. I’m definitely going to need one of those vests. Hit the jump to see other scans. -Trademarkk | {
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Parkfast Blog
Tag: Driving
Friday, May 23, 2014 [caption id="attachment_1397" align="aligncenter" width="512"] Anthony Correia / Shutterstock.com[/caption] One of four lanes on the Williamsburg Bridge eastbound to Brooklyn will be closed on Saturday from 6 am to 12:30 pm to facilitate NYCDOT bridge maintenance. Mulberry Street between Canal Street and Broome Street and Hester Street between Mott Street and Baxter Street will be closed Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 5:30 pm to 9 pm for the Little Italy Pedestrian Mall.…
Friday, May 9, 2014 The Brooklyn Bridge will be closed Manhattan-bound from midnight Friday to 7 am Saturday and from midnight Saturday to 9 am Sunday. The eastbound BQE exit onto the bridge closes 30 minutes earlier and other Brooklyn ramps onto the bridge shut down 5-15 minutes earlier. Motorists will be detoured to the nearby Manhattan Bridge. One of four lanes of the Williamsburg Bridge eastbound to Brooklyn will be closed on Saturday from…
Friday, April 25, 2014 The Brooklyn Bridge will be closed Manhattan-bound from midnight Friday to 7 am Saturday and from midnight Saturday to 9 am Sunday. Motorists will be detoured to the Manhattan Bridge or may choose other crossings. One of four lanes on the Williamsburg Bridge eastbound to Brooklyn will be closed on Saturday from 6 am to 2 pm to facilitate NYCDOT bridge maintenance. The Grand Street Bridge over Newtown Creek will be…
Friday, April 18, 2014 The Brooklyn Bridge will be closed Manhattan-bound from midnight Friday to 7 am Saturday. Motorists will be detoured to the Manhattan Bridge or may choose other crossings. One of four lanes on the Williamsburg Bridge eastbound to Brooklyn will be closed on Saturday from 6 am to 2 pm to facilitate NYCDOT bridge maintenance. The Grand Street Bridge over Newtown Creek will be closed on Saturday from 8 am to 1…
Fur will be flying on May 3rd when Celebrity Catwalk's "Paws in the City" returns to the Big Apple! This fashion show for pets fuses the worlds of fashion and entertainment into one unforgettable event, with all of the proceeds going to animal rescue organizations. As we've done in the past, Edison ParkFast is proud to support this event. And this year, for the first time ever, we're teaming up with Celebrity Catwalk for a free…
Friday, April 4, 2014 The Brooklyn Bridge will be closed Manhattan-bound from 11:59 pm Friday to 6 am Monday. The westbound/southbound BQE exit ramp to Cadman Plaza West also will be closed. BQE exit ramp traffic will be diverted to the Atlantic Avenue exit onto Furman Street. While the Manhattan Bridge remains an alternative for Manhattan-bound traffic, motorists should also consider the Williamsburg Bridge or the Hugh L. Carey Brooklyn Battery Tunnel (MTA-tolled facility) due to…
[caption id="attachment_1341" align="alignleft" width="300"] Sirikorn Thamniyom / Shutterstock.com[/caption] Yes motor freaks, it's time to start your engines. Because the 14th Annual New York International Auto Show is pulling back into town. And once again, Edison ParkFast is a proud co-sponsor, so we want to make sure you're ready to roll! Here's everything you need to know: What: 1,000 vehicles plus the latest in tech, safety and innovation in nearly 900,000 sq ft. It's the hottest automotive…
Monday, March 31, 2014 The Central Park transverses at 65th Street, 79th Street, 86th Street and 96th Street will each be closed once in the early morning hours during this week for annual scheduled under-deck bridge inspections. Each transverse will be completely closed to traffic, except for emergency vehicles, from 12:01 am until 5:30 am. Only one transverse will be closed at a time, so the adjacent transverses may be used as alternates. [caption id=""…
Friday, March 28, 2014 The following streets in Manhattan will be closed on Sunday: 6th Avenue between 51st Street and 55th Street and 51st Street between Madison Avenue and 6th Avenue will be closed from 7:30 am to 9:15 am for the NYC Fire Department Holy Name Society Parade: The following streets will be closed from 2 pm to 5 pm for the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York Parade: * 5th Avenue…
Friday, March 21, 2014 One of four lanes of the Williamsburg Bridge eastbound to Brooklyn will be closed on Saturday from 6 am to 2 pm to facilitate NYCDOT bridge maintenance. One lane in each direction on the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge over Newtown Creek is maintained Saturdays from 7 am to 1 pm to facilitate NYCDOT bridge repairs. One of two lanes on the Union Street Bridge over the Gowanus Canal will be closed northbound… | {
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Raynham Man Convicted of Molesting Six-Year-Old Girl
A 39-year-old Raynham man was given the maximum jail sentence allowable earlier this month after being convicted at trial in Taunton District Court of molesting his girlfriend’s six-year-old daughter, Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III announced today.
Damion Paxton was convicted by a jury of his peers of indecent assault and battery of a child under 14, enticing a child under 16, and assault and battery. After his conviction, Judge Michael Brennan sentenced the defendant to the maximum two-and-a-half year in the house of corrections and placed him on supervised GPS-monitored probation for an additional five years after his release from jail.
The case dates back to 2013, when the victim was just six-years-old and living in Raynham. The defendant, who lived with them for about two months, would coax the victim into his bedroom by letting her play a video game. He would make her sit on his lap while playing. She testified at trial that the defendant did not play with her, but rather was looking at her and watching her while she playing. While on his lap, he would rub her lower back under her shirt, going down to her waistband area. He also reached over and touched her vaginal area over top of her clothes. She testified that he would also reach over and touch her chest area, near the neck line of her shirt, but would not go inside her shirt. She said these incidences would happen mostly with the door closed and that they would stop when her mother or sister would come into the area.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Megan Burns.
“This defendant took advantage of his temporary living arrangement to abuse an innocent six-year-old girl. His conduct is despicable and I am pleased Judge Brennan imposed the maximum sentence for this career criminal,” District Attorney Quinn said. “I commend the victim for testifying under very difficult circumstances.” | {
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PS3 Attitude’s Most Wanted Games of 2010 #7 – Batman: Arkham Asylum 2
When the votes were cast for this year’s Most Wanted Games of 2010, there were a few titles that were tossed around that many of us probably wouldn’t have even dreamed mentioning a few months ago.
During this long and arduous process, over thirty games garnered nominations, but when the dust settled and the arguing stopped, no other game received more knowing nods among the staff here at PS3 Attitude for making a surprise appearance on this list than Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 (though it’s unlikely to retain such a title).
It’s a testament to the quality of the first game that word of a sequel got our red phones ringing and rushing to encase ourselves in a cape and leather. From its excellent balance of stealth and action to the fitting use of gadgets and techniques Batman implements to overcome the inhabitants of Gotham’s renown loony-bin, B:AA not only hit a lot of our buttons, it punched them right off our faces.
Naturally, considering the game was only announced a couple of weeks ago at the VGAs, little is actually known about Rocksteady’s second caped-crusade with the Dark Knight. In a way, with such little information to currently go on, it only compounds what a great job the guys at Rocksteady did the first time to make us want something we know so practically nothing about.
"Bit to the left, left ... left ... there, you got it ..."
What we do know is that Arkham is unlikely to be the setting of the sequel, or at least the only setting. With Rocksteady’s Paul Denning confirming that a sand-box Batman title just wouldn’t work, it’s probable that other Gotham landmarks will also make an appearance. Such locales could include the likes of Wayne Manor to the shadowy alleyways that claimed the lives of Bruce’s parents, what we can expect is that, with the success of the first game surely rewarding the Rocksteady crew a bigger budget, things are going to get bigger and, excuse the pun, even batter.
Other than the game’s possible locations, the only other thing we have to go on is what was shown at the VGAs. Depicting a sickly – though just as insane as ever – Joker, the Batman 2 teaser at least confirms that Bat’s arch-nemesis is returning. What other villains will make the role-call is anybody’s guess, but no matter who turns up, we’re looking forward to unleashing our brains and our brawn in another stellar action title next year.
Here’s the obligatory quote from the team:
The original Arkham Asylum is one of the best games of 2009 and is definitely the best superhero game ever created. With the foundation already made, there is no doubt that the sequel will be even better – PS3 Attitude’s Delriach
Batman 2 – or whatever it is ultimately called- hits sometime late next year. | {
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Exit Sign To Meet ISO 7010
Exit Signs To Meet New ISO 7010 is the latest edition, and is one of the many safety signs required by law. Providing the correct Emergency Escape Signage can be Life Saving, ensuring everyone evacuates the building via the appointed Fire Exits and Emergency Exits. Emergency Escape signage is white on green for ease of identification & legibility. All signs within this section conform to the new ISO 7010 safety standards. Safety signs are required by law in all public areas & buildings.
A mixture of ISO 7010 /BS 5499 and EC Directive fire exit signs should never be displayed together within the same building. | {
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ABOUT
Avid outdoorsman and underwater photographer, Barry Brown has spent the last 12 years documenting life above and below water in Curacao, Netherlands Antilles. He is currently working with the Smithsonian Institution documenting new Caribbean deep-water species and building a one of a kind database. His underwater images can regularly be seen in Sport Diver, Scuba Diver and on the Ikelite website. His image of a "Collage of Corals" seen under blue-light at night recently placed in the TOP 10 images for the 2014 NANPA (North American Nature Photographers Association) photo contest.
Archive for April, 2012
Good morning friends, how was your weekend?? Mine was very uneventful once again, I really didn’t do much as I still felt a bit sick this weekend, it’s like the cold that won’t go away!! Saturday morning Stijn met me and the dogs on the Calabash trail and we cleaned for almost two and a half hours! I had a big push broom and Stijn did the cutting and by the time we left it was looking pretty darn good! After that adventure we were going to go diving but because of the big incoming waves driven by this high wind we are having that never happened. We then attempted to go sea-glass collecting but again conditions were poor and we gave it up! So in the end Stijn just went home because of nothing to do around the Brown household! Yesterday I loaded the bike onto the car and took the dogs for a long bike ride along the North coast. We got there at around 7:00 and by 9:00 it was HOT and time to go! I spent most of yesterday waging war on these small cockroaches that are currently invading our house! I had to pull out some of our driftwood furniture and power wash it outside to get them and their eggs off and then once dry I spayed the furniture with bug killer, it was super fun, NOT!! After hours of moving and cleaning driftwood i then cleaned the inside of the house, it was a great way to spent a Sunday! I am almost packed and ready to go, I leave for the States on Wednesday and will be back in a week but will continue to post the blog everyday while gone, so keep tuning in!
Today is one of the biggest holidays of the year for Holland and Curacao it’s called “Queens Day” and thanks to the Queen I have the day off! There will be non-stop celebrations here all day with all the folks from the Netherlands being dressed in orange or should i say covered in orange, they even paint their faces! I might go down to Punda later and check out the big swap-meet they are having I think we went a few years ago and it was pretty fun.
Here is a very cute little Orangeclaw Hermit crab, Calcinus tibicen for your viewing pleasure today. This crab is commonly confused with the Red Reef crab but the tiny white speckles on the large claws and the light yellow tips set him apart from his cousin. They guy here was in a very old discarded Queen Conch shell and once again proves that nothing goes to waste underwater.
I need to get these three dogs out for a walk then I will go do a dive with Alita the baby dolphin, have a wonderful day, see you tonight, Barry
Good morning from the Caribbean. I got to work yesterday just in time to see this little bird giving this bigger bird a piggy-back ride and they looked like they were having a great time, at least the bigger bird did!! Ok, I see I can’t fool you folks, yes these are two mating Laughing Gulls, Larus articilla and the only one laughing here is still the bird on top! They get their name from the cackling sound they make which is unlike any noise I have ever heard. Lately we have this very large school of small fish out in front of the Ocean Encounters dive shop in our small lagoon and it is attracting birds from everywhere lately! These are considered true seabirds and can be found just about anywhere on the island from the shores to the harbour. They feed mainly on fish but are known to eat just about anything including garbage. I read that these birds are known to breed in Bonaire but have never been documented breeding in Curacao, boy do I have a photo for them!!
I did a morning dive yesterday on our Sea Aquarium House reef in search of the corals that were badly bleached a year ago. I have a whole set of laminated photos that I carry underwater so i can match the photo up exactly as it was a year ago, it’s amazing to see the before and afters. Many i could not find but did hit the jackpot with quite a few, I can see I won’t get that project done in one dive! Many of the corals that were badly bleached are now all dead while others fully recovered, the grooved brain corals took the biggest hit!
At 5:30 I finally got back on the o’l bike and went for a much needed and overdo ride. I have been sick with this stupid cold for close to two weeks and only have ridden twice, we normally ride three times a week with a long ride on the weekends!
Hi guys, for the past week we have seen countless flocks of Caribbean Flamingo’s flying East either to Bonaire or to the Jan Thiel Salt-Ponds and unfortunately I never once had a camera with me. I think it was three days ago that a flock of about 150-200 passed out in front of the Sea Aquarium and flying at only about a meter above the waters surface! The group was so large and so loud that it made everyone stop what they were doing and gaze in awe at a sight that only a few will ever be lucky enough to see. I honestly had a hard time believing that these birds because of their size could fly very well but they proved me wrong. They fly in a formation just like wild geese, there is one leader and the rest follow creating a large “V” or in a straight line, it’s really unreal to see. I am guessing that the leader must trade off with others quite often as the others were all more or less drafting him, it would be very tiring at the front. We always see them flying directly into the wind as well, again it seems to tiring but maybe the wind keeps their large bodies afloat or hovering in the air? For centuries Bonaire has been the principal breeding site for the flamingo population in the area which is currently estimated at around 20,000 birds. From what I understand the flamingos come from Venezuela and mainly pass Aruba and Curacao on their way to Bonaire but in the past few years a flock of 300 to 400 have started calling Curacao home and can be found here almost year around. This one here is enjoying some “me time” with a nice bath under the warm Caribbean sun without a care in the World!
I was again underwater with Alita the baby dolphin yesterday, that’s about as fun as it gets!! I started out the morning doing some photos above the water of her and her mother playing and will send those out to you as well.
Not much else going on, it’s really pretty quiet around her lately. I am off to the ocean, have a wonderful day, be back soon, Barry
Good morning from a little place called Curacao. I am waking up fully beat after spending close to four hours underwater yesterday with Ritina and Alita, our new baby dolphin. On my first dive in the morning I was in with them for close to two hours just standing or sitting on the sand waiting for them to come to me, this works so much better than swimming around and trying to find them. The whole time I am down there Ritina is talking to the baby with these high pitched squeals and whistles and the baby is answering back with her own unique calls, it’s really unbelievable to listen to! I have the camera all ready to go with one flash as Ritina brings the baby over to check me out, they usually do a few circles around me and I get a few shots and then off they go and I wait for a few minutes before they return. While waiting I play with the giant Queen Conchs and find all kinds of new and exciting fish to photograph including a tiny little just born Lionfish. I ended up with some great photos yesterday but was forced to exit because my fingers were frozen solid so after warming up for a few hours i jumped in and did it again, talk about fun!
Here is a beautiful, cool looking Green Iguana for your viewing pleasure today that looks so much like a prehistoric dinosaur!! The Green Iguana can weigh up to 18 pounds (8 kg) and can reach a length of five to seven feet (1.5 to 2 m). This iguana has a long body covered with soft leathery scales, a long tail and short legs. Its hard, long tail is used as a weapon and for balance when climbing. It has a greenish-gray color and can change color slightly (but not nearly as well as some lizards, such as chameleons). Female and juvenile male iguanas are a much brighter green than an adult male. It has feet with five very long toes with sharp claws on the ends, used especially for climbing. The iguana has a row of spines that extend along its back from the base of its head all the way to the tip of its tail, descending in size from head to tail. It also has a dorsal crest at the base of its head and a dewlap underneath its chin. The iguana also has a row of sharp serrated teeth.
The Green Iguana is a social species; groups can be found basking and foraging together in trees. The male iguana is typically more aggressive and territorial than the female. They exhibit male-male aggression and a male may injure another iguana in attempts for the alpha position, the best basking perch, the biggest territory, or access to females. Young males who are not yet ready to challenge mature males for territories may hang out with dominant males but are always watchful for signs of aggression.
Good morning everyone…dolphin day AGAIN! This is another one of our super cute little ones. Barry was in the water yesterday with our one year old’s and their mothers, this is little Kanoa, he is almost one and a half and the son of Renata. He also shares the pool with Bonnie and Nubia, who just turned one in April. This is the typical way we see these little ones, racing by and giving us a look backwards. Dolphins of course, have eyes on the side of their heads, and can almost see 360 degrees around them. You might recognize the name Kanoa. He got his name from a beach on the North coast that we often take the dogs to. And, Kanoa is typical of one year old baby dolphins. He is a bit scared, but very curious. So, he races by, but quickly comes back for another look at this man with the camera that he can see his reflection in. Barry and Kanoa had a blast during this photo shoot, and I am sure they will be doing more in the days to come. That’s great because we can see the fun photos afterwards! I believe he will be in the water once again today as it is quite clear these days and getting hot on land!
Barry here, good news on the puppy front, we found a home for our puppy Lola!! For those of that forgot we have had a puppy here at the house for quite a few months now well guess what, this lucky dog is going to America!! Yes, in just a few short weeks Aimee will take her all the way to Michigan and back, is that dedication or what?? Many of you remember our friend Emily who has been here over and over she will be her new Momma!! Cool huh!? I will keep you posted and send a new photo, she is now getting very well trained and is cute as can be!
Like Aimee mentioned I was in the water a lot yesterday, in fact close to four hours! I first did a sub dive and then off to the baby dolphin lagoons, what better way to spend the afternoon!
Here is something else fun for you all today, this is a short little video sent to me by a friend of a very rare Caribbean Two-Spot Octopus, Octopus filosus, that was recently spotted in Bonaire, check it out! http://www.youtube.com/user/lindascubastuff I have never seen one of these in our waters but apparently they exist as we now have proof, talk about well camouflaged!!!
It’s off to swim with dolphins and play with the sub, have a wonderful day!!
So…who’s smiling now? You cannot see this photo and not smile and not fall in love with this amazing little creature. This photo is exactly Alita’s personality! She is so funny and curious and sassy, all rolled up into one beautiful little package. She is now 5 weeks old and is “her own little dolphin”. It is amazing how fast these little ones become coordinated and how they are always looking above, below and around momma, trying to catch a glimpse of their new world. I get in the water with them every day, to give Ritina some TLC and to make sure everyone looks good and healthy. It also gives Alita a chance to see me often and slowly get used to me. Actually, Alita is very curious about me, but Ritina is still a protective momma and keeps herself between the two of us. The bond between Ritina and I has definitely grown and I love her more everyday as I see her blossem into such a wonderful momma. And, every so often Alita gets very close to me, but I never over-reach my boundry, and that is what makes Ritina relax and let me spend more time up close with them. The idea is not to touch Alita, but to have her come and touch me. Day by day, it will happen. So, to get this photo, Barry set up the camera and in I went! I can’t tell you how much fun that was. The big dome is a bit reflextive and that really got the dolphins interested, so they kept passing by. I did not even know this shot turned out so great, because she was right up in my face, but I was hopeful. So, either Barry has taught me well, or (as I sometimes think), even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while! Enjoy every! Fun times in Curacao.
Apr 20, 12 Comments Off on American Kestrel, Falco sparverius, Birds of Prey
Good morning from Curacao!! Yeah we know that’s a hard word to say, it sounds like, CUR-A-SOW and here on the island you hear it pronounced a hundred different ways.
A big Happy Birthday goes out to our friend Nancy Thompson today, we wish her a wonderful and fun filled day!!
Well, we got more rain again last night lucky us, it comes at a time when we needed it badly as everything was looking so dry. We are officially entering the dryer months now which is not my favorite time of the year here, I love all the blooming green stuff and it’s amazing just how fast it ALL disappears without moisture!
Yesterday I spent the day trying to get some new photos of baby Alita but it’s not as easy as it looks!! If the sun is not shining you can’t see the dolphins under the water at all so you really have no idea where they will surface. When the sun is out you can better follow them with your lens but guessing when and where they will surface for that one shot is still very difficult. I ended up standing out there for hours yesterday shooting around 6gb of film, thank goodness for it’s digital or I would never get a shot!
After work yesterday I met Stijn and a friend from Holland named Rolf in front of Lions Dive Hotel and off we went for an hour and a half of fast riding on my trails behind the Sea Aquarium. Rolf is a pro rider and has been here all week training and it was great to get to ride with him at least once.
Here is a popular bird in Curacao and we see them almost everywhere we go usually in pairs. This is called an American Kestrel, Falco sparverius and they are amazing hunters! The local Curacao residents call them Kini-Kini and in Dutch they are called Amerikaanse Torenvalk. The males have grey wings while the larger female has a more striped appearance. They eat lizards and small birds and occasionally insects but really nothing is safe with these guys around. Some of you will remember the photo I sent out years ago of a Kestrel eating a small Bananaquit thus their other famous name “the Sparrow Hawk”. This bird is found in great numbers here and in Aruba but strangely enough not in Bonaire??? Anyone who can come up with an answer for that please let me know.
Also, one last thing, if I post something with a wrong name or miss-identify something please let me know, I try hard to keep these blogs up to date and accurate, you can even call me on my spelling, I don’t mind!!
Good morning friends, here is something a bit different for you all today and I’m sending it because many ask me about lighthouses that are here on the islands. This is called the Willems Toren Lighthouse (also known as Lacre Punt Light) which is located at the Southern tip of the island of Bonaire. It is south of the three sets of slave huts and the salt production facilities on the Southern part of the island. The lighthouse was established in 1837 and is well maintained. The nearby remains of the stone walled keepers house are not in as good condition and so far there are no plans to restore it. This photo was taken about three years ago and if you go there today you find it has been freshly painted and looks quite different. It’s just been announced that the first of the five, and probably Bonaire’s most famous lighthouse, Willemstoren (seen here), is totally renovated and in good working order. In a joint venture between the Public Body of Bonaire, which actually owns the historic landmarks and monuments, and the Rijkswaterstaat, four additional lighthouses or light beacons will be renovated and equipped with the latest in electro-technology. Improvements have also been made to ensure the safety of the personnel tasked with maintenance of the towers. The current schedule of work allows for the remaining four lighthouses–Spelonk, Wecua, Seru Bentana, and Klein Bonaire to be completed by August, 2012.
We had a rain storm beyond description here last night and we needed it! It started at around 6:30 and lasted a whole hour flooding everything! We opened the back door and watched as dozens of little frogs came poring out of what we call the “frog hole” located on our back porch, it was so cool!
Good evening friends, this was the scene today on the beach next to the Substation and in front of Royal Resorts Hotel. The workers had just finished doing hours of raking and getting the sand on the beach all ready for the arriving guests when this big boy strolled in out of nowhere without a care in the World and wasn’t about to share the beach with anyone else!! This is a big Green Iguana, Iguana Iguana and is the number one most photographed and popular reptiles we have on the island. A fully grown male can reach two meters in length, that’s over six feet long folks! I only had a 16mm lens today so in order for me to get any shot with that lens I had to get close! I slowly bent down and moved in closer and he immediately lifted his head and started moving it up and down warning me to keep my distance. They will bite but it’s their tails you have to watch, they use those like a cowboy uses a whip, it’s unreal to see! After a I finished my photos he slowly walked down the beach and onto the rocks where I am sure he had a cave, he most likely spent the rest of the day laying in the sun and hunting for food.
Not much going on today, we had another film crew at the Substation most of the day doing their thing, I just kept out of the way!!
Good morning all, meet our friend Emma who was last here about a month ago and I am finally getting around to posting her photo! This lovely 18 year old hails all the way from the country of Sweden. Sweden is roughly the shape and size of California, but has about 9 million people, just about a quarter of the Golden State’s population. It is a land rich in nature, with ten’s of thousands of lakes, stony highlands and rich plains. Well, Emma, her sister and father travel to this warm little island a few times a year to enjoy the diving, the sun and the sea. We asked Emma a few things about herself.
Favorite hobbies
I love to dance. I’ve been dancing since I was one and a half, so that is something I do as often as I can. I have dance class five days every week, but I would do it even more if I had the time! I also love to hang out with my friends and family and just do anything.
Favorite foods
The best food in the world, must be my mom’s. She makes the best food ever! But other than that, I love Italian food, cooked in all its different ways! I also love to eat sushi, which I eat several days a week after school.
What you love about Curacao
What I really love most about the island, is that it feels like home to me. Since we’ve been coming there for seven years now, it feels like coming home. I know everything about the island ( at least a lot) and I know what I like to do there. I can do what I love most, and skip all the things you usually do as a tourist. But I also love the climate, and the nature which is a lot different from Sweden. It is so beautiful there!
Favorite things to do in Curacao
I love to just lay on the beach and swim. It’s the best thing to lay there in the sun and relax, that is something I never do at home! I also love to walk over to the Dolphin Academy and be with the dolphins. My big dream ever since I was a small kid has been to become a dolphin trainer, and it almost feels like it comes true when I am there. The dolphins are amazing and everyone there is so nice to me and my sister. Another thing I like is to be underwater, either snorkeling or diving. I love to see all the nice fish and corals. And at last, I also like to go in to town, and walk among all the cute, colorful houses!
Favorite dolphin trainers in Curacao
I think I like most of the trainers, especially George and Aimee and Junior. They have been so nice to us, helping us all these years We have taken dolpin trainer classes at DA, and have learned a lot about the dolphins, the shows and what trainers really do.
What you want to do in the future
I actually don’t really know what I want to do in the future. All I know is that I want to travel before I continue my upper education. I need a break! And like I said before, I’ve always wanted to work as a dolphin trainer during this break, but I don’t really know for the moment. The dream is still there, but I’ve started to realize that it might be a dream for a reason…. That it is harder than you think to just start working as one! But what I want to study after my break of school, is still undecided.
Who your role models are and whyMy role models are my family. But because I am a girl, it is mostly my mom and sister. My mom because she and I are so similar to each other. She helps me with so much, and she knows everything about me. She always understands me. It’s hard to explain in words, but she is the best, and we are very close. She and the rest of my family made me who I am. My sister is also a role model to me because she has always been there for me. She is not only my sister, but also my best friend. Whenever I am sad she cheers me up and whenever I am happy she is happy for me. She is the best sister you could ever wish for and I love her with all my heart.
Other places you have visited and what you like about thatOther than Curacao I have been to different cities in Europe, such as Rome, Paris, Nice, Barcelona etc. I’ve also been to Canada and USA – New York. My favorite places are New York and the French Riviera though. New York is a city that has everything, according to me, and it was so fun to be there. The French Riviera is a place that I love because, like Curacao, we have been then for many years – and for some reasons I seem to like those places the most. We always go to the same places and beaches when we are there, and for me that is real vacation. When you can really relax!
Your favorite place in SwedenThis question was a hard one, but I think I will say Gothenburg. I like it because it is the second biggest city in Sweden, but is still feels quite small. It is also close to the ocean, which is the best in the summer when you want to go out on an island a warm day!
How many languages you speakI speak Swedish fluently but I also speak English quite good and a little French. I’ve read it for 6 years, but it is really hard to speak.
I have had countless requests for a photo of a bathing beauty in a bikini in fact, it could be one of my most requested photos! When Emma returns for the next trip we will be doing more photographs with her and her sister and hopefully next time underwater with the dolphins.
Good morning friends, how was your weekend?? Mine was weird again due to the fact that i was still a little sick and semi wounded from my last bicycle crash!! On Saturday morning i loaded the bike on the car and drove to the North coast with the dogs, I figured it would be easier to ride than walk with this dumb cut-up knee I am currently sporting. I think we got out there at around 7:15 and by 9:00 it was so blasted hot we had to go!! This was a big reminder that good o’l HOT summer is on the way and future dog walks will have to be done much earlier in the morning, it’s just too much for them! The rest of my Saturday was spent working on my driftwood tree and doing a bit of shopping, I tried hard to just stay home and get over this week long cold. Yesterday, Sunday it was raining when we woke up so I only took the girls for a very short walk near the house and then spent the morning finishing my tree which you can read about in more detail below.
This is my newest driftwood creation called the “Divi-Divi tree”. I have been working on this piece now for around two weeks and realized yesterday that I could just keep doing more so I finally told myself to just stop and call it good! I found all the wood on the shores of Saint Joris Bay ( in the background) or floating in the water and no, it was not found in one trip, this took months of walking to find all the right pieces. It measures close to a meter or three feet in length and two feet tall and weighs about 10 pounds. I designed it around the ever popular Divi-Divi trees which are found here on the ABC Islands. These popular trees are know for their wind-blown look and because the wind is always blowing so hard and always from the same direction the trees take on a unique look of their own. Although it’s hard to see in the photo there is an old hummingbird nest in the tree, we took the nest after the babies grew up and flew away and hummingbirds never use the same nest twice. Around the base I used smooth rocks, sea fans, pieces of polished fossil coral, sea-glass and rope to make the bushes, not to mention countless tiny pieces of driftwood to cover and hide the needed screw-holes. What am I going to do with it now?? That’s a good question! Aimee of course has claimed it but then said yesterday it should be on display somewhere so who knows, every-things for sale!
Well, it’s coffee time and then off to work, I won’t be able to dive still because of my dumb knee so another weird week at work ahead! Take care, I will see you soon, Barry
Good morning everyone. This is one photo that should bring a smile to your face! This is the newest member of Dolphin Academy, Curacao Sea Aquarium. Her name is Alita, and she is the new, one month old baby of Ritina and Copan. She just received her name last week, by voting of the DA staff and trainers. We were looking for an island or Spanish name and her name means “noble”. It fits her because her momma thinks she is a princess. This is a particular miracle for all of us because this is a first time mother. There is usually a very tough learning curve for a new mother with knowing how to guide and nurse a new baby but Ritina knocked this one out of the park! She immediately was a very good guide, helping her swim and turn, and within a few hours was turning and trying to incourage the little one to nurse. We have really never seen anything like it! We are all still pretty much astounded at the natural mothering ability of Ritina. Of course I am particularly proud because Ritina is my primary dolphin, which means I work with her about 80 percent of the time and I am responsible for teaching her new behaviors. Well, that pretty much means I am a grandma! Yea. This photo is from when the baby was 2 weeks old. She is pretty chubby, which means nursing is obviously going well, she has already sluffed her baby skin and has this wonderful color, and she is strong and active, as you can see, jumping and playing. Ritina and Alita have two other dolphins in their same area, Annie and Tela, and Alita can sometimes be seen swimming with Annie, tucked up under her “Auntie” all safe and sound if Ritina needs to take a moment to herself. Mother dolphins are very protective and alert and seldom ever let their calves leave their sides, and Ritina is the same, always ready to keep her precious treasure safe. So, welcome Alita and we hope to have new and fun stories to share with you in the future.
Good morning friends, what a weird week I am having!! Not only am I sick with this stupid cold but I fell on my bike in the Sea Aquarium parking lot on my way home and cut the heck out of my leg, again! I already had some nasty, healing road rash from my big ride last weekend and when i wrecked in the parking lot I landed directly on the same wounds and made them even worse! How does one crash in a parking lot on a mountain bike you ask?? Well, like everywhere on the planet when they pour sidewalks they leave a small lip that rises above the asphalt. In our case here that lip is only about two and a half inches tall and if your sick and dizzy and not paying attention you can get stuck in that groove and there’s nothing that can be done about it, you don’t even have time to say your prayers! Not only is this embarrassing beyond belief but landing or falling on cement is about as bad as it gets, there is no cushion factor at all! So now my leg is worse than when I started which will be keeping me out of the water for the weekend. Yesterday i again went into work to get my camera set up but then went back home and went to bed for the rest of the day. I am feeling a bit better today, so far the nose is not running which alone is great news!
Here is one of the coolest Caribbean residents and voted “most fun to watch” by divers around the World. We call these Boxfish but their real names are Trunkfish, this one here is a Smooth Trunkfish, Lactophrys trigueter. They claim these fish can get to be a foot in length, I have never seen one that big but am still looking. This one here was about as relaxed and calm as a fish can be and fully entertained me for over 30 minutes! I just hovered a few feet above the reef and watched as he tried and tried to eat a Christmas Tree Worm but the worm was too fast. After several attempts he then put his mouth over the hole where the worm went down into and I presume started trying to suck it out with those big lips, not sure if he ever succeeded but I think he may have because of the time he spent there. I always tell divers, when you go out find a trunkfisk and just allow yourself five minutes to observe what they are doing, they are very entertaining and cute as cute can be!
Good morning from sickville. Still fighting this stupid cold but did go into work twice yesterday to help with the photos. I have been teaching our new colleague Tico to take underwater photos for the past few months and yesterday he jumped in and did my job of taking pictures underwater of the sub. I waited for him at the surface as he went and did his thing and once back i took the camera, rinsed it and took it inside to download the pictures and get them ready for the clients, he did a pretty good job. I was thinking yesterday, and yes it hurt, that we are all teaching Tico our jobs which will make him our most valuable employee down the road!!
Here is an animal we really don’t see that much here in Curacao and I think I have only ever seen two. This is called a Goldspotted Eel, Myrichthys ocellatus and are commonly confused as underwater snakes. We have NO snakes in the waters of the Caribbean which is a comforting relief as most species are very poisonous. These beautiful eels have bright yellow-gold spots with diffuse black borders on the body and head and a thin body plus, get this, they are able to crawl or move beneath the sand, maybe that’s why I never see them?? They usually hide during the day in sand or on shallow patch reefs, but occasionally out in the open. Generally these eels come out to forage at night but as you can see here this one is out during the day with no fear at all. The maximum size for this species is around 3 and a half feet in length, that’s pretty long and can be found in the 5-40 foot zone on the reef.
That’s it for today, I am going back to bed!! Have a wonderful day, Barry
Apr 11, 12 Comments Off on Coral Bleaching Before and After Photos, Brain Coral
November 18th 2010 Worst Coral Bleaching Ever!
February 12th 2011, Coral Fighting to Recover.
March 2012
Good morning from sickville! I have the worst cold ever and am sitting here wondering who is to blame for this?? I have been around sick people for the past week so i guess trying to put the blame on one specific person is never going to happen although it sure would make me feel better. I came home from work at noon yesterday and spent the rest of the day in bed and for sure won’t be going in today!
Here is a long overdo photo that I have been meaning to send. If you remember way back in November of 2010 during the worst Coral Bleaching event ever I sent you a photo of a big colony of Grooved Brain Coral that was completely bleached and dying. The middle photo was taken in February of 2011 and as you can see the corals were really fighting to come back but the water temperatures just were not changing fast enough. The bottom photo is the same colony taken a few weeks ago, talk about a major difference?? The Grooved Brain Corals took the biggest hit of all the corals and proved to be the most sensitive to coral bleaching and most did not recover! As I swim around the reefs here I still see dead colonies of Grooved Brain Coral everywhere that is now just a reminder of what can and will happen again if the seas become too warm or if we get another big season of rainfall. As you can see in the bottom picture not all the coral survived the severe coral bleaching and the spots where coral used to be is now patch’s of algae. The algae is also due to these little Damselfish that kill parts of the live coral so algae will form creating a kind of “algae garden” known as “destructive Damselfish Gardens”. The top photo really looks lke a face, you can see the eye, big nose and the mouth but as the coral grew back the face kind of dissapeared. You can also see a Lionfish in the photo on the right side of the coral head, these fish are really everywhere now so many in fact that over 1000 were caught this Sunday at a local Lionfish derby held here in Curacao at Santa Cruz bay. So far the waters in Curacao are still cold meaning no coral bleaching to this date, the reefs are still trying to recover from the last round in 2010. | {
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Which player led the league in meaningless receiving yards last year? Wait, what are meaningless receiving yards?
I am defining a meaningless receiving yard as one where:
On third or fourth down, a player gained fewer yards than necessary for the first down.
The receiving yard(s) came in a loss and when the player’s team trailed by at least 28 points.
The receiving yard(s) came in a loss and when the player’s team trailed by at least 21 points with fewer than 15 minutes remaining.
The receiving yard(s) came in a loss and when the player’s team trailed by at least 14 points with fewer than 8 minutes remaining.
The receiving yard(s) came in a loss and when the player’s team trailed by at least 9 points with fewer than 3 minutes remaining.
This definition is not perfect — Le’Veon Bell had a 29-yard reception on 3rd-and-30 last season against the Patriots, and then rushed for a first down on 4th-and-1 — but I think it gets us close enough to perfect that I feel comfortable using it. The results aren’t too surprising — two Jaguars ranked in the top three, separated by the player who led the league in receiving yards — but that doesn’t have to be the end of the analysis.
Cecil Shorts led the league with 351 meaningless receiving yards, which accounts for 45% of all of Shorts’ yards last season. That might lead you to think that Shorts’ 777 receiving yards were misleading or inflated because they came against soft defenses. However, 45% of Shorts’ targets last season came in meaningless situations, too. So there’s reason to think his gross number of yards last year isn’t misleading at all, and he wasn’t taking advantage of soft defenses — he just had lots of opportunities against them.1
The table below shows all players with at least 100 meaningless receiving yards from 2013, along with their number of total receiving yards, percentage of receiving yards that were meaningless, meaningless targets, total targets, and meaningless target percentage.
Josh Gordon’s line is interesting. While he was second in the league with 282 meaningless receiving yards, that represented only 17.1% of his total receiving yards. Meanwhile, nearly 28% of his targets came in these meaningless situations. Let’s take a game-by-game look at Gordon’s stat line:
Wk
Opp
Yards
Tar
Mean Yd
Mean Tar
3
MIN
146
19
5
5
4
CIN
71
9
0
2
5
BUF
86
6
0
0
6
DET
126
9
0
0
7
GNB
21
6
14
4
8
KAN
132
10
0
1
9
BAL
44
7
17
3
11
CIN
125
15
0
7
12
PIT
237
17
158
8
13
JAX
261
15
0
1
14
NWE
151
10
4
1
15
CHI
67
10
43
4
16
NYJ
97
16
6
4
17
PIT
82
10
35
4
Total
1646
159
282
44
In the final 7 minutes of the Steelers game, Gordon caught 7 of 8 targets for 158 yards and a touchdown. At no point during that stretch were the Browns ever down by less than 16 points. I’m okay saying that Gordon racked up some garbage time yards there. But the amazing part is how infrequently Gordon piled up meaningless yards. In only two other games did he top 20 meaningless receiving yards, and in neither of those games did he hit the 50-yard mark. On the contrary, against the Bengals (in week 11) and Vikings, Gordon had 12 meaningless targets for 5 yards and 34 meaningful targets for 271 yards. While Gordon was putting up numbers for a bad team that passed a ton while trailing, I wouldn’t discount his numbers because of the game situation (you would, of course, discount his numbers because of the sheer volume of passes attempted by Browns quarterbacks).
Another player with Gordon-like metrics was Washington’s Pierre Garcon. It’s easy to dismiss his league-leading 113 catches as the by-product of playing for a 3-13 team. But Garcon wasn’t racking up the yards in garbage time: despite often playing in meaningless situations, only 15% of his receiving yards came then, compared to 29% of his targets. Assuming Robert Griffin III and company are improved in 2014, this provides some evidence that Garcon’s numbers won’t necessarily decline as his team gets more competitive (his numbers still could decline, of course, due to a decrease in overall pass attempts or well, any other reason).
Update: How’s this for incredible? I have Calvin Johnson down for only two meaningless receiving yards the entire season. Those came on this third 3rd-and-5 completion against Arizona in week two.
I acknowledge that “targets” is not the best way to measure opportunities; the ideal metric to use would be snap counts on pass plays or pass routes, but my resources are limited. Why does this matter? It’s possible that soft defenses could have resulted in more targets for Shorts, too. If, for example, 35% of his passing routes came in meaningless situations and that’s when he got 45% of his targets and 45% of his yards, I’d argue that he was benefiting from soft coverage. On the other hand, if 55% of his pass snaps came in meaningless situations, but that’s when he only got 45% of his yards, well perhaps he has Randy Moss syndrome and checked out of those games (or his teammates tended to do better in these situations, decreasing his number of targets). I also recognize that the idea of an 8-yard meaningless catch on 3rd-and-12 is a bit clunky when applied to the concept of a meaningless target or a meaningless snap in that situation. [↩]
Did Calvin Johnson not break your threshold of 100 meaningless yards? He isn’t on the list.
Ian
I would imagine so. Detroit didn’t suffer many double-digit losses, and he didn’t even play in one of them. And he’s not really the kind of receiver you would throw to short of the sticks.
Chase Stuart
Great question. I’ve updated the post.
James
Scanning the list only three players had a higher percentage of receiving yards than targets: Chris Ogboynna, Trent Richardson, and Chris Johnson.
Checking down to a RB in a desparate situation has to be the definition of a meaningless pass.
Edward
This might be a crazy request, but is it possible to see the entirety of the list?
MattR
Why did you limit meaningless receiving yards to players on the losing team? It seems that if a player’s team is winning by 17 with 6 minutes to go (for example), any receiving yards he gains after that point on the way to his teams’s victory are just as meaningless as those of a player on the losing side of that game. Using the Super Bowl as an example, it seems weird that Demarius Thomas’s touchdown reception to cut the game from 36-0 to 36-8 at the end of the 3rd quarter is considered meaningless but all the Seattle receptions on the ensuing possession, including Doug Baldwin’s touchdown reception that increased Seattle’s lead from 28 to 35, are not meaningless (especially since if Denver had managed to recover the onside kick and passed their way down the field for another TD to cut the lead to 21 all those yards would have been counted as meaningless)
http://www.sports-central.org/sports/nfl/ Brad O.
Interesting stuff. I would love to see this same method applied to QBs. | {
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Abstract
We describe the fabrication of three-dimensional tissue constructs using a magnetic force-based tissue engineering technique, in which cellular organization is controlled by magnetic force. Target cells were labeled with magnetite cationic liposomes (MCLs) so that the MCL-labeled cells could be manipulated by applying a magnetic field. Line patterning of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) labeled with MCLs was successfully created on monolayer cells or skin tissues using a magnetic concentrator device. Multilayered cell sheets were also inducible on a culture surface by accumulating MCL-labeled cells under a uniform magnetic force. Based on these results, we attempted to construct a complex multilayered myoblast C2C12 cell sheet. Here, patterned HUVECs were embedded by alternating the processes of magnetic accumulation of C2C12 cells for cell layer formation and magnetic patterning of HUVECs on the cell layers. This technique may be applicable for the fabrication of complex tissue architectures required in tissue engineering. | {
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Dynamic Simulation
Beck Engineering simulates the cumulative effects of repeated dynamic loading by blasts, seismic events and earthquakes on stability, damage and deformation of built structures and excavations. We use 3d, strain softening geological models, incorporating built structures, discontinuities, ground reinforcement, and high resolution geology models to simulate the effects of measured or synthetic strong ground motions.
Vectors of peak particle velocity induced by a blasting event near a large underground infrastructure excavation
Our multi-scale, high resolution approach focuses on spectral similitude – matching the expected energy contained across a broad range of frequencies. Coupled with the best of discontinuum and continuum approaches this represents best feasible analysis for these class of problems. | {
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Our mission at the Minnesota Department of Human Services is to actively recruit, welcome and support a workforce that is diverse and inclusive of people who are underrepresented in the development of state policies, programs and practices, so that we can support the success and growth of all people who call Minnesota home.
HS employs a highly talented and dedicated workforce committed to providing services that produce positive outcomes for clients in a cost-effective manner. Employees have an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of Minnesotans every day. | {
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Set up a regular donation
Setting up a monthly donation is a simple way to help Beacon be there for more people. By giving a regular gift, you’ll be helping us sustain our services and plan for the future with confidence. We reach over 2000 adults, young people and children every year but we know that more support is needed and we’re passionate about helping so many more.
Your monthly contributions will help ensure that Beacon can continue to offer and build on its services each year. | {
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The Bold Type capped off a stellar season with an even more stellar season finale full of tears, laughter and a few dangling cliffhangers that are sure to drive us nuts. How will Sutton (Meghan Fahy) and Richard make their turbulent (and totally aga… Read more | {
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I have to come clean. Until last week, I was a Curtains virgin. That’s right; the guy who says he’s seen it all didn’t see this one. I really don’t have any excuses. I mean, it was always sitting there on the shelf of our local video store (one of those mom & pop joints that preceded Blockbuster), and even popped up on cable semi-regularly, but, for one reason or another, I just never got around to checking it.
But you know what? Now that I’ve seen the flick I’m actually glad it took me the better part of three decades to finally do so. Why? Well, for starters, I don’t think the brain-dead adolescent version of myself had the good taste to appreciate the film for what it is (more on that later), but I’m also pretty damned jazzed that my first exposure to it was through Synapse’s absolutely stunning Blu-ray.
Curtains opens with legendary theater actress Samantha Sherwood (Samantha Eggar) performing a bit from “Audra”, the play she’s helped option for her collaborator/director/occasional paramour, Jonathan Stryker (John Vernon). Stryker doesn’t feel that Samantha has the authenticity he wants to see in his main character, so, being the method actor she is, she enlists the director’s help in getting herself institutionalized for a period so that she can truly identify with Audra’s complicated personality. At first, her experiment seems to be working, but, the longer she’s incarcerated, the more she succumbs to her own personal demons, thus leading to a much longer stay than anticipated. In the meantime, Stryker decides to move on with his production, and schedules an intense, weekend-long audition for a select group of actresses. When Samantha gets the news, she escapes from the mental hospital, and makes her way to Stryker’s remote mountain retreat, where the auditions are being held. Stryker is none too pleased by the arrival of Samantha, but, soon, they discover they’ve more to worry about than a washed-up diva as, one by one, the aspiring actresses fall victim to a masked menace hellbent on thinning the competition.
Being new to Curtains, I didn’t expect such an elegant and methodically paced thriller; one that shares far more in common with the Italian gialli than the prototypical slasher flick. From its mature protagonists and somewhat soap-ish melodrama to the gorgeous cinematography by Robert Paynter ( who employs lots of nifty camera tricks and bathes scenes in the same sort of colorful theatrical lighting employed by the likes of Bava and Argento). I also found the kills to be very giallo-esque, with the emphasis on style rather than gore (especially the “ice skating” sequence, which is just jaw-droppingly well executed stuff). Performances are also uncharacteristically strong, which is another reason I just can’t lump this one in with the slasher films of the period, which, as any fan will tell you, aren’t known for their master thespians. Eggar and Vernon aren’t B-movie types, and both deliver really nuanced and solid performances that are complimented by the supporting cast of assorted lovelies, especially
While the production was a notoriously troubled one – so much so that director Richard Ciupka refused to put his name on it, opting to be credited, instead, as Jonathan Stryker. Despite this, the film is remarkably “whole”, especially in light of the reported reshoots and structural changes, and there’s no noticeable gap in quality or holes in the story (at least no more so than your average genre offering).
Synapse Films brings Curtains to Blu-ray with an absolutely GORGEOUS 1.78:1 2K HD transfer that I have no doubt will blow minds. While I’m 34 years late to the party, I have seen stills of the film culled from the various VHS and horrible DVD versions that have been floating around out there, and the difference here is nothing short of astonishing. The image is exceptional in every way, from the vibrant colors and perfectly balanced contrast to the scrumptious amount of fine detail evident in every frame; this is one to write home about, folks.
In terms of audio, we’re given two options; the purists 2.0 mono track, as well as a surprisingly authentic sounding 5.1 DTS HD track that manages to retain the vintage vibe while still giving us some well-implemented directional cues and atmospherics. I don’t often recommend these “manufactured” tracks as I’m one of those aforementioned purists, but this one sounds dynamite!
Synapse loads up this Special Edition release with a slew of quality bonus features, including a feature-length commentary track with actresses Lesleh Donaldson and Lynne Griffin, as well as an alternate vintage track featuring Samantha Eggar and producer, Peter R. Simpson.
We also get a brand new retrospective featurette entitled The Ultimate Nightmare: The Making of Curtains, which includes interviews with Ciupka, Donaldson, Griffin, and many other contributors. It’s a fascinating and in-depth look at what the film was intended to be and what it ultimately became, and the contributors offer some great insight into every facet of making the film, from planning to post-production and release.
Another great addition to the set is Gordon Thorne’s vintage piece Ciupka: A Filmmaker in Transition, which sports a lot of behind-the-scenes footage from Curtains.
Rounding out the extras is the film’s theatrical trailer.
Curtains is an absolute gem. It’s a classy, surprisingly mature, and gorgeously photographed thriller that, in my opinion, owes more to the Italian suspense films of the seventies than to more crowd-pleasing blood and boobs flicks that dominated the multiplexes at the time. Synapse’s Blu-ray presentation is nothing short of perfection, and comes loaded with a fantastic collection of informative and entertaining bonus goodies. Suffice it to say, this one gets my highest recommendation! | {
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Eden Addresses U.S. Senate; Stresses Danger of Arab-israel Situation
British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden, in an address before the United States Senate today, stressed the importance of a joint Anglo-American policy on the Arab-Israel problem. He made no reference to the Arab-Israel question when he spoke later in the House of Representatives.
In the Senate, the British Prime Minister said: “In the area where the danger of conflict is most acute, we should whenever we can declare our unity of purpose. For instance, between the Arab states and Israel where the danger has increased, we have done well to make clear that we are to discuss together what action we should take. The more prepared we are the less likely is an emergency to arise.”
A group of Arab diplomats, led by the Lebanese Ambassador, today called on George V. Allen, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, to complain that they were not consulted on the matters covered in the statement issued at the close of the Eden-Eisenhower talks yesterday. Speaking for himself and other Arab diplomats, Lebanese Ambassador Victor Khoury expressed the belief that any policy adopted toward the Middle East without Arab agreement cannot constitute “a factor of stability.” He said that he spoke to Mr. Allen on behalf of all Arab League members, including Iraq.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published. | {
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Why do we care about the iPad mini?
Not as big as the new iPad; not as small as the iPhone 5 or iPod touch; it's Apple's own "tweener" and by all rights and intents the iPad mini should be nothing more than a gap filler. Yet anticipation is high for the presumed 7.85-inch iOS tablet, and while spirits always tend to get, well, spirited in advance of an Apple event, sometimes the justification seems more inexplicable than others. Arguably, in the context of the tablet market - and post-PC computing as a whole - Microsoft's Surface is far, far more important than the iPad mini.
Windows 8 is the centerpiece of Microsoft's next-gen OS strategy - the hub of desktop and mobile computing, as well as pulling together Windows Phone 8 and Xbox gaming - and the company's future as an industry heavyweight is dependent on it getting that right. That also means showing how Windows RT - as on the first Surface model - fits into that equation, something so far we're yet to see summed up in a consistent, easily communicated message.
As Microsoft's Surface chiefs pointed out, though, their tablet project approaches slates from a different direction to others already in the market. Windows RT may be a pared-back version of Windows 8, but it's still Windows-from-the-desktop boiled down into tablet form. In contrast, iOS on the iPad and Android on tablets running Google's OS both take their cue from phones scaled up. What will be really interesting - and deserves attention - is seeing how full apps translate to finger-use and whether the detachable keyboard accessories Microsoft is so proud of turn out to be essential rather than just eye-catching.
With some calculated timing, though, Apple knocked Surface from the top of the headline pile: the preorder news had its few minutes of attention, only to be swallowed up by the invite for Apple's event next week. Yet in comparison with Surface - which, for Microsoft is pivotal - an iPad mini would simply be filling in a line-up gap for Apple. So why all the attention?
[aquote]It's iconic founder Steve Jobs who has to be disproved[/aquote]
In no small part, it's because the biggest challenge Apple has to overcome with the iPad mini is… Apple itself. More accurately, it's iconic founder Steve Jobs who has to be disproved, after he so vocally and memorably blasted smaller-than-iPad models back in 2010. Tablets that size, Jobs pointed out, don't just offer a slightly reduced display area of 9.7-inch iPad, but a considerably smaller touchscreen to play with. Vendors would need to supply sandpaper, he joked, so that users could file down their fingers in order to tap on-screen graphics with any degree of accuracy.
Jobs was undoubtedly a master of misdirection - telling you today that Apple had no intention of entering a segment, then launching a product to do just that tomorrow - but with his near-deification since his passing last year, and his comments on tablets still getting broadly circulated, all eyes will be on how Apple itself has addressed those complaints. If the iPad mini really is just a smaller iPad (which you may recall is, according to some, just a larger iPhone) then there's a legitimate question of whether Jobs was actually talking codswallop back in 2010. Just as the iPod nano does its touchscreen interface differently to the iPod touch, taking into account the smaller display size, so Apple needs to demonstrate that there really was a challenge to overcome, and prove that it alone has addressed it.
Looking more broadly, though, all eyes are on the iPad mini because of doubts in the small tablet segment as a whole. When Steve Jobs roundly dismissed 7-inch "tweeners" as unnecessary and useless in the market, that's because at the time they were pretty much pointless. 7-inch as a form-factor has, so far failed, unless it's been cheap as chips like Google's Nexus 7. That, with the heft of Google branding and a strongly competitive price - two Android tablets for the price of one iPad - has made the Nexus 7 the exception not the rule so far.
[aquote]Apple may have to compromise to make iPad mini a success[/aquote]
Apple may have to compromise to make the iPad mini a success, and compromise is not something the company does all too often. Too ambitious, too whizz-bang, and the smaller iPad won't be able to hit a competitive price point. Too humble, or built to too strict a budget, and it will lack the premium cachet the brand is known for. The smaller devices are, often the more complex they are to piece together - gathering the right blend of components for a tiny phone is more of a challenge than for a 10-inch tablet, where they may be a little extra wiggle room to play with.
The iPad mini lacks that room to wiggle, and the excitement around the product launch isn't simply because lots of people want a smaller tablet (though some undoubtedly do) but because we want to see whether a firm with a track-record of convincing consumers it has solved the equation can do the same under arguably tougher constraints. The world may not need a "tweener" iPad, but if Apple decides that it range does, then it needs to demonstrate it can do it with more than just a bloated iPod touch or a shrunken new iPad. | {
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It might be creepy, but it was perfectly legal when some guys flew a drone outside a woman’s Seattle apartment window this weekend, prompting a call to police.
The Seattle Police Department reports the woman got worried after spotting the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle outside her apartment window near Terry Ave. and Stewart St. early Sunday morning.
The woman was concerned the drone was looking into her apartment and called and reported the incident to her building concierge, who immediately called police.
The concierge went outside the building and spotted two men piloting the drone. The men were also carrying a tripod and video camera. Soon after, they packed up their gear and drove away.
Seattle Police officer Patrick Michaud says the drone flyers were not breaking any laws because it is legal to take photographs and video from any public place, and the FAA has not issued specific rules for recreational drone flying.
A federal judge ruled earlier this year the remote-controlled aircraft are legal because the FAA has not issued any rules governing model aircraft photography.
The FAA is working with law enforcement to further clarify rules for unmanned aircraft systems, the agency said in a news release Monday. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Fiji Pro Bono Directory
As UNHCR statistics generally rely on data from host countries, statistics on refugees alone can give an insufficient account of refugee numbers, as some host countries will not grant refugee status to certain groups. Including statistics for individuals in refugee-like situations is an attempt to account for unrecognised refugees and does not include internally displaced persons. Statistics for stateless refugees are included if available.
We have not yet identified any NGO or law firm that is offering refugees legal assistance in Fiji. We would welcome suggestions of individuals or organizations.
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UNHCR office contact details
We will provide a link to the UNHCR office information where available. If the information is not available or is incomplete you might find more information in this PDF list of UNHCR offices. | {
"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
} |
Meta
Tag: RDP
There exists a higher-quality solution to this need, known as ‘Samsung Side-Sync’. But a big problem in my own desire to use this Android app, is the fact that its client-program is only available for Mac or Windows – while I mainly tend to have Linux installed on my PCs and laptops.
The capability which the app delivers, is to turn the Android device into a type of remote, VNC Host, or Server, on which a client seeks to establish a session, in which the properties and resources of the host, are displayed on the client-computer, remotely, as if the user of the client was in fact sitting in front of the host.
This is not so strange an idea, as various types of VNC / RDP already exist, by which a remote session is created on a Windows or a Linux PC as host, such that the client – even if that client exists as an Android client – can seem to have a remote session.
Because I was intrigued by making the Android device the host for a change, and by the possibility of using a Web-interface as client, I decided to give an app a try, which is called AirDroid. After all, even Linux computers have Web-browsers which would be powerful enough to run as clients.
I installed the app on my up-to-date Google Pixel C Tablet, But was initially disappointed, in the apparent observation, that AirDroid just did not seem stable enough to trust with such an objective.
When people connect to their VPN, this could simply allow them to access shared files. But alternatively, this could also mean that they wish to create a virtual session, on the remote desktop of one of their servers. The latter exists under the terms VNC, RDP, XRDP, and several others.
On my main Linux server named ‘Phoenix’, I have the XRDP service installed, which is the Linux equivalent of RDP. But one main drawback of this method, of remotely accessing a desktop, is the fact that XRDP does not allow file-sharing, specifically in the version of this protocol that runs out-of-the-box from the package manager. I have read that certain custom-compiled versions support this, but do recall that this service is a mess to custom-compile, and to set up in such a way that it runs reliably. So I stick to the packaged version for now, and do not obtain file-sharing.
There exists a closed-source application named , which we could use to bridge this gap. But while their paid software subscriptions are very expensive (from my perspective), their Free software version has some big disadvantages.
First of all, even their Free version can be run in client or in server mode. I think that this is terrific. But in server mode – which affords access to the local machine desktop from elsewhere – there is no built-in support for SSH protocol. There is only the unencrypted NX protocol, for which their service listens.
Secondly, not every computer is strong enough to run in server mode. On the computer ‘Phoenix’ I have a fragile X-server, and this service has actually crashed my X-server. Not only that, but allowing this service to run on reboot, consistently prevents my X-server from starting. It gets its hooks into the session so early on boot, that the X-server crashes, before the user is even asked for a graphical log-in. | {
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Brian Goodwin 10k (2017)
Brian Goodwin 10k
This year’s Brian Goodwin 10k road race was held on Friday 16th June 2017 in a warm Pollok Park. The almost perfect weather conditions were matched by some great running and a new course record of 29:14 set by Olympian Calum Hawkins. The early leader, Giffnock’s Luke Traynor wasn’t too far behind earning silver in 29:27, with Shettleston’s Tewolde Mengistear placing third in 31:20.
Callum’s Kilbarchan AAC clubmate Elspeth Curran won the women’s race in a time of 36:28, Aberdeen’s Kayleigh Jarrett was runner-up in 36:48 with Bellahouston Road Runner, Ann Robin third in 39:17.
The much coveted first Male Veteran 60 prize went to Motherwell’s Brian McLinden, who crossed the line in a time of 39:11.
If you want to capture the special colours of a sunrise you need to get up at about 6 am in Pai, jump on your motorbike and try to find your way to the Chinese village of Santichon and then brave the ascent up to the Yun Lai Viewpoint high above the northern province of Mae Hong Son and hope that mother nature is on your side. Perhaps this morning, she was. | {
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} |
Voss Norway – Meeting Location
Meeting in Voss Norway
Our meeting location in Voss Norway is conveniently situated on the lakefront in center of town, come look for our floating office on the pier just below the Park hotel. We are a short 5 minute walk away from the train station in Voss Norway and close to most accommodation, making it the ideal location in Voss Norway.
By Bus or Train
If you arrive Voss Norway by bus or train you should get off at the Voss train station. Our base is just a short 5 minute walk away, simply exit the train station, walk towards the lakeside. Continue left as you reach the lakeside, we are 150 meters further along the shore, look for our floating base.
By Car
If you arrive by car, follow the road signs to Voss Norway. We are 100 km East of Bergen along the E16, on the way to the fjords. When you reach Voss you find the Park hotel as you arrive at the centre of town, you find car parking at the central parking lot which is located next to the nearby lake side Minigolf Café.
Where is Voss Norway?
Voss Norway is situated in between the two most famous fjords in Norway – the Sognefjord to our North & the Hardangerfjord to our South and within short travelling distance from Bergen, Gudvangen, Flåm, Aurland, Ulvik or Eidfjord. This makes Voss Norway the perfect base for a shorter or longer stay exploring the fjord region. Wherever you may be staying there are good connections by train or bus, making it easy to make it in time for our tours and still get back in opposite direction same day.
Voss Norway is a small town framed by spectacular mountains surrounding the city and central lake. Being relatively old, it is a place rich in history and colourful folklore. The more recent image of Voss becoming the Adventure Capital of Europe is only one of the things that makes the place truly unique. The annual Extremesports week hosted in late June draws thousands of adventure seeking people to town.
What to expect in Voss Norway
Culture, tradition, nature, the great outdoors, adrenaline or family activities whatever you wish for Voss Norway has it all! It is a unique place for a holiday, allowing you getting away from the crowds into nearby unspoiled nature while still being able to enjoy the comfort of the nearby facilities.
For your convenience, the Nordic Ventures Base provides:
VISA or Master Card & Maestro payment facilities
Complimentary refreshments, tea & coffee
Free car parking nearby
Bicycle, valuables and luggage storage so you don’t have to worry about the belongings you leave behind while you are out and away kayaking.
Access to a great selection of activities to suit everybody¹s taste – Voss has it all! | {
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Exporting American Jobs
In the United States, offshoring – the business practice of moving operations overseas, usually to less developed countries with lower labor costs in Asia – has become a major political controversy. Dr. Sennholz explores…
Outsourcing – the business practice of moving operations and jobs to other countries – undoubtedly is the crucial issue of the European Union. Facing Union-wide competition, companies are eager to move to places where conditions are more favorable. They may want to leave France, Germany, and Italy where labor legislation and regulation condemn many millions of workers to chronic unemployment. They may prefer to move to new E.U. member states where labor is less encumbered and production costs are much lower. But such moves give rise to loud calls for government intervention, especially in countries that see themselves as losers and victims of the freedom for companies to move. Indeed, outsourcing is casting grave doubts about the future of the European Union.
In the United States, offshoring – the business practice of moving operations overseas, usually to less developed countries with lower labor costs in Asia – has become a major political controversy. It played a major role in the 2004 presidential election in which Senator John Kerry, the Democratic Party’s candidate, denounced corporate executives who were offshoring American jobs as traitorous “Benedict Arnolds.” He, and many of his colleagues, proposed legislation to eliminate all tax breaks to corporations that export jobs. Offshoring undoubtedly will play an even bigger role in future elections when many more jobs will have gone abroad.
Offshoring Jobs: The Voices of Protectionism
Loud voices of protectionism were heard already in 1992 when the North American Free Trade Agreement was to lower trade barriers and make the United States, Mexico, and Canada more competitive in the world market. It raised loud fears that it would lead to ever greater expatriation of U.S. jobs to Mexico where labor is less expensive. The same voices now are sounding the alarm about American jobs going to China and other Asian countries. Moreover, they are greatly upset about the nature of the work being exported. In the past, American companies had concentrated on transplanting low-skilled jobs which minimum-wage legislation and benefit regulation had made unlawful. More recently, the voices have focused on professional jobs going to China, India, the Philippines, and Malaysia where university-trained technologists are engaged in software engineering, computer chip designs, and code writing. After all, many thousands of engineers in those countries studied at American universities and acquired such expertise. General Electric Corporation has sent most of its technology services to graduates in China; Aetna is sending them to India.
Many legislators are eager to call a halt to such exports of American jobs. They are ready to levy steep fines, raise taxes, or imprison the violators of their laws and regulations. But they are not willing to lower the benefit costs that they imposed. In their private lives many were attorneys, counselors-at-law, civil servants, educators, or heirs to family fortunes before they embarked upon political pursuits. Few are knowledgeable economists familiar with basic principles of economics. Instead, they usually are enamored by their own position and especially by their great legislative powers. The only limit they may recognize is the political clout and vote of other legislators.
Most members of Congress are unaware of the inexorable principles of foreign trade and international cooperation. One of the great 19th century economists, David Ricardo, clearly elaborated and stated them. He propounded the Law of Comparative Cost, better known as Ricardo’s Law of Association, which applies to the common situation in which economic goods move readily across national borders, but governments prevent capital and labor from moving freely. Under such conditions, people everywhere benefit most if they concentrate on the production of those goods in which conditions are most favorable, leaving all other production to others. The case is similar to that of a surgeon who concentrates on surgery and leaves all supportive work to his assistants although he also excels in their simple tasks. And it is similar to that of a master mechanic who relies on his apprentices and assistants for ordinary work, although he could outdo them readily, but chooses to concentrate on the work requiring greater skill. Cooperation and division of labor benefit all.
In Ricardo’s time, the mobility of both capital and labor was limited rather severely. Later in the 19th century, under the influence of classical economic thought, both capital and labor became rather mobile. They created the “world market” with rapidly rising productivity and standards of living. During the 20th century, unfortunately, economic nationalism and rampant socialism closed many borders and precipitated not only ugly trade wars but also numerous armed conflicts. After World War II the “cold war” between the Soviet and American blocs of nations divided the world, creating political tension and military rivalry short of actual war. Yet the comparative differences in production cost allowed both sides to benefit from peaceful trade.
Offshoring Jobs: No Nullifying Ricardo’s Law
Ever since the disintegration of the Soviet bloc the market order has gradually expanded to most corners of the world and business capital has assumed new mobility, seeking employment wherever production conditions are favorable. But no matter how mobile capital now may become, it cannot nullify Ricardo’s Law of Association as long as labor lacks the mobility to move freely and expeditiously from country to country. The great differences in religious, racial, national, and cultural characteristics as well as the notable differences in birth rates and mortality rates will never allow man to spread evenly around the globe, but they may encourage him to engage in peaceful cooperation and international trade.
There cannot be any doubt that the problems of offshoring will be with us as long as economic conditions change and business is free to move. American business may move abroad, and it may come back again. Guided primarily by cost and yield comparisons many American companies are known to have canceled outsourcing projects in Asia, citing poor employee training and performance, inadequate support, personal and property security concerns, and political arbitrariness, hostility, and corruption. They must cope with anti-offshoring legislation and political malice wherever they would like to leave and with unfair competition laws and regulations where they like to settle. After all, construction of a modern plant undoubtedly leads to the closure of many old shops and relocation and training of their employees. Surely, closure of shops and relocation of workers are painful also in Asia.
Economists like to reflect on all the effects of a business move to places and countries where it is more productive. They are ever mindful of Ricardo’s Law of Association which affirms that trade benefits both countries. And they are elated when foreign competition persuades legislators and regulators to reduce their obstacles and restraints, trim mandated labor costs, and remove employment barriers. But they are saddened by the rising mood of protectionism in Europe as well as in the United States. The voices of nationalism and socialism are rather persuasive; they speak of interest, not of reason. They pay no heed to the old precept: What you do to others, they will do unto you.
Regards,
Dr. Hans Sennholzfor The Daily Reckoning
August 16, 2005
Dr. Hans Sennholz is president emeritus of The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in Irvington, NY. His essays and articles have appeared in over thirty- six major German journals and newspapers, and 500 more that reach American audiences. Dr. Sennholz is also the author of 17 books covering the Great Depression, Gold, Central Banking and Monetary Policy.
We are still on vacation. During these idle, brown days of late summer, we’re determined to find some new thoughts. Our old thoughts have seemed a little worn…like an old pair of slippers. We think we should try on something new; but the old ones seem more comfortable than ever.
Yesterday, we began a rumination based on a speech we gave in Vancouver last week. Today, we continue it…
Our new thought is that you can tell where you are in a major investment cycle by looking at the attitudes and beliefs of investors. When they are very bullish, it is late in the cycle of rising prices. When they are very bearish, prices are likely to turn up soon. We suspect also that attitudes similarly evolve in an imperial cycle, in which a country’s economic, financial and military power runs up over several generations and then decline. At the peak, the imperial people come to believe that their system is superior; that their values are universal, and that their way of live will inevitably dominate the entire world.
Readers will recognize these attitudes in a famous article by Francis Fukayama, written after the fall of the Soviet Union, in which he suggested that the world might have reached the “End of History.” It was the end of history because the American system had triumphed; no improvement seemed possible. Fukayama’s idea was not original. Hegel, and Marxist intellectuals, had proposed the same thing more than a 100 years earlier. With the victory of the proletariat, no further advance could be made. History had to stop.
Hegel stopped ticking. Marx died, too. History continued.
But when people feel they are on top of the world, they begin to take for granted things that they previously thought absurd. As we mentioned earlier, Americans now depend on the savings of Communist China in order to pay for their lifestyles…and their wars to make the world safe for democracy. They do it without thinking. Subconsciously, they’ve come to believe what imperial people always seem to believe – that their society is so superior that the rest of the world longs to be just like them. That’s the premise behind the billions of dollars Americans are investing in China. A few years ago, if someone had suggested that they invest in a communist country they would have thought the man mad. China is still run by veterans of various Great Leaps Forward, but Americans are convinced that they’re all becoming just like us – capitalists and democrats at heart! So vain are we that we can’t imagine anyone wanting to be anything else.
Likewise, we were just down in Nicaragua. We have a house down there and buy more land whenever we get an opportunity. Prices have soared in the last five years. Someone bought a beachfront lot recently for $350,000, a price that would have been thought insane a few years ago. Nicaragua is, after all, a third-world country. It is also a country that was run by communists until a few years ago. Even now, the nation’s politicians are debating a proposed law that would declare all land within 200 meters of high tide “public.” In effect, we’d all lose our land, our houses, and the money we’ve invested down there. But none of us quite believe it will happen. Because we’re convinced that they all want to be just like us – and we’d never do such a thing.
And of course, the invasion of Iraq was based on the same sort of thinking: that even the grubby desert tribes want to be just like us. All we have to do is to get the dictator all their backs and the men will start building shopping malls and the women will all start dressing like Britney Spears.
Those are the sort of delusions you get at the top of an imperial cycle. Cultural attitudes, political systems, and economies are never as universal and eternal as we think. Instead, everything evolves.
Now, for the news from our team at The Rude Awakening:
————–
Eric Fry, reporting from Manhattan…
“An espresso bar that rarely sells an espresso may represent a kind of aesthetic tragedy, but it is a capitalistic triumph. Just ask Starbucks’ shareholders.”
————–
Bill Bonner, back in Ouzilly…
*** Before getting involved in the market, investors must examine their ‘twin tolerances for risk,'” advised Steve Sarnoff, last Friday at The Agora Wealth Symposium.
“First, you must only gamble with money you can afford to lose. Never assume you are going to make huge gains.
“The other tolerance for risk is psychological. Review your temperament. Will you be able to handle the emotional roller coaster of the market?”
*** The American lumpeninvestoriat are jumping ship at a greater rate than any time since 1994. US investors bought $146 billion worth of bonds and equities outside the US in the past 12 months. Perhaps they are beginning to sense the urgency of panicking now… and avoiding the rush.
Thank god, the foreign lumpen haven’t gotten the message, huh? Overseas investors poured $71 billion into the US… more than covering the $58.5 billion shortfall created by the consume-at-will culture of ours.
(Addison’s book, by the way, explains the relationship between the current account deficit and the value of the dollar, quite clearly. What’s more, it shows you how you can profit from it – in an easy way.
*** Even in France, our closest cousins do not share our American attitudes. In the United States, we all seek to maximize our incomes. We work long hours. We start enterprises. We invest. In France, people do not seek to maximize their incomes. Instead, what they want to maximize is their leisure, and the quality of their lives. They spend more time talking about how to cook the bacon than they do about how to bring it home.
France once had a European Empire – from Spain to Moscow. Later, it had a worldwide empire – with subject countries and colonies in Africa, the West Indies and the South Pacific. From the time of Richelieu to the time of Leon Blum, France had one of the most powerful armies on earth. Even at the beginning of WWII, France had the largest army in Europe – on paper. But there never was a cycle that didn’t want to turn. And the imperial cycle turns along with the rest of them. For many generations, the French believed they had the finest culture, the best schools, and most advanced scientists, and the most dynamic builders in the world. France saw its mission as bringing the benefits of its civilization…of vin rouge and the Rights of Man…to the rest of the globe. But now it’s our turn. It is we Americans who think we have the best culture, the best economy, the best government, and the best army the world has ever seen. Now, it is we who have the burden of the “mission civilisatrice.” It is our duty to bring freedom and democracy to this tattered old ball; our president said so. | {
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SHEIKH MANSOUR International Spiritual Healer with Born Gifted Power & Experience. Supernatural gifted man who helps both Internal & External matters in Marriage, Love, Court, Business, Luck, Gambling, Protection, Returning Loved One Back. EXPERT IN ALL OCCULTIST HUMAN PROBLEMS. ONLY ONE VISIT WILL LEAD YOU TO THE RIGHT PATH! CALL NOW FOR JOY! RESULTS IN A FEW DAYS. Call 347-261-0226 www.cheikhmansoor.com
SHEIKH MANSOUR International Spiritual Healer with Born Gifted Power & Experience. Supernatural gifted man who helps both Internal & External matters in Marriage, Love, Court, Business, Luck, Gambling, Protection, Returning Loved One Back. EXPERT IN ALL OCCULTIST HUMAN PROBLEMS. ONLY ONE VISIT WILL LEAD YOU TO THE RIGHT PATH! CALL NOW FOR JOY! RESULTS IN A FEW DAYS. Call 347-261-0226 www.cheikhmansoor.com
Yes he’s back from the shadow of death, the Jamaican born Obeah man and spiritual case worker. MR. B. CALL 718-523-1426 Guaranteed success where others fail. Power to help in all walks of life. Calls out friends and enemies by name, without asking you a single word. A visit to this Obeah worker from Jamaica will be of immense value to you. | {
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Don't accidentally paste a password into a public messageDon't share your phone number if you're in any sort of position of prominenceIn a tweet directed to Oculus CTO John Carmack, Elon Musk today broke rule number two. The wayward tweet was quickly deleted, but many of Musk's 16.7 million Twitter followers had already taken notice.
While TNW isn't going to share the number, multiple outlets are confirming its legitimacy.
As a CNBC reporter found, Musk's ringing music was an homage to the classic PlayStation franchise "God of War." We tried it ourselves and, yep... that's Kratos.
The ringing starts with "By the Gods you've done it. Somehow you've found your way here to me. I offer you my congratulations and my respect." You can hear the monologue the ring music was referencing here.
Musk hasn't shown much public interest in VR, so it's unclear why he'd want to speak with Carmack. A simple search for the terms "VR" and "virtual reality" yielded zero results for Musk. | {
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OFFICE TEAM
Lilac Miller
Position: Director
Background: Lilac qualified as a beauty therapist in 2001 and completed an MA in Management & Economics at St Andrews University prior to taking over the Lerwick Salon in Spring 2005 and opening the second location later that year. Lilac is an Assessor in Beauty Therapy and carries out training for our Junior Therapists and offers treatments at the Margaret Street Salon on Sundays and occasional Thursdays.
Personal: Lilac says 'I love working in the beauty industry and am always interested to find out about new treatments and developments and see what we can offer to our clients. I specialise in waxing but enjoy carrying out all treatments.'
Nicole Muir
Position: Office Administrator
Background: Nicole joined Sleeping Beauty in 2015, moving from Glasgow. She manages our office, working Monday-Friday.
Personal: Nicole says 'I'm originally from Glasgow and moved to Inverness in March 2015. I like working at Sleeping Beauty as all the girls have helped me settle into my new home.'
Grahame Harrison
Position: Book-keeper
Background: Grahame joined Sleeping Beauty Salon in 2015. He handles all of our accounting. | {
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Fixed and Variable Costs
There are two main types of cost which are Fixed or Variable costs. If something is being manufactured it consists of both fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs are those cost that do not change based on a quantity. That basically means the cost is fixed if you product 1 or 1000 pieces. Some of these costs would be security, taxes, insurance and administration costs. These costs are called Fixed because they do not vary with the quantity being manufactured or the level of production. Variable costs do vary based on quantity and level of production. Some examples of variable costs are direct material and direct labor costs.
There is a third category of fixed and variable costs which is often referred to as mixed costs. Mixed costs are simple costs that are part variable and part fixed. Example would be a heating oil or gas, there is a fixed amount that would be used regardless if the machines are running just to keep the building warm. The variable costs would be the amount of oil consumed by the machine.
MIE Solutions provides a great solution to manage and organize all the costs required including both fixed and variable costs.
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David Ferguson has over 20 years of experience in the manufacturing and fabrication industry. David Ferguson has been to over 100 manufacturing companies helping and guiding them to be more efficient and cost effective.
As a child in Junior High School David Ferguson found a passion for the early computer systems, which would drive much of his future work. David Ferguson created and sold his first computer program, Arrow Data Systems, which was an early CAD/CAM system for the Apple 2e Computer. In the late 1980's after seeing his father (a sheet metal manufacturer) come home many nights estimating, David Ferguson saw an opportunity to optimize his effort through computer technology. Shortly thereafter the FabriTRAK Production Control package was developed. The Quote It! estimating package was developed out of the FabriTRAK system to become one of the leading sheet metal estimating packages in the world. David Ferguson has always had a passion for developing software to make the manufacturing process simpler, faster and more efficient.
Prior to founding MIE Solutions David Ferguson worked with his father at Alco Sheet Metal, METALSOFT Inc. and was a consultant at Toyota Motors Sales. David Ferguson has his Masters in Computer Science and Mathematics from California State University, Long Beach.
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Wow, that took a while. Sorry for the 12-month outage chaps. Contrary to reports in the media I have not hung up my chopsticks for good, I just couldn’t locate my inner rant. I might well have left it in the back of a Hong Kong taxi to be honest. Well, now your friendly neighbourhood Noodle is back, with all the inevitability of an unloved season, and primed to explode over this city like hot porky broth on a ramen shop floor. (I’m going to be doing some jokes).
To kick things off, though, I found this little gem lurking in the bottom of my tatty porcelain noodle bowl of fun. An interview with arch electro-plinky plonkers Metronomy from back in 2008 – ie before they was as famous as they is now – replete with original line-up and arguably better songs. Stay tuned for original content coming soon…
————————————–
Metronomy is not a band to play by the rules. In fact, they don’t even know where the rule book is. And if they found it, they’d probably burn it, in a wooded area, next to a no-smoking sign. So it comes as no surprise to find these three deceptively well-spoken and civil young men having a cheeky fag in one of the numerous threadbare rooms inside Camden’s Koko. It’s a couple of hours before they’re on; the nth date on their never-ending tour to promote their unique brand of electro plinky-plonk, perfect pop harmonies, falsetto choruses and affected, meticulously choreographed dance moves.
Here at Canvas we don’t rate the more obscure bands for the sake of their obscurity, but Metronomy are different, we’ve decided; they pretty much provide our very own litmus test of friends and acquaintances. Heard of Metronomy? Yes? OK, thumbs up. Like them? Alright, you can be our friend for life. Which isn’t actually to say that Metronomy are obscure – songwriter and band founder Joseph Mount has remixed everyone from Kate Nash to Goldfrapp.
“It’s nice now because people are quite up for having their stuff remixed,” he says. “KD Lang wanted something quite radio-friendly, so I did what I thought was radio-friendly but it wasn’t really what she expected. Taking entertaining risks is good fun, it’s a nice way to while away a few hours.”
You might have already come across Metronomy in broadsheet articles heralding the so-called Nu Rave scene alongside Late of the Pier and Does it Offend You, Yeah? among others – but it’s about as cohesive a scene as anything invented by a Guardian journalist, ie not at all. “I guess you have to expect that,” muses Mount. “But it’s actually quite nice now because we have people interviewing us and they’re saying ‘ we don’t know how to describe your music’.”
So how do you describe Metronomy’s music? According to the MySpace page, the band hail everyone from Bowie to The Ramones as an influence. In their own words though, they rate Usher and Timberlake for their unique credit-crunch defying dancing skills, Timbers coming in for special praise by virtue of being “like Beatles-lite”, according to Mount. A cross between the Beatles and Nirvana is how they’d like to describe their own music though – ie a combination of Revolution # 9 and Polly, apparently. Hmmn, maybe you should just go out and buy a record for yourself, or even better, see them live – their unique stage show involves rather large push button lights slung from each band member’s neck, being pushed on and off at regular intervals in time to the music, and statuesque posing behind their keyboards. If you’re very lucky there’ll also be a troupe of dancing girls behind doing a jig in time to the tunes. But don’t let this put you off, there’s a boyish playfulness – a knowing wink to the audience that this is all just a bit of a larf and not some art school pretentious wank – that means they can just about pull it off. But are they worried the gimmick will be a curse as more people discover “that band with the lights”?.
“I went though the paranoia that maybe we should change this idea but actually it’s brilliant – it’s a strong look,” says Mount. “I’d argue that there’s not that many other bands that have something so visual linked to them. So some people may catch us at a festival and not know who we are but remember the show and then stumble across our music a few weeks later.”
The music has evolved a lot since Mount wrote the first album in his bedroom – figuratively anyway. Recruiting school chums Oscar Cash and Gabriel Stebbing for the live shows has led to a more expansive, lyrical and, god forbid, radio-friendly sound. Tunes like Heartbreaker, Radio LADIO and Heart Rate Rapid featuring infectiously catchy choruses and little flourishes which marry perfectly to the band’s cheeky on stage antics.
“It’s been quite a gap between the first album and this and it’s been quite a natural progression, influenced by the fact that we’ve been playing live and me realising what Oscar and Gabriel are capable of … and what they can’t do,” says Mount. “When the first album was done, songs like Trick or Treatz were written by me but the reason I didn’t sing on them was because I wasn’t confident enough to sing like a girl … but that’s all changed now.”
So what’s the ultimate goal for the band? Can they or do they want to reconcile their unique sound and growing band of followers with the mainstream and super stardom? Well, their aspirations are typically modest; Gabriel wants a Saturday morning kids TV slot, apparently, while Oscar would just like it “if a few more people heard of us because we deserve it”.
“It would be a shame if we were dropped by our label because people didn’t pick up on it quickly enough,” adds Mount. “It would just be nice if more people got it, although we’d have to do fucking badly to get dropped by our label.”
So look out for the new album in September kids – “driving music” perfect for 45 minutes in the car, according to Mount. Or better still, catch them at one of numerous London and festival appearances over the summer – you won’t be disappointed, although they might be if you don’t bother coming, and so will we. Not angry, just disappointed. | {
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Photos: Rockets, Pacers arrive for NBA's first game in...
Video: Did Joey Crawford almost toss the Sixers' mop boy?
Leave it to Joey Crawford, the most infamous of active NBA officials, to turn a spilled drink into an episode.
In the third quarter of a game between the Sixers and Cavaliers last Friday, Crawford called for cleanup after a man sitting courtside spilled his drink on the sideline. Nothing undue about that, as the spill occurred in the exact spot at which Sixers forward Lavoy Allen was set to inbound the ball.
Apparently, though, the work of the mop boy on the scene was not to Crawford's liking. After the spill got its once-over, Crawford blew his whistle and barked at the mop boy retreating to his post -- seemingly demanding further cleanup via towel wipedown. Nothing wrong with erring on the side of caution, I suppose, though Crawford seals the ordeal in trademark fashion by appearing to stare down the boy with the mop from across the court. | {
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Audition Songs from contemporary musical theatre writers
Choosing an audition song from the new generation of musical theatre writers is bound to get you noticed for all of the right reasons.
It is very likely that the panel has not heard the song many times before.
It also shows them that you are interested in what is happening in the world of musical theatre.
It is unlikely you will be compared to another performer’s version of the song because these are new songs for everyone’s ears.
It will get you remembered if you introduce them to something they have never heard before.
As with all audition songs, it is massively important that you research the show the song has come from. You want to show that you understand the character and the acting of the story behind the song. If the song is a ‘stand alone song’ as some of them are in this collection then please write your own back story – keep it plausible but use this as an opportunity to add some meat to the bones of the song and make it a fully rounded and acted performance.
The terrific resource New Musical Theatre asked a number of it’s writers to choose one of their own songs and one from another new musical theatre writer which would be suitable for an actor to sing at an audition – and to tell them why.
Here are their choices along with some of our own:
Audition Songs from The New Generation of Musical Theatre
We would love to know what your favourite audition song from a new musical is, let us know via Twitter @actorhub.
Click on title to view the video
Click on image to buy from Amazon
Run Away With Me (click to view video)Sam Brown
This song comes from the musical The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown written by the hugely talented team of Kait Kerrigan and Brian Lowdermilk.
The show is set at dawn on the day that Samantha Brown is supposed to leave for college, she is sitting in her car but can’t turn the keys. She is filled with doubts and the show is told through a series of flashbacks from her senior year as Sam comes to terms with her parents expectations, her first love and a lost friendship.
This love song is sung by Sam’s boyfriend Adam as he tries to get her to run away with him!
Here is what Kait Kerrigan had to say about using this for an audition:
Our friend Josh Young told us the reason he likes to use it in an audition is because as an actor, you’re asking for something from your audience. It’s easier to get the audience on your side than it is with a stationary ballad.
“Let me be your ride out of town. Let me be the place that you hide. We can make our lives on the go. Run away with me.”
The Last Loser In The Universe (click to view video)Drew Gasparini
I just love this song and it really is one of those perfect audition songs for a character actor.
The song was written for a specific project which Drew did not get but he loves the song and so put it out as a stand alone song. The song is a celebration of any young person who is cast aside for their love of something which isn’t considered very ‘now’, the character singing this song’s passion is magic.
Here is what the composer Drew Gasparini has to say about this song
Even when people look at you differently for what you do or believe in, there’s always that fire inside you that says ‘keep going.’ The word loser is subjective, and that’s what makes this character a hero
Lovable nobodies are a tried and true method of character writing and acting. I think this song allows for vastness and smallness. It’s a toe tapper too…. shit… at least I hope it is. My mom thinks it’s good… so there’s that
The links here are for Gasparini’s cd but you can buy the sheet music for this song here
Marie and Me (click to view video)Chasing The Day
Maria and Me is taken from Will Van Dyke’s album Chasing The Day. An album which features songs that were written on the road. Aboard planes. Across time zones. Between sets. In hotel lobbies. At 24 hour coffee shops. Miles apart. When the thought of home is your only companion. A collection of songs about the places life takes us and the people who bring us back.
Here is why Will Van Dyke chose this song as his audition song recommendation:
I’m always a huge fan of auditioning with music that fun and catchy enough that beyond your time in the room, it leaves the person behind the table humming. Sometimes a great tune is just as important as a great performance.
“Marie and Me wanna get together Just like before this world tore us apart Marie and Me, can we make it happen? Lets take a ride make a start”
More (click to view video)Out Of Context
Michael Patrick Walker is a hugely gifted musical theatre writer who co-wrote the smash hit musical Alter Boyz. This wonderful stand alone song comes the wonderful collection of songs which form his first album ‘Out Of Context’
When asked to choose one of his own songs for auditions, Michael Patrick Walker chose ‘More’ because:
This song tells a story without being a “story song” making it easy to perform the entire thing or do an audition cut without losing too much of the story. Much like my other choice, “More” allows you to be funny and touching in the same song which is almost always more effective at making an impression than just being “deeply meaningful”. While written for a male voice, it can be sung by a female voice with only minor adjustments and it is pop enough that it can work for either a pop/rock show or something less modern..
Working (click to view video)String
This great little number was cut from the show String by Adam Gwon.
A workaholic Greek god gets tangled up with a security guard in the basement of the tallest building in the world. One mistake leads to another – a lost pair of scissors, a kiss, a stolen string – and soon Atropos is breaking her own rules to offer forever to an ordinary man. Can the fabric of the universe stand a flaw? An original musical about the three Fates in the modern city.
Here is why the song’s writer Adam Gwon thinks this song would be a great audition number for a comedy actor:
A short-and-sweet number for a funny guy. Lots of room to make the song your own, with some range-y stuff thrown in in the B section. Also not widely known (it was cut from a show of mine) so chances are you can stand out a little with this one.
The links here are for Adam Gwon’s CD Ordinary Days but you can buy the sheet music for this particular song here
Random Black Girl (click to view video)Out Of Our Heads
This wonderful song comes from Homemade Fusion a song cycle from the wonderful song writing team Kooman and Dimond and the YouTube video featuring Broadway star Patina Miller has had over 100,000 views making it a hit!
Here is what fellow new musical theatre composer Zoe Sarnak has to say about this terrific song:
This song equally for showing vocals and comedy. Lots of beats, lots of space to show chops. Also, always fun to hear it the room.
“Why couldn’t I be cast for a part in The Color Purple, ‘Stead of a random black girl singin’ the soul? My agent gave me advice. Those words I’ll never forget. He said “Don’t think you’ll ever be cast As Eponine or Cossette.”
Rock City (click to view video)See Rock City
“See Rock City and Other Destinations” is a contemporary musical by Brad Alexander and Adam Mathias about connections missed and made at tourist destinations across America. With a score that incorporates pop, rock, folk and more, each story builds on the last to create a vivid travelogue of Americans learning to overcome their fears and expectations in order to connect.
Here is why composer Adam Gwon thinks the title song Rock City makes a great audition number:
This song will tell me everything I need to know about you very quickly. Can you act? Can you sing? Verse, chorus, check. The verse is easy to endow with some stakes (actors, please give high stakes to any song you perform at an audition!), and the chorus has some badass money notes. I also love listening to this song, so you’d get extra points for that.
“Out there it waits for me Just off I-24 I’ve got to see Rock City Answer to every prayer”
Lisa (click to view video)The Black Suits
Joe Iconis is one of my favourite of today’s young musical theatre writers and Lisa is a wonderful example of his fantastic songs – full of character and storytelling.
The song is taken from the show The Black Suits: A rock musical about a high school garage band on suburban Long Island trying to win The St. Anne’s Battle of the Bands. The story of two teens and their struggle to learn how to be real friends as the inevitability of adulthood threatens to pull them apart. A musical about dreams, blood, Pop Tarts, records, drug runs, blue hair, the St. Anne’s Battle of the Bands, and the undying transformative coolness of rock and roll music.
I think “Lisa” by Joe Iconis works well for an audition song because of its versatility – I’ve heard it sung by both a guy and a girl. It is very dramatically effective with a beautiful hook and shows off a strong singer. It’s easy to make a great cut out of as well and has a dynamic bridge.
When She Smiles (click to view video)Lysistrata Jones
Lysistrata Jones is a musical comedy adaptation of Aristophanes’ comedy Lysistrata by Douglas Carter Beane and Lewis Flinn. The show tells the tale of the men on a losing college basketball team whose cheerleader girlfriends refuse to have sex with them until they win a game!
When She Smiles is sung by Mick towards the end of the show – the leading guy, a real jock – who is thinking of seducing the slightly nerdy poetry loving Robin as a move to win the war against the girls but things don’t go according to plan as she treats him with respect and challenges him to be a better person and awakens something new in him.
Songwriter Kait Kerrigan chose this as one of her top audition picks and has this to say
I heard a girl sing this song in a master class and it felt fresh and young and it surprised and delighted me. Surely, not everyone can pull that off but I love gender-bending in an audition. It shows your confidence. It makes me sit up and pay attention.
“Cause when she speaks It’s like my heart just skipped a beat And when she moves It’s like my world is falling thorough It’s when she smiles”
Stroke By Stroke (click to view video)Jasper in Deadland
Jasper in Deadland is written by the awesome Ryan Scott Oliver. It tells the story of 16-year-old Jasper as he journeys into the afterlife to save his best friend.
This song is a terrific number as Jasper persuades his afterlife guide Gretchen that life is to be lived not just passed over and hidden from.
Musical theatre composer Will Van Dyke chose this as a great audition song for these reasons:
I’m always a huge fan of auditioning with music that fun and catchy enough that beyond your time in the room, it leaves the person behind the table humming. Sometimes a great tune is just as important as a great performance. For that reason I recommend: Stroke By Stroke by Ryan Scott Oliver.
Here is what Ryan Scott Oliver himself has to say:
when you add in the tuneful chorus and its hearty rock chord progression, I think the philosophy is coated in something quite enjoyable and not preachy… until the listener falls for the song (hopefully) and discovers themselves equally seduced by its rooted, buried philosophical text.
The links here are for Ryan Scott Oliver’s cd but you can buy the sheet music for this song here
“Let others walk around an ocean, Let others try to build a bridge across. But you and me, we fall in, we fall in Never sure we’ll survive.”
Jeff (click to view video)Stand Alone Song
I just love Joe Iconis and his story songs. Most of them would make amazing audition songs and ‘Jeff’ is a great song for any bold actor who is prepared to make a brave choice at a casting.
Here is what fellow new musical theatre composer Nick Blaemire has to say about this terrific song:
I love Joe’s stuff because it’s so unexpected. This song takes a turn you never see coming, and it may not be appropriate for the stuffier showcases/auditions, but intelligent audiences with a sense of humor will appreciate both the great situation the character is in, and the opportunities it gives the actor who’s playing him.
The links here are for Joe Iconis’ brilliant CD but you can buy the sheet music for this song here
The Waiting (click to view video)Relativity
Rob Rokicki is a New York based composer, lyricist and performer.
The song is taken from the Relativity by Rob Rokicki and Michael Ruby. You can’t escape the effects of time…or your family. That’s the concept behind RELATIVITY – a new pop-rock musical about perspective…about how your points of view on time and family continually change and impact each other…and about discovering what and who are really most important in your life.
Here is why composer Rob Rokicki chooses this as one of his favourite songs (written by himself) for auditioning:
I think my song “The Waiting” works well because of its versatility. It has drive and dynamic range and shows off acting (both dramatic and humorous). Musically it has nice interval leaps, which can be floated and then mixed/belted to show vocal range. I’ve also heard this song done by a guy or girl.
I’ll Be Here (click to view video)Ordinary Days
I’ll Be Here is taken from the musical Ordinary Days by writer and composer Adam Gwon.
When Deb loses the notes to her graduate thesis she unwittingly starts a chain of events that turns the ordinary days of four New Yorkers into something extraordinary.
Told through a series of intricately connected songs and vignettes, Ordinary Days is an original musical about growing up and enjoying the view.
This song is sung by Claire who is embarking on a new life with her boyfriend Jason, she has had to face her difficult past before she has been able to commit and this truly beautiful song tells her story.
Joshua Salzman and Ryan Cunningham chose ‘I’ll Be Here’ as a great audition song because:
“I’ll Be Here” by Adam Gwon is a wonderfully written story that takes the character on a beautiful emotional journey. It shows the range of the actor and is a gorgeous song to perform and listen to.
Have you ever felt like quitting during a rehearsal process, or spent ages in the evening kicking yourself for not ‘finding the role’ yet? Its perfectly normal, we all deal with frustration and its perfectly healthy. | {
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Faculty Profiles
Richard H. Steinberg
Richard Steinberg writes and teaches in the areas of international law and international relations, with a focus on international economic law, international criminal law, and human rights. He currently teaches International Trade Law, International Business Transactions, and Theories of International Law. Professor Steinberg also directs two Law School clinics, one that leads students on research trips to study gender violence in Eastern Congo, and one that works with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on contemporary problems facing the ICC. He is also Director of the Sanela Diana Jenkins Human Rights Project, and Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning http://iccforum.com/.
In addition to his UCLA appointment, Professor Steinberg is currently Visiting Professor of Global Studies at Stanford, at the Center on Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford.
Professor Steinberg is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and served on the Board of Editors of the American Journal of International Law from 2004-2014 and on the Editorial Board of International Organization from 2003-2012. He has taught law courses at Stanford Law School, the University of California Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law, Sciences Po (Institut d’Etudes Politiques) in France, the University of Coimbra in Portugal, La Trobe University in Australia, and elsewhere.
Professor Steinberg has written over forty articles on international law. Recent books include: Assessing the Legacy of the ICTY (Martinus Nijhoff, 2011; BCS translation, ICTY, 2011), International Institutions (co-edited) (SAGE, 2009), International Law and International Relations (co-edited) (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and The Evolution of the Trade Regime: Economics, Law, and Politics of the GATT/WTO (co-authored) (Princeton University Press, 2006; Chinese translation, Peking University Press, 2013).
Prior to arriving at UCLA, Professor Steinberg worked as Assistant General Counsel to the United States Trade Representative in Washington, D.C., and later as an associate with Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco. He also served as Project Director at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (BRIE) at UC Berkeley. | {
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Regional Sales Director, Staffing - Indianapolis, IN
Are you looking to align your career trajectory with the world leader in recruiting and workforce solutions?
With unprecedented growth in the staffing industry there is no better time to join the National Account sales team of this innovative organization. This is a great opportunity to elevate your career and scope of responsibilities.
The Regional Sales Director is a strategic hunter responsible for performing all prospecting, sales and customer activities for middle market regional accounts with a minimum threshold of $2 million within an assigned region. Focus is on increasing sales and profitability for regional accounts through sales calls, strategic sales methods and conducting formal presentations and submitting proposals focusing on core business offerings.
Calls on prospective regional account customers to understand their needs and wants; introduces potential customers to products and services with the goal of developing prospects into clients.
Maintains an awareness of customer requirements and needs, recommends resolution of potential and actual staffing problems and increases overall sales of services.
May modify current service offerings to meet special needs of customers.
Establishes and maintains an understanding of organizational operational procedures and practices.
Develops presentations, proposals and other sales collateral.
Coordinates sales negotiations across assigned region.
Tours customer facilities to gain an understanding of business activities and staffing requirements.
Maintains an up-to-dates record of all sales activities and follow-up requirements within a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.
Assists in the development and maintenance of brand awareness through advertising and public relations activities including, but not limited to, digital mail, social media, promotional programs, job fairs and professional memberships.
Participates in special projects and performs other duties as assigned.
Education & Job Requirements:
Bachelor' s degree in business or a related field with a minimum of eight (8) years of related business to business (B2B) sales experience with a proven track record of building a new book of business; or equivalent combination of post high school education and experience.
Willingness and ability to travel is required.
Previous sales experience within a staffing organization is highly desirable.
Competencies:
Skilled in communicating effectively verbally and in writing.
Ability to proactively establish and maintain effective working relationships.
Ability to consultatively sell and demonstrate superb customer service skills.
Ability to work collaboratively with colleagues to create a results-driven, team oriented environment.
Mee Derby is an executive search firm dedicated to the staffing industry. For nearly three decades, we've helped thousands of executives, managers, senior sales and senior recruiters find their place in this robust industry. You spend your days helping people find the perfect job. Don’t you deserve a partner who can do the same for you? Leverage our hard-won connections to take the next step in your staffing career. | {
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Photos, Finds, and Other Fun Fodder
Menu
Bon Appetit!
Good morning! I hope you had a relaxing weekend. Mine was nice and hectic (in a good way). I got to see a girlfriend I haven’t seen forever and enjoy a couple of cocktails and then brunch on Sunday and a nice dinner with the family.
We were out to dinner Friday night at one of our favorite Italian/pizza places, Pizza Antica in Lafayette. I love the decor there. Ironically, it looks more french cafe. It got me started thinking how you could decorate your house with elements of a french cafe and here are a few finds: | {
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Final push to save JFK’s endangered ‘flying saucer’ Pan Am terminal
“I was only 2 years old,” said Stramaglia of his first trip through Pan American World Airways’ "Jetsons"-esque structure, the Worldport. “I’m dating myself here, but it must have been 1971. I flew out with my mother on a trip to Rome, and there must have been something about the terminal that struck me, even then.”
Stramaglia, a New Jersey resident, has thrown himself into a quixotic campaign to save the Pan Am Worldport from almost certain demolition by the New York/New Jersey Port Authority and Delta Air Lines, which now owns it. In 2011 he joined a grass-roots Save the Worldport campaign, founded by a former Pan Am employee, Kalev Savi.
“I’m not a preservationist by trade,” said Stramaglia. “I’m an IT guy. But this is something I latched on to. I have a close emotional tie with it.”
Opened on May 24, 1960, the Worldport conjures up images of a time when air travel was seen as sophisticated and glamorous. With its massive, cantilevered roof suspended over a structure of concrete and glass, the terminal is a sleek embodiment of 1960s style and the emergence of the Jet Age. Some call it a flying saucer; and for Stramaglia, it’s a flying saucer worth saving.
“Midcentury modern is disappearing these days. Some of it is making a comeback with TV shows like 'Mad Men,' but we’re afraid that if this goes it’s going to be one of those Penn Stations,” Stramaglia said, referring to New York City’s original Pennsylvania Station, which was demolished in 1963.
“With the Worldport, the threat was clearly dire and the significance of the place was really compelling to us,” said Roberta Lane, spokesperson for the National Trust, told Yahoo News by phone. “Our aim is to help people embrace modern design and to preserve our modernist heritage. The Worldport embodies the very best of the tradition that came out of the Jet Age, and it occupies a significant place in aviation history as well.”
Stramaglia says he appreciates the publicity his cause has received, but he worries that it might be too late. According to the Times, workers have already started to remove asbestos and lead paint from the terminal to prepare for the wrecking crews.
“It’s not looking good at this point until we get in front of Delta,” he said. “We know the terminal’s obsolete as far as travel—that’s a given. But the saucer can be repurposed.”
Suggestions from the Save the Worldport campaign have included a museum as well as restaurants, shops and an observation space.
The organization has yet to receive a response from Delta on these proposals. And while Stramaglia and his team have spoken with the Port Authority on several occasions, they say that’s not enough.
“It’s a small victory,” said Stramaglia of those meetings. “But they can’t do anything here—they need the private funding from Delta.”
Still, the National Trust believes it can use its status as a top preservation advocacy group to rally support for the Worldport.
“Raising public awareness can be an extremely powerful thing, and we’ve had a good record of that with our annual lists of endangered places,” said Lane, who cited the successful refurbishment of JFK’s futurist TWA Flight Center after that building appeared on the organization’s 2004 list. “There’s been a real groundswell for groups like Save the Worldport.”
More than 6,700 people have joined the group’s Facebook campaign, while an online petition has garnered signatures from almost 70 countries. Stramaglia said people aged 16 to 64 have signed the petition.
“It shows you how much younger people care for the architecture and the history,” he said.
The Worldport has been on the chopping block since 2001, when the Port Authority conducted an eligibility report on the terminal’s status as a historical landmark. According to the Times, Delta plans to turn the site into a parking zone for its aircraft by 2015.
“They said there’s nothing original about the building,” said Stramaglia of the Port Authority’s 2001 report. “They said that the terminal’s cantilevered roof and the suspension cables were something you see every day. They’re not. Those techniques might be common in architecture, but it’s the uniqueness of how they were applied here that makes the building special.” | {
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Photo of a Baby Doing a ‘Keg Stand’ at Tailgate Party Draws Outrage: ‘They Should Be Jailed’
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(Photo via ABC15)
A picture of a baby doing what appears to be a keg stand– an act typically performed in college when two friends hold a person upside down while they guzzle excessive quantities of beer– has caused outrage with one woman even saying the perpetrators should be “jailed.”
Posted on thedirty.com, most are at least are agreeing that the picture is in poor taste or “just wrong.”
[It's] not clear if the child was actually drinking beer, but you can clearly see the nozzle in his mouth. Onlookers snapped photos as an adult held the child up for a “keg stand,” where a person is held upside down and drinks as much beer as he can.
According to thedirty.com, an ASU student, who was appalled, sent the picture in.
“I just don’t see the joke in it at all,” says website creator Nik Richie. “People are really looking at this saying, even if it was a joke it is just poor taste and it is terrible parenting.”
Richie says the photo was taken while tailgating outside the stadium before Saturday’s game.
“If you are an ASU alumni, I know this is a party school and people look at ASU like this is what you do. It is fun and games. It is not.”
If this was intended to be joke, not many people are laughing now. ASU Police are investigating. [Emphasis added]
However there are also those who are taking the photo with a grain of salt– and a bit more humor.
Disagreeing with the woman who said “they should be jailed,” one commenter wrote on thedirty.com: “I doubt they actually gave the kid beer…Just a funny photo opp. Everyone needs to stop being so serious!”
Another agreed, adding: “I doubt everyone around would be laughing if it was actually happening…Come on, people.”
What do you think? Is the “baby keg stand” photo an innocent joke, or over the line either way? | {
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Department of Physics and Astronomy, School of Arts and Sciences, New Brunswick; Rutgers
Areas of Interest: Heavy Atomic Nuclei, Unstable Nuclei, Applications of Nuclear Physics to Energy and National Security, Graduate Education in Science and Engineering. Department of Physics and Astronomy | {
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February 23, 2011
There's little downside since you haven't made a deep connection. You've barely made a connection at all. Yet you can easily set yourself apart with this free sample of your thinking.
Unrequested feedback isn't the same as making your views public to stand out, which deals with publishing. Here the receiver knows who you are, whether you share your views live in person, or later by email or phone. This feedback isn't the same as showing gratitude, though there is a selfless component here too.
Three Examples
Here's what I did at an entrepreneur event yesterday
told the speaker she said "um" often (she caught herself using that same crutch word a few minutes later)
told a person that university-level words made her 60 second group introduction hard to follow and less compelling (she plans to speak more vividly and simply)
told a person that his self-printed business card looked cheap (he explained that proper cards were being printed)
Your feedback will attract or repel. That's fine. That's ideal. That's bound to happen over time. Now's the best and cheapest time to find out. I didn't get slapped or belted once.
Waste
People give plenty of feedback but rarely to the person who could directly benefit. Telling your friends about slow service robs the restaurant an opportunity to improve.
Win
Those who appreciate your help will remember, like you more and perhaps mention you to others. They might be inspired to help others.
When you're more attentive to others, you'll be more alert to your own foibles. That helps you improve.
Lose
When you give feedback, you might cause offense. Learning how to give feedback reduces the risk but not completely. Toastmasters is a safe place to practice.
Those who feel offended may resist your input, a sign of a fixed mindset. They're tough to help. Wouldn't you rather know that now?
Volunteers in nonprofits have good intentions. Yet they sometimes complicate their lives by using old proprietary tools. The business world ...
About
We're all in marketing and need help to improve. Since 2007, Promod Sharma ("pro-MODE"), actuary to the wealthy, has shared what he's learned here.
Promod doesn't sell any marketing-related services. He's spent his entire career in the universe of life & health insurance. Through Taxevity, he assesses and addresses neglected insurance needs in Toronto, Ontario. | {
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OK, if the price differences between Canadian and American machines are any indication, I think that I'm most likely going to see this machine selling for around $2800-$3000 in Canada, which wouldn't really surprise me. This machine is going to make both the R58 and Duetto look like antiques in comparison. Will it make a better cup? Who knows.
I can understand the reluctance to buy a sophisticated machine with electronics in it, but I'm sure that La Spaziale has done their QA and isolated those electronics from heat (And possibly moisture?) which those double boilers produce. Their engineering is a bit ahead of that of other espresso machine companies IMHO. (For example, using their own PID control instead of a generic one.) I can understand some of their reasoning behind using a 53 mm portafilter, eventhough the industry standard is 58 mm, but it makes me wonder.. I can't tell but I'm going to make an assumption that this new machine uses a 53 mm portafilter as well?
I think that it is amazing that La Spaziale is listening to the Coffee Geek crowd and catering to them, which IMHO is a downright amazing thing. I can't think of any other manufacturer of equipment which does that.
I think it is nice that they've listened and addressed the shortcoming with the external timer. I wonder if this machine will have pre-infusion capabilities and if it is plumbed in only? (It looks like it is.)
I have to admit, depending on the price and the feature set, even though this machine may be overkill for someone like me, it would keep my upgradeitis cured for a very long time. The only reason why I don't own a Vivaldi right now is because it won't fit next to my sink, it's two inches too wide. This new machine looks to be the same width as the Vivaldi. Maybe I'll just have to suck it up, bite the bullet and put it on the other side of my sink!
Garbage In, Garbage Out, for every step of the process. From Beans to grinder, grounds to machine, coffee to cup.
Bud, I wouldn't be so sure that something like "using their own PID" is that good an idea. Do they have the chip designers, foundries and engineers to make a better PID than companies like Omega or Watlow? Doubtful. And a proprietary PID is just one more thing that, 8 or 9 years down the line, when they've changed chip architectures, will be impossible to source.
Think about all the products out there today that were touted as "future-proof" because they could have new EPROMs swapped in for code changes. Now go source a 1-megabit EEPROM. I dare ya! Or devices that used TI fixed point DSP, or any of the thousands of "latest thing" chips that were supposed to be the be-all and end-all of convenience and ensure that you'd always be able to update and improve your existing device.
I've also seen devices die because somebody lost the source code, or the hardware cross-compiler necessary to optimize the p-code to final run state for production went down and the manufacture had gone under so there was no support or parts. I've been at companies where both those things have happened.
For something like a high-end espresso machine that's supposed to last you a decade or more? Open source hardware and software is really the only way to have any hope that it'll be more than just a passing fancy if you're going to insist on these types of glitzy digital bells and whistles.
I look at the completely mechanical Faema and Gaggia machines from the 50s and 60s that are still running today, and I wonder if that Vivaldi will still be working 50 years from now, or be rusting in a landfill. My money's on the latter.
I guess I should have elaborated on that point. I agree with you that going with more generic components is probably better in the long run because it would make the machine more serviceable, but the fact that they have the capability of engineering their own PID says something about the capabilities of their engineering department, which is pretty much far beyond what I've seen with other makes. Is that a good thing? Maybe. Maybe not. Of course,that is up for debate.. USB on a machine like that certainly is something really out of the ordinary. It makes me wonder what else they've done which nobody else has.
GVDub Said:
Do they have the chip designers, foundries and engineers to make a better PID than companies like Omega or Watlow?
I suppose this is up for debate. Perhaps they actually sourced the PID from Omega or Watlow using their own engineering specifications? Automotive companies do this all the time. As an example, there is a company in the USAwhich engineers latching systems. That's all they do. GM goes to them and says, "We need you to design a latching system for our Minivans." .. and they do it. Sometimes it isn't the best solution, but it's better when many smallercompanies work together with a larger company to develop a product.
GVDub Said:
And a proprietary PID is just one more thing that, 8 or 9 years down the line, when they've changed chip architectures, will be impossible to source.
I agree with this. Absolutely. I'll admit that it is a downside.. but I'm sure that parts for these machines would be available for a few years past that.. and if I got 10-15 years out of a $3000 machine, I'd say I would have gotten my moneys worth. Considering that people buy a $40,000 car and rarely keep them for more than 10 years..... Maybe that's not a fair comparison....
GVDub Said:
For something like a high-end espresso machine that's supposed to last you a decade or more?
I guess it makes me wonder... what kinds of people would buy this machine and would they really keep it for a decade or more anyway? Consider how many people have "upgraded" from a perfectly decent HX machine to a DB machine... then eventually ditched that to get one of those legendary LM GS/3's on their kitchen counter... :)
One of the things which has caused the longevity of the PC platform was the fact that PC's always used "Off the shelf" parts which could be sourced from multiple suppliers. As a result of this, you could quite literally build an IBM PC/XT/AT from scratch because the full schematics were available to the public. Will La Spaziale do the same thing? I kind of doubt it, at least IMHO. Perhaps they will keep this design on the market for a very long time. In which case, I'm sure there will be plenty of "Parts" machines on the market for a very long time afterwards.
This is how a friend of mine keeps driving his beat up rusty 1986 Dodge Aries.. There's thousands of these things in junkyards still. :-)
GVDub Said:
is really the only way to have any hope that it'll be more than just a passing fancy
One thing that kind of shocked me about the audiophile world was that I was told that the average audiophile keeps their equipment for no more than three years. Can you imagine blowing $10k on an amplifier, only to sell it and buy something else just three years later? I've seen it happen all the time. There are lots of audiophiles who get hand-me-down equipment all the time for fire sale prices.
I think that the Coffee Geek world suffers from this as well, but not to the degree that they do in the audiophile world. I'll use the Rancilio Silvia as an example. Some people buy them, keep them for six monthsand then quickly move on to something else. Other people buy them and keep them in daily operation for 20 years. It's a strange mix of people. :-)
So, I keep wondering what kind of "upgradeitis" would strike the coffee geek who buys one of these machines. I find it strange sometimes how someone will have an LM GS/3, yet they have this beat up old Cremina from the early 70's sitting next to it. I understand the rationale behind it, but I guess it's kind of like seeing someone with a Hyundai parked next to a Ferrari.. both have very different driving experiences.(I'm going to apologize if I offended anyone who owns a Cremina, I'm just using that as a rather ignorant example.)
GVDub Said:
I look at the completely mechanical Faema and Gaggia machines from the 50s and 60s that are still running today, and I wonder if that Vivaldi will still be working 50 years from now, or be rusting in a landfill.
I've read the USB is for uploading the firmware (not for temp datalogging download as I had stupidly guessed earlier). A nice feature to have none-the-less since the old Vivaldi required you to strip out the old control board and mail it back to CCS for a upgade. This avoids all that. Also, this allows them to realease the machine with the software still in semi-Beta and fix the inevitable bugs later.
qualin Said:
I think it is nice that they've listened and addressed the shortcoming with the external timer. I wonder if this machine will have pre-infusion capabilities and if it is plumbed in only? (It looks like it is.)
Are you kidding? The old timer was $200 and couldn't even keep time accurately! What a joke. They had better fix it.
Yes, the machine has programmable pre-infusion. The old S1V2 had it as well after the last software upgrade so this is nothing new. I assume the difference here is it will be more easily accessible from the LCD panel now.
Keep in mind, beyond the cosmetic and "brain" changes, I expect the internals are the same (i.e same 53mm grouphead and boiler, same steam boiler, etc). So the I expect it will perform exactly the same as before where it really matters....in the cup.
qualin Said:
I find it strange sometimes how someone will have an LM GS/3, yet they have this beat up old Cremina from the early 70's sitting next to it. I understand the rationale behind it, but I guess it's kind of like seeing someone with a Hyundai parked next to a Ferrari.. both have very different driving experiences.(I'm going to apologize if I offended anyone who owns a Cremina, I'm just using that as a rather ignorant example.)
I have both Vivaldi and Cremina. But I think of it in the opposite way. I drive a Hyundai Genesis GT every day but have a beatup vintage Ferrari 250 GTO next to it for weekend enjoyment. In my opinion, the owning both a Vivaldi and Cremina is the best of both worlds (old and new). A perfect compliment to one another if you wish to own 2 machines.
Nothing special there. That's pretty much standard accuracy for most PIDs on the market (.5°C or .9°F), though most of the time it's a little more accurate. They allow for a fudge factor for standard deviations in tolerances.
I've read the USB is for uploading the firmware (not for temp datalogging download as I had stupidly guessed earlier). A nice feature to have none-the-less since the old Vivaldi required you to strip out the old control board and mail it back to CCS for a upgade. This avoids all that. Also, this allows them to realease the machine with the software still in semi-Beta and fix the inevitable bugs later.
"Shipping beta" is a wonderful way to lose customers and destroy your reputation. I can think of several products in the musical instrument world that did just that for the companies that made them. I even know of a couple products that had major bugs in them for their entire life because the engineering attitude was always, "we can fix that with a "dot" release" and then they weren't allowed to issue that release because some bean counter in the front office decided there wasn't sufficient ROI involved to allocate the engineering resources.
Lest anybody get the wrong idea, I'm not anti-"Dream Machine". As a matter of fact, had I the room, a Vivaldi would be on the short list of machines I'd really like to have. But if the added complexity doesn't bring anything to the cup, it's pretty much for show, and to drag a few extra dollars out of the "Ooooh, shiny!" crowd. I don't see the ROI for me in this machine. IMHO, YMMV, IANAL, CYA, and all that.
Symbols: = New Posts since your last visit = No New Posts since last visit = Newest post
Forum Rules:No profanity, illegal acts or personal attacks will be tolerated in these discussion boards.No commercial posting of any nature will be tolerated; only private sales by private individuals, in the "Buy and Sell" forum.No SEO style postings will be tolerated. SEO related posts will result in immediate ban from CoffeeGeek.No cross posting allowed - do not post your topic to more than one forum, nor repost a topic to the same forum.Who Can Read The Forum? Anyone can read posts in these discussion boards.Who Can Post New Topics? Any registered CoffeeGeek member can post new topics.Who Can Post Replies? Any registered CoffeeGeek member can post replies.Can Photos be posted? Anyone can post photos in their new topics or replies.Who can change or delete posts? Any CoffeeGeek member can edit their own posts. Only moderators can delete posts.Probationary Period: If you are a new signup for CoffeeGeek, you cannot promote, endorse, criticise or otherwise post an unsolicited endorsement for any company, product or service in your first five postings. | {
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Kauffman Stadium gets lighting makeover as helicopter lifts 412 new LED lights into place
On Wednesday, 412 new LED lights were installed at the top of Kauffman Stadium, replacing more than 600 halide lights that had lit the stadium for years. Learn about the new lights and watch them being installed.
By
Up Next
On Wednesday, 412 new LED lights were installed at the top of Kauffman Stadium, replacing more than 600 halide lights that had lit the stadium for years. Learn about the new lights and watch them being installed.
Royals use helicopter to install new lights at Kauffman Stadium
As we approach the new year, this is the attitude many a person will take. It goes for Kauffman Stadium, too. Just weeks after completing the installation of a new field, the team on Wednesday started to put the new LED lights at the Royals’ home.
With the temperature in single digits, the project couldn’t have been much fun to complete. But on Wednesday morning, helicopters began picking up sections of the lights from the parking lot at the Truman Sports Complex and moving them to each tower.
“We don’t know that it will be noticeable for the average fan, but it will be a big deal for the players and umpires,” Toby Cook, the Royals’ vice president of publicity, told The Star in October. “The big deal with LEDs, I’m told, is that we can turn them off and on with a push of a button.” | {
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Welcome to the second edition of the seasonal table topper series from The Quilt Branch. We have designed this SUMMER offering to take you through June, July, and August. The bright colors of summer make us ready to get the picnic basket out and enjoy the sunshine. You will have fun making a new table topper each month for your summer table. Designed by Susan Knapp and Mary Jane Mattingly | {
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Thapar University Distance Education - TUDDE
Thapar University Department of Distance Education, Patiala launched B.Tech. Programs through Distance Education in April 2007. The new admission of B. Tech (Distance Education) programs have been stopped as per the directions issued by Govt. of India, Ministry of Human Resource and Development.
DDE is offering Master in Computer Application (MCA) in distance mode from July 2010. This program is approved by the Joint committee of AICTE-UGC-DEC. The University is accredited by NAAC at B++ level among Deemed Universities with Institutional score of 82%.
The eligibility for TUDDE MCA courses is a recognized bachelor’s degree of minimum 3 years duration in any discipline with Mathematics atleast at 10+2 level or a recognized bachelor’s degree of minimum 3 years duration in any discipline with Mathematics as one of the subject in the degree.
Courses Offered:
DDE of Thapar University is offering Master in Computer Application (MCA)
Admissions:
The Admissions are a complete online process. Register yourself on their admission page: https://webkiosk.thapar.edu/CounsTIET/ and complete the procedure as per the instructions. | {
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smunge/smunge.spec
Name: smungeSummary: Funneling POP proxyVersion: 1.3.7Release: 1.2License: GPLGroup: System Environment/DaemonsURL:http://www.i2pi.com/smunge/Description: Smunge is a stand alone POP3 funneling proxy server, designed to allow
clients to attach to multiple pop servers as if they were one. Smunge can
be used to join together multiple mailboxes, or to present different users
with different mailboxes (depending on username). This allows for
administrators of pop servers to set up either load balancing or redundant
clusters for pop services.
It was initially designed to smooth over the transition of pop services
from one machine to another, without users losing mail (by keeping the
old server active whilst the new one was being installed).
It supports DRAC for pop-before-smtp authentication, and LDAP based
authentication and lookups for mapping users to sets of pop servers.
The DRAC feature is not compiled by default in this package.
CentOS 7 x86_64
The build could not start because the following file is missing: smunge-1.3.7.tar.gz
CentOS 6 x86_64
The build could not start because the following file is missing: smunge-1.3.7.tar.gz
Contents
The spec file used by the build system currently has the following contents: | {
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Environment´s information
There are three close populations of Soria which are Historic-Artistic Complex. In San Esteban de Gormaz, two Romanesque arcade galleries is the most artistic famous of the Middle Ages of San Esteban. In Burgo de Osma its cathedral, essentially Gothic, is the main monument; although there are also landscapes like its park of Carmen and the path between Osma and the bridge of La Güera, as well as its gastronomy (like in San Esteban de Gormaz). In Rejas de San Esteban its two arcade Romanesque temples are appeals. In Langa de Duero the worthiest are its medieval bridge, the Gothic parish and the big tower. On the other hand, to the Northeast is the Natural Park of the river Lobos. And to the Northwest the Romanesque of site of Clunia in Coruña del Conde highlights. Likewise, to the East, is worthy to get close to the region from Burgos, Peñaranda de Duero which is also Historic-Artistic Complex.
Villalvaro
Villálvaro is located close to San Esteban de Gormaz, with wineries and cereals in its field. Some traditional cellars are still there. In the high of the hill which looks after the village is the hermitage of San Pedro, initially Romanesque. The parish has a fenced yard in stone wall. The patronal festivals are on the 29th of June with bowers, bonfires and popular snack. Shared pilgrimage with Zayas of Báscones to the hermitahe of the Virgin of “las Lagunas”. The typical stew is made of “machorra”.
Activities
Villálvaro celebrate the festivities in honor of San Pedro Apostle the last weekend of June with a duration of the day before and three more days.
Church bells and fall of the saint from the hermitage to the church. Parade and later “chuletada” (meeting where the people eat chops (chuletas)) in the wine cellars organized by the groups tasting the good wine of the land.
Masses, processions, playground, entertainment and humor. | {
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To the east, a massive banner on the National Museum of American Jewish History quoted a 1790 letter from President Washington to the Hebrew Congregations of Newport: “For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance…” To the west, the outdoor exhibit of the remains of the President’s House listed the names of slaves who served Washington, including a young woman named “Oney Judge.”
“Without the least provocation”
As Dunbar illuminates in her new book, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, about three years after Washington penned those lofty words in 1790 (loftily displayed in 2017), he signed the Fugitive Slave Act. Near the end of his presidency, he advertised in newspapers in hopes of finding the enslaved woman who had slipped away from his household in 1796 and never looked back.
Dunbar reproduces one of these ads, from May 1796, in her book. Washington offered a $10 reward for the return of Judge, “a light Mulatto girl” who fled “without the least provocation.”
During a February appearance at the Free Library, Dunbar referred to Judge as “a 22-year-old black woman who resisted the president of the United States” and quipped that, more than 200 years later, maybe we can relate.
“Why don’t I know this story?”
Dunbar lives outside Philadelphia and is a professor of black studies and history at the University of Delaware. She discovered Washington’s archived ads in research for another project. “Why don’t I know this story?” she asked herself.
Why had no one told the story of an illiterate black woman who escaped the president in the 1790s and lived the rest of her life on a knife edge, praying she wouldn’t be caught and forced back into slavery at Mt. Vernon?
There isn’t exactly a surfeit of primary sources on people like Judge. As Hidden Figures reminds us, black women’s stories and achievements, even at the most crucial junctures of 20th-century history, are easily erased. What about black people from centuries ago whose freedom -- and often their lives -- depended on leaving no trace of evidence?
From a research perspective, a book about a person like Judge is a mighty undertaking.
Fortunately, about 50 years after her escape, Judge (who eventually married and became Ona Staines) granted interviews to a pair of abolitionist newspapers. These serve as some of the only direct records we have of narratives like hers.
The rest of Dunbar’s work is a marvel of research and educated conjecture. The author said she pulled “on the fragile threads of history,” collecting “shards of evidence written by or about black women” and weaving them into the much better known context of scholarship about the Washingtons, their family, and estate.
Getting past the founding fathers
Readers should discover for themselves what drove Judge to escape and what happened after she fled. But until his death in late 1799, George Washington used every means at his disposal to recover his human property.
An 1851 depiction of "Washington as Farmer at Mount Vernon," part of a series on George Washington by Junius Brutus Stearns. Located at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. (Photo via Creative Commons/Wikimedia)
Though reading about life for slaves and free black people in late-18th-century America can be grueling, Never Caught is also a breath of fresh air for history enthusiasts. Finally, there’s a story about the nation’s early years that doesn’t simply lionize its founding fathers.
The Washington of Dunbar’s scholarship is a stubborn slaveholder who repeatedly flouts Northern abolition laws during his presidency — and a chronically impecunious man who struggled with public life and his own health.
Judge, naturally, is harder to know. When Dunbar finally shares a few of Judge’s own rare words, it’s a small but piercing moment we don’t see until more than 100 pages in. If more excerpts like this exist from Judge’s interviews, I wish they could have been woven into Dunbar’s text.
Normalizing hate?
For anyone insisting we can’t “normalize” hate and discrimination in the age of President Trump, if a book like Never Caught is a startling portrait of George and Martha Washington (or if it’s strange to see them as characters secondary to a black woman), this forces us to consider that bigotry has always been the norm. Every time we idealize Washington, we live and breathe that historic and contemporary normalization.
But that makes Judge’s story all the more relevant, and even optimistic. As Dunbar explained at the Free Library, Judge’s escape framed a larger problem for the U.S. president than the loss of a slave: She was a problem he was never able to solve.
“What did it mean that you couldn’t control this one woman?” Dunbar asked. It’s a question millions of US women can ask themselves today, and it’s a privilege to add Judge’s story to our cultural lexicon.
Get in Touch
Broad Street Review
Welcome to Broad Street Review — an arts and culture website for thinking people with strong opinions.
Since its launch in 2005, BSR has sought to promote the exchange of viewpoints rather than any particular point of view. To that end, we welcome commentary from professionals and amateurs alike about the performing and visual arts, as well as any other field of interest to our eclectic group of contributors. | {
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0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80Q4. Since how long you are using your current laptop?
Years No. of respondents Percentage (%)
Less than 1 year 32 32
1-2years 40 40 2-3 years 20 20 More than 3 years 32 32 TOTAL 100 100
Since how long you are using your current laptop?
MORE THAN 3 YEARS 32
LESS THAN ONE YEAR 8
2-3 YEAR 20
1-2 YEAR 40
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
INTERPRETATION: 32% of respondents are using laptops less than 1year, 40%responded that they were using from 1-2 years, 20% of respondents were using laptop from 2-3 years & the rest 32% of respondents were using from more than 3 years.Q5. What minimum features do you expect from your laptop? (May select more thanone feature)
Response No. of responses
Minimum features expected by respondents
DESKTOP CLASS 35
OLED DISPLAYS 19
HIGHER RESOLUTION SCREEN 46
BATTERY BACKUP 86
USB TYPE CHARGING 29
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
INTERPRETATION: 35% respondents will like to have desktop class laptop, while 19% ofrespondents will prefer OLED Displays, 46% of respondents choose high resolution screen,86% of people prefers battery backup while purchasing there laptop & 29% prefers USB typecharging.Q6. Will you consider buying a second hand laptop?
RESPONSE NO. OF PERCENTAGE
RESPONDENTS %
YES 4 4
NO 78 78
IT DEPENDS 18 18
TOTAL 100 100
Will you consider buying second hand laptops?
It depends NO Yes
INTERPRETATION: 78% of respondents denied to purchase second hand laptops,
while 4 % choose to buy second hand laptop and 18% responded that it depends oncircumstances.Q7. What is your budget for a new laptop?
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
Less than 20,000 11 11
20,000-30,000 43 43
More than 30,000 46 46
TOTAL 100 100
Budget for new laptop?
MORE THAN 30,000 46
LESS THAN 20,000 11
20,000-30,000 43
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
INTERPRETATION: 11% of respondents have less than 20,000 budget, 43% canafford in between 20,000-30,000 & 46% of respondents have more than 30,000 budget.Q8. How frequently do you change your laptop?
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
Any time 46 46 Every 6 months 1 1 Every year 2 2 Every 2 years 51 51 TOTAL 100 100
How frequently do you change laptop?
1% 2
Any tym 46% Every 2 years 51% Every 6 months Every year
INTERPRETATION: 46% of respondents change their laptop whenever they want,
while 51% of respondents change their laptop in every 2 year, 2 % change their laptop once
in a year & 1% of respondents change their laptops once in six months.
Q9. Do you choose your laptop on the basis of advertising on various media?
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
YES 19 19
NO 42 42
TO SOME EXTENT 39 39 TOTAL 100 100
Do you choose your laptop on the basis of
advertising on various media
No To some extent Yes
INTERPRETATION: 19% of respondents choose their laptops on the basis of
advertising on various media while 42% respondents don’t choose their laptops on the basisof media, 39% respondents choose their laptop through various media to some extent.Q10. How did you get to know about your current Laptop?
Response No. of responses
TV 7
Newspaper/Magazine 14
Friends/Family/Relatives 54
Existing Customers 25
TOTAL
How did you get to know about your current
laptop?
TV 7
MAGAZINES/NEWSPAPERS 14
FRIENDS/FAMILY/RELATIVES 54
EXISTING CUSTOMERS 25
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
INTERPRETATION: 7% of respondents came to know about their laptops through
television, 14% of respondents came to know about their laptops throughnewspapers/magazines, 54% of respondents came to know about their laptops throughtheir friends, family and relatives while 25% % of respondents came to know about theirlaptops through existing customers.Q11. Do you prefer to purchase that brand of laptop which offers any special salespromotion scheme or discount?
Response No. of responses Percentage of
responses YES 37 37
NO 28 28
TO SOME EXTENT 35 35
TOTAL 100 100
Do you prefer to purchase that brand of
laptop which offers any special sales promotion scheme or discount?
No To some extent Yes
INTERPRETATION: 37% of respondents prefer to purchase the brand which offers
any special sales promotion, discounts or schemes while 28% of respondents do not go for
discounts and all 35% of respondents go for some extent.
Q13. Price of your laptop is
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
Expensive 15 15
Reasonable 85 85
TOTAL 100 100
Price
Expensive Reasonable
INTERPRETATION: 85% of respondents were having reasonable price of their laptop
while 15 % are having expensive laptopsQ14.Which kind of laptop do you prefer?
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
Stylish 59 59
Simple 41 41
TOTAL 100 100
Which kind of laptop do you prefer?
Simple Stylish
INTERPRETATION: 59% of respondents are having stylish laptops while 41 % of
respondents are having simple laptops.Q15. Comfort level of your laptop is
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
More Comfortable 78 78
Less Comfortable 22 22
TOTAL 100 100
Comfort level of your laptop is
MORE COMFORTABLE 78
LESS COMFORTABLE 22
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
INTERPRETATION: 78% of respondents are having laptops with more comfort while22% are having less comfort laptops.Q16. Maintenance cost of your laptop is
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
Expensive 18 18
Reasonable 82 82
TOTAL 100 100
Maintenance cost of your laptop is
Expensive Reasonable
INTERPRETATION: 82% of the respondents have reasonable cost of maintenance of
their laptops while 18% of the respondents are having expensive maintenance cost of theirlaptops.Q17. Battery Efficiency of your laptop is
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
Satisfactory 79 79
Non-satisfactory 21 21
TOTAL 100 100
Battery Efficiency of your laptop is
SATISFACTORY 79
NON SATISFACTORY 21
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
INTERPRETATION: 79% of respondents are satisfied with the battery efficiency of
their laptops & 21% of respondents are not satisfied with the battery backup of theirlaptops.Q18. Do you prefer to purchase a laptop brand who’s after sales service is good?
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
YES 83 83
NO 6 6
TO SOME EXTENT 11 11
TOTAL 100 100
Do you prefer to purchase a laptop brand who’s after sales
service is good?
No To some extent Yes
INTERPRETATION: 83% of respondents prefers to buy laptops brand who’s after salesservice is good, 6% doesn’t prefers to buy on the basis of after sales service & 11%respondents can buy but to some extent.Q19. Are you comfortable by using an outdated version of laptop?
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
YES 9 9
NO 80 80
TO SOME EXTENT 11 11
TOTAL 100 100
Are you comfortable by using an outdated version of laptop?
No To some extent Yes
INTERPRETATION: 80% of respondents are not comfortable in using an outdated
laptop while 9% of respondents have no objection in using outdated version of laptop and 11%of respondents can use to some extent.Q20. Which brand of laptop are you having?
Which brand of laptop are you having?
laptops, 23% of respondents have DELL laptops, 1% of respondents are having HCL laptops,54% of respondents are having HP laptops and the rest 13% of respondents have other brandsof laptops.
Q21. Which of the following reason motivates you to buy the laptop?
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
Price 23 23
Fashion Trends 18 18
Friends/Family/Relatives 5 5
Convenience for 54 54 connectivity TOTAL 100 100
Which of the following reason motivates you to
buy the laptop?
Price 23
Friends Following 5
Fashion Trend 18
Convenience for Connectivity 54
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
INTERPRETATION: 23% of respondents buys laptops on the basis of price, 5%
respondent’s buys through friends and family, while 18% of respondents motivates throughthe current trend in the market and 54% buys as per their convenience for connectivity.Q22. How important is the “design and style” of a laptop to you in comparison to itsfunctionality?
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
Very Important 22 22
Not Important 11 11
Important to some 52 52 extent Extremely Important 15 15
TOTAL 100 100
Very Important 22
Not important 11
Important to some extent 52
11% of respondents don’t give preference design and style 52% of respondents are havingdesign & style to some extent 15% of respondents have extremely important to design andstyle rather than functionality of laptops.Q23. What are the reasons of replacing your current laptop?
Response No. of responses Percentage of responses
Outdated 23 23
Arrival of new models 19 19
Arrival of new brands 11 11
Fashion Trend 8 8
New features 39 39
TOTAL 100 100
Reasons of replacing your current laptop
outdated new model new brands fashion trends new features
INTERPRETATION: 23% of respondents replace their laptops because it’s outdated,
while 19% of respondents replace their laptops because of arrival of new models, while 11%of respondents replace their laptops because arrival of new brands, 8% of respondentsreplace their laptops because of fashion trends and 39% of respondents replace theirlaptops because of new features. | {
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We noticed that you're using an unsupported browser. The TripAdvisor website may not display properly.We support the following browsers:Windows: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome. Mac: Safari.
Ashlee
Steps lead up to this semi-detached, upside down house in the village of Dale popular with sailing enthusiasts and only yards from the water. A spiral staircase leads from the hall up to the first floor with bright double bedroom and compact kitchen. The light and airy lounge/diner with large double aspect windows is comfortably furnished with leather sofas and a woodburning stove for chillier evenings, it opens out to a small decked patio - an absolute sun trap to enjoy; steps lead to a large, shared lawned garden which slopes up to the mature trees behind. Conveniently located, the village pub, The Griffin, is on the shore line, serves good food and is only a stone’s throw from your front door, as well as the sailing club and watersports hire for the adventurous. Alternatively only a 15 minute walk in the opposite direction is West Dale... Read more
Steps lead up to this semi-detached, upside down house in the village of Dale popular with sailing enthusiasts and only yards from the water. A spiral staircase leads from the hall up to the first floor with bright double bedroom and compact kitchen. The light and airy lounge/diner with large double aspect windows is comfortably furnished with leather sofas and a woodburning stove for chillier evenings, it opens out to a small decked patio - an absolute sun trap to enjoy; steps lead to a large, shared lawned garden which slopes up to the mature trees behind. Conveniently located, the village pub, The Griffin, is on the shore line, serves good food and is only a stone’s throw from your front door, as well as the sailing club and watersports hire for the adventurous. Alternatively only a 15 minute walk in the opposite direction is West Dale beach. There are a wealth of beaches to explore all within a short distance and some of Pembrokeshire’s most stunning coastline within this peninsula. Ashlee is a welcoming holiday base for families and couples whatever the season. Sloping garden and unfenced drops in rear garden - care needed. | {
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EVERGREEN PROPERTY MANAGEMENT
Evergreen Property Management
Realty OH always try to get all available information about Property Manager Evergreen Property Management, based in Cincinnati.
This Real Estate Profile about Evergreen Property Management will help you to find the right Property Manager from Cincinnati, Ohio for you.
Please, check reviews under this Ohio Real Estate listing to make sure this is the right Ohio Property Manager for you.
Address:
5828 Bramble Ave
Cincinnati, Ohio
ZIP Code: 45227
Phone number: (513) 588-8078
Evergreen Property Management on the map:
About Evergreen Property Management:
Realty Ohio try to provide maximum information about Evergreen Property Management and other Property Management from Cincinnati, OH. If you have any updates about Evergreen Property Management to expand this listing, leave the note under this Ohio Realty Profile. If you have already used Evergreen Property Management based in Cincinnati, Ohio (OH), please write a quick review. Let us and readers from Cincinnati know what do you think about Evergreen Property Management. Also if you are representative of Evergreen Property Management, please update your Realty OH Profile information. Simply leave the updated info under this listing.Our editors will soon update all information. Hurry, it won’t be free forever. | {
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KDE 4.8 RC Released
Today KDE released the first release candidate for its Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing. Compared to Beta2, RC1 contains hundreds of fixes. Please give this release another good round of testing to help us release a rock-solid 4.8 in January.
Highlights of 4.8 include:
* Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces -- Qt Quick is making its way into the Plasma Workspaces. The new Plasma Components provide a standardized API implementation of widgets with native Plasma Look and Feel. The device notifier widget has been ported using these components and is now written in pure QML. KWin's window switcher is now also QML-based, paving the way for newly designed window switchers.
* Dolphin's file view has been rewritten for better performance, scalability and more attractive visual appearance. | {
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RIDGELAND, Miss. — Police in Mississippi say an official in the conservative tea party movement arrested after photos were taken of U.S. Senator Thad Cochran’s ill wife has been found dead.
They are treating the case as a suicide.
Police say the body of attorney Mark Mayfield was found Friday morning at his home in a gated community outside Jackson.
Authorities say Mayfield had been shot, and a suicide note was found.
The establishment wing of the Republican party Tuesday will mount a last-ditch effort to prevent the Tea Party from winning a major victory in a high-profile Senate race in Mississippi.
Thad Cochran, Mississippi’s long-serving 76-year-old senator, is fighting for his political life against Chris McDaniel, a Right-wing challenger backed by Sarah Palin.
With polls showing Cochran heading towards defeat, the Republican leadership has rushed money and reinforcements to Mississippi to try to stave off another win for the conservative grassroots.
U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his re-election bid, falling to Tea Party challenger David Brat in a Virginia Republican primary in the biggest upset of this year’s campaign.
Cantor is the second-ranking House Republican and was considered the frontrunner to become the next House speaker. Tonight’s loss is a stunning fall for Cantor, 51, who was instrumental in the election of many of the Tea Party-backed candidates who handed Republicans their House majority in 2010.
WASHINGTON — A longtime Republican senator narrowly led a challenger backed by the small-government Tea Party movement Tuesday in a Mississippi primary runoff that exposed deep divisions in the party.
The runoff in Mississippi — one of seven states to have votes on Tuesday — was the first big test for the party establishment since it was jolted two weeks ago by the defeat of the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, Eric Cantor, by a little-known college professor loosely associated with the Tea Party.
This Saturday, right-wing protesters will gather in Washington DC for a march to oppose health reform and President Obama. The event, scheduled intentionally on September 12 to coincide with the anniversary of the day following the September 11 terrorist attacks, was conceived largely by Fox News’ Glenn Beck.
While The Tea Party had been relatively aggressive in the race, it is still quite shocking to the establishment that the second-highest House Republican just got unseated (despite outspending Brat by a ratio of 5-to-1) by a local tea-party-backed economics professor:
A recent Tea Party Second Amendment program attracted an overflow crowd to a rear dining room at the First Street Family Restaurant in Simi Valley. A few days later, a couple of hundred people, many of them local Tea Party members, attended a "Day of Resistance" gun rights rally and march in Ventura.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — From county chairmen to national party luminaries, veteran Republicans across the country are accusing tea party lawmakers of staining the GOP with their refusal to bend in the budget impasse in Washington. The Republican establishment also is signaling a willingness to strike back at the tea party in next fall's elections. | {
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Just a week after vowing to be "part of the solution" regarding Hollywood's sexual harassment problem, the actor revealed he will be donating any future earnings from a Harvey Weinstein or Miramax film to charity.
"It's funny that you mention that. Once Kevin suggested that, I decided to do the same thing. So any further residuals that I get from a Miramax or a Weinstein movie will go either to F.I. or to RAINN. One is Film Independent, and the other is a women's organization… I just didn't want to cash any more checks from the guy, you know?" | {
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Formed in 1917, during the First World War, Grimethorpe Colliery Band is a British institution. National and British Open Champions on numerous occasions, the band’s contest successes remain legendary.
Their accomplishments include 16 Brass in Concert Championship titles, 11 times Yorkshire Regional Champions, two English National Championship victories, four times British Open Champions and four times National Champion Brass Band of Great Britain.
Grimethorpe’s diverse concert performances include appearances at the FIFA World Cup, BAFTA Awards, BBC Proms, Eurovision and London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, together with a wealth of national and international television / radio appearances and professional recordings.
The band has been the recipient of two gold discs, as well as a BAFTA nomination for its contributions to the global hit movie “Brassed Off” for which Grimethorpe was the focal point.
The Royal Albert Hall, Symphony Hall, Barbican, Westminster Abbey, European Parliament, Sydney Opera House have all played host to Grimethorpe.
With tours to Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, and concerts and festival appearances throughout Europe, the band’s performance reputation remains unsurpassed.
“A thoroughly entertaining show & a must for all music enthusiasts”– The Guardian
“Grimethorpe Colliery Band – the finest jewel in the world of brass bands, and a unique cultural asset”– Sir Peter Maxwell DaviesEnglish composer and conductor
“Sensational – performing favourite classics in spectacular style!”– The Times
“The brass bands of this country are unique, and the Grimethorpe Band is unique amongst them”– Sir Harrison BirtwistleComposer
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The Urban Dictionary Mug
Life is a stage where each one of us has the chance to act and prove who we really are. I've heard that life is beautiful, life is suffering, life is f*cking stupid, life is a gift. the list just goes on..
And I've thought about it awfully alot. What comes down in the end my friend is how you are living your life. There are people in one hand starving till death & some rich people blowing cash like "there's no second day," there are people who link their lives in drugs & there are hardworking people workin' their arse off. There are people who are true religious devotees and there are extremists violating every religious notion there is. So the thing is, what does LIFE mean to YOU? | {
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Microsoft Offers Peek at Office for Windows Phone 8
Microsoft revealed today in a blog post some details about how Office 13 will integrate with Windows Phone 8. The blog post mostly discusses the cloud-based features of Office 13, but notes that the latest version of Microsoft's suite of productivity software will extend to mobile devices, as well. For example, Microsoft Word will remember where you were reading within a specific document and when re-opened on another device (such as a Windows Phone 8 smartphone) will go straight to that spot. PowerPoint and Excel will exhibit similar behaviors. Microsoft has also revealed a glimpse of the refreshed design of Office for Windows Phone 8, though it stopped well short of revealing all the consumer-facing features. Windows Phone 8 is expected to debut later this year. | {
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Vietnam, China to deepen comprehensive strategic partnership
Updated: 11:34’ - 06/11/2015
The Vietnamese Party, State and people have continually treasured the amity with China and are willing to work with the neighboring country to deepen the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong told visiting General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and President of China, Xi Jinping, on November 5 in Hanoi.
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Nguyen Phu Trong welcomed General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and President of China Xi Jinping on November 5 in Hanoi__Photo: Tri Dung/VNA
Trong said the Chinese leader’s state-level visit is of great significance and demonstrates that the Chinese Party and Government and the Party and State leader have placed importance on cementing and promoting the friendship and connection with Vietnam.
The two leaders highlighted the importance of consistently consolidating the traditional friendship between the two Parties and countries. They shared the need to firmly follow the orientations for the Vietnam-China friendship, maintain high-level exchanges, reinforce political trust, increase cooperation across the Party, National Assembly, Fatherland Front, ministries, sectors and localities, and boost trade and investment in an efficient, fair and healthy manner.
They also seek to broaden scientific, technological, educational, cultural and tourist cooperation, coordinate to effectively implement land border management documents, and work together to properly manage and address sea disputes without any effects on the stable and wealthy development of the bilateral relations.
General Secretary Trong suggested implementing exchange and cooperation programs and mechanisms, and fostering collaboration between the Vietnamese and Chinese parliaments and Fatherland Front agencies.
He urged both sides to take practical measures promoting the stable, balanced and sustainable development of bilateral trade while bringing into play the role of the working groups on infrastructure and monetary cooperation in boosting cooperation in related fields to achieve practical outcomes.
Vietnam and China should encourage cooperation projects within the "two corridors, one belt" framework as well as the "one belt, one road" initiative, on the basis of respecting each other’s legitimate interests, equality and mutual benefits, Trong added.
He appreciated China's decision to provide 1 billion yuan (USD 158 million) in aid for Vietnam over the next five years for the building of social welfare facilities like schools and hospitals.
Regarding the East Sea issue, Trong suggested the two sides work closely to control the situation at sea, respect each other's legitimate benefits, and avoid actions that complicate the situation and enlarge the dispute. He called on the two sides to build and strengthen strategic trust for facilitating the implementation of agreed cooperation projects at sea.
General Secretary and President Xi Jinping and General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong witnessed the signing of the agreement on cooperation to protect and exploit tourist resources of the Ban Gioc Waterfall__Photo: Tri Dung/VNA
In reply, Xi Jinping described friendship and cooperation as the mainstream of the ties between Vietnam and China. He urged the two sides to increase political trust and step up dialogues and collaboration in foreign affairs, national defense and security and humanistic exchanges.
He also called for concerted efforts to boost win-win cooperation, mutual respect and friendly negotiations, put aside minor differences to seek common ground, and control disputes, thus bringing practical benefits to the two countries' peoples and contributing to peace, development and prosperity in the region.
China will encourage its businesses to forge trade cooperation and expand investment in Vietnam while coordinating with the country to properly manage disputes at sea and preserve the bilateral relationship as well as peace and stability in the East Sea, the Chinese leader noted.
Following their talks, the two leaders witnessed the signing of a number of documents, including a plan on cooperation in personnel training between the two Parties for the 2016-2020 period, an agreement on free navigation of ships at the mouth of the Ka Long (Beilun) River and another on cooperation to protect and exploit tourist resources of the Ban Gioc Waterfall between the two Governments.- (VNS/VLLF) | {
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Cast Recording opens at PRISM, featuring the work of Sarah Conaway
Cast Recording draws together works that employ two distinct methods of casting ― the casting of objects and casting of characters. One is in the aid of transfiguration and the other in pursuit of personification, yet both share the intention of filling a form with a substance malleable enough to assume a given shape. | {
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Thursday, August 6, 2015
Keurig Green Mountain gave about 200 of its Vermont employees layoff notices on Thursday.
The layoffs are part of a 5 percent reduction in workforce company-wide, which amounts to 330 employees overall, said Suzanne DuLong, vice president of corporate communications for Keurig Green Mountain.
Most of the Vermont employees losing their jobs work on Keurig’s "hot system production" in Waterbury, DuLong said.
Some of them will be able to apply for 75 vacant positions within the company, she said. About 60 of those are in the "cold-system production facility" in Williston.
Keurig Green Mountain has about 2,000 employees in Vermont — roughly a third of its workforce, she said. The company declined to provide specific numbers.
Gov. Peter Shumlin announced Thursday that the state Labor Department is holding a job fair September 10 at the Sheraton in South Burlington with 100 Vermont employers participating.
“This is a huge hit to the affected employees and their families, the Waterbury and South Burlington communities, and the whole Keurig Green Mountain family,” Shumlin said in a press release. “I’m hopeful these Vermont employers can find opportunity in today’s difficult news and add talented and dedicated workers to their workforce.”
Keurig Green Mountain announced Wednesday that net sales had declined by 5 percent. In response, the company said it would cut jobs to save $300 million in the next three years. DuLong said some outside the company misinterpreted that to mean the job cuts would be made during three years, but employees understood the cuts were coming more immediately.
Most being laid off would know their fate by the end of the day, DuLong said. All will be given a severance package, the details of which depend on the employee’s job and length of time with the company, she said.
“We remain committed to our operations in Vermont (which include production facilities in Waterbury, Essex and Williston, as well as our Beverage R&D Center in Waterbury and corporate offices in South Burlington), and plan to continue being one of the largest corporate employers in the state,” Keurig spokeswoman Kristen Mercure said in a written statement. | {
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Cavs’ Damon Jones is back, he’s just not sure why
INDEPENDENCE — Cavaliers guard Damon Jones has an opinion on just about everything, but he isn’t sure why he fell out of coach Mike Brown’s rotation last season. Equally uncertain whether he’s legitimately in the team’s plans for this season, the only thing the colorful veteran is sure of right now is that he’s still a member of the team. “I’m just excited about being here right now and getting out here and practicing with these guys every day and having fun,” Jones said Wednesday at Cleveland Clinic Courts. “What happens tomorrow, I don’t know. I’m not worried about that right now. I don’t, for the most part, control those cards. While I’m here, I’m going to be professional and give it all I’ve got.” Jones, who is in the third season of a four-year, $16 million deal, asked general manager Danny Ferry, the man who signed him to that contract, to trade him shortly after the Cavaliers were swept by San Antonio in the NBA Finals. That never materialized. Even with Sasha Pavlovic absent from camp because he doesn’t have a contract and Eric Snow out for the entire preseason due to knee surgery, it doesn’t look like Jones is really in Cleveland’s plans. Larry Hughes and Daniel Gibson, whose game went up several notches in the postseason, probably will be the Cavaliers’ starting guards when the regular season begins. If Pavlovic signs a contract, he’ll likely get the majority of minutes off the bench — unless he’s traded. But even if Pavlovic doesn’t sign, the Cavaliers seem likely to take a look at second-year guard Shannon Brown and recently signed Devin Brown ahead of Jones. “Mike Brown has a job to do,” Jones said. “For him to be successful, he has to go with what he thinks is best for the basketball team to win. As players, we have to be able to support what he does. “Hopefully, it gets better, but it’s another season. I’m blessed to be here for my 10th (NBA) season.” The 6-foot-3, 195-pounder began last year playing exceptional basketball, especially at the offensive end, but by the middle of the season he was an afterthought. Though Mike Brown has talked repeatedly about Jones’ great help defense, the primary reason for the veteran’s disappearance from the rotation was likely due to the fact he’s not a very good on-the-ball defender. “I don’t know if there’s one thing specifically,” Mike Brown said when asked why Jones fell out of the rotation. “We have a competitive basketball team. I’m going to play the guys I think can help us win at that time. That doesn’t mean this guy or that guy or Damon is a bad player. “I’m just looking to win. However that may be, that’s what I’m paid to do.” Jones, who did creep back into the rotation in the playoffs, is also paid — and paid quite well — to do a job, so for now he’s playing the good soldier. “(Brown’s) the coach and I’m the player,” he said. “Whatever he feels is good for the basketball team (is OK). It’s part of being professional: You have to take the bumps with the bruises.”
Brown fighting back
Shannon Brown has filed assault charges after apparently being roughed up by bouncers at Liquid, a nightclub in Cleveland’s Warehouse District. The incident, which occurred Saturday night, apparently started over Brown’s refusal to remove his baseball cap. Teammates Drew Gooden and Hughes were with the second-year guard, but were in other parts of the club at the time of the incident. “We’re going through the legal process on it right now,” said Shannon Brown, whose father is a policeman in Illinois. “I’m going to respect that process by not commenting further at this time.” | {
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Title: Method and apparatus for operating a gaming device to dispense a specified amount
Abstract: A gaming device, such as a slot machine, determines a balance and a "dispensed amount" that is less than the balance. The dispensed amount may be determined by, for example, receiving signals from one or more key presses that specify the dispensed amount. Alternatively, the dispensed amount may be determined in accordance with one or more "balance management rules". The gaming device in turn dispenses the dispensed amount, for example, by dispensing an amount of currency, transferring the dispensed amount to an account or adjusting a balance of a remote gaming device. The balance is adjusted by the dispensed amount, and this adjusted balance is available for initiating a subsequent play of the gaming device. | {
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Phishing Simulator & Training Platform
Phishing is Your Company’s #1 Security Threat
Phishing scams are targeting and baiting your employees. In fact, 95 percent of all attacks on networks are the result of successful phishing scams, according to the SANS Institute, one of the leading computer security training organizations.
Cyber attackers are finding that it’s easier to hack humans than it is to hack through robust online and physical defenses. The use of social engineering in cybercrime often involves tricking people into breaking normal security procedures. The success of these exploits often relies on people’s willingness to be helpful and compliant.
What is Phishing?
Phishing is when a malicious party sends a fraudulent email disguised as a legitimate email, often purporting to be from a trusted source. The message is meant to trick the recipient into sharing personal or financial information or clicking on a link that installs malware. How it works is an employee receives an email and clicks on a link or opens a file they weren’t supposed to open — many times this leads to a data breach. According to the recent Verizon data breach report, a phishing email is the first phase of an attack.
What PhishOn Does
PhishOn is a phishing and social engineering threat simulator, with wraparound security awareness training, that mitigates the threat and risk of a data breach by building healthy intentional skepticism. Easily deployed in under an hour, you can empower your employees to be your first line of defense to stop threats before they do damage to your company and reputation.
You can deploy PhishOn in under 30 minutes—we do the heavy lifting so you can proceed with business as usual. PhishOn is SaaS based, automated, and continually updated to reflect new and emerging attacks. Turn it on today to protect and secure employee and customer data and your reputation.
Key Benefits
Continually updated to reflect new and emerging attacks
Easy to manage, non-intrusive and built to integrate [API & SIRM Integrations]
PhishOn is powered by Hueya, Inc. Hueya, Inc. is a SaaS company that develops cloud based privacy and security products for corporate ecosystems. To request a demo or speak with a salesperson, please contact sales@phishon.com or call 877 904 9048. Terms of Service | {
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Part 2- The TV5 Monde Hack and APT28
In his attribution of the DNC hack, Dmitri Alperovitch, of Crowdstrike and the Atlantic Council, linked APT28 (Fancy Bear) to previous hacks at TV5 Monde in France and of the Bundestag in Germany:
FANCY BEAR (also known as Sofacy or APT 28) is a separate Russian-based threat actor, which has been active since mid 2000s … FANCY BEAR has also been linked publicly to intrusions into the German Bundestag and France’s TV5 Monde TV station in April 2015.
Alperovitch’s identification of these two incidents ought to make them of particular interest for re-examination (CA readers will recall that the mention of Peter Gleick in the forged Heartland memo proved important.) In each case, including the DNC hack, attribution of the TV5 Monde and Bundestag hacks resulted in a serious deterioration of relations between Russia and the impacted nation – arguably the major result of each incident.
In today’s post, I’ll re-visit the TV5 Monde hack, which took place in April 2015, almost exactly contemporary with the root9B article discussed in Part 1. It proved to be a very interesting backstory.
The TV5 Monde Hack
TV5 Monde in France is one of the largest international news networks in the world. On April 8, 2015, control over its operations was seized by a group identifying itself as the Cybercaliphate. All aspects of TV5 Monde’s operations were seized. The scale of the hack was “unprecedented”, described by Trend Micro as follows:
Post information on social media accounts purporting to be the names and personal information of the relatives of French soldiers involved in operations against ISIS.
Any one of these actions alone would qualify as a major cybersecurity incident. To have all of these actions occur as part of a synchronized attack puts this incident in a whole new category and takes critical infrastructure attacks to a another level.
The seizure of control of TV5 Monde caused a sensation in Europe – there are many contemporary news reports. This was not the first appearance of the “CyberCaliphate”: they had previously hacked control of US Centcom’s twitter account in January 2015, but the scope of the TV5 Monde hack went far beyond the earlier incident.
Initial Attribution
April 9 Breaking 3.0
The first technical analysis was by Breaking 3.0. Their article is no longer online, but lengthy excerpts are in a contemporary article, which stated that the attackers came from Algeria and Iraq, using a Java flaw and used pseudonyms NAJAF and JoHn.Dz:
Anti-Daesh hackers have gone up the trail of the attack that paralyzed TV5 Monde and its websites. According to them, the computer at the origin of the piracy is in Algiers. name: NAJAF, nickname: JoHn.Dz. A second computer, located in Baghdad, reportedly participated in the attack. Exclusively for Geopolis, William Raymond, founder of Breaking3.0 reveals the scenario of the attack.
“We started to work with several on this attack, just before 10 pm. We are on the brink since the attack against Charlie Hebdo and the computer attack of 19,000 French sites. We were able to go up the track fairly quickly, “ says William Raymond of Breaking3.0 .
The computer at the origin of the cyberattack is based in Algiers. Name and alias of the pirate: NAJAF, JoHn.Dz. ” Dz as the signature of all the Algerian hackers. The colors of the Algerian flag are found on each page of TV5 hijacked by the cybercaliphate, name they gave themselves, “explains William Raymond.
According to the Breaking3.0 site, the Algerian hacker was reportedly helped by a computer located in Iraq. It would belong to a named Khattab. ” The hacking of TV5 was done via a Java flaw. A fault on a particular computer: that of the social network administrator of the chain or a PC directly connected to the control room. “…
How did this virus enter the TV5 network? The maneuver is disconcerting of simplicity and rapidity. ” It is for a hacker to grab a user’s IP via Skype. One of our sources did it in front of us, on one of our computers to illustrate it. TV5 journalists like many other media use Skype. Including in their communications with certain jihadists. ” For Breaking3.0, ‘c ‘ is probably during one of these sessions – recent – that the IP address has been stolen, and with it, the identity of the channel network” .
April 9 Blue Coat
Later that day, Blue Coat reported that they had located malware containing references to the same aliases, which was “an adaptation of the Visual Basic Script worm KJ_W0rm”, which in turn was connected to a hacker with the online handle of Security.Najaf, “apparently located in the Najaf province of Iraq”, who was “a prolific poster on the dev-point[.]com forums”:
Blue Coat has no insider information on this intrusion, but we were able to find a piece of malware which, though not identical, matches many of the indicators given in the Breaking3Zero story. Among others, it contains references to the same aliases (JoHn.Dz and Najaf). The md5 hash of this sample is 2962c44ce678d6ca1246f5ead67d115a.
This sample appears to be an adaptation of the Visual Basic Script worm KJ_W0rm, a derivative of the old and widespread NJ_W0rm.
This malware is commonly known by AV tools under the name VBS/Jenxcus. Since this is script-based, the malware is very easy to modify, something which has spawned a lot of modifications.
Jenxcus often occurs in the company of another malware called Bladabindi or NJ_Rat. Unlike Jenxcus, Bladabindi is not a script, but a Windows executable written in .NET. It has an extensive set of features, and can for example take screenshots, steal various online credentials, and download and install more malware.
Bladabindi is possible to create and configure using a publicly available creation tool, making the production of new variants straightforward. This has made it a very popular tool to use in the underground, and it is now one of the dominant malware families, particularly in the Middle East region. Indeed, it has been so common that Microsoft decided to take aggressive action against it. This resulted in the somewhat controversial botnet takedown in June 2014. The legal papers filed with this takedown identify the authors of the Bladabindi backdoor and Jenxcus worm as Naser Al Mutairi (Kuwait), and Mohamed Benabdellah (Algeria). Mutairi reportedly used the online handle njq8, and is presumably the person referenced in the “Credits” section in “our” malware sample. This mention is however likely to be just a shout out to the original author of what essencially now is an open source malware.
If we compare the “Najaf” sample with a regular KJ_W0rm sample, we can see that there are clear similarities. Most differences revolve around how hardcoded parameters are placed in the code…
On the Internet, anyone can claim to be associated with any movement of their choosing. Not only that, they can use whatever tool they want, claim to be totally different people, and generally lie as much as they want to. Because of this attribution is hard, though not impossible. It requires solid data, experience, and often the involvement of law enforcement to do right. Because of this we’ll not make any assumptions about who was behind the intrusion in TV5. However, we can point out some indicators.
The 2962c44ce678d6ca1246f5ead67d115a sample is similar to the VBS script mentioned in the Breaking3Zero article. The script contains the same greetings, mentions the same JoHn.Dz and Najaf.
Security.Najaf seems to match the online handle of a developer apparently located in the Najaf province of Iraq. He is a prolific poster on the dev-point[.]com forums, a forum which has contained a lot of NJ-Rat/Worm-associated material. He is listed as recoder – presumably modifying programmer – in many other malicious scripts. One example is the file with md5 de8e6e14b7e548eda7d4ff33bb3705ad. In this file, the C&C server is defined to aziza12.no-ip.biz, a domain which also has been used as C&C by Bladabindi malware such as the sample with md5 a5ce6dcb062ceb91a6fce73e99b3514d. This is a DynDNS domain, meaning that there is no domain registration data to look at. However, if we examine the IP history of this domain, we see that it has mapped to a number of IP addresses over time, many of which are located in Iraq. One of these, 178.73.223.9, has also earlier this year pointed to the domain islamstate.no-ip[.]biz.
Blue Coat added a variety of caveats, reminding readers that “IP overlaps can occur for many reasons”, that aliases are inconclusive:
So, does this really mean anything? No, not necessarily. IP overlaps can happen for any number of reasons, and aliases on forums and inside malwares are just text strings. NJRat and its related malware are used by a lot of activists in the Middle East, so their use in this intrusion – if that indeed is confirmed – can not be used as basis for any conclusion.
Trend Micro, April 10 and 11
Trend Micro’s April 10 article warned readers of the new power of non-state activists and cybercriminals:
this demonstrates that it’s not just the big states with tremendous resources that can execute devastating attacks. Sophisticated techniques are being adopted by non-state activists and cybercriminals as well. We’ve known this for some time, but this shows how true (and damaging) that can be.
On April 11, Trend Micro published its own analysis of malware used at TV5 Monde, describing it as a variant of VBS_KJWORM.SMA, which they had previously catalogued in Arabic language forums:
A malware that is being tied to the recent cyber attack in France is detected by Trend Micro as a variant of the NJWORM/Kjw0rm remote access Trojan (RAT). This malware (with the MD5 hash of 2962c44ce678d6ca1246f5ead67d115a), which we detect as VBS_KJWORM.SMA, is backdoor that may have been around since 2014.
Our initial analysis showed that VBS_KJWORM.SMA was created by a hacking tool named Sec-wOrm 1.2 Fixed vBS Controller. This is a RAT generator that we detect as HKTL_KJWORM.
It should be noted that the Kjw0rm family is already known to us; in January we had written about this family when it emerged from the NJWORM source code leak. Kjw0rm was found in the Arabic-language section of dev-point.com.
Using data from the Trend Micro™ Smart Protection Network we found that VBS_KJWORM.SMA is observed in at least 12 countries in the past week, including South Africa and India. This is not surprising, since this malware is available in underground forums and can be used by anyone.
This particular malware can be used as a backdoor into the infected system. In addition, the C&C server reportedly used in the attack has been tied to another backdoor, BKDR_BLADABINDI.C. Our investigation leads us to believe the actors behind Kjw0rm and BLADABINDI are the same.
Further information from the Smart Protection Network suggests that other VBS malware variants are currently circulating in the wild. Four separate C&C servers (distinct from those used by NJWORM) were also found. These different samples, in turn, are connected to previous NJRAT/JENXCUS attacks. NJRAT has been tied to DUNIHI attacks in the Latin American region.
Note: The SECWORM malware is a RAT derived from KJw0rm with some modifications and improvements.
Attribution to Russia
Over the next two months, French police carried out an investigation of the TV5 Monde. L’Express stated that they saw a confidential report on the investigation, which was led by ANSSI. L’Express appears to have retained Trend Micro and Fire Eye as consultants for their story. They said that the report identified an otherwise undisclosed an internet address (“precious data”):
Before taking action, the pirates took their time. After penetrating TV5 Monde’s computer system at the beginning of the year, they succeeded in acquiring all the rights, sesame types, to visit every corner of the chain’s internal network, map it, and thus understand how it works . Above all, in its note, the agency details the indices (also called indicators of compromise) left by the assailants during their passage. It also mentions an Internet address from which malicious software was sent . Precious data…
L’Express reported that it gave this “confidential information” to Trend Micro, who associated it with banking malware used in Brazil:
L’Express submitted these confidential information to the computer security company Trend Micro. At the end of its investigation, the Japanese company concluded that the malicious program originated from a server located in Brazil. Its owner was based in São Paulo. Several codes are hosted there. “One of them is a banking malware, which has already been used in Spain and Brazil, and it was downloaded in France in March …”, notes Loïc Guézo, head of strategic development at Trend Micro. … [Previous Trend Micro discussion of Brazilian banking malware in May 28, 2013 here]
L’Express also gave information to Nicolas Ruff, another security expert, who told them the “clues left” and “mode of operation” were the same as other cases.
For Nicolas Ruff, another security expert, there is no doubt that the assailants have been operating sophisticated since at least 2010. “The clues left and the mode of operation, he points out, are the same as those found in other” other cases.”
According to L’Express, Trend Micro said that they clues indicated that the attack “could originate” from APT28 (Pawn Storm/Fancy Bear):
Trend Micro came to the same conclusion. “Thanks to the data provided by L’Express, we believe that the attack could originate from a group known as ‘Pawn Storm’.”
L’Express then recounted various hacking incidents associated with APT28, then observing two seeming smoking guns: lines of code in a Cyrillic keyboard and compilation in Moscow office hours:
These various examples, and their direct links with the interests of Moscow, pushed the cyber security company FireEye to deepen its investigations. For this American company, the pirates are linked to the Kremlin and often target opponents of the regime, journalists or military organizations in the United States and Europe. Two further elements support his conclusions: the lines of codes were typed on a Cyrillic keyboard and at times corresponding to office hours in St. Petersburg and Moscow. FireEye baptized the same group by another name: “APT28”.
Here, L’Express has incorrectly conflated FireEye’s analysis of APT28 in October 2014 with the TV5 Monde incident: the Cyrillic keyboard and Moscow hours had already been raised in October 2014 and do not occur in the TV5 Monde hack (as I understand it). This error was perpetuated in a subsequent article by France 24 :
However, investigators discovered that the computer codes used in the attack were typed out on a Cyrillic keyboard during office hours in Moscow and St. Petersburg, L’Express wrote this week.
L’Express then observed that APT28 had previously targeted media outlets with phishing emails, summarizing (Google translation) that French intelligence had concluded that APT28 was implicated and the CyberCaliphate was a false flag:
The accumulation of these elements creates doubt about the reality of the claim of the CyberCaliphate in the piracy of TV5 World. From judicial sources, the implication of APT28 (or Pawn Storm) seems to be confirmed and the jihadist track, it, moves away. “It could be a lure, as suggested by the experts of the Anssi,” says the director of the channel.
Based on this information from French intelligence, the French government had already taken an antagonistic policy towards Russia, described by L’Express as follows:
Only certainty: relations between France and Russia have deteriorated in recent months. Francois Hollande refused to attend the parade commemorating the victory over Nazism in Moscow on 9 May. And Paris aroused the anger of the Kremlin by suspending the delivery of Mistral ships to Russia against a background of Ukrainian crisis. The Vladivostok first projection and command vessel should have been delivered in November 2014, but still docked in the port of Saint-Nazaire.
Since then, the negotiations between the two countries have changed in nature and only concern the compensation which the French authorities would be prepared to grant. In Le Figaro, the Russian writer and former diplomat Vladimir Fyodorovsky regretted this affair – a reflection of a great danger of historical rupture between Russia and the West: “We are witnessing a sort of return to the cold war.” In the age of the Internet.
June 9 Buzzfeed
On June 9, the renowned technical journal Buzzfeed reported that US security firm FireEye said that the ISIS CyberCaliphate was merely a front for Russian hackers APT28.
Russian hackers posing as the ISIS “Cyber Caliphate” were likely behind the hack of France’s TV5Monde television channel, according to cybersecurity experts who have examined the attack…
But a Russian group known as AT28 may have used ISIS as a cover for hacking, the U.S.-based security firm FireEye told BuzzFeed News Tuesday, after observing similarities in the infrastructure used by the Russian group and the one involved in the TV5Monde attack.
Their conclusion was based on a stated commonality between the IP block for the CyberCaliphate website and prior APT28 infrastructure:
“There are a number of data points here in common,” said Jen Weedon, manager of threat intelligence at FireEye. “The ‘Cyber Caliphate website,’ where they posted the data on the TV5Monde hack, was hosted on an IP block which is the same IP block as other known APT28 infrastructure, and used the same server and registrar that APT28 used in the past.”
Whereas, in connection with their multi-faceted attribution, Blue Coat had warned that “IP overlaps can occur for many reasons”, FireEye issued no such caveat, leaping from the apparent IP overlap to attribution to APT28. (To my knowledge, FireEye never reported the actual overlapping IP addresses.)
June 10 BBC
On June 10, BBC wrote a short secondary article on the investigation. It was this article which Alperovitch later cited as authority for the link between APT28 and the TV5 Monde hack. It stated:
Jihadist propaganda was posted on the station’s website in April by individuals claiming to represent Islamic State. A police investigation is now focussing on a group of Russian hackers called APT28, according to French media… A judicial source told AFP that investigators were narrowing the search by probing the IP addresses of computers used in the attack.
June 10 Register
On June 10, the Register summarized the French articles, stating that French investigators now believed that the attack had been carried out by Russian hackers,
However, French investigators announced this week that they believe the TV5 Monde attack was carried out by Russia-based hackers. Sources close to the investigation and TV5 Monde’s president told France 24 that the finger of blame for the megahack pointed towards Russia, confirming a report by French magazine L’Express, which broke the story about new leads in the investigation.
It repeated the falsehood (in respect to the TV5 Monde incident) about Cyrillic keyboard and Moscow hours:
Computer malware and scripts that featured in the attack were typed out on a Cyrillic keyboard and compiled during office hours in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
It stated that attribution to Russian hackers was “supported by findings from security vendors FireEye and Trend Micro”:
FireEye has evidence to suggest that the attack on TV5Monde could have been perpetrated by APT28, a Russia-based APT group it suspects works for the Kremlin. In particular, the Cyber Caliphate website which published leaked information was hosted on the same IP block as other APT28 infrastructure, and used the same name server and registrar that FireEye has seen APT28 use in the past.
FireEye bizarrely associated their attribution with a then current New York Times story about the “troll factory” in St Petersburg:
“We suspect that this activity aligns with Russia’s institutionalized systematic “trolling” – devoting substantive resources to full-time staff who plant comments and content online that is often disruptive, and always favourable to President Putin,” FireEye concludes.
The Register then raised an obvious question not asked in the French articles, but which ought to have been front and center
But what possible motive would Putin crack cyber-squad have for hacking into a French TV network and spewing jihadist propaganda? France and Russia are at loggerheads over the Ukraine but both are equally opposed to the rise of ISIS.
FireEye, the lead promoter of the Russia theory, speculated that APT28 had vandalized TV5 Monde for no reason other than to “test” damage on a media outlet, with the “CyberCaliphate” being nothing more than a fabricated front to conceal their involvement (a wild theory later presumed to be a fact during attribution of Guccifer 2):
Greg Day, VP & CTO EMEA at FireEye, told El Reg that it might be that Russian hackers were testing what type of damage they might be able to inflict on a media outlet (beyond running a standard DDoS attack) against a real target. If this theory is right, then the Cyber Caliphate-theme was there purely to provide plausible deniability.
Richard Turner, FireEye president EMEA, added in a statement that the “APT28 group has been hacking into computer networks for the past seven years using highly advanced and aggressive methods.”
Register quoted L’Express that Trend Micro had characterized the attack as having the “same hallmarks” as APT28 attacks:
Trend Micro told L’Express that the TV5Monde attack has the same hallmarks as the so-called “Pawn Storm” hack against government, media and military agencies in the United States, Pakistan, and Europe. “Pawn Storm” featured spearphishing, watering hole attacks and malware-laced Word documents. Trend blames the whole run of attacks on hackers backed by the Russian government. Pawn Storm has previously targeted Chechen separatists and Islamic extremists in former Yugoslavia, making co-operation between it and islamic hactivists in turning over TV5Monde rather unlikely.
Trend Micro, June 11
The following day (June 11), Trend Micro published a response to L’Express in which it repudiated a firm attribution of the attack to APT28.
Trend Micro stated that they had been asked by L’Express to review indicators of compromise which had been shared with media organizations by ANSSI. Trend Micro’s opinion was that these indicators indicated “an infestation of Sednit malware” but stated that they could not “definitively link the stolen information or compromised accounts from the April attack to this Pawn Storm compromise”:
Yesterday evening French magazine L’Express published a report linking an attack against TV5 Monde very firmly to the Russian state. The attack, which knocked 11 of its global channels off air for a period of time and resulted in a compromised website and Facebook page, took place back in April.
At the time when the attack took place, a group calling itself CyberCaliphate immediately took responsibility for the hack and went on to publish details purportedly of serving French military personnel involved in the struggle against Islamic State or ISIS. The attribution at the time seems simple and immediate; Islamic Extremist motivated hacktivism.
L’Express approached Trend Micro with certain indicators of compromise which had been shared with 43 media organisations by the Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (ANSSI) in France, with a view to uncovering more about the attacker or the motivations behind the attack. These indicators very definitely evidence an infestation of Sednit (also known as Sofacy) malware, associated with the ongoing targeted attack campaigns by the Pawn Storm operators (also referred to as APT28). What they did not do was to definitively link the stolen information or compromised accounts from the April attack to this Pawn Storm compromise. Neither is it possible to state with certainty that the two are *not* related.
Trend Micro then raised three distinct possibilities, one of which was attribution of the “ISIS” takeover to APT28 – which they described as “extremely out of character” for APT28:
Attribution in online crime is complex, more so when there may be nation-state involvement. Trend Micro’s assessment of the current possibilities, with reference to the facts as they stand today leaves us with three possibilities.
1 – We could be looking at two entirely unrelated incidents, a Pawn Storm infestation and a separate hactivist compromise
2 – Perhaps the Pawn Storm group gave attack relevant data to a third party, directly or indirectly to islamic hactivists. While possible, this would seem highly unlikely as we have seen Pawn Storm actively targeting Chechen separatists and Islamic extremists in former Yugoslavia
3 – Finally, the Pawn Storm group carried out a highly visible website, Facebook and TV network compromise (which would be extremely out of character) and used it as a false flag operation to lay the blame at the door of islamic extremists.
Trend Micro rather uncertainly settled on their option 1: two “entirely unrelated incidents”:
While the false flag option is not entirely out of the question, it is at least somewhat out of character of previous operations of the Pawn Storm campaign. My spider senses right now are tingling on option one. TV5 Monde, as a media operation is a target entirely within the remit of the regular Pawn Storm operations and an infestation of Sednit malware there should perhaps not be a surprise at all. The fact that during the time of this Sednit compromise, they were also targeted by Islamic extremist hacktivists, given the contemporary news and political environment in France is perhaps also not surprising.
Attribution online is always complex, sometimes though things can be entirely as they seem.
Discussion
Re-reading the two stages of contemporary articles, the first analyses of malware, linking back to malware known in Arabic language forums, to IP addresses in Iraq and Algeria and to jihadi-sympathizing hackers, are much more specific than the subsequent analyses attributing the hack to APT28, which did not present a single technical detail (hash, IP address etc.) It is also frustrating and troubling that the proponents of APT28 attribution did not discuss and refute the seemingly plausible connections to jihadi sources. It is also troubling that so much emphasis in contemporary discussion of FireEye’s analysis incorrectly associated the Cyrillic characters previously described by FireEye in October 2014 with the TV5 Monde incident.
Second, the confidence of attribution to APT28 was dramatically aggrandized in subsequent reporting, fostered in part by inaccurate original reporting. Contrary to newspaper reports, Trend Micro did not attribute the seizure of TV5 facilities to APT28. Its assessment was indeterminate, weakly preferring that the seizure was separate from APT28 eavesdropping.
Third, Trend Micro was asked to comment on indicators of compromise by L’Express. One can only conclude from events that the indicators did not include the indicators of compromise considered by Breaking 3.0 and Blue Coat in the original attribution of the attack (or else Trend Micro would have discussed them). It seems implausible that the original indicators were invalid, given how specific they were. So why were these indicators not included in the list given to L’Express and/or Trend Micro?
As a research comment, I began by googling “TV5 Monde hack” and followed various links. I did searches in which I limited dates to contemporary dates. While I located all manner of stories and articles about the Russian hack, the stories about the original attribution to jihadi sources did not turn up in any of these searches. I eventually located the stories through specific searches in the Trend Micro blog, not in a generic Google search. Armed with malware name from Trend Micro, I could turn up contemporary articles. I’m surprised that they didn’t turn up in general searches.
Overall, the presumption that the CyberCaliphate was a false flag created by APT28 to conceal their vandalization of TV5 Monde seems very much unproven, with substantial evidence to the contrary. It seems ludicrous that attribution of the DNC hack should, in any way, be based on such piffle.
It gives the timelines, and while it ignores (or doesn’t explain) the attribution of the malware used between 2015-01-23 and 2015-03-17 (which is most fairly common tools and only has pointers to the Middle East) , it does give many other interesting details.
This also allowed to identify a suspicious DLL (ConnectBack.DLL is an arbitrary name) on the active malicious session ran by rundll32.exe and C&C IP. This malicious DLL can then be analyzed to understand in depth what the malware is doing but also identify code similarities with other malwares.
Unfortunately the picture does not show the IP address.
Also (this is about March 2015, perhaps 2015-03-17):
The attacker compromised another administrator machine (Codenamed: ANKOU) which contains the Remote Access Control (RAT) which was used for the sabotage. Prior to this, the attacker also dropped njRAT as a decoy on the system but didn’t run it — ANSSI isn’t sure why.
Upto this time all malware (RAT’s) are those than can be attributed to Islamic hackers with IP adresses in the Middle East.
But apparently this last DLL was found (or also found) and that one is the one that made ANSII conclude it was APT28.
Perhaps that DLL is a version on Xagent? Or was it a more common generic backdoor and the attribution was based on the IP adress used?
Both of these are not clear.
Apparently that information was only in the secret report that ANSII did give to (a.o.) L’Express, which in turn asked Trend Micro for a reaction.
L’Express approached Trend Micro with certain indicators of compromise which had been shared with 43 media organisations by the Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (ANSSI) in France, with a view to uncovering more about the attacker or the motivations behind the attack. These indicators very definitely evidence an infestation of Sednit (also known as Sofacy) malware, associated with the ongoing targeted attack campaigns by the Pawn Storm operators (also referred to as APT28).
What they did not do was to definitively link the stolen information or compromised accounts from the April attack to this Pawn Storm compromise. Neither is it possible to state with certainty that the two are *not* related.
So what we need to establish is exactly what these indicators where. And what was the IP address used for the C&C?
It seems those details were given to no less than 43 media organizations, so one would expect it to be reported somewhere…
794 Comments
I’m dying. After reading paragraph after paragraph of badly translated quotations (done by Google Translate), reaching about a dozen, I got to this:
L’Express then observed that APT28 had previously targeted media outlets with phishing emails, summarizing (Google translation) that French intelligence had concluded that APT28 was implicated and the CyberCaliphate was a false flag:
i don’t speak French so I can’t tell how much the bad translation impacts the meaning of these paragraphs, but I do think this is hilarious. There were about a dozen paragraphs which weren’t noted as having been translated, then suddenly, in-between paragraphs taken from the same source, a note about Google Translation is suddenly thrown in.
I find it difficult to get past that to look at what this post argues, partially on principle but also partially because I don’t know how phrases like, “De source judiciaire” get translated to, “From judicial sources” which then gets interpreted as referring to “French intelligence.” Maybe that’s right, but given how bad the (mostly unmarked) translations used in this post are, I’m somewhat skeptical.
Adding to my skepticism is how the first quote in the “Initial Attribution” section is a misquotation. I was able to get the exact same text as used in that quote block with Google Translate, but when I do, there are numerous sentences which I got that were not included. Obviously one doesn’t have to include all text from a source when quoting it, but when you cut out parts of a quotation, you have to indicate such to readers by using things like ellipses.
I find it incredibly difficult to pay attention to the substance of a post when it does things like use bad translations without informing readers or cuts (significant) portions of quotations out willy-nilly.
““From judicial sources” which then gets interpreted as referring to “French intelligence.” ”
I expect Steve M. had more French in school than I. But “source judicaire” can mean top source or very good source. And I do not think it unhelpful that Steve chose in his own comment “French Intelligence” over “ANSSI”.
Don’t know how much French you had, but I had 5 years of French at school. I’ve also done legal documents in French (as customer not writer). I can read French reasonably, but don’t speak it well. For the purposes of a blog post, I thought that the Google translate was adequate – this isn’t Moliere.
ANSSI translates to National Cybersecurity Agency. I’m not sure how that would compare to the NSA, but don’t believe that it matters. I think that “French intelligence” captures the right nuance.
My expectation, now confirmed, was based on my knowledge that you are Canadian and I am not.
I know Canadiens anglais (from Alberta and BC) who love to talk about how many years of French they were compelled to take in school. They rave about it. I think they wish they were forced to take even more!
Perhaps as a French I may help in this semantic questions..
“de source judiciaires” refers to a source close to the police & justice department investigations
“French intelligence” would refer to either the equivalent of CIA ,NSA or FBI
“ANSSI” is not really considered as part of the intelligence community; this agency is in charge of overhauling IT security and upgrding cybersecurity in France, first within the public authorities, but also within the private sector. Very different from NSA which is a spionage agency.
Thanks for this – analogizing to NSA led me astray on this. In US (and even Canada), this is not the sort of incident that would be investigated by a “Department of Justice”, so there seems to be institutional differences in how matters are approached.
Follow the Money, I don’t know how that phrase should be interpreted. What I do know is I wouldn’t interpret the English phrase “judicial sources” as “French intelligence.” If “French intelligence” is how the original French ought to be interpreted in this case, that’s fine. The interpretation given in this post just doesn’t support that. It’s a bad translation though so maybe a good one would.
I have no problem with people using Google Translate. However, if you’re using a translation, particularly a bad one, you should indicate it is a translation. If the translation you provide is inaccurate/imprecise in regard to a point you want to make (like perhaps in this case), you should note the discrepancy so people can understand why what they read does not match what you come up with. If all you provide is the English phrase “judicial sources,” nobody can see why you say that means “French intelligence.”
And whether you’re using a translation or not, if you present a continuous quotation with part of the text removed, you need to indicate that removal. That’s a basic principle of using quotations. If you don’t do that, what you provide is a misquotation, not a quotation.
I would be as skeptical as Brandon if it were not for so many feints and contradictory expert opinions. It really does seem that this whole enterprise of attribution of cyber-attacks is wide open for confirmation bias (for the committed) to outright chicanery (for the unsavory).
It is indeed a reason for more skepticism regarding the ability of cyber security “experts” to make attributions, their track records regarding attributions and more skepticism regarding media reports concerning those attributions (and, perhaps, more skepticism regarding the “good faith” of Google search results). But I think that is what Ron meant.
Oddly, you seem to mean the opposite. The worse the narrative/sausage looks being made, the more faith you believe we should place in the results.
The journey, Steve undertook and doggedly pursued, was not and is not simple. Given the amount of bafflegab by the less diligent anti-malware agents, coupled with the over-the-top news releases; tracking through this mess and organizing and quantifying facts is a very tough chore.
ATheok, my apologies. I agree that ferreting out the truth is often a saga.
Brandon, I am skeptical of surefooted, self-serving cyber attack attributions and thus not as skeptical as you of Steve’s analysis as you are. I hope you agree.
Last night I watched a few CSPAN discussions on cyber crime by 3 recent authors. All underscored the difficulties in attribution and response. One even pointed out the lack of accurate definition of terms for discussing and reporting, like what exactly one means by reporting an attack by Fancy Bear. Despite this the forum held by the Atlantic Council had one of their panelists, Senior Fellow for the Atlantic Council Laura Galante, assuming Russian attribution for all aspects of the DNC hacks, WL and G2. She was the Director of Global Intelligence for FireEye for 5 years until last March. I found this quote of hers last October before the election:
She’s just doing the logical analysis except through her bias, supporting my asserting any picture can be developed that one wants. The author at that forum, Alexander Klimberg (THE DARKENING WEB The War For Cyberspace [2017]), rightly pointed out that the major damage of cyber-attack is that of breaking down trust. Separately it came up that the US government, US media and US institutions in general are polling at all time lows in public trust. I am still holding open the possibility that Russian intelligence put on Russian clown makeup. The thing that still bothers me is why and how did someone choose to bring in Warren Flood.
After researching these 3 books and also Malcolm Nance’s The Plot to Hack America, all assume that the Russian were behind Cozy, Fancy, G2 and used WL as an information laundromat. There is little forensic analysis. They rely on the US IC’s “high confidence.”
Brandon, I am skeptical of surefooted, self-serving cyber attack attributions and thus not as skeptical as you of Steve’s analysis as you are. I hope you agree.
I rarely find skepticism for one narrative increases my faith in the validity of another. Besides, McIntyre has made numerous errors and false claims. He’s no more reliable a source than the people he criticizes. If anything, I’d say he’s less reliable.
Heck, he hasn’t even fixed the gross misquotation in this post I pointed out yesterday. If people want to talk about skepticism, I’d say using misquotations and choosing not to address/correct them when they’re pointed out is a good reason to be skeptical of a person’s commentary.
Steve: I don’t agree that there was a “gross misquotation” in the post. However, there was a missing ellipsis in the first two quotations which I’ve remedied.
Steve: I don’t agree that there was a “gross misquotation” in the post. However, there was a missing ellipsis in the first two quotations which I’ve remedied.
The record won’t show this since inline remarks aren’t timestamped (one of the reasons I’ve criticized using them for non-moderation purposes), but McIntyre only posted this out after I wrote a post to point out he had secretly edited his post to fix an error I pointed out. What happened is this:
1) The post went live with a misquotation.
2) I pointed out the misquotation.
3) The post was secretly changed to (attempt to) fix the error I pointed out.
4) I pointed out this change had been secretly made.
5) McIntyre edited one of my comments to add an inline remark which disclosed the change.
Of course, the public record doesn’t show this given the lack of traceability in McIntyre’s changes. The “fixed” version also isn’t correct. There were three problems with the quotation as originally presented. Only one was fixed.
U.S. Intelligence services admittedly relied on the analysis of Crowdstrike the Atlantic Council proxy who relied on FireEye the Atlantic Council proxy.
All roads are leading back to the Atlantic Council.
If some kids had his Facebook hacked and his messenger conversations with a one night stand sent to his girlfriend an Atlantic Council proxy like CrowdStrke would attribute the hack to Russian intelligence.
Okay had a chance to go back and look at your posts. You are pathetic. You make blanket appeals to authority and no one here gives you the time of day because of how pathetic your argument is. You think that your vapid posts that no one really gives a damn about amount you to winning the argument because you have a complex.
‘Its a slam dunk Mr. President’
CIA director George Tenant to President Bush on Iraqi WMD. Our intelligence agencies have been junk for a long time.
Steve McIntyre’s observation five months ago that Steele’s Trump-dossier, laundered through “trusted” international intelligence sources, prompted surveillance on the Trump campaign, must count as a Sherlock Holmesian display of deduction. Well…if the FBI will finally answer in the affirmative congressman Jim Jordan’s standing query. Until they answer Jordan says he will assume it is so.
A topic that interests me greatly and which I’ve been meaning to write about: the “fingerprints” of Steele Dossier memoranda can be seen in news stories as early as September 2016 and even late August 2016 then attributed to leaks from the intel community. I’m also convinced that the super-secret intel relied upon by CIA Director Brennan to set Obama administration hair on fire in early August 2016 (as described in June 23 WaPo story) was nothing more than Steele Dossier memoranda. I think that Trump would be tactically wise to declassify and publish everything, thus proving what a cock-up it was. [SM Jul 23, 2017]
Except, a quibble about Sherlock Holmesian influence; mostly because Holmes is a Conan Doyle literary invention.
Consider Steve’s work akin to U.S. Naval Intelligence work prior to the Midway battle; e.g. Lt. Commander Jasper Homes’s “AF” deduction and assessment where he tested the hypothesis with a false message that Midway needed immediate water desalination unit replacement and repair.
Don Monfort: not one of those intelligences agancies, most of which didn’t have a dog in this fight anyway, got to see any evidence of a russian breach of DNC servers. The DNC actually refused to let the FBI have access and there was never question of any other agency seeing the so-called evidence. The whole nonsense, and it is nonsense because we know how Wikileaks got the emails (just ask Craig Murray), relies on the “forensic” examination conducted only by CrowdStrike in the space of about two hours.
“… The NSA, FBI et al. discovered what they determined to be Russian hacking of the DNC back in Summer of 2015. I am guessing they didn’t just pick Russia out of a hat. They continued to monitor the activity and repeatedly warned the DNC up until the time the DNC finally took action and the story became public…”
Even a very reluctant POTUS Trump came around to accept that the Russians likely hacked the DNC. Admiral Rodgers showed him the evidence. Try to use your head.
Good advice. Is Alperovitch a Ukrainian agent? If he is, investors can kiss away their $265 million. It will all come out. Remember, over 90% of the exfiltration occurred with CrowdStrike watching. What a coincidence. I have a feeling that there are Ukrainian fingerprints all over this DNC “hacking”.
Alperovitch is connected to Atlantic Council of anti-Russian vehemence, as are the notorious Chalupa sisters. There are other indicators that this organization is a Ukrainian lobby. The Ukraine hated candidate trump, naturally. They have a part in this murky business.
My theory: Alperovitch set up the DNC for a Ukrainian operation. Thus 90% of the exfiltration after CrowdStrike arrived. The Ukraine is an innocent lamb? Rubbish. The DNC an innocent victim? I doubt that as well. Use your nose. Or don’t. We shall learn the truth later this year.
Yes, you vociferate against Russians and Putin and against anyone who does not share your views, calling them names. As above.
That is why you claim CrowdStrike and Alperovitch are reliable and honest because to admit otherwise exposes your prejudice. And the Ukraine is the innocent victim and not the malefactor against Trump.Your world collapses when the truth outs.
You just keep making crap up and ignoring the facts. Ukraine did not invade Russia. I never claimed that Crowdstrike and Alperovitch are reliable and honest. Admiral Rodgers is reliable and honest. That is why he is Trump’s Director of NSA. And your “feeling” that Ukrainian fingerprints are all over the DNC hack is a very foolish feeling. If the Ukrainians are against Trump why would they expose the DNC emails?
Try to come up with a coherent and logical story. That is all the time I have for your foolishness. Just be very happy and grateful that Trump won. You don’t need to make up a lot of dumb crap to defend him. (Like pretending that the Stalinist KGB dictator Putinski is the good guy.) The big orange fella will get along fine without your blundering blubbering. MAGA!
You stupidly keep pretending that I have relied on Crowdstrike/Alpobitch’s credibility. One of my previous comments:
“Ron, I don’t care what Alpobitch said. The NSA-FBI warned the DNC back in Sept 2015, that they were being attacked by Russian hackers. The NSA-FBI warned them more times subsequently that they were still being attacked, up to the time the DNC hack became public. Crowdstrike had nothing to do with any of that. The NSA-FBI was monitoring the hacking in real time and they knew where the hacking was coming from. Have you read the Economist article that I have left the link to a couple of times describing the signal intelligence, cryptanalysis capabilities etc. etc. of the NSA and CYBERCOM? Add to that the snooping of the black bag boys. What you people are discussing here is the info handed out by CrowdStrike and whatever tidbits the government has revealed. What use is that? Trump accepts that it was probably Russia. He has access to all the information. What is going on here is called speculation.”
And so monfort shuts up and investors watch in dismay as their $265 million goes down the tubes. CrowdStrike, Alperovitch, Henry Shawn will be seen as close confederates of the criminal Comey FBI, probably to be indicted themselves.
The fact that “fancy bear” has a recognizable thumbprint means that anyone can copy it and implicate “fancy” or any other “bear” they want. It’s the easiest thing in the world to drop a few cyrillic characters in your hacks for instance or mention “felix derzhinsky” – heck the CIA admits to doing this. Once a hack is unleashed it can be copied, reused and modified by anybody with the hacking skills; and that’s a lot of people around the world in and out of government.
“In the next post in this story, I’ll follow the story of the C2 malware indicator (176.31.112[.]10]) discovered by root9B in their unwitting investigation of Nigerian bank scams.”
What happened with this -same IP address- lead?
Steve: that will be next episode. As I was working on that episode, I noticed the hard-to-find stories on TV5 Monde indicators towards Arabic language hackers that had never been adequately covered..
Thomas Rid in an influential article on DNC hack in July 2016 used CyberCaliphate in TV5 Monde incident as type case for APT28 using false flag to divert attention – a supposed precedent for Guccifer 2.
yet a deception operation—a GRU false flag, in technical jargon—is still highly likely. Intelligence operatives and cybersecurity professionals long knew that such false flags were becoming more common. One noteworthy example was the sabotage of France’s TV5 Monde station on 9/10 April 2015, initially claimed by the mysterious “CyberCaliphate,” a group allegedly linked to ISIS. Then, in June, the French authorities suspected the same infamous APT 28 group behind the TV5 Monde breach, in preparation since January of that year. But the DNC deception is the most detailed and most significant case study so far.
But the attribution of CyberCaliphate incident to APT28 is very flawed and ignores original attribution, complete with hashes and IP addresses, to jihadis in Iraq and Algeria.
In a Brandonesque assessment of the attribution statement, when “compiled during office hours” features prominently, I’m surprised people haven’t actually died!
Was it dastardly planning or just luck that cyber trails lead back to Iraq, which just happens to be in the same time zone as Moscow/St Petersburg? If the code had been compiled out of office hours, would that have precluded Russian involvement? Clearly what the need Russians need to do is reset the times of all their computers so office hours are now during the night and that’ll throw a big spanner in the attribution works! If they’re really really smart, they could even use a different time zone!
It gives the timelines, and while it ignores (or doesn’t explain) the attribution of the malware used between 2015-01-23 and 2015-03-17 (which is most fairly common tools and only has pointers to the Middle East) , it does give many other interesting details.
This also allowed to identify a suspicious DLL (ConnectBack.DLL is an arbitrary name) on the active malicious session ran by rundll32.exe and C&C IP. This malicious DLL can then be analyzed to understand in depth what the malware is doing but also identify code similarities with other malwares.
Unfortunately the picture does not show the IP address.
Also (this is about March 2015, perhaps 2015-03-17):
The attacker compromised another administrator machine (Codenamed: ANKOU) which contains the Remote Access Control (RAT) which was used for the sabotage. Prior to this, the attacker also dropped njRAT as a decoy on the system but didn’t run it — ANSSI isn’t sure why.
Upto this time all malware (RAT’s) are those than can be attributed to Islamic hackers with IP adresses in the Middle East.
But apparently this last DLL was found (or also found) and that one is the one that made ANSII conclude it was APT28.
Perhaps that DLL is a version on Xagent? Or was it a more common generic backdoor and the attribution was based on the IP adress used?
Both of these are not clear.
Apparently that information was only in the secret report that ANSII did give to (a.o.) L’Express, which in turn asked Trend Micro for a reaction.
L’Express approached Trend Micro with certain indicators of compromise which had been shared with 43 media organisations by the Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (ANSSI) in France, with a view to uncovering more about the attacker or the motivations behind the attack. These indicators very definitely evidence an infestation of Sednit (also known as Sofacy) malware, associated with the ongoing targeted attack campaigns by the Pawn Storm operators (also referred to as APT28).
What they did not do was to definitively link the stolen information or compromised accounts from the April attack to this Pawn Storm compromise. Neither is it possible to state with certainty that the two are *not* related.
So what we need to establish is exactly what these indicators where. And what was the IP address used for the C&C?
It seems those details were given to no less than 43 media organizations, so one would expect it to be reported somewhere…
Greg Day, CTO of FireEye EMEA, told SCMagazineUK.com today that attribution is difficult, and never an absolute certainly, but said that in this case the firm was able to tie the attack to APT 28 by three key factors; the IP address range (used before by APT28) and the server and domain registrar, which were also used by the group in the past.
“All of those findings indicate that this is tied to APT28,” said Day.
U.S. cybersecurity company FireEye, which has been assisting French authorities in some cases, said on Wednesday that it believed the attack came from a Russian group it suspects works with the Russian executive branch. Relations between Paris and Moscow have suffered over the crisis in Ukraine, leading France to halt delivery of two helicopter carriers built for Russia.
Information about the TV5 attack was published on a website branded as part of the “Cyber Caliphate,” a reference to the Islamic State.
But the site was hosted on the same block of Internet Protocol addresses and used the same domain name server as the group called APT28 by FireEye and Pawn Storm by Trend Micro, another large security company.
So the indicators are more than just the IP of the C&C server (at this time I’m just assuming that the C2 IP is indeed part of the indicators in this case), it is (also) the IP address of the Cyber Caliphate site (+ the domain name server for that IP address).
French authorities distributed a sample of malicious software from machines at the TV network that both FireEye and Trend Micro said originated with the Russian hacking group.
OK so according to this source they did find software which is also used by APT28. Which then can only have been that DLL, as all other malware (the RAT’s) were variants of well known common tools, adapted by Islamic hackers.
Trend Micro Vice President Rik Ferguson said it was possible that both the Russians and true Islamic State sympathizers had hacked the network, but the judicial source and FireEye discounted the possibility, citing other evidence.Code used in the attack had been typed on a Cyrillic keyboard at times of day corresponding to working hours in St Petersburg or Moscow, FireEye said.
And there it is again: the allegation that code used in the attack actually contained Cyrillic script… That seems odd. It will not have been in the customized ‘Islamic’ RAT software, so apparently that was contained in that DLL. OR this is a mistake by the reporter and is actually referring to APT28 software in general, as found in earlier attacks.
A DDL is a compiled binary executable, comments in the original code can’t be detected from that. So the only options are (debugging) texts still left in the DLL.
An odd oversight, but it does happen. Some variants of APT28 software contain strings with the PDB (program debug) paths, these are mostly in English but at least one contained ‘/Новая папк/’ which translates to ‘/New Folder/’. Even rarer is to find binaries with other strings (let alone with Russian language texts).
What is odd is that the same “mistakes” keep popping up. Same IP address block. Same DNS server. Code containing cyrillic.
These are all trivial things to fix if a state actor didn’t want to leave fingerprints they know are being used to identify them. What it suggests to me is that these IP blocks and DNS servers are essentially open for use by anyone with the know how and the piece of software with the cyrillic script is available for anyone to hook into their hacking software.
Let’s assume this “APT28” group did it and Putin has direct links as has been claimed. The TV5 attack cost him political capital and delayed his hardware for what has been claimed to be a stunt. Um okay, maybe he thought it would be good for a laugh and mistakes happened. One might imagine that metaphorical or actual heads would roll as a result though. Then for the same mistakes to happen again?
Diagnosis of both the German Bundestag and DNC hacks similarly depend on similar supposed “mistakes”. An issue that troubles me (I’m working on a writeup) concerns the X-Tunnel software used in both Bundestag and DNC hacks. The Bundestag hack was linked to APT28 through an IP address associated with APT28 which was hard-coded in the text and recoverable – a “mistake”. Curiously, the X-Tunnel software was not part of previously known APT28 repertoire and uncommon in subsequent. The software is also very large and very noisy – uncharacteristic of APT28 techniques as described in surveys. More on this – it’s very much at the edge of my technical knowhow. Attribution of the Bundestag hack to Russia caused deterioration in their relations.
Even more curiously and perhaps strangest of all, this blown software re-appeared in the DNC hack almost verbatim.
As we’ve discussed, the diagnosis of Guccifer 2 commences with “Russian” metadata that did not arise organically through the copying/uploading of documents, but required intentional insertion of the contents of a “clean” Word document into a template which had been whiskered, then saving and making public the document with “Russian” whiskers.
For a supposedly covert operation ordered by Putin himself, it’s ludicrous – a point that Jeffrey Carr has made.
In all three cases, the main result was deterioration of relations between target country and Russia. Almost makes one wonder whether these blown softwares might have been used by someone with that objective in mind.
If one examines this from the “who benefits” viewpoint, one finds no benefit accruing to any party. Indeed, this bears aspects of a teenage prank. I see no benefit to Russia even if there had been no repercussions.
It is conceivable that this was a CIA operation designed to injure Russia. If so, it succeeded. Or a Ukrainian. Or some other malafactor with a grudge against Russia. Russia is one which got injured in this affair..
Alperovitch is a twitter follower of several Ukrainian hacking groups, but not (say) Wikileaks. His family came from “Russia”, but his name appears to be (from my inexperienced and quick look) from Ukraine/Belarus part of eastern Europe (based on Ellis Island landings in early 20th century.)
it’s hard to be sure when we’re trying to understand a very technical point through the prism of hurried newspaper reports. This article appears to be after the Trend Micro article. From the newspaper article, it sounds like they’re saying that APT28 continued to use software containing the Russian text artifact. Entirely possible. Also possible that misreported.
What is entirely unclear is why they attributed the CyberCaliphate incident with the APT28 malware rather than the Arabic language malware which had been identified in original reports? If both malwares were present, the incident is far more consistent with CyberCaliphate precedents than APT28 precedents.
I’m not saying that the FireEye diagnosis is “wrong”, only that there is a very plausible alternative and that the attributions failed to discuss this alternative.
While it’s conceivable that APT28 would leave the same or similar fingerprints, I think it’s inconceivable this group could possibly still be working for the Russian state, or indeed anywhere where the Russian state would have easy access to them.
Even rarer is to find binaries with other strings (let alone with Russian language texts).
That is usually true for malware. But some do contain strings.
What is indeed odd is that updated (recompiled) versions of a know malware binary are continued to be used with the same strings. That would be fine for small and common strings, but what about those that are very easy recognizable… Wouldn’t that alarm every virus scanner?
An example for this is the X-Tunnel which was found in the German Bundestag attack as well as at the DNC.
Apart from “176.31.112.10” some strings are “is you live?” (…) and something with “Xtunnel” or “XAPS” in it (respectively the name of the tool and the latter the name of the project; the last one only seen when they forget to exclude the debug stuff)… There are other strings but most are rather common.
Note that X-Tunnel is so ‘big’ because it uses Open-SSL which is included inside the executable, instead of depending on an external DLL.
Also they use code obfuscation since July 2015 at the latest (see ESET Part 2 on Sednit). That also makes the binary a bit bigger. This is only done to the X-Tunnel code, not the included libraries (such as Open-SSL) and (oddly enough) also not to the strings.
In the Bundestag attack it (X-Tunnel) was the only binary which can be linked to APT28 and also the only non open source one (see Netzpolitik article).
At DNC, COZY BEAR intrusion has been identified going back to summer of 2015, while FANCY BEAR separately breached the network in April 2016. We have identified no collaboration between the two actors, or even an awareness of one by the other.
CS does not list 176.31.112.10 among the IP addresses in that report (or at least the current version of it).
It lists several others, and I see no overlap with the C&C lists for these tools by ESET.
CrowdStrike also found the other group of hackers, Fancy Bear, was sending command and control instructions from a server with an Internet Protocol (IP) address of 176.31.112.10. This was the same IP address that was linked to command and control of an attack against the German parliament in 2015.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence linking GRU to the DNC hack is the equivalent of identical fingerprints found in two burglarized buildings: a reused command-and-control address—176.31.112[.]10—that was hard coded in a piece of malware found both in the German parliament as well as on the DNC’s servers.
If true that would be quite odd, because that IP address 176.31.112.10 was reported in May 2015 and has been BLOCKED since!
For this see comment section by the hosting provider on the article by Netzpolitik linked above.
Crookservers sagt:
20. Juni 2015 um 02:25 Uhr
We had received 1st abuse report about the IP 176.31.112.10 on 20th May 2015. IP 176.31.112.10 had been reported to be a Command & Control for APT-28.
We immediately suspended the service on 20th May 2015. We had also requested our client information about the criminal activity and we never received a response. We’re ready to provide any information we have to law inforcement agencies.
So obviously it can’t be used for C&C anymore after that date!
Perhaps some reporters misunderstood CS? And that IP address was just hard-coded in the executable for X-Tunnel, but no longer used?
Even so why would APT28, who only arrive at the DNC in April 2016, still have that IP address in it’s X-Tunnel binary, when it couldn’t be used anymore for a year?
Just to ease detection? /sarc
They go as far as using code obfuscation, which is only useful in case they often recompile & redo that. So they do that yet leave this by now very well known string “176.31.112.10” in their executable?
The string “176.31.112.10” is very troubling from an analysis perspective for precisely the reasons that you state. Thomas Rid was first to report in twitter on July 8 saying that he located the string in hashes reported by Crowdstrike. I presume that Rid was given a copy of the malware to test? Or can it be located in public library from hash?
I think we can exclude sloppiness. This is what they know. This is what they these people do, every day.
If this X-Tunnel binary is really from the group associated with APT28, then they would not redeploy an outdated version ‘by accident’, surely?
Of course one could assume that APT28/Fancy Bear/Sednit (etc) doesn’t care.
That can work assuming they have a way that X-Tunnel knows where to get a good IP address for its C&C when the hard-coded one isn’t responding. That would still be very odd, because it is very easy for them to change the IP address to one that works and then simply recompile. In April 2016 it was almost a year ago that the old C2 IP stopped working in May 2015; surely even when they are lazy they will have recompiled at least once in the meantime ?!
So I see three options (with a few variants 🙂 ):
1. Re-use of an X-Tunnel binary by another group (not APT28)
but that only works when that group knows how to use the binary by changing the C&C IP, say by overwriting in memory or by using startup parameters. Otherwise it is misdirection and we have option 2b below.
2. Misdirection (by either APT28 or another group)
2a. Misdirection by APT28 – unlikely but say they really want to be found, so they reuse an outdated binary in order to … ?
2b. Misdirection by another group (not APT28), like say a state or non-state entity who likes to make people mad at Russia or to drive a wedge between them and the US.
3. CrowdStrike lied (with two sub-options)
3a. CS lied about the time of infection; this binary is really from APT28, but it was present at the DNC since May or June 2015, not since April 2016 as they (CS) claimed
3b. CS lied. There was no hack by APT28 at all, instead they (CS) deployed this binary to make it look like it was.
IMHO 2a is very unlikely, what would be their motive?
Options 1 and 2b mean that there was a malware binary, but it wasn’t APT28 and hence unlikely to be ‘The Russians’ (as in Russian government).
Option 3b also means that it wasn’t ‘The Russians’.
Option 3a still means that CS has some explaining to do, because they were quite adamant that APT28 did not enter the DNC before April 2016. Also do we have any evidence for a leak or hack before April 2016? I guess it is possible, but at this moment I’m not buying it.
Another oddity is that X-Tunnel does not seem to be part of the usual APT28 repertoire, which (according to my novice understanding) used X-Agent/Chopstick for exfiltration. Also X-Tunnel appears to be re-written from Chinese malware.
I think it’s worth pointing out that x-tunnel appears to do many things. While the IP address might be important for some functions, it seems likely others don’t require it.
It still looks to me like it’s simply being repurposed by talented amateurs who simply do not care about hardcoded IP addresses or cyrillic characters, only that it carries out the functions they require.
3. CrowdStrike lied (with two sub-options)
3a. CS lied about the time of infection; this binary is really from APT28, but it was present at the DNC since May or June 2015, not since April 2016 as they (CS) claimed
3b. CS lied. There was no hack by APT28 at all, instead they (CS) deployed this binary to make it look like it was.
IMHO 2a is very unlikely, what would be their motive?
If the Clinton campaign was aware of the Fusion GPS research that claimed Trump was compromised by Putin before June 10 there was a huge motive by the June 12 Wikileaks announcement to set up an active operation to blame the leaks on Russia/Trump rather than a pro-Bernie DNC leaker. There is also the potential that the Trump-Russia collusion intelligence was manufactured by Clinton request after June 10.
I agree this is unlikely by the sheer degree of conspiracy required by Clinton-DNC-CS. But if Russia truly was present with Cozy Bear conducting a standard computer network exploitation (CNE) without intent on leaking all CS had to do was add Fancy Bear to create a plausible explanation for the crazy Guccifer 2.0 leaker. The fact that CS broadcasts that FB only ex-filtrated the Trump opposition research document and G2 displays it as “Doc1” the next day on his debut conveniently connects G2 to the hack. G2 shows unique knowledge that the WL announcement was regarding the DNC files, not the Clinton server as falsely reported by the media. But G2 shows no possession of DNC documents beyond Doc1 despite inaccurately waving many labeled such. Perhaps CS found a second network incursion but is was not FB but an insider, a leaker.
If the Trump dossier is true that a presidential candidate colluded with a national adversarial state to run an active operation on his presumed opponent it’s the biggest scandal of US history. If the dossier is false and was part of an active operation by a presidential candidate to frame an opponent through a cyber avatar personality that would be an even bigger scandal due to the enhanced degree of conspiracy. If the later were the case it would defame America thus pulling the US IC in plausibly as conspirators after the fact to suppress that possibility. But there is precedent for that. The Nixon WH was cleared by the FBI investigation into Watergate burglary. Then a few reporters cracked the case but with the help of an anonymous insider, the deputy director of the FBI. His identity was kept secret until his death decades later, which obscured the fact that the FBI investigation had to be corrupt. (But not for love of Nixon.)
Adding to the circumstantial evidence is Assange’s $20,000 reward for Seth Rich murder solution posted 3 weeks after the DNC doc release and the presence of Imran Awan and his team having access to the DNC network during 2016.
In Dec 2014, PWC observed:
…
Seems an interesting provenance for code used by major Russian hacking group.
It’s important to note the code in question is just code used for the front-end of an effort, a web page. That code’s purpose is to get people to click on a malicious link. The link would direct them to a fake login page for Yahoo. If the person put in their account information, the hacker would be able to steal it.
if you want to create a simple phishing page to bait people into clicking on links to fake pages to steal their password, there is little reason to write your own code. Tons of people have made phishing web pages already, and the code used is quite simple. Why not copy someone else’s work when creating your own front-end web page? It’s not like you’re going to come up with something better than what everyone else has already come up with.
ANSSI rightly focuses on the importance of the logs collection but also on memory forensics part which is very important in such scenarios to keep a frozen state of the infected or machines of interested but easily allows to retrieve information such as the quick-wins described above.
On March 31, 2015, about 10 days before the TV5 Monde attack, Cheryl Mills talked to Platte River Networks about the destruction of backup of the Clinton server (including server logs). Mills and Clinton have argued that they produced all the non-personal emails, but were never pressed on server logs. Comey whitewashed the situation, saying that there was no evidence that the Clinton server had been hacked. “No evidence” because all the server logs had been destroyed. Comey ignored the obstruction of justice.
While I am inclined to tweak you on your misrepresentation of what ANSSI actually said, I find this much more troubling:
Comey whitewashed the situation, saying that there was no evidence that the Clinton server had been hacked. “No evidence” because all the server logs had been destroyed. Comey ignored the obstruction of justice.
The FBI reported examining the server logs you claim had all been destroyed. Are you saying the FBI not only lied but fabricated specific details about the server logs? That seems a bit far-fetched.
We know that Platte River destroyed backups subsequent to their discussion with Cheryl Mills. Can you give me a link to the FBI statements that you cited. There are numerous pieces of hardware involved. If the server logs were not destroyed, I’ll correct any mistake.
We know that Platte River destroyed backups subsequent to their discussion with Cheryl Mills. Can you give me a link to the FBI statements that you cited. There are numerous pieces of hardware involved. If the server logs were not destroyed, I’ll correct any mistake.
“We” do not know anything of the sort. I’m not even sure what you’re talking about. I have seen no evidence Platte River Networks (PRN) deleted any “backup of the Clinton server.” Some time in March, 2015 a PRN employee deleted an e-mail account and data files which had been used to export e-mails so as to give them to Clinton’s staff (to prepare their response to the request for Clinton’s e-mails). Neither of those was a backup of a server.
If what you say is true, I have seen nothing to indicate it. I certainly haven’t seen anything which would justify saying I know it is true. Quite frankly, I can’t imagine it would be true.
As for the FBI having server logs for the Clinton server, it was widely reported back in March, 2016 that the guy who set up Clinton’s server had provided the logs to the FBI. As one example, here is an article by The New York Times. Server logs were then in the official July, 2016 FBI report on the investigation into Clinton’s e-mail server. Included in this report is a discussion of how a review of IIS logs were used to figure out an e-mail account on Clinton’s server had been broken into. That would have been impossible if the server logs had all been destroyed like you claim.
I have no idea where you’re getting your ideas from, but the only person who “knows” any of this seems to be you.
Brandon, I think that you’d benefit from avoiding some of the extraneous editorializing.
The New York Times article states that, according to anonymous sources, Pagliano “provided agents the security logs”. However, at the time, Pagliano had been interviewed by FBI once (Dec 22, 2015) and the FBI notes to that meeting (which I carefully reviewed) do not state anywhere that Pagliano had turned over server logs to them. My take is that the New York Times article was inaccurate on this point.
Your second argument is:
Included in this report is a discussion of how a review of IIS logs were used to figure out an e-mail account on Clinton’s server had been broken into. That would have been impossible if the server logs had all been destroyed like you claim.
I’ve shown an excerpt from page 29 of the FBI report, which, as I read it, describes a review of Internet Information Services (IIS) weblogs, not server logs from the Clinton server. If I’ve misunderstood this, please clarify.
A point that I hadn’t noticed and doesn’t seem to have been widely discussed: this paragraph of the FBI report states that an email account on the Clinton server was “compromise[d]” on (at least) one occasion.
The FBI report directly states that they were not able to recover all of the server equipment and they lacked complete server logs for the relevant period.
So, after review, I do not agree that either of your points invalidate my conclusion that there is evidence of obstruction of justice, though both points were relevant.
As a follow-up to my previous comment, I should point out it’s not just the idea expressed in this sentence:
On March 31, 2015, about 10 days before the TV5 Monde attack, Cheryl Mills talked to Platte River Networks about the destruction of backup of the Clinton server (including server logs).
Which I am confused by, The date confuses me as well. I can’t find any evidence Cheryl Mills talked to PRN on March 31. As far as I know, the last contact had been March 25. The PRN employee who deleted Clinton’s e-mails testified he had deleted those e-mails by March 31. That would make the claimed sequence of events: Cheryl Mills talked to PRN on the 25th, a PRN employee deleted Clinton’s e-mails, Mills then talked to PRN again after which PRN then deleted a backup of the Clinton server (including server logs). That seems implausible.
Also, the phrase “were then in the official July, 2016 FBI report” in my last comment is obviously missing the word “used.”
Steve: I mistakenly said March 31, when I should have said March 25. The events are descibed in CA post here. No need to hypothesize elaborate alternative chronology.
That blog post seems to mostly refer to the deletion of e-mails from server backups, not the deletion of entire backups. It does say:
The wiping and bleaching of the Clinton server and backups can be conclusively dated to late March 2015.
Which may imply a conflation of deleting e-mails from backups (because those e-mails weren’t supposed to have been stored in the first place) and deleting backups as a whole. That’s the only thing I saw in the post which might conflate the two concepts though. I definitely didn’t see anything said about server logs being missing. It seems your current understanding may differ materially from your previous one.
On the upside, that post’s references to and quotes from 302s made me review the documents released by the FBI on this matter. When I did, I found out there was in fact a conference call on the 31st in addition to the one on the 25th.
in making my comment, I was relying on memory and there is a risk of conflating email backups (which I documented closely in my post) and server logs (which I didn’t). Nonetheless, there are gaps in the server logs. I’m satisfied that my substantive point is right, though the precise timing would need to be crosschecked as I did with email backups.
in making my comment, I was relying on memory and there is a risk of conflating email backups (which I documented closely in my post) and server logs (which I didn’t). Nonetheless, there are gaps in the server logs. I’m satisfied that my substantive point is right, though the precise timing would need to be crosschecked as I did with email backups.
You explicitly stated all server logs had been destroyed so claimed there was “no evidence” Clinton’s server was hacked were something (left rhetorically undisclosed). You then implied this was a form of obstruction of justice, which James Comey whitewashed. However, the evidence does nothing to indicate any server logs were destroyed. I cannot imagine how you believe your “substantive point is right” given that. What, exactly, was your “substantive point” that remains true even if server logs were never destroyed?
The New York Times article states that, according to anonymous sources, Pagliano “provided agents the security logs”. However, at the time, Pagliano had been interviewed by FBI once (Dec 22, 2015) and the FBI notes to that meeting (which I carefully reviewed) do not state anywhere that Pagliano had turned over server logs to them. My take is that the New York Times article was inaccurate on this point.
As I stated, this story was widely reported at the time. Your claim would require not only the New York Times being wrong, but also the Washington Post, CNN and dozens of other organizations which made the same reporting. Your sole basis for claiming so many groups got this wrong seems to be the lack of FBI notes of an interview in which Pagliano turned over these logs.
That is non-dispositive, however, as turning over the logs would not require an interview. I’ll note there is no record in the interview you cite of Pagaliano being given immunity. Clearly, the FBI notes don’t provide a full picture of what all happened during the investigation (hardly surprising as Pagliano would have talked to people other than FBI agents). There is no reason to think the FBI 302s would have shown a record of something like Pagliano having his lawyer go to the FBI and turn over files. That’s not what 302s are for.
I’ve shown an excerpt from page 29 of the FBI report, which, as I read it, describes a review of Internet Information Services (IIS) weblogs, not server logs from the Clinton server. If I’ve misunderstood this, please clarify.
As a note for clarity, I assume you mean “web logs” rather than “weblogs” as a weblog is a blog. As for IIS logs, I don’t understand what distinction you are trying to draw here. There is no single, special thing called a “server log.” Server logs are whatever logs a server creates. They can be created by the operating system, services installed on the server (such as IIS) or even created by something like a homebrew script an admin wrote.
For a Microsoft Exchange server like this, IIS logs are what one would want to examine to look for signs of an intrusion. How confident one could be in saying no attack succeeded would depend on what kind of information the server was configured to log and how many of the entries that got logged were still available (as opposed to being deleted/lost for a variety of reasons, including to save space).
So, after review, I do not agree that either of your points invalidate my conclusion that there is evidence of obstruction of justice, though both points were relevant.
Could you clarify what server logs you think were destroyed? Could you clarify why you think the destruction of those logs should discredit claims there is “no evidence” Clinton’s server was hacked? Could you clarify how this supposed destruction of server logs shows there was obstruction of justice? You say you believe your substantive points remain valid, but I can’t see any basis for any of those three claims.
A point that I hadn’t noticed and doesn’t seem to have been widely discussed: this paragraph of the FBI report states that an email account on the Clinton server was “compromise[d]” on (at least) one occasion.
I find it strange you say this without noting I referred to that exact incident. If someone brings up an example and you then discuss that example, it seems appropriate to refer to what they said in some way.
As a quick note, I should point out I make no claim as to whether or not Pagliano actually did turn over server logs as reported. If one wishes to believe many organizations reported on this matter incorrectly, that would change nothing in my eyes. Pagliano set up a Microsoft Exchange server for Hilary Clinton. The type of logs one would expect to exist for an Exchange server are IIS logs. The FBI reports examining IIS logs and provides specific detail taken from them.
Unless one wishes to believe the FBI lied then fabricated at least one specific example, the only conclusion is the FBI had server logs for Clinton’s server. Whether it got the logs from Pagliano as reported or obtained them in some other ways seems irrelevant. What matters is the server logs not only exist but were examined by the FBI.
There might be some interesting questions to ask about what the IIS logs were configured to capture, how reliable that information would be in establishing if a hack was successful or if entries in the logs were ever lost/deleted (which could happen for a number of reasons). What there doesn’t appear to be is any reason to claim the logs were all destroyed, that such a destruction discredits claims there is “no evidence” the server was hacked or that such a destruction indicates people were guilty of a felony which Comey ignored.
‘No evidence the server was hacked’ tends to get switched to ‘FBI said the server was not hacked.'(not here)
There were intrusion attempts. At one point they shut down the server to stop an attack. I agree there is no solid evidence the server was hacked. However, I think her being the Secretary of State a prominent target, combined with what appears to be general incompetence by the IT team, is weak evidence she was hacked. I add to that the new discovery that e-mails from DNC are ramping up starting with Hillary’s first e-mail on April 19, though there is the possibility this is a result of a search for Hillary’s e-mail in the total archive. Also, having the server in Chappaqua under Secret Service guard is one thing, but having it or backups in a bathroom closet isn’t very secure for a high profile target. Marc Perkel wrote that she was using a private spam filter so third parties had access to her e-mail(I’m guessing the IT staff of Platte River did as well).
There were intrusion attempts. At one point they shut down the server to stop an attack. I agree there is no solid evidence the server was hacked. However, I think her being the Secretary of State a prominent target, combined with what appears to be general incompetence by the IT team
Based on what Pagaliano describes having done, I can’t say I see any indiciation of “general incompetence by the IT team.” Could you explain what gave you that impression of them?
Marc Perkel wrote that she was using a private spam filter so third parties had access to her e-mail(I’m guessing the IT staff of Platte River did as well)
You say this like it is surprising, but I don’t see why it would be. Companies like McAfree are trusted to provide anti-virus software used on computers for government employees all the time. Given that, why would it be remarkable for Clinton’s server to use McAfee’s spam filtering e-mail? The server wasn’t supposed to have confidential material on it, so what is the problem here supposed to be? The risk of third-party access seems commensurate with the sensitivity of the information that was supposed to be present.
(Of course, confidential material being on the server would make that judgment wrong. However, confidential material should not have been on the server. I can’t fault the security assessment of a server based on people using the server for things they aren’t supposed to.)
You’re right Brandon, I am conflating two different things here. If it is OK for third parties to have access to her e-mail, then why does it matter if it was hacked by Russia or if she used State e-mail? That was a political argument she was denying, but not the technical argument you are doing here.
The idea that I’ve turned off the server for some time to shut off hacking attempts, with no apparent followup is my first impression of incompetence. I’m not familiar with Pagliano’s technical qualifications, but I may have been thrown off by Clinton shenanigans- his employment at State was a political hire.
E-mails to and from the Secretary of State will presumably have classified or confidential material. The items which were not supposed to be there are the even higher security items that should not have gotten to her e-mail, private server or State Department server.
MikeN, I’m sorry, but your comments indicate you have too poor a grasp of this topic for it to be worth having a discussion. I don’t mind a lack of knowledge from people, but when they combine their ignorance with a certainty of their correctness, it’s a waste of time.
Brandon, I can’t believe you said that to MikeN. I read his comment as perfectly sensible (and polite, BTW).
Former Bill Clinton aid Justin Cooper originally set up the personal Clinton server. He is the only one who did not take the 5th and gave congressional testimony. He is the one who would notice the unusual activity on the server and would pull the plug. After doing this on several occasions he suggested they hire professionals. That turned out to be Pagliano and PRN, who kept the server in their bathroom.
Former Bill Clinton aid Justin Cooper originally set up the personal Clinton server. He is the only one who did not take the 5th and gave congressional testimony. He is the one who would notice the unusual activity on the server and would pull the plug. After doing this on several occasions he suggested they hire professionals. That turned out to be Pagliano and PRN, who kept the server in their bathroom.
You should go back over the facts of what happened. For instance, Pagliano had nothing to do with PRN except for when he helped transition the server he set up to their network.
To summarize, Cooper had set up a server initially, then Pagliano was brought in to migrate things to a new server so the setup would be better. Pagliano and Cooper both managed the server for a time, with Pagliano having more responsibilities for it. After a few years, PRN was hired to take over and Pagliano helped with the transition. As for when Cooper “would pull the plug,” the record shows only that he rebooted the server twice, on the same day. That day was approximately 22 months after Pagilano was first brought in.
Pagliano was hired as a Schedule C appointee, very unusual for his position. Perhaps this was just to pay him a higher salary, but I interpreted it as he might not be very qualified. I also saw reports of Remote Desktop running and no VPN. I would need evidence of Pagliano’s credentials in security. Wikipedia says Cooper has no security clearance or expertise in computer security, but is silent on Pagliano. Also, the threat detection software that caught 5 intrusions in 2013, was not running for at least three months that year.
New York Times is hardly reliable on anything to do with Russia. read Jeffrey Carr or moonofalabama for a different take on this incident, which might well be propaganda against Kaspersky. (Haven’t parsed issue myself)
There we see that this file had lot’s of strings, most of these are from the OpenSSL library (OpenSSL 1.0.1e 11 Feb 2013) which was statically linked into the binary.
Here is a part of the list of strings:
So the outdated C&C (176.31.112.10) is still there. CS reported that other IPs were used, one of which we see at the start of the snippet (45.32.129.185).
We already know that the outdated C&C was hosted by a company called CrookServers.
That company accepts or accepted bitcoins which is what all kinds of nefarious operators like.
But of course they are just one of many.
Who Is IP for 45.32.129.185 gives us the following
United States AS20473 Choopa, LLC
RegDate: 2015-02-17
Note that Choopa also accepts bitcoin.
HTTP Persistent Connection (June 2015)
In June 2015, a novel way to connect to the C&C server was introduced: an HTTP persistent
connection [94].
…
This request comes with the HTTP header Connection: keep-alive to enable the persistent connection.
Another HTTP request header hardcoded in Xtunnel is Accept-Language: ru-RU,ru;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.6,en;q=0.4, which interestingly contains
the language code ru-RU. This header may have been copied from a request made from a computer whose default language is Russian.
Neither of these strings can be found in the DNC sample (a search for “keep-alive”, “Accept-Language” or “ru-RU” fails).
And another change was
Code Obfuscation (July 2015)
In July 2015, Xtunnel binaries changed drastically from a syntactic point of view, due to the introduction
of code obfuscation. This obfuscation was applied only to Xtunnel-specific code, while statically
linked libraries were left untouched. The method employed is a mix of classic obfuscation techniques,
like insertion of junk code and opaque predicates [95].
Consequently, Xtunnel binaries are now about 2 MB in size, while the previous non-obfuscated versions
were about 1 MB with most of that being the statically linked OpenSSL library. The obfuscated version
is, of course, much harder to understand and, to illustrate that, the following Figures show the control
flow graph (CFG) [96] of a small Xtunnel function, before and after obfuscation.
The binary which according to CS was found at the DNC has a file size of about 1.8Mb according to VirusTotal, but just 1 Mb according to Invincea (see Invincea details page). So which of these it it?
The XTunnel malware that was used by Russian APT threat actor Fancy Bear to penetrate the Democrat National Committee (DNC) network was specifically designed to work against this target, Invincea researchers say.
…
The researchers discovered that the Fancy Bear threat actor used the XTunnel malware for compromise purposes. After taking a closer look at the malware, Invincea discovered that the malware didn’t cluster with other known threats and says that it was likely a “purpose-built original piece of code” meant to target the DNC network specifically.
…
Another interesting aspect of XTunnel is that its code isn’t obfuscated, as most modern malware employs this technique to make analysis challenging.
Of course the above dates for the changes are approximate, but both are shortly after the Bundestag hack, after which the C&C server 176.31.112.10 was closed down.
So based on these three pointers we have the following actual compile date for this binary:
Presence of outdated IP “176.31.112.10” … before June 2015
Absence of HTTP Persistent Connection ….. before June 2015
Uncertain: Absence? of Code Obfuscation … before July 2015
In case the code obfuscation was present then perhaps that was included before the HTTP persistent connection in which case the binary can still date from late May 2015 or early June 2015, as concluded earlier.
Normally these binaries are all rather fresh. That makes sense because re-use of binaries eases detection, and APT28 is constantly tweaking it’s arsenal, certainly the newer tools like X-Tunnel.
Below the dates & times reported for these tools when deployed together, in the only report that I could find that details an attack where they were used together.
Note that the identification between malware names and the file names in the table below is made based upon the details supplied in the appendices. These identifications are made by me and inserted as comments into the block quote after, comments indicated by “– [ xxx ]”.
The table below shows the compilation date and the file creation time for each of the files involved in the attack.
File Name Compilation Date Creation Time
…
%allusersappdata%\svehost.exe 22/04/2015 11:49:54 14/04/2008 16:00 — [X-Tunnel – XAPS]
…
%localappdata%\Microsoft Help\advstorshell.dll 30/04/2015 13:13:13 14/04/2008 16:00 — [Sedreco – EVILTOSS – ADVSTORESHELL]
…
%allusersappdata%\Pr.dll 13/05/2015 22:05:57 14/04/2008 16:00 — [X-Agent – CHOPSTICK]
…
Table 1
The latest creation date is 13/05/2015, which hints at the date the attack happened. Given that it took almost an hour from the moment the first downloader got written to the disk to the arrival of the second stage downloader, this process was likely carried out manually by a human operator. An important observation is that all of the components, except one, had been compiled before the attack. “%allusersappdata%\Pr.dll” is the only file that was compiled 5 hours after the compromise. This suggests this file was specifically built for the target.
This is relevant because CS said that the intrusion dates from April 2016 and Security Week (mentioned above) said that the binary for X-Tunnel was specifically built for the DNC hack.
The compilation dates given on VirusTotal for these binaries are:
For SHA256 Hash 4845761c9bed0563d0aa83613311191e075a9b58861e80392914d61a21bad976 it is: 2016-04-25 10:58:38
For SHA256 Hash 40ae43b7d6c413becc92b07076fa128b875c8dbb4da7c036639eccf5a9fc784f it is: 2016-05-05 09:20:08
Both are in 2016, yet the contents of these binaries dates from 2015, not 2016, as explained in previous posts!
The compilation time is stored in the PE header; although not so common, those dates can be manipulated by editing the binary by using a tool like PE Explorer.
Perhaps these are in fact recycled binaries, with a slight change to the PE header?
If so, who did that?Note that such a change also happens to change the SHA hash computed for the binary, which is required otherwise the re-use would be obvious.
Also this would seem to rule out option 3a given above.
That leaves options 1, 2b and 3b; in all cases that means that somebody is faking it and it wasn’t ‘The Russians’.
That leaves options 1, 2b and 3b; in all cases that means that somebody is faking it and it wasn’t ‘The Russians’.
yes. There’s something very weird about it all. I’m trying to write it all up, but finding it very difficult to finish everything.
Another point on which I’d welcome your thoughts.
Microsoft has excellent analysis of APT28 (who they call Strontium) and, among the characteristics that they ascribe to APT28 are: that they move on quickly from blown infrastructure; that their exfiltration is extremely covert, trying as much as possible to blend with common processes. The use of X-Tunnel for DNC Hack is exactly opposite: it was about as thoroughly blown as imaginable from the DNC hack. Also, Guarnieri pointed out in connection with the Bundestag hack, that it was noisy – it didn’t blend into background.
In the numerous APT28 surveys prior to Bundestag hack, X-Tunnel wasn’t ever mentioned as part of APT28 repertoire (to my knowledge from my research.) It gets mentioned in subsequent surveys, but I wonder whether there are really two separate APTs at work.
Talking about noisy, I found another funny thing.
By the way XTunnel isn’t used that much, but has been used before by APT28, see also above.
But first a bit of an intro.
I’m drafting a list of all reported X-Tunnel variants (for which there are details published at sites like VirusTotal), to show the time when the last occurrence was of the use of that IP address (176.31.112.10).
As expected the last occurrence of that APT28 C&C IP was in April 2015 (2015-04-22 08:49:54), before that C&C server was blocked permanently in May 2015, probably because of the complaint by the Germans after the Bundestag hack.
Next binary has compilation date 2015-06-25 05:15:54 and uses a different IP address (obviously), so do all others after that date.
Well all others except the DNC samples (…).
For a few we also have samples listed at cynomix.invincea.com, which means that we can see the list of strings.
I was looking for some string that could indicate the use of the HTTP persistent change (mentioned above), not proof just indication.
Well I have finally found them in the DNC binaries, language settings which could be part of a HTTP header, it is just rather unlikely that they could be used to blend in & hide the communications as innocent HTTP chatter…
They are (… hold it …):
So we are looking for another X-Tunnel binary that was used in an actual APT28 hack, but not too late after May 2015 because the old C&C IP is still there.
And it must be a 64-bit binary (I have found none so far), not a 32-bit binary as usual.
From the contents of the DNC samples I assume we have to look for hacks in or near either Azerbaijan or Uzbekistan.
Of course it could be a misdirection once again … but let’s assume for now that it isn’t.
FireEye reports one that could fit (but then APT28 has been quite active in the Caucassus and other ex-USSR states to the South).
See APT28: AT THE CENTER OF THE STORM, page 4.
Kyrgyzstan Ministry of Foreign Affairs – OCTOBER 2014 THROUGH SEPTEMBER 2015
AFAIK no samples of that one have been reported (and we can’t be sure that this is the correct one).
Re-use of such a binary would fit options and 1, 2b and 3b.
I do not see why a small state somewhere to the south of Russia would want to hack the DNC, so it wasn’t one of those victims.
But it can be done by anyone who manages to get a copy of a binary used in an actual hack, it does not need to be any local group.
As a reminder, those options are:
1. Re-use of an X-Tunnel binary by another group (not APT28)
2b. Misdirection by another group (not APT28), like say a state or non-state entity who likes to make people mad at Russia or to drive a wedge between them and the US.
3b. CS lied. There was no hack by APT28 at all, instead they (CS) deployed this binary to make it look like it was.
All options imply re-use of a binary, just slightly changed with a binary editor and PE editor, none of which requires access to the actual source code.
And again in all cases that means that it wasn’t ‘The Russians’.
And if option 3b is true, than there wasn’t even a hack by APT28 / Fancy Bear.
The introduction of an obfuscated version of X-Tunnel in July 2015 seems important for fingerprinting (I’ve been trying to parse this as well and very much appreciate the discussion.)
One would presume that an authentic APT28 use in March-April 2016 would continue the most recent obfuscated version, rather than reverting to the blown June 2015 Bundestag version.
But it would be easy enough for Crowdstrike to plant at the scene of the crime – like a police officer planting a gun to help a conviction along. Then Crowdstrike allows six weeks of operation of the system, conceals system logs from FBI etc.
“But it would be easy enough for Crowdstrike to plant at the scene of the crime – like a police officer planting a gun to help a conviction along. Then Crowdstrike allows six weeks of operation of the system, conceals system logs from FBI etc.”
Not sure this is technically feasible or likely, but since the NSA and FBI were aware of and obviously interested in the attacks on the DNC in real time, couldn’t the NSA monitoring detect any such Crowdstrike shenanigans? What would motivate Crowdstrike to take the risk? Just asking.
Not sure this is technically feasible or likely, but since the NSA and FBI were aware of and obviously interested in the attacks on the DNC in real time, couldn’t the NSA monitoring detect any such Crowdstrike shenanigans? What would motivate Crowdstrike to take the risk? Just asking.
Well this is just one of the options of course. But still a serious option (as there is more, will come back to that later).
But how they could do it is easy. NSA monitors communications and external network traffic, it can’t monitor what goes on inside the DNC (unless they hacked the DNC, which is not allowed; and even then it is unlikely that they could notice).
So yeah anyone can install anything without the NSA knowing.
A bigger issue would be to fake traffic to & from the alleged C&C IP addresses. You will have emulate that in case you want to fool the NSA.
What helps is that the traffic via X-Tunnel is encrypted via SSL. So you can only see the traffic, but you can’t read it.
Even when you break SSL security you then have to break the security of the packets, which will be zipped & password protected and or zipped and encrypted.
The whole point of using SSL is that the hackers want to be able to send encrypted data, which when send across normal HTTP looks very suspicious. When you communicate using HTTPS (HTTP using SSL) the traffic is always encrypted, so no alarms need to go off.
SSL is already encrypted, but I doubt that the hackers would just trust the SSL encryption, so double encryption is more likely.
Of course this also means that you can fake the traffic by sending encrypted data using SSL. In case you are afraid that the NSA will be able to decrypt all of that (in real time) then you may also decide to send some actual files.
You can re-use a SSL certificate from an earlier intrusion; indeed in this case it seems that the same SSL certificate was used as was already used in the 2014/2015 hack of the Bundestag.
As the DNC didn’t allow the FBI on their servers (privacy concerns/ hiding other info/ ?) that hack story and any pointing fingers from it should be discarded as potentially biased.
Unless laws have changed and it is now allowed to accuse others based on concealed evidence by a private party.
Antony: “Unless laws have changed and it is now allowed to accuse others based on concealed evidence by a private party.”
There are criminal law questions that I have not seen answered. For example, I know that the victim does not have a legal right to stop a criminal investigation. I would think once a crime is reported the police (FBI in this case) could gain a search warrant for the DNC computer server. There may be special laws to protect such a seizure just as there apparently is laws preventing the seizure of congressional communications.
The USA congress president or congress can slap sanctions on foreign governments without due process, and in this case did. The question is if it is then legal to use the same private evidence to convict Trump of being part of that conspiracy. If the Steele memo regarding Carter Page’s alleged meeting to hire Romanian hackers came out at the time of the DNC hack I would think it would be highly suspicious if the DNC did not cooperate to prove their claim of being hacked. We are also relying on the Clinton campaign for the timing of their knowledge of the Steele memo information.
Jaap, it seems like you are only seeing conflicts in Apt28. The FBI notice to the DNC had to be regarding Apt29 since Apt28 was alleged by CS to only have arrived in April.
If Russia was behind everything, Apt29, Podesta, Apt28, DCleaks, G2 and leaking to WL, the G2 aspect behavior and documents can only point to a muddying of the water by making false false flags, the Russians dressing themselves up in Russian clown makeup. This would also fit with an MO of leaving false false flags in Apt28. All the easy explanations are eliminated.
Jaap, I believe you are underestimating the NSA’s cryptanalytic capabilities and their ability to peek into things. Also, the intelligence gathering crews of the DIA, CIA, FBI, XYZ etc. etc. work closely with the NSA. Signal intelligence and human intelligence. There are some very serious resources dedicated to tracking down and combating the hackers, especially the state actors. Here is the most informative and accurate account of what’s going on in the game that I have seen in public:
All of the above was in play as the NSA et al. monitored the hacking of the DNC systems. Trump’s people are in charge of the agencies in possession of all the information gathered. That information and the rationale for the “Russia done it” assessment have been explained to Trump, by his own appointees. He has discussed what he has learned with trusted advisers, other than the agency people. He has been persuaded that it was probably the Russians. I believe it is highly unlikely that anybody with access only to publicly available information can disprove or seriously dent the credibility of that conclusion. I would be happy to be proven wrong.
Next binary has compilation date 2015-06-25 05:15:54 and uses a different IP address (obviously), so do all others after that date.
Well all others except the DNC samples (…
where did you locate this?
As I said I have been compiling a list of all reported hashes for X-Tunnel (taken from samples submitted by various security companies). That list will not be complete, it is just the set of those that have been published about. Then I collected details via Google’s VirusTotal and other sites (Invincea is handy because it is the only one that shows more details on readable strings).
Then I sorted the samples based on the Compilation Timestamp.
This shows that he last sample that uses the same C&C IP 176.31.112.10 which was also used in the Bundestag attack is 2015-04-22 08:49:54.
The next sample has timestamp: 2015-06-25 05:15:54 and uses 95.215.46.27:443.
All other samples reported with later compilation dates also use different IPs.
Then come the two samples from the DNC, which still contain that C&C IP 176.31.112.10 (almost a year after the server had been disabled…).
There after two more recent samples, neither of which references that old C&C IP.
See below for the full list.
The majority where reported by ESET in their reports (https://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/eset-sednit-full.pdf). ESET gives SHA1, first is same as Bundestag (reported also elsewhere).
I could not find details for 3 hashes reported by Microsoft in their security bulletin 19 (on STRONTIUM, their name for APT28; Microsoft_Security_Intelligence_Report_Volume_19_A_Profile_Of_A_Persistent_Adversary_English.pdf).
FireEye / Mandiant has not reported any on X-Tunnel (and they do not report X-Tunnel as part of APT28’s reportoire)
Two are reported by CrowdStrike (DNC).
A few recent ones are reported by Sophos.
A note on the hashes: some use SHA1 other SHA256 as primary hash, but many reports and sites report both. Either can be used to uniquely identify the sample.
The Imphash is a hash taken not over the entire binary but just over the Import section of the PE, this lists all external DLL used and also all function calls inside those DLLs in the order that they are called in the program . This helps in determining that two binary’s in fact contain the same code calling sequence, which indicates that they may contain the exact same code; this helps to match files even when the data section or compilation times differ (as any small difference there will also lead to a completely different file hash).
Below the full list, sorted by compilation date & time as reported by the binary.
Most of the details come from VirusTotal; most of those details have been automatically generated based upon the sample, some extra information was reported by (security companies) commmunity.
I added a space to the Invincea URLs to prevent WordPress from blocking this post due to too many URLs.
I added a note on Farnborough 2014 (cct-w08_evolving-threats-dissection-of-a-cyber-espionage-attack.pdf by RSA), because it mentions the C&C IP 176.31.112.10, yet does not say that X-Tunnel was used (I get the distinct impression that it wasn’t or if it was, it wasn’t detected). This is just to show how it fits in the timeline.
Some of the hashes from MS not reported in VirusTotal, I list these first, but of course we have no compilation timestamps for them.
{ MicroSoft – XTunnel }
64515c7ce8bcc656d54182675bd2d9ffceffe845
{ MicroSoft – XTunnel }
3ec270193815fa2bd853ea251d93fdfffcbc40d6
{ MicroSoft – XTunnel }
e5039bb420f9a3a23aaa9ee7392bd05dfee42540
Correction to the above (as to which variants where found at the Bundestag in 2015):
According to Netzpolitik the X-Tunnel variant at the Bundestag was the one with SHA256 hash 730a0e3daf0b54f065bdd2ca427fbe10e8d4e28646a5dc40cbcfb15e1702ed9a, which has compile time 2015-04-22 10:49:54.
So it is then not (or also?) the earlier one referenced elsewhere with SHA256 hash 566ab945f61be016bfd9e83cc1b64f783b9b8deb891e6d504d3442bc8281b092 compiled 2014-04-14 13:13:59.
Unfortunately Invincea gives for both of these the tags: “bundestag, apt28, apt, malware, upload”, and both are possible because the hack probably started in 2014 (quite a while before it was detected).
On the other hand these attacks tend to use the most recent build & updates do take place during infection.
So either both were found at the Bundestag or just the last one. It doesn’t matter much because both used 176.31.112.10 which was hard-coded into both these variants.
There seem to be two anomalies: 1) reusing the C&C IP address 2) Compiled in 64-bit rather than 32.
How anomalous are they? Would it be possible to check how frequently IPs had been reused in the past and how often 64-bit had been used? Or is actual data too limited?
Do any APT28 IP addresses appear in XTunnel variants that aren’t attributed to APT28? How common are XTunnel 64-bit binaries not attributed to APT28? If 64-bit is really uncommon then finding out who uses it might point to other potential suspects.
Nor does 185.61.148.54 turn up in the Invincea listings for the two X-Tunnel versions in the DNC hack?
Wonder where it came from in the Crowdstrike report?
CrowdStrike would have detected that because X-Agent used that IP address, you can see that with a network monitoring tool (or when malware is installed in a good sandbox).
You can’t see any IP addresses by just looking at the binary of X-Agent, because X-Agent doesn’t store them as plain text. There is no need to store an IP address in plain text, you would store it as numbers or even encrypt it. Much better to hide it than to simply hardcode it as text. And we have seen before that C&C used by and X-Agent sample is also used by an X-Tunnel sample.
Now this re-use of an IP address used in the DNC hack, hence very well known, several months after that hack is quite odd.
This XTunnel sample (97020924373f42800f03f441ef03a99893fb5def) with compile time 2016-12-07 23:56:57 was reported to VirusTotal on 2016-12-11 20:57:38 UTC. File size 1.0 MB (1068032 bytes). Sample was loaded but ‘not shared’ on Payload Security, and it is unclear who reported it (perhaps Sophos).
The strange thing about this one (and at least one other on VT, from October 2016, also reported by Sophos on their site) is that these postdate the DNC hack, yet seem to use the old XTunnel source, not the newer one. You can tell by the size (around 1 MB, most of that is the OpenSSL library) and the use of merely one (1) IP address.
The two XTunnel binaries from the DNC have 3 IP addresses (1 used, 1 probably backup and the 3rd ‘176.31.112.10’).
So we have an old source code style X-Tunnel sample postdating the DNC (new source code style) ones, and this old style one reuses the IP address (185.61.148.54) that was used by the X-Agent sample found at the DNC several months earlier…
That seems rather odd to me.
1) Why re-use a burned C&C IP? Burned by use in DNC hack no less.
2) Why switch back to old source code base?
3) So is this a live one, one really found in the wild, or is this a test sample? IDK
As to 1: That IP would be blocked or server would have been removed after DNC hack. And if for some reason neither DNC, nor CS, nor FBI (etc) did complain to hosting provider, then the hackers may expect it to be monitored by FBI or NSA…
Or could this be an example of brazen re-use perhaps after re-infection? In that case the server was complained against and taken offline. After a while the IP is re-issued to another and some hackers (APT28?) broke right back in to start using it (again)… I guess it is possible, but …
As to 2: Going back to old source is odd, in case they were afraid of detection then fixing the new source works fine.
Just remove the visible artifacts and I’m sure the new code is better than the old one. The code obfusciation prevents binary pattern match, so all you need to do is to strip strings (from OpenSSL) and hide a few of those obvious strings (and delete that ‘176.31.112.10’ nonsense) and you are invisible again.
As to 3: Of course we could assume that APT28 switched back to old code base and for some reason decided to re-use a known C&C. But there are other options. One of them is that it was a test.
The sites like VirusTotal are not just used to report actual samples, but also to test other samples. Either white hat or black hat. White hat use is for example simply to see if a simple variant is detected, and how well the competition handles it. Black hat tests are by hackers trying to see whether any of the scanners detect their newest creation as malware or not…
Fair enough. In such murky waters, it is best to be as precise as possible. A commennter at Gurnieri’s blog on June 20, 2015, who identified as Crookservers, stated that they had terminated service at 176.31.112.10. I might add that, as I recall, one of the computer security companies (I’ll look for URL) reported on June 24, 2015 that 176.31.112.10 was no longer active.
This tells us that IP address 176.31.112.10 was linked to 155-reverse.crookservers.net starting on (and ending on) 2015-04-20.
IP number was last seen (associate with it) on 2015-04-20 00:00:00, the IP name (155-reverse.crookservers.net) was last seen 2015-06-05 07:31:43.
So the story by CrookServers seems to check out: they took over the IP address on 2015-04-20, which also the last time it was seen active (after that no active IP was detected on that name, makes sense as they had shutdown that server).
It can take quite a while for a blacklisted IP to get off that list.
The IP address was taken back by the French ISP OVH SAS and has been re-issued to kimsufi.com, yet another hosting providor (for VM VSP or server ks393354.kimsufi.com) starting a few months later (October 2015).
So unless you wan to claim that APT28 managed to take over the new server on that address sometime after October 2015 (we do not even know that & when a server was active on that address after that time) then the APT28 C&C server with IP 176.31.112.10 simply has been offline since 2015-04-20, exactly as that post by Crook Servers stated.
Jaap Titulaer, I made that remark because I find it interesting how Steve McIntyre has repeated many things as fact based upon little evidence yet expresses great skepticism at official claims/reports. It wasn’t about whether or not the claim was correct – it was about the seemingly different degrees of skepticism.
If I were going to discuss this “evidence” in a substantive manner, I would start by pointing out I’m not convinced that IP address was hard-coded in any program tied to the DNC attack. As far as I was able to tell, the source of that claim was a tweet posted by Thomas Rid. I can’t find any independent reference of anyone saying they found the IP address in the code, I haven’t found any reference to the IP address from CrowdStrike in reference to the attack, and I couldn’t find any mention of it within the government documents discussing Grizzly Steppe.
Absent actual evidence this IP address was hard-coded into a program used (or at least claimed to have been used) in the DNC intrusion, I’m inclined to chalk this up to bad reporting where someone made a claim and it got repeated without being verified. It probably didn’t help Rid wrote an article promoting this claim with a link to his tweet as his proof. People reading his article might have assumed his link went to something which counts as evidence. Even so, I haven’t seen that many people report this so I’m not sure why the last post said:
As I’ll discuss in a subsequent post, the C2 server 176.31.112[.]10 turns out to have a central role in establishing “Russian” responsibility for the DNC hack, a role which has thus far not been critically examined.
This IP address hasn’t had “a central role in establishing” anything that I’ve seen in regard to the DNC hack. Until the last post mentioned it, I hadn’t even seen anyone cite it as evidence. I suspect this issue is being blown out of proportion.
If I were going to discuss this “evidence” in a substantive manner, I would start by pointing out I’m not convinced that IP address was hard-coded in any program tied to the DNC attack. As far as I was able to tell, the source of that claim was a tweet posted by Thomas Rid. I can’t find any independent reference of anyone saying they found the IP address in the code,
Sorry it is there. And I reported about it here, several times. I gave direct links to the evidence. See below.
I haven’t found any reference to the IP address from CrowdStrike in reference to the attack,
I have found one reference that claimed that CrowdStrike reported on it in it’s blog post, but I haven’t found any evidence to confirm that so far (I reviewed several older versions of that same blog post via the Way back Machine).
and I couldn’t find any mention of it within the government documents discussing Grizzly Steppe.
That report is very light on relevant details, IMHO. They mention lots of stuff which is more related to hacking in general than Russian hacking, and more about Russians hacking than about the DNC hack…
But anyway, I did find evidence that indeed these binaries contained that IP address, hard coded in plain text.
So once again:
Here are the Invincea links to both samples found at the DNC. Invincea shows all strings longer than a few characters as found in the binaries.
Invincea gives also a direct link to the entry at VirusTotal for the same sample.
These samples are copies of the binaries found by CrowdStrike in one or more computers at the DNC. Copies of these samples were given to many security companies, and also submitted to sites like VirusTotal and Invincea.
Yeah sorry, I’m a bit unclear. And when I saw the 20th as ‘last seen’ I assumed that it said 20-05 when in fact it says 20-04…
Note that those free services have low resolution (as to ‘last seen’). Perhaps payed for IP history servers have more details.
And one could of course always ask OVH SAS, the ISP that supplied rack space & network to the hosting providors (first Crookserver, now address is in use by kimsufi.com).
Here is the text of that post again:
Crookservers sagt:
20. Juni 2015 um 02:25 Uhr
We had received 1st abuse report about the IP 176.31.112.10 on 20th May 2015. IP 176.31.112.10 had been reported to be a Command & Control for APT-28.
We immediately suspended the service on 20th May 2015. We had also requested our client information about the criminal activity and we never received a response. We’re ready to provide any information we have to law inforcement agencies.
And from those ThreatMiner& ThreatCrowd pages we can see that:
– IP address 176.31.112.10 was linked to 155-reverse.crookservers.net starting on (and ending on, ‘last seen’) 2015-04-20
– that same IP address resurfaces again but now for a new server (ks393354.kimsufi.com) of another hosting company (but with hardware still in a building of ISP OVH SAS, certainly in their network) on 2015-10-07 00:00:00.
Which basically tells us that sometime between 2015-04-20 and 2015-10-07 the original server at that IP address (the one being used as C&C for APT28) has been removed (at least take offline & wiped). Probably some time after 2015-04-20. Unfortunately we can’t tell exactly when based on this public data, because these free services have low dat resolution.
The last known X-Tunnel variant that I know of was compiled 2015-04-22 08:49:54, so it must have been after that.
And Crookservers claimed that this happened on 2015-05-20. In case we believe that, that would be the exact date.
The next known variant of X-Tunnel has compile time 2015-06-25 05:15:54 and used a different IP address, as do all versions after that. Which indicates that it must be before that date.
We can independantly of that be certain that the server was no longer usuable (for C&C) at least starting from 2015-10-07, based on ThreatMiner.
So claimed by Crookservers the date that the C&C server stopped working is 2015-05-20.
Based on malware variants it was between 2015-04-22 and 2015-06-25.
Based on threat site data it was between 2015-04-20 and 2015-10-07.
Jaap, have you read the ThreatConnect article series on the DNC hack? They were largely used as the technical basis for MSM reporting of attribution before the US IC reports came out.
In building upon Crowdstrike’s analysis, ThreatConnect researched and shared 20160614A: Russia-based groups compromise Democratic National Committee within the ThreatConnect Common Community. This incident includes the IP address 45.32.129[.]185 which Crowdstrike lists as a FANCY BEAR X-Tunnel implant Command and Control (C2) node.
Using ThreatConnect’s Farsight passive DNS integration to review the resolution history for 45.32.129[.]185 we uncovered some additional domain resolutions. One of these domain resolutions is the suspicious domain misdepatrment[.]com (note the transposition of the “t” and the “r” in department).
How could the misdepatrment[.]com piece of the operation have been created by CS. The registration for that domain was March 22 and put into active use before the May 4 arrival of CS at the DNC? ThreatConnect says:
On April 24th, 2016 the domain misdepatrment[.]com moved from the parking IP Address 5.135.183[.]154 to the FANCY BEAR Command and Control IP Address 45.32.129[.]185 where it remains resolved at of the time of this writing.
This has to be describing a verifiable (non-spoofable) attack. Right?
The article also links the Podesta attack to Apt28. The article was written prior to knowledge of the Podesta WL release.
On June 16, 2016 Secureworks reported that a Russia-based group, operating on behalf of the Russian government, used a combination of bit.ly short links and a fake Google login page to target the Clinton Campaign between mid-March and mid-May 2016. The group, dubbed TG-4127 (aka APT28, Sofacy, Sednit, and Pawn Storm), also targeted DNC staff between mid-March and mid-April 2016. This timeline is consistent with the misdepatrment[.]com registration and resolution changes as well as CrowdStrike’s assessment of FANCY BEAR tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP).
We know the bit.ly short links and a fake Google login page was actually successful, creating the Podesta WL. Does it make sense that in the wake of a successful attack, when security would be called in and monitoring beefed up that one would expose their newest tools, misdepatrment[.]com, to be identified and shared by the cyber security community?
one of the oddities of the bitly campaign – which has never been discussed – is that it hacked many more hillaryclinton.com addresses than dnc.org addresses, but nothing was ever leaked from the hack of the hillaryclinton.com server. Why not?
The malware binaries talk to IP numbers, they do not care about IP names, so the malware works regardless of the IP name.
The IP name is however probably used for phishing attacks, so perhaps the date (‘April 24th, 2016’) indicates the first time that the domain could be / would be actively used to do a phishing attack (assuming that the other server was indeed just a parking spot).
So it would indicate the start of a phishing campaign.
Not sure why one would re-use the same server for a different purpose though. But apparently they did (45.32.129.185 is the other IP in one of the X-Tunnel binaries, CS said that traffic from the malware was to/from 45.32.129.185).
How could the misdepatrment[.]com piece of the operation have been created by CS. The registration for that domain was March 22 and put into active use before the May 4 arrival of CS at the DNC? ThreatConnect says:
On April 24th, 2016 the domain misdepatrment[.]com moved from the parking IP Address 5.135.183[.]154 to the FANCY BEAR Command and Control IP Address 45.32.129[.]185 where it remains resolved at of the time of this writing.
So we see an update on May 22, not April 24. At least the last update was on that date.
Of course it is unlikely that CS would register misdepatrment on 2016-03-22 when the first time that the DNC knows about WikiLeaks plans is June 12th (TV, Assange), or perhaps June 4th I think (WikiLeaks Insurance file names DNC for one of the collections).
Unless of course the DNC knew about leaks much earlier (just not who) and asked CS for help (much earlier), but that seems rather far fetched to me.
So that points against 3b, but still leaves options like 2b (misdirection, not by APT) wide open.
Another option is simply that this site does belong to APT28 (or a similar crew) and CS would know about that (and indeed all related IP addresses). Option 3b assumes that the hack was faked, so it does not require an actual operational virus, just the binaries need to be there. No one can verify the network traffic (well except the NSA perhaps, they could at least store metadata, assuming they are allowed to actually do that inside the USA, without a FISA warrant against the DNC, and assuming that they really did; on the other hand the NSA could be monitoring the attack node 45.32.129.185, so that is a risk).
All options assume that someone is re-using old binaries. And of course the IP address 45.32.129.185 for this secondary/fallback C&C can be simply changed manually in the binary. What we do know is that the IP address existed much earlier, e.g. on 2015-12-31 it was linked to ‘newtoro.com’. We can’t be sure it belongs to APT28.
Does it make sense that in the wake of a successful attack, when security would be called in and monitoring beefed up that one would expose their newest tools, misdepatrment[.]com, to be identified and shared by the cyber security community?
Uh no, good catch. That is a bit odd.
Why would you expose your C&C IP address used in (secret) malware for a hack in May/June by also using it in a quite visible phishing attack campaign in March & April. I would expect that IP address to be blocked (from access to DNC network) just because of those emails.
They (APT28) have sooo many servers to play with (many not even their own), so why didn’t they use a burner server, or a TOR exit node? Instead they use a C&C server?
So no it does not make sense to me.
The X-Tunnel version of 2016-04-25 10:58:38 uses IP’s 45.32.129.185, 130.255.184.196, 176.31.112.10
The X-Tunnel version of 2016-05-05 09:20:08 switched to 23.227.196.217, 130.255.184.196, 176.31.112.10
As I said earlier, the reason for the new version may very well be that DNC IT & CS started blocking 45.32.129.185. I assumed it was because they had detected the malware but by this reasoning it could also be because it had been involved in the phishing campaign…
I have found one reference that claimed that CrowdStrike reported on it in it’s blog post, but I haven’t found any evidence to confirm that so far (I reviewed several older versions of that same blog post via the Way back Machine).
I have also seen claims Crowdstrike reported this IP address, but as best I can tell, those claims are false.
Here are the Invincea links to both samples found at the DNC. Invincea shows all strings longer than a few characters as found in the binaries.
Invincea gives also a direct link to the entry at VirusTotal for the same sample.
These samples are copies of the binaries found by CrowdStrike in one or more computers at the DNC. Copies of these samples were given to many security companies, and also submitted to sites like VirusTotal and Invincea.
It is wrong to say those links are “to both samples found at the DNC” as they are analyses of the samples, not the samples themselves. There are some other points I’d make, but it turns out they don’t really seem to matter (though Invincea tagging these malware as “cozybear” annoys me). I see now why I never saw evidence of that IP address being used. It is quite likely the IP address was never used. It was included in the binaries as stated, but that doesn’t mean it was actually used.
CrowdStrike identifies command and control servers for those two malware samples as having been 45.32.129.185 and 23.227.196.217. Those are the first IP addresses listed in the two samples you excerpted. Each was followed by the same IP address, 130.255.184.196, which was likely configured as a fallback server. The address 176.31.112.10 comes later in the code, in a separate piece of code.
Assuming Crowstrike told the truth about what IP address was used as the C&C server for these malware samples, the 176.31.112.10 would have no apparent role. Programs which go through many stages of development often have deprecated Code. Outdated parameters can easily show up in functions which aren’t being actively developed/used. If that’s the case here, it could well be irrelevant if the 176.31.112.10 server was still around. All it would mean is some old code didn’t get updated/deleted between versions.
Is there any reason to think the inclusion of this IP address is anything more than that? If not, do people think it implausible deprecated code might exist in these binaries?
one of the oddities of the bitly campaign – which has never been discussed – is that it hacked many more hillaryclinton.com addresses than dnc.org addresses, but nothing was ever leaked from the hack of the hillaryclinton.com server. Why not?
First off, stealing someone’s password cannot fairly be described as a “hack of the [e-mail] server.” That’s not accurate at all. When John Podesta’s e-mail account was broken into, that wasn’t a “hack of the Google mail servers.”
Second, do we actually know this? I know SecureWorks said 20 links sent to hillaryclinton.com addresses were clicked as opposed to four sent to DNC accounts, but clicking on a link to a fake web page asking you to reset your account doesn’t mean you’ve been hacked. I’m not even sure it tells us how many different people clicked links since there were multiple attempts against individual accounts, meaning one person could have clicked on multiple links.
Do you have a reference indicating how many people’s accounts were broken into in this campaign? Even if material was released from DNC accounts and not hillaryclinton.com accounts (again, do we have a reference indicating that’s the case?), that could just mean the people who clicked on links sent to hillaryclinton.com accounts didn’t fall for it.
You seem to accept now that that IP address 176.31.112.10 is really there in the DNC binaries and also that this old C&C IP address was no longer operational since sometime mid 2015.
Good 🙂
Is there any reason to think the inclusion of this IP address is anything more than that?
Oh, yes 🙂
How about provoking false attribution?
The mere presence of 176.31.112.10 in the binary was the main part of the attribution. And it would have been conclusive had that IP address still been active at the time of the attack, but it wasn’t.
Other elements that helped recognition were things like using a text with ‘XTunnel’ in the binary and ‘OpenSSL 1.0.1e’, that very outdated OpenSSL implementation that should have been updated (even just using 1.0.1g would have been enough to protect client and server from the Heartbleed bug).
If not, do people think it implausible deprecated code might exist in these binaries?
In general perhaps not, but in this case it is different.
[1] The other new IP addresses are close to the old unusable IP address, so while updating that section of the code I find it rather unlikely that they will have just ‘missed’ it. Why leave it in?
[2] That old IP address was mentioned a lot after the Bundestag attack. As a result it was, among others, included in a YARA signature which are used to detect malware. In this case in YARA signature “apt_sofacy_xtunnel”
That is just one of the way how this signature get’s included into virus & malware scanners (by summer / fall 2015 at the latest; that above linked signature from github was placed there Feb 2016; the original was given in that Netzpolitik article dated 2015-06-19).
So you have to be assuming two things:
a) That the DNC had absolutely zero virus scanners active on its servers (granted that can be true …).AND
b) that APT28 didn’t do any virus scanner recognition testing (which will include not just a YARA check, but also scanners from several from major security companies). That is something that these groups normally will do. These groups normally tweak until their malware is no longer recognized.
You seem to accept now that that IP address 176.31.112.10 is really there in the DNC binaries and also that this old C&C IP address was no longer operational since sometime mid 2015.
Good 🙂
Actually, no. I accept that IP address was present in the code Crowdstrike provided to some people/companies to examine. I believe in what I have evidence for. I initially hadn’t seen evidence that IP address was included in the code because I had only paid attention to the IP addresses stated to be used for something (like the C&C servers). It hadn’t occurred to me people might find IP addresses in the code which they didn’t identify a purpose for.
Oh, yes 🙂
How about provoking false attribution?
The mere presence of 176.31.112.10 in the binary was the main part of the attribution. And it would have been conclusive had that IP address still been active at the time of the attack, but it wasn’t.
This doesn’t answer the question I asked as what I asked is if there was any reason to think the IP address was part of anything other than deprecated code, not if there would have been any other reason it might be included in the code. That said, I don’t agree with your claim this IP address “was the main part of the attribution.” That IP address wasn’t even mentioned by Crowdstrike or a number of groups which made the attributiobn. You and Steve McIntyre seem to have overstated the significance of this issue.
That is just one of the way how this signature get’s included into virus & malware scanners (by summer / fall 2015 at the latest; that above linked signature from github was placed there Feb 2016; the original was given in that Netzpolitik article dated 2015-06-19).
So you have to be assuming two things:
a) That the DNC had absolutely zero virus scanners active on its servers (granted that can be true …).
This is complete nonsense. That a signature like this may get posted in some repositories in no way means we must assume any system which gets infected by it “had absolutely zero virus scanners active.” Rather than go into detail explaining why this claims is incredibly dumb, a source you referenced lists hwo various antivirus programs perform against this very malware. 1/3rd of the programs fail to detect it.
There is way more wrong with what you said than that indicates, but if you’re going to fabricate things in such an obvious way, I don’t see any reason people should bother responding to you.
That said, I don’t agree with your claim this IP address “was the main part of the attribution.” That IP address wasn’t even mentioned by Crowdstrike or a number of groups which made the attributiobn. You and Steve McIntyre seem to have overstated the significance of this issue.
Quick summary, details & links follow below:
1] CrowdStrike (CS) did not explain in sufficient detail their attribution in their blog post [A].
2] As to the ‘number of groups’, I have found only one security company (Fidelis) who explained their attribution in sufficient detail and they DO mention 176.31.112.10 specifically [B, F].
3] A known expert (Thomas Rid) also did mention this IP address and said it was one ‘of the strongest pieces of evidence’.[C]
4] A few sources (TIME, The Intercept) indicate that CS did also use an IP address associated with APT28 in their attribution, but if so it is not in their blog report. The TIME even mentioned 176.31.112.10 specifically.[D]
5] Another security company (Mandiant) said ‘the malware and associated servers are consistent with those previously used by “APT 28 and APT 29’, but unfortunately they did not give details as to which server (IP address) they mean. [E]
The only one I know of that was used before is 176.31.112.10.
So I do not think that I have overstated the issue. Of course our information is extremely limited, which may lead to tunnel vision…
[A]
I do not see where CrowdStrike explains, in their report (actually: blog post ‘Bears in the Midst: Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee’ of 2016-06-15), how they determined that some of the malware was APT28’s XTunnel.
I do see that they supply additional IOC’s (IP’s and hashes), but those are new hashes and AFAIK also all new C&C IP addresses.
So those can’t have been used to determine it was APT28’s XTunnel.
CS did not explain in that article how they determined that it was APT28’s XTunnel, as opposed to someone else’s XTunnel or another malware from another group merely cloaked to look like APT28’s XTunnel or a re-use of an old binary by another group (or etc.).
If you have another source that explains on what basis CS attributed this, I would like to know.
[B]
CS supplied samples of this malware to a few other security groups. While the security companies seemed to agree with the attribution (those that I know of), they (except Fidelis) do not explain in sufficient details on what grounds they decided that this was probably APT28’s XTunnel. Fidelis did give much more details on the XTunnel attribution, more on that below.
[C]
Professor Thomas Rid was of course already quoted above (see comment-776105), he is reported to have said:
One of the strongest pieces of evidence linking GRU to the DNC hack is the equivalent of identical fingerprints found in two burglarized buildings: a reused command-and-control address—176.31.112[.]10—that was hard coded in a piece of malware found both in the German parliament as well as on the DNC’s servers.
[D]
The TIME reported about this (see same post above), and seemed to indicate that they got their information from CrowdStrike, but I have not been able to find any report by CrowdStrike that confirms that.
Perhaps they got this from Thomas Rid or from one of the security companies that DID explain the reasons behind their attribution?
THOMAS RID: Yes. You know, what I do is I look at specific cases and I drill down and I zoom into the details of the picture and look at that detail. So, we can often link specific cases like the one that Dmitri was just describing to another case because the tool set that they’re using is the same, really like the tool of the burglar that breaks into one building and uses the same or a comparable tool in another building.
So, one thing that I’m, for instance, interested in and that I focused on is how they broke into the German parliament and that we can link that to the DNC and, indeed, we can also link those two cases. So, the evidence is really strong that we have at this point.
The corresponding factor was XTunnel of course. And Dmitri Alperovitch of CrowdStrike did not disagree to Thomas Rid’s statements, so perhaps we can forgive TIME from getting the impression that CrowdStrike agrees.
And later in that interview Thomas Rid says:
You know, keep in mind: this has been going on for many years. This particular act, that we watched them for eight years, and over the past year, they made quite a lot of mistakes which revealed themselves.
What mistakes did they make over the past year? Well one of them certainly is using too many of the same distinctive strings, even when this wasn’t needed.
Oddly enough The Intercept (Here’s the Public Evidence Russia Hacked the DNC — It’s Not Enough, 2016-12-14) also seemed to read that (what TIME understood) somewhere in CrowdStike’s report:
Malware found on the DNC computers was programmed to communicate with an IP address associated with APT 28/Fancy Bear.
But when we look at the CS report, I can’t find any mention of that.
Yet The Intercept seems adamant about this, as further down they say:
Would these groups that “constantly [go] back into the environment to change out their implants, modify persistent methods, move to new Command & Control channels” get caught because they precisely didn’t make sure not to use IP addresses they’d been associated before?
[E]
As to the security companies: I have not found comments by ThreatConnect on the XTunnel attribution. I understand FireEye/Mandiant agrees, but I again can’t find any comments by them on the XTunnel attribution (in fact FireEye does not even mention XTunnel in their reports under any alias).
In an WaPo article (Cyber researchers confirm Russian government hack of Democratic National Committee, 2016-06-20) Mandiant did comment:
Mandiant, a cyber-forensics firm owned by FireEye, based its analysis on five DNC malware samples. In a statement to The Washington Post, Mandiant researcher Marshall Heilman said that the malware and associated servers are consistent with those previously used by “APT 28 and APT 29,’’ which are Mandiant’s names for Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, respectively.
c. For the X-Tunnel sample, which is malware associated with FANCY BEAR, our analysis confirmed three distinct features that are of note:
i. A sample component in the code was named “Xtunnel_Http_Method.exe” as was reported by Microsoft and attributed by them to FANCY BEAR (or “Strontium” as they named the group) in their Security Intelligence Report Volume 19.
ii. There was a copy of OpenSSL embedded in the code and it was version 1.0.1e from February 2013 which was reported on by Netzpolitik and attributed to the same attack group in 2015.
iii. The Command and Control (C2) IPs were hardcoded into the provided sample which also matched the Netzpolotik reporting.
iv. The arguments in the sample were also identical to the Netzpolitik reporting.
The hardcoded C2 matches those in Netzpolitik reporting (i.e.: 176.31.112.10).
And as I said above:
The mere presence of 176.31.112.10 in the binary was the main part of the attribution. And it would have been conclusive had that IP address still been active at the time of the attack, but it wasn’t.
Other elements that helped recognition were things like using a text with ‘XTunnel’ in the binary and ‘OpenSSL 1.0.1e’, that very outdated OpenSSL implementation that should have been updated (even just using 1.0.1g would have been enough to protect client and server from the Heartbleed bug).
That’s three recognizable strings that easily could have been excluded from the DNC XTunnel variants, but weren’t. Indeed ‘quite a lot of mistakes’…
In Guarnieri’s article, his X-Tunnel malware is identified as SHA-1 cdeea936331fcdd8158c876e9d23539f8976c305 – which you attributed in your list to the ESET survey. You associated SHA-1 0450aaf8ed309ca6baf303837701b5b23aac6f05 with Bundestag, but it doesn’t appear in the Guarnieri article. It appears in the root9B article (as well as in contemporary lists by Sophos, Alien Vault and later in Microsoft.) It has considerable overlap but is not the same.
3835 out of 3878 phrases in the Invincea list match between the two versions. Both versions refer to 176.
There’s an interesting transition in respect to phrases that we’ve been watching. The earlier version (“root9b” compiled 2014-04-14) has the phrase XAPS_OBJECTIVE linking back to earlier malware with that phrase. However, it’s the first version to exceed 1.0 MB in size, as it is the first to include the SSL cryptographic internally.
Jaap, something else possibly interesting about XTunnel. The version SHA1-0450aaf8ed309ca6baf303837701b5b23aac6f05 was compiled on April 4, 2014. As has been observed, it hard-coded a lot of software related to OpenSSL 1.0.1e 11 Feb 2013 – a version vulnerable to Heartbleed.
The Heartbleed defect was discovered on April 3, 2014 (heartbleed.com) and was announced publicly on April 7, 2014.
I don’t understand the purpose of X-Tunnel relative to X-Agent, but the programmers appeared to be aware of the defect and responded to it before the public announcement.
This is complete nonsense. That a signature like this may get posted in some repositories in no way means we must assume any system which gets infected by it “had absolutely zero virus scanners active.”
It was not just posted in ‘some repositories’, it was posted in the repositories that matter (samples in VirusTotal, rules in YARA), those are one of the main sources for AV vendors for new virus & malware definitions. Not to mention the publicity given to the Bundestag hack.
‘zero’ might be a bit of an exaggeration, but that is how many IT professionals would call it IMHO. I simply mean ‘as good as zero’.
I did not feel the need to define that in great detail, as that gets boring and I thought it would be understood.
But apparently not, so let me explain & define in some more detail.
A few situations can lead to ‘as good as zero’ protection:
– They may have had fit for purpose anti-virus & malware protection, but had disabled it, on the affected computers.
– They may have had fit for purpose anti-virus & malware protection, but hadn’t updated their virus & malware definitions for many months, perhaps as long as a year, on the affected computers.
– They may have had anti-virus & malware protection, but were using a product that is not fit for purpose, among others (but not limited to), because it too often fails in detecting known viruses or malware (such as failure to detect any significant set of historic samples such as those stored at VirusTotal).
Disabling anti-virus & anti-malware products gives you no protection.
Not updating the virus & malware definitions of fit for purpose anti-virus & anti-malware products gives you insufficient protection; you might as well have none.
Using unfit anti-virus & anti-malware products gives you insufficient protection; you might as well have none.
Please note that some people (even in IT) think it is OK to completely disable virus scanners on database or email servers. I disagree.
And I do not mean just that all email should be scanned for viruses, that is usually done (and always in large organisations).
I mean that the server itself should also scanned. The reason that a virus scanner gets disabled on a database server is because the scanners locks the database file, causing the database server to fail. Fit for purpose (server) virus scanner allow you to exclude database files. The rest of the server is scanned as usual. Similar for an email server such as MS Exchange. Certain special important files get excluded (and other additional measures are taken).
Because Xtunnel was given so much publicity and because a good enough signature was defined for YARA, and samples distributed to some companies and then posted at VirusTotal, it is my expectation and experience that such a virus or malware would be included in the virus & malware detection of any of the fit for purpose anti-virus & malware protection products (certainly the top 20), by sometime in 2015.
Hence my conclusion: they (the DNC) did not have a fit for purpose anti-virus & malware protection product, or they did have it but they had disabled it, or they did have it and had enabled it (most of the time) but they hadn’t updated the definitions for many months, on the computers affected by XTunnel.
I hope this is detailed enough. And I do hope the above is not really new for most people.
Rather than go into detail explaining why this claims is incredibly dumb, a source you referenced lists hwo various antivirus programs perform against this very malware. 1/3rd of the programs fail to detect it.
Granted, several so-called ‘anti-virus’ products fail to detect this kind of malware or viruses even today.
But then they do not belong to the set of anti-virus and malware security products that are fit for purpose, it is mostly the same set that fails all the time.
Nor do they belong to the set which makes it to the top 10 or 20 during product selection by any larger organization, be it government, company or otherwise, simply because their detection rate is too low.
Several can’t be used on database or email-servers because of how they operate and do not offer methods to be able to protect and/or scan properly in such a situation, which in turn leads to them being disabled on such servers. If that (usage on servers) is the intended purpose, then they are not fit for that purpose (they may still be fit for purpose for use on personal computers).
For example Microsoft Defender detects the XTunnel variants that I’ve tried (and immediately removes any such binary).
The majority of the products, and certainly all of the top products such as BitDefender, McAfee, Symantec, TrendMicro and Kaspersky, also detect them, according VirusTotal (& as expected).
Microsoft Defender is now also available for servers (included in MS Server 2016 I think) but e.g. Microsoft Security Essentials is & was not supported by MS on servers. I also doubt that Microsoft Security Essentials would detect all (or even most) XTunnel variants.
Now I’ve seen this more often (i.e. no or insufficient protection), or used to see this more often, on computer laptops used by individuals, but I haven’t seen this on server class computers at larger organizations for a very long time, certainly not as recent as 2016.
In such organizations all computer servers have one of the top 20 products installed, enabled and sufficiently updated. The same applies for most if not all of the laptops used in such organizations.
And I haven’t worked for any organization over the last decade (or so) that did not have such products installed (one of the top 10), enabled and updated on all their laptops as well. And who did not also either forbade outside laptops from connecting to their network, or did not allow them to do so if not sufficiently protected.
So I can understand, but do not approve, when this happened on the laptop of some of the staff of the DNC and even more when this happened on laptops of people associated with the DNC. For example on the laptops of individuals or groups who had outsourced the management & maintenance of their computers to some lesser experienced IT service provider. Or on private laptops of some of these people. I would hope that such laptops would not be allowed to connect to the DNC network.
But I do not really understand how this version of XTunnel could survive for even a few days, on computers with enabled, recently updated and fit for purpose anti-virus & anti-malware products. And certainly not if it was present on any of the DNC servers.
Of course CrowdStrike did detect it immediately (as can be expected), but I currently also do not understand why they (CS) left that malware in place for so long (early May to 11 June). Many AV solutions would delete or quarantine such malware immediately.
In Guarnieri’s article, his X-Tunnel malware is identified as SHA-1 cdeea936331fcdd8158c876e9d23539f8976c305 – which you attributed in your list to the ESET survey. You associated SHA-1 0450aaf8ed309ca6baf303837701b5b23aac6f05 with Bundestag, but it doesn’t appear in the Guarnieri article. It appears in the root9B article (as well as in contemporary lists by Sophos, Alien Vault and later in Microsoft.) It has considerable overlap but is not the same.
I was laid astray by the Invincea tags, as those the ‘Bundestag’ tags linked to two different samples. But the second one (dated 2015-04-22 08:49:54) is the one reported by Guarnieri. Perhaps the older one is really from the Bundestag as well, but if so Guarnieri did not say so.
Interesting, that normally indicates that they have enabled or used more of that OpenSSL library, so a more recent rebuild of that library (which usually is fairly simple, just header changes & then recompile and re-link to main program).
I still do not understand why they did not then switched to using version 1.0.1g, which hasn’t the Heartbleed bug and which is otherwise a direct replacement (no changes required to the code of the main program that uses that library AFAIK).
There were even then more modern versions of that library (none of which suffer Heartbleed), but perhaps those would require some changes to their main program. Perhaps.
Jaap, something else possibly interesting about XTunnel. The version SHA1-0450aaf8ed309ca6baf303837701b5b23aac6f05 was compiled on April 4, 2014. As has been observed, it hard-coded a lot of software related to OpenSSL 1.0.1e 11 Feb 2013 – a version vulnerable to Heartbleed.
The Heartbleed defect was discovered on April 3, 2014 (heartbleed.com) and was announced publicly on April 7, 2014.
That explains why the version of April 4 2014 had it, assuming they didn’t know, but why the Bundestag version of April 22, 2015 still had it is a mystery to me.
And their apparently continued use of 1.0.1e is odd, nowadays uncommon & unexplained (and hence included in the YARA signature for XTunnel).
wiki: “Heartbleed may be exploited regardless of whether the vulnerable OpenSSL instance is running as a TLS server or client.”
So when the Bundestag hack went public people speculated that the C&C server could have suffered the same issue and could have been hacked (this is given as one explanation why the XAgent source code became into the possesion of (at least) ESET (and I understand some other person/hacker).
I don’t understand the purpose of X-Tunnel relative to X-Agent, but the programmers appeared to be aware of the defect and responded to it before the public announcement.
Well the APT28 programmers may not have known prior to 2014-04-04, but they most certainly will have known at least a few days later.
Microsoft credits them with perhaps the largest collection or at least use of zero days, so it is indeed likely that they knew before the public knew, IDK.
The fact that they still use the old library (a year later in 2015 Bundestag) does not so mean that they can exploit this Heartbleed bug, instead it means that their software that uses this version can be hacked …
In order to exploit the Heartbleed bug you do not need that old library.
Maybe they do not care that their client has issues, as long as their servers are OK.
As far as I know their XTunnel client code simply ignores the server side SSL certificate, so they can use any kind of old certificate all the time. It is their XTunnel client software that makes the initial (hardcoded) connection to their C&C server, so they do not need to check that they are talking to the right server, they just need SSL in order to be able to talk across an encrypted line (HTTPS), without drawing too much attention. (all that based on the detailed description of XTunnel by ESET, see eset-sednit-part2.pdf or eset-sednit-full.pdf).
Another question: in the Virus Total reports on the malware, in the Details tab, there is a section on ExifTool which reports time in timezone format. All malware for Cozy and Fancy Bear has Exif timezone of +0100. However, I’ve seen reports which stated that it was compiled in Russian time zones. ??
Jaap: “Of course CrowdStrike did detect it immediately (as can be expected), but I currently also do not understand why they (CS) left that malware in place for so long (early May to 11 June).”
So, you are not buying their “shoulder surfing” story. Confirming Steve’s claim in the first post on G2, I found no media articles that highlight that the malware lay detected, yet active, for over a month. This is direct contradiction to the DNC Chair’s public claim on June 14 that the virus was “immediately” removed.
Jaap, do you have any insights as to whether the WL DNC dump would likely be the product of Apt28, Apt29 or internal leaker? What about the veracity of CS’s claim that the only exfiltration via Apt28 was the 237-page Trump opposition research doc?
Jaap, MS Server 2016, which is Windows 10 with expensive bells and whistles does not have MS Defender activated standard, luckily – as I wouldn’t rely on just that. Separate anti-virus software should be run parallel to Server 2016, best a special server version.
The version of MS Server prior was Server 2012 R2 – a renumbering every 4 years, so next should be 2020.
Steve: “one of the oddities of the bitly campaign – which has never been discussed – is that it hacked many more hillaryclinton.com addresses than dnc.org addresses, but nothing was ever leaked from the hack of the hillaryclinton.com server. Why not?”
I was thinking the same thing when going back to read the June 16, 2016,Secureworks article cited by ThreatConnect’s June 17 article. Considering the high yield achieved at the DNC and the lax security at the Clinton campaign (who got compromised first) it seems there should be more than Podesta out of those 20 clickers who went and entered their password. Oddly, his name is not among the slew of top Hillary CTU researches found out of the 106 targeted email accounts.
One explanation could be to all presentation to Assange as being separate from Apt28 attack, which is assumed to be Russian. In fact, has anyone ever heard Assange questioned on this point? How can he claim Russians were not involved considering the SecureWorks article displayed facts?
Also, if the HillaryClinton.com Gmail attack was the same tools and MO as the DNC attack, and they were the source of the WL dumps, they would have to be disguised in some way to Assange to hide the bear prints, assuming Assange has an ounce of self-respect or honesty to his stated convictions.
If the bear did disguise his paws on both email dumps to WL how does G2 fit in? G2 clearly had inside knowledge that the DNC was the subject of Assange’s cryptic interview of June 12. G2 also clearly undermines the legitimacy and impact of WL per se by maniacal and dishonest clowning and
lack of contribution of any important docs.
I was thinking the same thing when going back to read the June 16, 2016,Secureworks article cited by ThreatConnect’s June 17 article. Considering the high yield achieved at the DNC and the lax security at the Clinton campaign (who got compromised first) it seems there should be more than Podesta out of those 20 clickers who went and entered their password. Oddly, his name is not among the slew of top Hillary CTU researches found out of the 106 targeted email accounts.
I thought Podesta had a personal Gmail account broken into, not one connected to Clinton’s server. Am I mistaken? As a follow-up, do we know who at the DNC or on Clinton’s server actually had their account broken into? Clicking a link to a fake web page asking you to reset your account doesn’t do anything on its own. At least some of the people who clicked the link would have not have been tricked into giving up their password.
Brandon, I would think that if they clicked on the prompted link many would comply since they would be provided the expected Gmail log-in screen and be directed to their account after entering their credentials. There is not much reason to click on the first prompt if you were suspicious. Anyway, I could not find the article I read that I think 7% of DNC staff that were presented with the phish went hook, line and sinker for it.
BTW, I have a comment above you in moderation. One of the answers to my own questions in it is that the Clinton For America IT staff consisted of two employees from MIS Department Inc., (maybe on loan,) and two others here.
The #2 IT person on the DNC 2016 chart is the present VP of MIS Department Inc. and has worked there since 2011. His two co-workers and MIS were the two who cleared Podesta to click on the reset password link.
The domain name misdepatrment[.]com selected by Apt28 in the DNC hack indicates knowledge of the Hillary For America hack, where the #1 and #2 IT administrators were from MIS Department Inc. and the hacker knows foolishly told Podesta the phish was “legitimate.” Misdepatrment[.]com is a taunting inside joke. Question: who would make the joke? We can eliminate the current VP of MIS. The only CS would make up Misdepatrment[.]com was if they were aware of the Hillary For America hacks. He might do it to connect the two incidents. Would a state-sponsored hacker group create an evidence trail intentionally just to have a taunt?
Brandon, I would think that if they clicked on the prompted link many would comply since they would be provided the expected Gmail log-in screen and be directed to their account after entering their credentials. There is not much reason to click on the first prompt if you were suspicious. Anyway, I could not find the article I read that I think 7% of DNC staff that were presented with the phish went hook, line and sinker for it.
I can’t say I agree. Being suspicious of a link doesn’t mean a person won’t click on it. I’ve clicked on many malicious links out of cur4iosity. Besides which, a person might not get suspicious until they’re asked to give their password.
The domain name misdepatrment[.]com selected by Apt28 in the DNC hack indicates knowledge of the Hillary For America hack,
I have two questions. First, why do you think referencing MIS Department indicates any special knowledge when it was no secret the DNC was a client of MIS Department? Second, what hack are you even referring to when you say “Hilary for Clinton hack”?
A large number of local campaigns had their DCCC national party vetting research leaked to the local press helping their GOP opponents. It looks like the DCCC hack, Hillery for America (Podesta hack), and DNC hacks were exactly the same MO during March and April of 2016. If they were indeed all connected this shows an anti-Dem motive, not just an anti-Clinton one. Crazy Guccifer 2.0 was self-defeating when it came to trying to promote WL but seems to have been effective in local races. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/house-democrats-hacking-dccc.html
Brandon just got some crucial facts in front of him from Jaap (digital fingerprints) but didn’t like what they implied, so he rejected them. He also diminished the list of people to who he wants to respond to to 2 or 3.
He sounds like a frustrated DHS member 😉
Jaap, Dave or anyone, I read in the Equifax breach evaded detection for months only by keeping the ex-filtration data volume sufficiently low to emulate normal traffic. Is it plausible that the cf.z7 and ngp-van.z7 zip archives could have been ex-filtrated over the internet in whole without setting off alarms? If not, would this point toward a leak vs. hack?
Ron, I read a few weeks ago that it was suspected that an insider aided the breach. I regard this as one of those affairs that may never be brought to light. I think Equifax may have an interest in suppressing facts to curtail liabilities. Also, there are criminal liabilities for some of their management. So…?
Also, I think it’s possible that the hack may have been by the U.S. IC. They are currently building a database on all U.S. citizens. The DHS likes this sort of stuff.
Well they could have used their own file transfer protocol, which sends stuff in whatever size they need, at whatever time that seems best to keep hidden. They do not need to send the entire file in one go, they can always recombine the parts after arrival.
So even zipping lot’s of documents, which creates one large zip file, does in itself not mean that they would have to send it in one big file transfer.
Any file transfer is broken up into smaller parts, but then usually it is send in one steady stream. That means that switching to a steady stream of small packets is also not so smart, so they would have to sprinkle some random delays here and there.
I am not capable of deciphering the discussion here. Not in my skill set. What is the consensus among you all, if there is one? Was it a hack, or a leak? Was it likely the Russians? Do you believe that your discussion here is getting at the truth? Is everyone aware that the government agencies, with thousands of skilled analysts, has access to the same information that you have and a lot more? Of course, the intel agencies could be incompetent and/or dishonest. Would anyone care to comment?
I think Steve has an ultra-proprietary moderation algorithm that includes a Monte Carlo component for anti-counter measures.
Don, I did a little extra background research this week and found virtual unanimity in the past year’s published articles and books. They all say the Russians did it as an “active measures” operation. That said, Watergate was not broken by experts or by authorities but by hippie reporters too naive to trust the FBI’s investigation. They likely still might not have succeeded if not for a patient editor (Ben Bradley) and a sympathetic anonymous insider, FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt (aka Deep Throat).
We must admit Steve likely took heat from everyone to be so naive as to question the authority of the IPCC Third Assessment’s most impressive graphic in 2001.
If we can find enough forensic chinks in the armor of the establishment case on the DNC hack I think it could be used to build a case if evidence also appears from other places like the Seth Rich FBI file or Imran Awan Capitol Police investigation.
Both Thomas Rid, Professor of Security Studies, King’s College London and Kevin Mandia, CEO of FireEye, Inc., testified before the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last March 30, concluding Apt28 has been increasing its volume and brazenness of operation. They assume DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 were creations by Apt28 to publish fruits of their exploits. Wikileaks is seen to be an unwitting accomplice, as would we if we put together a theory that would only make it on InfoWars. That is why I said we likely would need more than any forensics alone. This does not mean the establishment has the truth any more than it means that Watergate was not connected to the Whitehouse as the FBI concluded after their investigation.
Steve, I was tongue in cheek. But actually, we hate to bother you to release things. Perhaps you could delete some more moderation trips and publish the remaining ones. George Carlin had a point: how can we avoid the bad words if we don’t take a look at them?
I didn’t disclose all moderation words before, because I didn’t want people to circumvent. I’ve de-greylisted some words that were annoying in climate discussions: leftist, Obama, army (for some reason) and a few others. Hitler, Jews, Nazi remain greylisted though the latter word is being used for Ukraine. Work around it.
The Socialist Nationalist Party of Ukraine (SNPU) adopted wolfsangel of Waffen SS and marched as brownshirts. Doesn’t seem unreasonable to label them as neo-Nazis.
Racism was embedded in their party platform:
Given the prospect of massive degradation of individuals and entire nations, we are the last hope of the white race, of Humanity as such. […]
The original Nazis were not only anti-Semite, but racistly anti-Russian. Anti-Russian racism was part of SNPU platform:
We must resolutely separate ourselves from our northeast neighbor, not only because he is aggressive or could take hold of us, but, first of all, because he brings in our lives, in the Psychology of our people, things that are different from European values.
in contrast to the Ukrainian, psychology and traditions which were created over thousands of years, the Russians have not yet formed a nation, the vast majority of so-called Russian – yesterday Finno-Ugric tribes, peoples of the Urals and Siberia, nomadic Mongoloid origin, so the Russians as typical national nihilism, which is destructive to peoples with traditional culture.
The brownshirt in the above image was military leader in the Maidan coup (top two images in panel below), later warmly congratulated by Victoria Nuland of the Obama admin, who made multiple trips to Ukraine to meet with leaders of the coup in the weeks prior to coup and was taped deciding who would be in the post-coup government and by John McCain who, like Nuland, had met with leaders of the coup in the weeks prior to the coup and encouraged Maidan demonstrators.
Steve, how many of those nasty neo-nasties are in the current democratically elected government of Ukraine? You avoid that question for some reason. The fact is that it was not a coup perpetrated by whatever you want to call them. Contrary to the KGB Putin story you are trying to promote, the great majority of the Ukrainian people are not rabid anti-Russian neo-N*zis. They elected in 2010, a Russian who can barely communicate in Ukrainian as their President. Do you think they just set him up, so they could depose him in a coup in 2014? Unbelievable.
No, it was the losers of the 2010 election who engineered the Maidan (with the very considerable help of the Obama administration).
That important fact eludes you every time. The usurper government then proceeded against his supporters. This occasioned the secession of the Crimea and the Donbass. It’s not so difficult to understand. The neo-n*zis were the strongarm of the insurrection, Nuland was the money bag.
I wouldn’t call anybody or any group neo-N*zi. Especially not based on some adopted insignia or words that they spouted. They would have to commit some atrocities on the scale of the originals to merit consideration for the label. Khmer Rouge would be candidates. But I agree with a lot of people who think it’s inappropriate to fling that label around willy nilly. I believe that we should reserve the brand N*zis, for the originals. They are the only folks who I can think of, who have properly earned it. There are still some OG N*zis lying around in nursing homes, if you feel you need to point them out.
Describe the folks you are talking about by their actions and I will tell you if I agree with your description. That’s how I judge people. Mostly by what they actually do, along with consideration to what I think I know about their intentions.
And you dodged my question again. No problem. We know the answer and why you are dodging.
How would you characterize Putin? I am guessing you don’t think he is a neo-N*zi, or you would be happy to say so. How about neo-Stalinist KGB bred thug? Or maybe you prefer: Savior of oppressed Russians, everywhere.
Or, you could just answer the question. Or , you could comply with this request: Describe the folks you are talking about by their actions and I will tell you if I agree with your description. Or, you can play games.
They are not a significant power in the current government and those who were in the interim government resigned voluntarily.
“Political Image
Olexiy Haran, a political science professor at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, says “There is a lot of misunderstanding surrounding Svoboda” and that the party is not fascist, but radical.[92] Ihor Kolomoyskyi, president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, stated in 2010 that the party has clearly shifted from the far-right to the center.[93]
Political scientist Andreas Umland predicted the party would continue to become more moderate over time, and that “there’s a belief that Svoboda will change, once in the Verkhovna Rada, and that they may become proper national democrats.”[44] Since then, the party has gained seats in parliament and has net over 10% of the national vote in the 2012 parliamentary elections. The US ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, said in 2014 that he had been “positively impressed” by Svoboda’s evolution in opposition and by its behavior in parliament. “They have demonstrated their democratic bona fides,” the ambassador asserted.[80] Alexander J. Motyl argues that Svoboda’s brand of nationalism “has significantly diminished during, and possibly as a result of, the Euro Revolution.”[94]
Membership was restricted to ethnic Ukrainians[30][35][35][./Svoboda_(political_party)#cite_note-svoabout-36 [27]], and for a period the party did not accept atheists or former members of the Communist Party. The party has been accused of recruiting skinheads and football hooligans.[“
Don, I’m trying to deal with five different topics. Not ignoring you. But Andriy Parubiy as a start. He’s co-founder of Socialist Nationalist Party of Ukraine, was military leader of the Maidan opposition. In charge of National Security in immediate post-coup government. continues to be leading figure in government, met earlier this year with Paul Ryan and others in US, Justin Trudeau in Canada.
Wikipedia says although SNPU’s name and symbol were N*azi inspired in their 1991 formation, they dwindled down to 1000 members by 2004 and then merged with another group to form In 2004 the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda”
…with the arrival of Oleh Tyahnybok as party leader.[14] Tyahnybok made some efforts to moderate the party’s extremist image.[21] The party not only replaced its name, but also abandoned the Wolfsangel logo[8][14] with a three-fingered hand reminiscent of the ‘Tryzub’ pro-independence gesture of the late 1980s.[8] Svoboda also pushed neo-Nazi and other radical groups out of the party,[22] distancing itself from its neofascist past while retaining the support of extreme nationalists.[21]
Putin has a pretty unsavory past as well. The choices around the globe are usually more like those in Syria than those in established democracies. Why don’t we give them time. I doubt Putin’s Russia is promoting centrist ideals.
I agree Ukraine hacker are highly suspect, especially of exploiting the situation once the Russian flag got painted on the DNC hack/leak.
5) DNC/Clinton/CS make sure media does not portray DNC files as leaks if they are what Assange was referring to. They make sure the attribution is Russian hack as CS eagerly accepts Russian planted whiskers on Apt28.
6) Ukrainians create maniacal Guccifer 2.0 in Russian clown makeup, just as they had done with Apt28.
Problems:
1) Ukrainians likely favored Clinton as more anti-Russian.
2) They had no reason to put Clinton/DNC fingerprints by planting Warren Flood’s name.
3) They had no reason not to have G2 prove himself by showing DNC docs pre-release of WL.
4) Russia already would have taken heat for their active hacking and trolls. Why risk the break in good relations with US and Clinton when Clinton would likely win anyway?
OK, that’s a start. What exactly is your point? Parubiy was appointed by the interim government Secretary of National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine on Feb 27, 2014 and resigned on August 7, 2014, reportedly because he disagreed with some government military policy. Do neo-N*zis respect civil authority and resign from powerful security positions over policy differences, or do they stage a coup and take power for themselves?
Subsequently Parubiy was elected to parliament in a free election, and he is now the speaker of the parliament. He meets people. So what? Read the comment I left a few comments above. Svoboda is not a party anymore. Things change. No reasonable impartial observer of Ukrainian society and politics would try to make the case that Ukraine in general and the government in particular is dominated or strongly influenced by neo-N*zis. Nonsense.
And it wasn’t a coup and that is all I have to say about it.
The Austrians just gave two Austria first, nationalist, right of center parties 58% of the votes in parliament election. OMG! The N*zis are back in charge of Austria.
Don, you know very well that Austrian Sebastian Kurz has very little to do with anything like an A.H.
Austrians trying to dam the flood of illegal immigrants forced up on them by Brussels is quite natural. A good number of those trying to enter are young men of a certain intolerant religion. Eastern Europe seems to have more sense than most of Western Europe is this respect. Trump’s Mexico wall might do something similar.
Elements in Ukraine are very different: violent against others living there since long time, who speak their language, mostly share most culture just not their ethnicity.
no anthem disrespecting from hockey nation. BTW, Canada is very vulnerable to Trump’s whims in the NAFTA negotiations. My guess is that the only nation that will actually end up seriously damaged from Trump’s economic policy won’t be China or Mexico or Russia, but Canada.
We also respect other anthems. Canadians of my generation know stirring Russian anthem from memorable 1972 Canada-Russia series. Russian players are known and respected in Canada.
You have a dim view of Trump. But I assume you don’t think he is racist, if you guess that he is going to be rougher on Canada than those other lands. He has reasons other than economics to be harder on China, Russia, and Mexico. We still consider Canada to be an ally, except for the frenchies. There is a video of Montreal hockey fans booing the U.S. anthem, I believe during a game against the Boston Bruins. And a video of the Boston Bruins fans’ reaction when Montreal team visited, explosively cheering the Canadian anthem.
I grew up in Detroit, but we didn’t have a car and didn’t get out of the ghetto much. Closest I came to Canada was getting a Canadian coin in change. once in a while. Hated that. The stores wouldn’t take them back. Never got to Canada while I was traveling the world fighting for truth, justice and the American way. We never got to invade Canada and felt no pressing need to spy on you all. I spent time in just about all of our allies’ countries except for Canada. Maybe you neighbors figure we are close enough, if you need help you’ll just holler.
Don, I don’t get the standard of naming groups by their actions. We should wait until they commit atrocities to label them Nazis? By that standard, the Nazi Party of 1930 isn’t Nazi either.
My original question was actually the other way. I wasn’t asking if these parties are legitimately Nazi, but whether use of National Socialist to get around the filter was still accurate. I didn’t know that was the official name of the current Ukraine party.
Don, I don’t get the standard of naming groups by their actions. We should wait until they commit atrocities to label them “National Socialist”? By that standard, the National Socialist Party of 1930 isn’t “National Socialist” either.
My original question was actually the other way. I wasn’t asking if these parties are legitimately “National Socialist”, but whether use of National Socialist to get around the filter was still accurate. I didn’t know that was the official name of the current Ukraine party.
Reposting to get around the filter. Use of National Socialist in quotes is a replacement for N**i
I didn’t propose any standard of naming groups by their actions, Mike. Groups name themselves. Those calling them by other names, are labeling/branding. I said I am among those many people who think applying the brand neo-N*azi willy nilly is not kosher. Maybe there is a group of clowns somewhere who actually put on costumes and call themselves neo-N*zis, or just plain N*zis. They are just posers.
I am not capable of deciphering the discussion here. Not in my skill set. What is the consensus among you all, if there is one? Was it likely the Russians? Do you believe that your discussion here is getting at the truth? Is everyone aware that the government agencies, with thousands of skilled analysts, has access to the same information that you have and a lot more? Of course, the intel agencies could be incompetent and/or dishonest. Would anyone care to comment?
What is the consensus among you all, if there is one? Was it likely the Russians?
IDK about a consensus, but my view is: Very unlikely the Russians.
So either there was a hack, but it wasn’t the Russians, or there wasn’t a hack in the first place, it was just a smoke screen needed because Wiki Leaks was about to release some DNC emails which had been leaked (by someone at the DNC).
Do you believe that your discussion here is getting at the truth?
Babysteps. Who knows where the road might leads us?
But I do think we are getting closer, yes.
Of course there is a lot of basic information withheld, which complicates things.
But what I can check doesn’t add up. And this is just one of many related matters where that is true.
Is everyone aware that the government agencies, with thousands of skilled analysts, has access to the same information that you have and a lot more? Of course, the intel agencies could be incompetent and/or dishonest. Would anyone care to comment?
Probably. But then there is no investigation into this at the moment, now is there?
I mean AFAIK it is not exactly what Mueller (et al.) is looking into. Of course one can hope, but I don’t hold my breath.
The DOJ and by extension the FBI has been recused & barred from looking into anything related as long as they (Mueller et al.) are busy.
In 2016 the FBI was rebuffed when they asked to get a look at the DNC servers.
So they have not seen any Trojan active in RAM of a computer, they have not been able to see the network traffic while it was active. (assuming there was any).
And they apparently did not even get a disk image, so they also will not have been able to look into any OS logs (system, event, security), nor have they lifted the (alleged) malware binaries from the disks.
So all they had to go on is a report, a set of pretty blue eyes & “Scout’s honor” 🙂
After 2016 the Mueller investigation started. So unless he is really bipartisan, I doubt any serious investigation has been done since June 2016.
Asking a few handpicked analysts to write that they agree without some politically inspired conclusion written up by their masters does not really convince me I’m afraid.
You have to convince me with evidence. And there is a lot you can tell me without breaking any state secrets.
Knowing that intelligence assessments are always in danger of being shaped by politics, until President-elect Trump stated on January 11, “I think it was Russia.”, I would not accept the attribution, by Obama’s hacks.
Trump’s reluctant concession came a few days after his comprehensive briefing by the agency heads, including NSA and CYBERCOM chief, Adm. Mike Rogers. People who should know have made it known that Trump has confidence in Rogers, and Rogers’ explanation of the evidence and the rationale for the conclusion were convincing.
Rogers has consistently indicated that he was less certain than the heads of the other agencies summarized by DNI Obama hack Clapper, who concluded there is “high confidence” that it was Russia. Rogers has stated his agency had “medium confidence”. The other agency heads (all Obama hacks) are gone and Rogers still serves. I am with Trump and Rogers on this one, until some more authoritative explanation comes along.
I have a very good idea of what the capabilities of the NSA were 23 years ago and I am sure they have increased in scope and effectiveness considerably. See Snowden. And take a guess on what their budget is. Back in September of 2015, before Trump was hardly a gleam in our eye, the NSA informed the FBI who notified the DNC that their systems were being attacked by the Russians. DNC said “Huh?”. The attacks and the NSA-FBI notifications continued, until it became big news. The NSA-CYBERCOM didn’t come upon the attacks by examining the DNC servers. Well, maybe they had also hacked the DNC servers. Anyway, the point is that there are other ways to discover and track hacking attacks.
Jaap, why would you think no serious investigation has been done since June, 2016? Trump’s people have been in charge of all the agencies long enough to review the Obama regime’s “investigation”. I know that they have not just accepted the product of the Obama hacks. And the intel agencies are not going to reveal details on exactly what they know and how they know it. They are prohibited from doing that. Period. Don’t expect to get any more than has already been told, unless Trump finds out something that indicates the original Russia conclusion is suspect and he decides to tweet it.
Anyway, I admire the technical knowledge that most of you have and would be happy to be convinced that there is persuasive, or better yet conclusive evidence that it ain’t Russia what done it. Show me, and I’ll pass it on to interested parties. Thanks.
Jaap, why would you think no serious investigation has been done since June, 2016? Trump’s people have been in charge of all the agencies long enough to review the Obama regime’s “investigation”. I know that they have not just accepted the product of the Obama hacks.
The FBI departments and field offices can’t just investigate something like this without approval from higher up, all Obama appointees. And I’m pretty sure the then head of the DOJ, AG Lynch, would forbid it.
Hence I said the issue is that during 2016 there was no real opportunity for a proper investigation. The FBI and DHS were not allowed access to the DNC servers.
And after 2016, yet before the incoming administration had been able to replace all those Obama appointees, the new AG had to recuse himself and the independent investigator was appointed, which means that organizations like the FBI are not allowed to do their own separate investigations, unless ordered to do so by the special investigator.
And I think the special investigator will believe the conclusions from the IC of late last year (I mean why not), so will not waste time on little details like who exactly hacked the DNC, were the Wiki Leaks DNC hacked or leaked etc.
Unless of course there are reasons to revisit that. Say because other parts of the investigation (like the dossier) start to smell a bit.
Also we know of several other related issues that should have been investigated and the right conclusions should already be known, yet the FBI did not make any public comment on that, despite the fact that such investigations should have been finished by early November 2016 at the latest.
They claim that this was because of the ongoing investigation, but any ongoing investigation must be into other issues.
And the allegations, though unproven, could therefore still be used during an election.
One issue is the ‘communication between servers of the Alpha Bank and the Trump organization’.
That whole story was fairly quickly dismissed in various articles, like the one by The Intercept, or the one on Errata Security (Debunking Trump’s “secret server”), yet the FBI refused to comment (because: ‘investigation still ongoing’).
An Alpha Bank email server was doing look-ups to a former Trump Hotel email server address. That server was never owned by Trump Hotels, but was owned by a company hired by a company which was hired by Trump Hotels to send marketing emails. That server was in fact no longer in use for the Trump organization. It is still part of a group of servers that send marketing emails for hotels, but just from other chains.
What the Alpha Bank server was sending are normal look-ups and queries which are done as course of exchanging emails.
It was just a bit odd that the Alpha Bank server was still doing that (and so often) when the last emails send from that ‘Trump’ server must have been sent many months ago.
But no secret communications.
An deeper investigation by a professional Cyber unit would have made the matter even more clear. Sometime later another article detailed such an investigation.
It appears that the Alpha Bank had two email servers. A short check revealed that one server was setup properly, but the other wasn’t.
The issue was that the second server did not properly check and challenge the sender of any email. As a result it could be fooled. A sender could act as if the email came from another email-address and the badly setup server wouldn’t challenge that. This could be done by spammers using other one’s email addresses to hide behind or by a hacker wanting to create havoc or even implicate Trump.
Now the FBI could come to the first conclusion fairly quickly, and to the second shortly thereafter. But they didn’t say anything.
They didn’t say that the victim of the allegations was blamed without cause. Nor did they say that in fact all evidence made it quite clear that what happened was the result of someone spoofing the Alpha Bank servers.
Same story here. The NSA, FBI et al. discovered what they determined to be Russian hacking of the DNC back in Summer of 2015. I am guessing they didn’t just pick Russia out of a hat. They continued to monitor the activity and repeatedly warned the DNC up until the time the DNC finally took action and the story became public. Do you not count that as an investigation?
The investigation was done before Mueller ever became involved. Do you get the part about the NSA informing the FBI it was a Russian hack back in summer 2015? Of course, Mueller is going to rely on the investigation that has already been done and maybe review it for problems. That is what Trump has done and he is persuaded that it was probably Russia. What would you suggest be done to come to what might satisfy you as being a more reliable conclusion?
Jaap, thank you so much for your volunteered expertise here. In case you hadn’t seen my question to you earlier, considering the Guccifer 2.0 files may have come from a 7z backup, would it have been too noisy to have exfiltrated the 820MB cf.7z file? Were the 7z files likely created after exfiltration?
Also WRT, 2a. you say:
Misdirection by APT28 – unlikely but say they really want to be found, so they reuse an outdated binary in order to … ?
…IMHO 2a is very unlikely, what would be their motive?
According to several expert statement to the US Senate Committee on Intelligence of March 30, 2017, the Russians primary goals in an active measures were to cause a breakdown in trust in democratic institutions and to exploit division within societal fabric.
According to Thomas Rid’s statement of 3-30-17, the Apt28 has grown in the use of unwitting agents to enhance effectiveness of active measures, citing WL and leveraging of social media. So, Adam Carter could be a Russian. For all we know we are fulfilling a pre-ordained role as unwitting accomplices to spread doubt. There is precedent for this in the climate debate with the “merchant’s of doubt” meme, believed or not by climate activists. Steve, has been accused of being a fossil fuel shill (I think in Mann’s Climategate emails).
The Russians may indeed want to do that.
My question simply was: why would they want to implicate themselves? Had they simply installed a properly updated version, they could still ensure detection, if that is what they really wanted.
It may very well be that this is what Trump was briefed on late 2016. I.e. that there was evidence that the Russians were trolling both campaigns (e.g. that several pointers in the ‘dossier’ were to Russian fabrication).
I think other secanrio’s are more likely, like a third party wanting to get the USA mad at Russia (& vice versa), that third party being say Ukraine, Iran or some Islamist group.
George Eliason was probably the first person to suggest that Ukrainians might be involved in the DNC incident. See here.
Of the various details in the article, I was most struck by the fact that Alperovitch is a Twitter-follower of several very obscure Ukrainian hacker groups (I’ve confirmed this) with very strong anti-Russian animus and clearly having very superior hacking skills: they hacked Surkov, an important Russian. I didn’t get the impression that Alperovitch twitter-followed hackers in general; his interest in Ukraine appears specific.
Hardware backdoors: in processors, HDDs etc.
The USA today: good at cyber offense (including on all of its own citizens), bad at cyber defense.
Like inventing N-bombs and afterwards loosing the technology to the USSR due to lacks internal security -> Vault 7.
Not a good set up.
As fun (and interesting) as this thread and series has been to follow, I can’t help but think those ‘in the know’ have been following as well. Fortunately for me I’ve never been in a position to be in danger for knowing too much. Ask my wife. On the other hand, she knows everything.
We are those meddling kids. Don, the fact that Russia does cyber attacks and active measures campaigns does not mean that every attack is the Russians. According to Alperovitch’s own account he made the conclusion Russians are in the DNC network in less than 10 seconds when he got a phone call at 6:30am on May 6, from his staff that they had installed Falcon (CS’s anti-malware) on the DNC server and found both Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, the latter matching the signature of code used in the 2015 Bundestag attack.
The analyst said there was no doubt. Falcon had detected malicious software, or malware, that was stealing data and sending it to the same servers that had been used in a 2015 attack on the German Bundestag. The code and techniques used against the DNC resembled those from earlier attacks on the White House and the State Department. https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/5bgwfj/culminating_analysis_of/
Ron, I don’t care what Alpobitch said. The NSA-FBI warned the DNC back in Sept 2015, that they were being attacked by Russian hackers. The NSA-FBI warned them more times subsequently that they were still being attacked, up to the time the DNC hack became public. Crowdstrike had nothing to do with any of that. The NSA-FBI was monitoring the hacking in real time and they knew where the hacking was coming from. Have you read the Economist article that I have left the link to a couple of times describing the signal intelligence, cryptanalysis capabilities etc. etc. of the NSA and CYBERCOM? Add to that the snooping of the black bag boys. What you people are discussing here is the info handed out by CrowdStrike and whatever tidbits the government has revealed. What use is that? Trump accepts that it was probably Russia. He has access to all the information. What is going on here is called speculation.
I appreciate your kindness, Ron. It is hard to keep up with who is responsible for which and what theories based on which alleged facts and obvious fictions, the back and the forth, the charges of dishonesty/stupidity, who is a neo-Nasty and who ain’t, who’s on first? yatta yatta yatta.
By June 15 the Russians saw they were going to be flagged for DNC WL, which would be considered serious active measures. The DCLeaks.com domain, being registered on April 19, shows some intention by that time for the later (July-onward) DCLeaks dumps, which were both Dem and GOP targeted, leaving only foreign suspects.
I don’t see Assange accepting the DNC emails without an American insider (likely Seth Rich) taking claim as the source. Once the DNC emails are out and the DC leaks I see it possible the Russians saw the opportunity they could recruit an American to hand Assange the Podesta emails.
Today I found an avenue for Seth Rich to plausibly have access to the Podesta emails. The MIS Department employees were working for both Hillary and DNC. If one of them shared Rich’s affection for Bernie, well… And the IT employees would also have to be aware of the system breach. Thus when CS declares extreme secrecy about the breach as they “shoulder surf” the hackers for a “short time” (a month) Seth Rich could easily have been a person in the know. The reason CS demanded secrecy was that the network for that month was wide open for an unattributed hack/leak by anyone having access, including Bernie supporters.
The reason the DNC FB is highly suspect is that both the DCCC and Hillary for America organizations had been attacked a month earlier. CS was brought into both (I believe). But I know all three organizations shared The MIS Department as their IT vendor. And, the DNC switched off Google as their email/document platform in response. How could the DNC not have installed anti-malware before CS’s May 6 Falcon considering they were warned by the FBI repeatedly and MIS presumably? Why all the old code used in Apt28, as Jaap pointed out?
It seems the point you’re making, Don, is that the FBI/NSA knew the DNC was getting hacked. Are clever and powerful enough to know this but apparently not clever and powerful enough to stop it from happening. So either they are also incompetent, or, more likely IMO, they didn’t care enough to want to prevent it.
Either way, tt therefore seems like a stretch to then assume they care enough to do a thorough attribution assessment when suspects had been fingered before the event had even taken place.
I don’t see much there but speculation, Ron. Part of your theory is that Cozy Bear was rummaging around in the DNC systems for a year, up until the DNC finally called in CrowdStrike. I don’t see any good reason to believe that they are not the most likely suspect in giving the hacked product of their rummaging to wiki.
Your lame suppositions are comical, Dave. The NSA-FBI repeatedly notified the DNC that they were being hacked. It is not within the authority of the NSA-FBI to stop traffic to and from the DNC systems. They continued to monitor the activity and continued to warn DNC. Maybe the DNC liked to get hacked. You have no clue about the competence of the vast majority of the people who work for the FBI and the NSA and the other intel and law enforcement agencies. You are just another smug clueless kibitzer.
Mike, I think the basic rationale for Seth being the leaker is that he got rubbed out. Also, I heard there is some connection with the Dallas School Book Repository. My theory is that Seth was not involved, but got rubbed out as an example of what would happen to the real leaker, if he/she talked. Think about it. These people are very diabolical.
OK Don, ha ha. But yes, the fact that Rich was murdered, Assange offers a $20K reward and others claim Seth Rich involvement show he was either rubbed out or got so distraught from the prospect he drank his troubles away into the night, walking home ~2 miles in DC at 4am into a fatal mugging.
Don says w/ sarc: “These people are very diabolical.”
On the contrary, they are saving the free world. That justifies extremes, (just like climate activism). I’m certain the Ukranian neo-N@zis and the Putin thugs are equally convinced of their own purity.
Some say Hillary is cold and has a temper but she was understanding enough to offer Rich, a huge Bernie supporter, a job in the Clinton For America campaign. He was considering the job, according to his family, when he was murdered.
And while we are laughing at such nefarious, spy novel ideas. Most outwardly laughed at the Vince Foster murder theory. One notable exception was the last person to witness him alive, Linda Tripp, who Foster, walking out of the office handed his extra M&M candy from his lunch (because he was on a diet) and asked her for a pager and said he would be back in an hour. She did not see his depression that the Clintons would later refer to. She saw the Clinton assistants rifling though his files in their, the safe broken into, the park police ordered to stay in the hall, etc… So when Monica Lewinsky confided to her 5 years later about the sex in the oval office Tripp feared for the young girl’s life. She recorded Lewinsky on the phone about the affair, asked to keep the blue dress for her, and 7 months later compelled her to come forward to the Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr.
Don: “I don’t see much there but speculation”
Granted, all profiling is speculation. I’m just organizing clues. If you see flaws in my logic or my regard for Sir Occam feel free to give it to me.
I will be watching you, Ron. I think you are on to something. Somebody needs to organize the clues. You should team up with Brandon on that. Dude is high strung and a pain in the buttocks, but he has good analytical skills. Enjoy.
Don, several people have come forward to make note of Hillary’s temper. Some of them not even waiting 24 years to dare so. If the incident did happen as described a reasonable reaction might be resignation, not suicide. The Foster death investigators I suppose you would label “grassy knoll truthers” suspect the note his briefcase, found by the Clinton staff a week after the death, was a resignation letter rather than a suicide note. It was ripped into 27 pieces. The missing 28th piece was the closing and signature. Although the note was in Foster’s handwriting there were no fingerprints (of anyone) on the note. Try imagining ripping a paper into pieces without leaving a fingerprint on any of them. But considering anything nefarious is just crazy talk. What am I saying. The Clintons are gentle, laid back souls of the utmost character. I guess my point was that even people on the White House staff, like Tripp, did not buy it.
Don, what is your explanations for Imran Awan leaving in a phone closet for the Capitol Police to find: a laptop with user name RepDWS, his ID and a note saying “attorney client privilege?” Why would Awan do such a thing to DWS when she is being so non-Islamophobic as to pay him the highest salary allowed, hire his friends and family and continue to keep him on the payroll for months after the authorities bar him from access to do his job?
Most people who commit suicide have what would seem to be more reasonable alternatives. I recall evidence that he was depressed. Maybe he believed what Hillary probably said, that he was a failed POS and he didn’t want to go back to being a hick town scheister.
You failed to mention he was shot through the mouth with his own gun that was found in his own hand. I have not heard of any actual evidence that indicates anyone else shot him.
We are interested in actual evidence more than we are interested in speculation and people’s feelings and suspicions. You hear of a lot suicides where the friends and loved ones say, nah he would’ve never done that. According to people I know, who are in the know, they are white collar criminals. Of course, when you have a lot of power, even white collar crimes can be very significant, bordering on treason.
I have no idea why Swami Enron Awan left that laptop there. Not even sure he left it there. I just hope that creature DWS and her multi-million dollar crooked crew of IT flunkies all go to jail. One cell for all of them, to save money.
For those who would like to know the facts and forensics of the Vince Foster investigation the notes of the Fisk-Star investigator Miguel Rodriguez is a good place. Here is a small quote from an interview of Rodriguez:
Miguel Rodriguez:
It’s ah, the result is being dictated by a lot higher, um, authority than I think people really understand or appreciate and certainly more than I ever appreciated. What with this whole notion ah, you know, of, of doing an honest investigation, um, you know, you know, it’s, it’s laughable.
I knew what the result was going to be, because I was told what the result was going to be from the get-go. And then there’s all so much fluff, and a look-good job, it’s just, this is all, all so much nonsense and I knew the result before the investigation began.
That’s why I left. I don’t do investigations like that – do investigations to justify results…
Well barn, you tell me who they are and I will think about why they wouldn’t be watching. Are they people interested in few facts and a lot of speculation? If they are smart, they can do their own speculation. If they are the people who I suspect you are talking about, they have far more information, facts and heads to think about it than you see here.
I am not conversant in the technical aspects of the hacking game. Probably down around the level of your knowledge. What I am picking up here is that there are few facts known and very likely at the end of this discussion you all will still be just speculating.
On the other hand, we have your Hero POTUS Trump reluctantly admitting that he believes the Russians probably done it. He has access to all the information that went into the intelligence and law enforcement assessments, he has his own technical and legal experts to advise him and you all got next to squat to go on. Do you seriously think that a few guys on a blog are going to come up with a more reliable assessment than your Hero and his gazillion dollar national security and law enforcement team? I know it’s hard for you, but use your head. On this one, you should probably just trust in the infallibility of your Hero. Or, he could be lying about believing it was the Russkis (3D chess). Well, you are back where you started until The Donald makes his next move. Carry on with whatever it is you are trying to do.
I think the point of this thread is that “to few facts are known” at least publicly but yet positive and politically charged attribution was made. Given this it is appropriate to examine what is known, and not known including classic elements of means and motive.
The attribution that has substantial authority was made by the intelligence and law enforcement communities, who had the DNC server (and everything else on the planet) under surveillance, since Summer of 2015. They had alerted the DNC on several occasions that they were under attack by Russkis. We are all free to whine about lack of evidence, but they are not going to reveal the details of what they know and how they know it. It’s spy stuff. Shhhhhh!
I left a link to a very authoritative 2013 Economist article describing the capabilities of the NSA, CYBERCOM et al. (It seems to have been studiously ignored.) Very likely the billion$ that have been spent since then have added to those intel capabilities.
Oh, but the government agencies might lie. No problem. Try to prove it on a blog with a half dozen disorganized contentious kibitzers who can’t agree on what is a fact and what ain’t, and who have access to practically none of the information that the big boys know about.
If you all want to get somewhere on this, put Brandon in charge for a while and follow his directions. He knows his doo doo and is a fastidious little character with a lot of time on his hands. He also seems to be more objective than the rest of this crew. You are also going to need a black bag man. Use painter. He is highly expendable.
Don: “…but they are not going to reveal the details of what they know and how they know it. It’s spy stuff. Shhhhhh!”
Don, this is only comforting when you are sure everyone in every compartment are “the good guys” and that they, and everyone else, know what that means. There is a clear historical conflict between a free societies right to know against its right to security, real of hypothetical. J. Edgar Hoover, famously lost sight of the difference between his personal interests and those of America’s, although he was absolutely certain to his death that they were one and the same.
Going back to your logic, if the US IC knew that it was not all the Russians they could not tell us that because to do so would also compromise their sources and methods, just like when Churchill allowed his merchant convoys to be sunk by U-boats rather than endanger Ultra. After all, the Russians certainly deserve blame and scorn. Why not keep it simple for the public?
It’s not my logic, Ron. It’s the rules of the trade. Don’t give anything away. If they do let something slip, most likely it is deliberate mis-information. Or wait, it might be a deliberate attempt to make you think it is deliberate mis-information.
Don, I agree that it’s SOP to hide knowledge to hide sources and throw up misinformation to hide misinformation to hide possible information. That was my point. Theoretically, the US IC is there to serve and inform the commander-n-chief. Thus, what is their purpose when they are flooding the media with leaks about the president, especially if it is misinformation? This begs us to ask how useful is it to have cloak and dagger agencies leading a free society. This I believe is what motivated Truman’s Dec 1963 Washington Post letter and Eisenhower’s farewell address warning.
Putin has voiced his belief that the US IC aims to undermine and destabilize his country. This gives him perfect rationalization to do the same, and we have every reason to believe that is his top goal. The reason for Putin and the US IC’s mutual belief that the other is out to destabilize is not coincidental; it’s what these agencies do naturally by their mere existence.
Ron, the DNI was ordered by Obama to review and report on Russian activities during the election. They followed orders. Obama could have ordered them to reveal specific evidence. Trump surely ordered a review of the evidence for the conclusions in the report by Obama’s DNI POS Clapper. I am pretty sure that if there was evidence it was Seth Rich or those pesky Canadians what done it, we would have heard about it.
The cloak and dagger organizations do not lead our society. They follow lawful orders from the President. Congress has oversight powers. The Congress created the CIA and they could abolish it. If they don’t like what’s going on there, they could cut the CIA budget to $3 and 29 cents. Of course the POTUS would have to sign the bills. The CIA is subject to the laws of the land, just like everybody else.
Under Obama the intel community was turned into a politicized cesspool. Every department of the executive branch, likewise. It is not the institutions that are leaking, it’s former Obama officials and some politically motivated a$$holes who remain on the job. Hopefully, they will be discovered and locked up in jail where they belong. I am sure that some of the leaks have come from idiots brought on board by Trump. Who knows why those fools are doing it. Jail them also.
The motivations and activities of our intel services and Stalinist KGB Putin’s services are not all that similar. For example, our services serve the country. Putin’s services serve Stalinist KGB dictator Putin. And when you see Putin’s lips moving, it is very likely he is telling a lie. He knows that our problem is not with Russia. We want a stable Russia that is not led by a Stalinist KGB dictator who is trying to resurrect the Soviet Union of Evil Empire fame.
Don: “I am pretty sure that if there was evidence it was Seth Rich or those pesky Canadians what done it, we would have heard about it.”
I can’t think of any historical examples that would lead one to that conclusion. In Watergate the break-in was planned and executed by US IC personnel (or their outside agents). When they got arrested in the act we did not see the US IC come out and say, “Hey! those are the guys that we recruited to overthrow Castro. Now they have tarnished our good name. Throw the book at them.” On the contrary, whoever planned it knew that the CIA would become an accessory in a coverup should it be needed. That’s why they were chosen. Nixon, indeed is on tape suggesting they use the CIA to persuade the FBI to stand down. The only reason we know anything about Watergate is an odd series of events:
1) J.E. Hoover die and Gray was appointed, stepping over acting Deputy Director Felt, who was next in line.
2) Bob Woodward happened to strike up a friendship and developed a mentor relationship with Felt before and as Woodward decided to become a reporter.
3) Felt was left in charge of investigating Watergate (which surely would have been a whitewash, like the Clinton investigation.
4) Felt was willing to go outside of all this due to his dislike of Nixon to take great risks to meet with Woodward late at night on the few occasions that Woodward would leave a red piece of cloth hanging on his balcony as a signal. Felt would only confirm information that Woodward got independently from another source, again out of fear.
I am not aware of any person in the US IC ever prosecuted for misconduct short of being a double agent.
Don says: “Under Obama the intel community was turned into a politicized cesspool.”
What is going to stop Elizabeth Warren or Clinton or Sanders from returning it to a cesspool? Why not drain the whole mess while we have the president who could do it. If Trump allows the CIA’s JFK next week that will be a great sign in that direction.
Ron, I said:”Trump surely ordered a review of the evidence for the conclusions in the report by Obama’s DNI POS Clapper. I am pretty sure that if there was evidence it was Seth Rich or those pesky Canadians what done it, we would have heard about it.”
Do you doubt that Trump would order a report to be released, if his agencies’ finding was that it was not Russia, or that there is a significant doubt? Can we try to have some reasonable level of reading comprehension around here.
Why drag up your vague impressions of Watergate? “In Watergate the break-in was planned and executed by US IC personnel (or their outside agents).” Uh, huh. Then you can name the people involved and the intel agencies they were working for.
Name a person acting for the intel community that wasn’t prosecuted for a crime you can prove that person committed. You don’t know about all the people who have been disciplined by the intel community.
What do you mean by drain the whole mess? Is it to throw out the baby with the bathwater?
Don, I read and understood your point. But it assumes one believes the president is in command of all the US IC’s intel. And that would assume full employee loyalty to their elected commander, who you’ve acknowledged are undermining him, even at the risk of their careers (and freedom, if you believe they would be prosecuted.)
Don says: “Then you can name the people involved and the intel agencies they were working for.”
Will you really be ready to change your position if I document the CIA connections to the Watergate burglars? Or, are you just giving me a makework?
Don says: “You don’t know about all the people who have been disciplined by the intel community.”
If any of them have been jailed, or even suspended without pay, I think it would be unconstitutional to have them deprived of our judicial system.
The “mess” is similar to the one is all government agencies except there is even more of a rationale to keep dirty laundry in house since national security is attached to everything. To keep from throwing out the baby I would propose moving any counter-espionage to the FBI, who is rightfully in charge of that anyway, move other intel gathering to NSA and other agencies. I would move the military assets of the CIA to the special forces and disband the letters C I A from our government and world lexicon except in historical reflection.
With those with the record of highest integrity and non-partisanship I would start a new small agency charged with oversight of the US IC that would report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Devon Nunes on the Russia investigation looked like a dear in the headlights recusing himself. It just too spooky for a small senate staff to have the hot-seat of responsibility. The news this week that the Uranium One deal was approved while being secretly under investigation for corruption should never have happened and could be the inspiration for the formation of oversight within the US IC.
With the re-alignment of the US IC, Trump could announce to the world that not only are we out of the business of nation building, we are out of the business of nation meddling. For if we don’t we cannot claim the moral high ground. If we don’t have Toronto behind us we can’t expect any other part of the world would be.
Don, I did a little Googling on Watergate’s CIA connections and found this.The five burglars sued Nixon’s campaign in 1977 for having tricked them all into thinking the burglary was part of a CIA operation. Nixon’s CRP settled and paid them $200K, (the same CRP that had paid them with a slush fund of donor’s cashier checks after their arrest to keep them quiet in 1972,).
Often referred to as the “foot soldiers” of Watergate, the four men have testified that they believed they were working for a national security agency when they were recruited for the June 19, 1972, break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters here. All four said they had participated in CIA operations against the Castro government in Cuba, including the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
Researchers believe that Nixon used these men’s involvement in the plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, (and/or JFK,) to gain the cooperation of the CIA to help in the coverup. Nixon’s code for the nefarious secret is “the Bay of Pigs thing.”
In giving instructions to Mr. Haldeman in the June 23 conversation to secure Mr. Helms’s cooperation in the Watergate cover‐up, the President told his aide to remind the C.I.A. chief that a vigorous investigation of the break‐in might “blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing, which we think would be very unfortunate—both for C.I.A. and for the country, at this time, and for American foreign policy.” http://www.nytimes.com/1976/03/12/archives/nixon-explains-his-taped-cryptic-remark-about-helms.html
Here is a transcript of the Nixon-Haldeman excerpt:
Nixon: When you get in these people when you…get these people in, say: “Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that” ah, without going into the details… don’t, don’t lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, “the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don’t go any further into this case”, period!
Haldeman: OK.
Nixon: That’s the way to put it, do it straight (Unintelligible)http://watergate.info/1972/06/23/the-smoking-gun-tape.html
Trump tweeted this morning that he will not block the release of the CIA’s JFK file whose historic deadline for release is next week. But, Trump added, that if Pompeo or other official made a clear case to him to continue to withhold them that he would. (What?) The press is expressing doubts that there will be a smoking gun connection to the CIA revealed. I would share their doubts that such would be reported since there is already a smoking gun in that the CIA apparently had a cut-out visit the Russian embassy in Mexico City weeks before the assassination under the name Lee Henry Oswald to create a pretext to block investigation after the assassination from opening a can of worms “that Russia thing.” The CIA did not count on J.E. Hoover getting a hold of copies of a audio and video surveillance of that “Oswald” visit and determining it was not Oswald, according to a memo from Hoover to Secret Service Chief Rowley on 11/23/63.
…..The Central Intelligence Agency advised that on October 1, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identified himself as Lee Oswald, who contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring as to any messages. Special Agents of this Bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas, have observed photographs of the individual referred to above and have listened to his voice. These Special Agents are of the opinion that the above-referred-to-individual was not Lee Harvey Oswald. Memo from Hoover to James J. Rowley, Secret Service, 11/23/63; AR 249-50; cf. FBI #62-109060-1133, NARA #104-10419-10022.
Since we’ve taken a pause from SHA1, SHA2 and binary strings, the move American Made that came out last week is about a CIA pilot named Barry Seal (played by Tom Cruz). The movie has Seal being recruited in the late 1970s to run drugs for the CIA but actually Seal goes much further back. In fact he was recruited at the same time Lee Harvey Oswald was and by the same man, David Ferrie (played by Joe Pesci in the movie JFK,) who was their Civil Air Patrol leader when they were teens. There is a chance Barry Seal was the get-away pilot for a Dallas CIA team on the day of the assassination, as he is said to have claimed. After Seal’s death in 1995 the CIA stormed his house, according to his widow, to clean anything of importance. But they missed one picture that she kept in a hidden safe. It was picture of Seal with nine other men known to be part of Operation 40, the CIA plot to kill Castro. It was taken by a Mexico City nightclub photographer in January of 1960.
There is some debate about some of the identities but it shows Barry Seal, Porter Goss, later to be Bush Sr’s CIA director, (looking away,) Tosh Plumlee, who admitted being in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963, (cloaking his face partly with his jacket,) and Virgilio Gonzales, one of the five Watergate burglars.http://www.madcowprod.com/2017/09/17/american-made-lies-sex-videotape/
Nice work, Ron. I am sure that will all be corroborated when the JFK docs are released. The public outcry will certainly result in the CIA being disbanded. Your honorary G-man badge, plastic whistle and tin foil hat are in the mail.
The release of the files is guaranteed to improve support to uncover CIA involvement. The only questions are to what degree, how many of the suspects will be implicated and in what ways. For example, Plumlee claims that a small part of Op 40 colluded with the mob and he was sent to stop the hit but got to Dealey Plaza only in time to witness the event. E. Howard Hunt sued a conservative magazine for libel after they published witness claims he was in Dealey Plaza the day of the event. The jury found not only was the magazine not liable, the jury felt Hunt was guilty after the testimony of the star witness, Marita Lorenz. She was Fidel Castro’s mistress and mother of his child before being recruited by Hunt (aka Edwardo) to aid in an assassination plot. After it failed Hunt aided her in fleeing to Miami. She recounted the story of traveling to Dallas, Hunt and a trunk full of cash and rifles. She begged to return home to Miami the care for her baby and thus left a day before the event.
Correcting in the caption that Porter Goss was G W Bush’s CIA director. Goss’s bio has the CIA stationing him in Mexico after his recruitment from Yale in 1960, so the files being released may shed more light on his role, which is likely just knowing the players. The highest officer thought to have been directly in control was David Atlee Phillips. E. Howard Hunt’s recorded deathbed confession to his sons of his involvement and that of Phillips I just saw and have not read about yet. St. John Hunt is the son who is talking openly.
Don, I just took the family to see American Made. Even though it’s only half true you should see it or read Daniel Hopsicker’s book, Barry and the Boys. It’s not anti-conservative nor anti-liberal, it’s anti-nation building, a historical lesson that should be learned in glorious detail. Future generations need to beware of the mistakes of the past, even if they were with good intentions. The cloak of national security should <b<never be used to spare embarrassment. The nation’s brand needs to be protected. Our pride and world leadership not only can survive the truth and transparency, they depends on it.
Was Joe Peschi in that flick? You seem to get a lot of your BS from Joe’s films.
If I believed what you do, I would move to another country. Aren’t you scared to death the black helicopters are going to swoop in and gangster CIA ninjas slide down ropes to shut you up? One of those razor sharp star shaped throwing things, right between the eyes. Isn’t that what happens in the movies, Ron? You live an exciting life, in your head.
The people who work for the CIA are Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Eagle Scouts. A lot of them come from the elite branches of the military. The cream of the crop, the top of the class. They are not gangsters. You need to find something to take your mind off this corrosive foolishness. Do you like model trains?
Don, I greatly respect the service of our IC and military forces and have no problem encouraging people to serve, including my own children. I was a Boy Scout leader for 11 years and my wife continues to be Girl Scout leader for over 25 years and running. My issue is a desire to see our country live by the scout law.
Do you think Trump should withhold the last JFK files? When would you have had them released? Have we ever had files released that we could see were being held for any other reason than for embarrassment? Waiting for perpetrators to die is not a good reason to withhold evidence.
It seems that Trump is going to release the JFK files. It was a long time ago and I don’t think it will be a big deal. People in the agencies take omerta very seriously, so they would prefer that nothing ever get’s released. But they don’t get to make the final determination.
Non-entity has found a criticism of the CIA on a right wing web site. Usually, they love the CIA, but it’s the Russia thing now. The lefties usually want to destroy the CIA, but now they love the CIA and Comey. When Russia Russia Russia turns out to be a flop, they will go back to hating. Bunch of hypocritical clowns on both sides.
Anyway, non-entity’s article says the CIA mistakes almost caused nuclear war…the Cuba thing…yatta yatta yatta. The CIA is the continuation of the OSS. We won WWII and the Cold War and as far as I know we have managed to avoid nuclear annihilation, while saving most of the planet from communist tyranny. We are the pre-eminent superpower and when we fail to kick a$$ properly, it has been due to weak political leadership and a lack of will to go the distance. We are a democracy. If the Soviet Union had gotten the bomb before us, they would very likely have ruled the world.
When one criticizes the CIA, I say compared to what. Wasn’t it really Soviet intelligence that miscalculated in Cuba? They thought Kennedy was Obama. Wasn’t it the KGB-Soviet Union that went bankrupt and extinct? Now they are reduced to grabbing little pieces of land from their weak Slav neighbors. When we get our LNG business cranked up in Europe and flood the world market with American oil, we just might drive them bankrupt again.
Don, I have no disagreement with your point. The world is a dangerous place, and it always gets worse with American weakness. But strength needs to be is more effective when used in the open and with an abundance of restraint, realizing it is possible to make things worse, even with good intentions.
An organization that has omerta as its official policy must be kept to be squeaky clean. That can only be done with the check of serious congressional oversight. And, there are no good reasons in time of peace to subvert any foreign government. It’s always counter-productive.
The fundamental problem is that secret operations are excused from the scrutiny of systems of open justice. The Nigerian Prince con, like all cons, are designed to entangle the victim by enticing them to temporarily compromise ethics in favor of a presented rationale. The subverting of the target to join the conspiracy then binds them to not exposing the nefarious actions, even after they become victimized, and even after they find it was a scam from the start. This same tool is the basis of recruitment of intelligence assets even when the rationale for temporary compromise is legitimate.
I am frankly disappointing that Donald Trump Jr. said, “I love it” when the prospect of Clinton ill-gotten emails was dangled in front of him. Anyone in business or in politics needs to know better.
As I demonstrated by showing J. E. Hoover covered up that a fake Oswald was used to create a Mexico City Cuban and Soviet embassy connection, even the highest officials can be subverted into joining a conspiracy. It only takes being silent for a moment, usually in a time of high duress, to permanently seal the deal.
Having activities that must permanently remain sub rosa inherently subverts open democracy. This is the reason for FOIA and the congressional order 25 years ago to release the remaining JFK files.
In reading the NYTs, I came across a reference to these points made by Joy Reid. Her points were made as follows: “So what you’re talking about is a deal that nine members of CFIUS approved unanimously. None of them was Hillary Clinton. You have a donor who separately gave Hillary Clinton donations at a time when she was not Secretary of State. The two things cross in the night, they have no relation to each other. The members of CFIUS have been very clear Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with that approving that deal.” http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/29/watch_msnbc_s_joy_reid_expertly_debunk_lies_around_uranium_clinton_story.html
If you have the time and inclination what would your response, as one in the mining industry, be.
I think that recusal is more a matter of form than substance. It also depends whether the conflicted director is a lead dog or passive. If the resolution has landed on their laps and involves a leader, the other directors know the position of the leader and have to decide whether they want to pick a fight or not. Most people prefer to get along, particularly if they are dependent on the leader.
If the transaction is wrong in some sense, I think that the conflicted director should take responsibility for not presenting the resolution to the board, rather than simply recusing. But that’s an ideal.
I don;t see the CFIUS approval as being all that important to Uranium One or something that they would even lobby hard for. If it were a problem, in their shoes, I’d dividend the US properties to a Newco under original ownership. Once they were gone, CFIUS approval would not be needed. The Kazakh properties were the ones of interest.
“If the transaction is wrong in some sense, I think that the conflicted director should take responsibility for not presenting the resolution to the board, rather than simply recusing.”
I would go further and suggest the receipt of generous gifts or lucrative contracts after a deal that was approved during a recusal should also be avoided to eliminate appearances of quid pro quo. Power is fungible and does not need to relate directly to the issue on the table. In other words indirect quid pro quos are easily constructed with the use of intermediaries.
All of the Clinton Foundation donations and speaking fees were in ethical conflict while Hillary was SoS and presumed future Presidential candidate.
It’s hard to eliminate corruption and graft completely by law. When people leave the presidency stripping off the gold plating from fixtures and selling pardons we know what they are about. Starting a foundation or doing philanthropy after leaving the political scene is admirable, i.e. Jimmy Carter. But the Clintons should have waited until Hillary was done politically before setting it up. Instead, they did the reverse of Jimmy Carter’s example, they actually shut it down then.
I’ve just looked at the plea agreement of Vadim Mikerin, which has got in the news lately. That a Rosatom subsidiary was engaging in extortion in the US seems highly relevant to the CFIUS approval. It’s disquieting that this wasn’t brought to the attention of the committee making the decision. If that information was withheld from me as a member of the committee, I’d be pretty mad. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
An investigation into the digital break-ins that disrupted the U.S. presidential contest has sketched out an anatomy of the hack that led to months of damaging disclosures about the Democratic Party’s nominee.
The investigation helps explain how a Russian-linked intermediary could boast to a Trump policy adviser that the Kremlin had “thousands of emails” worth of dirt on Clinton.
how a Russian-linked intermediary could boast to a Trump policy adviser that the Kremlin had “thousands of emails” worth of dirt on Clinton
my take: whatever Mifsud was talking about (if story true) would have been the 33,000 deleted emails from Clinton server – then and later very much in the news. Retrospectively attributing prediction of DNC hack or Podesta emails in that incident is fake pattern spotting.
OT: Steve, have you seen that Penn State’s payouts to victims in the Sandusky scandal are now over $100 million? Article says that total financial costs to Penn State in the scandal are now 1/4 BILLION dollars! (I don’t know what all the other costs might be, although lawyers and investigators must add up, but another $150 million??? weird….).
Just think of how much of Michael Mann’s “research” President Spanier et al. might have supported with those funds!
Is Donna Brazile starting to confess that she fears Clinton killed Seth Rich? Newsweek is reporting some strange comments made by Brazile in her new book and recent interviews. She dedicates her book in part to “my DNC colleague and patriot, Seth Rich.” Patriot? Although Rich is pictured wearing clothing with the US flag patterns, it seems unlikely Brazile is referring to that. Newsweek goes on:
Rich appears elsewhere in Brazile’s book, as the Post reported earlier in the weekend. She wrote that Rich’s murder haunted her and that she’d installed surveillance cameras at her home and would keep the blinds in her office window closed so she could not be seen by snipers, according to the Post.
Brazile talked about Rich on ABC News’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. She told the host about her critics: “They don’t know what it was like to be over the DNC during this hacking. They don’t know what it’s like to bury a child. I did: Seth Rich.”
Seth Rich is “haunting her?”
Why is Brazile afraid of snipers and putting DNC hacking in the same sentence as burying Seth Rich? As we might recall, after Brazile flatly denied supplying questions in advance to Hillary before a debate she came forward unprompted months later to confess to the act, a Washington rarity.
she came forward unprompted months later to confess to the act, a Washington rarity.
when she lied to Megyn Kelly, she prefaced her remarks by saying that she was a “Christian woman”, perhaps a rarity in Washington political classes notwithstanding public religiosity. IF so, she would have had regrets about her initial lie and sought to make it right.
She’s going to be on Tucker Carlson tonight. I hope that he asks her why she was nervous.
Brazile screwed up. She could have sold the rights to _Hacked_ to the Clinton Foundation for, who knows? 20, 30, $million, Lord knows that it has the money. Now she has to settle for, maybe a measly $million or so.
But maybe she has something else to sell. To the Clinton Foundation.
The DNC/Hillary campaign paid $10 million to Fusion GPS through Perkins, Coie. Steele reportedly received about one million. What was the other nine million used for?
Reportedly, the House Committee on Intelligence seeks additional bank records from Fusion GPS which “could reveal if Fusion GPS had paid any reporters or media sources to plant stories”.
What many don’t know is that it is perfectly legal for a news source to print or broadcast planted stories and receive a fee for doing so. Happens all the time. And now reporters and commentators have their own Twitter accounts a.d so they, too, can rake in some Clinton loot.
Don’t get your hopes up. P&C would have done a lot of legitimate and semi-legitimate legal work for the hag’s campaign and the DNC. And the only reporter I can think of off the top of my coconut who reported on Steele dossier info before the election was David Corn. Of course, that rascal’s bank account needs to be checked. Post election payoffs to reporters doesn’t seem too likely. Could have happened. I hope Fusion gets turned inside out. Happy hunting, painter. Did you see the reception Trump got in China, compared with the shabby treatment they gave Obama? OMG! Trump is colluding with Red China! Now they’ve got him.
I might have more hope in you getting results than The House Committee on Intelligence. Are they still working that Ben Gazi thing?
I think lawyers get paid a lot more for semi-legitimate work. And don’t forget it was a nationwide election. Lot’s of legal jobs and payoffs to be done. Still, I hope they all get locked up. But I have learned not to get too excited about the hyperbole I see on Fox and various right wing websites. That Hannity is a freak. Tweets about a new bombshell every day. Could have something to do with driving ratings. We may never know.
Actually,Perkins,Coie revealed that they had engaged Fusion GPS on behalf of Hillary campaign. They had their reasons. My own preference is more light be put on this whole business, not less. The public should be informed, not kept in the dark.
“Binney says he conducted an independent analysis of the metadata from the emails with a focus on timestamps that he says indicate a download speed consistent with loading the files onto a thumb drive.
“I was willing to meet Pompeo simply because it was clear to me the intelligence community wasn’t being honest here,” Binney said. “I am quite willing to help people who need the truth to find the truth and not simply have deceptive statements from the intelligence community.”
Former DNC chair Donna Brazile’s revelation in her new book that she feared for her life after DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered helped shed new light on Binney’s theory.”
the problem with Binney’s argument is that the timestamps, in my opinion having looked very closely at topic, are from secondary copying by G2 AFTER exfiltration of the files, NOT speeds of exfiltration. So they don’t shed light on any substantive issue.
OBL figured out the power of USB keys around 2005, but the NSA is still dithering.But N.S.A. employees say that with thousands of employees pouring in and out of the gates, and the ability to store a library’s worth of data in a device that can fit on a key ring, it is impossible to prevent people from walking out with secrets. Yes! But after No: Lurking in the background of the Shadow Brokers investigation is American officials’ strong belief that it is a Russian operation. The pattern of dribbling out stolen documents over many months, they say, echoes the slow release of Democratic emails purloined by Russian hackers last year.
Chose a scapegoat; lets pick Russia.
The NSA still could find these cyber “Shadow brokers” breaches after over a year. Enter Crowdstrike: a few days and the DNC breach is solved. Two guys better than 20,000 others? Only when the attribution is to the designated scapegoat.
I hope that Pompeo has the toughness needed to deal with the Bush/Obama/Clinton holdovers/Trump haters. These are committing felonies in an effort to undermine his authority. If he is reluctant to take effective measures he compounds the problem.
But not all of the NSA are lowlifes; there are those who find that the nefarious methods used by that organization are morally repugnant. No need to blame it on Russia. The scum that run our intelligence organizations fail to reckon with decent types who are repelled by what’s going on.
No doubt the vast majority of those working for the NSA started out as decent guys. Only when you keep on working on domestic mass spyware or offensive weapons only you become complicit to the twisted policies of some guys at the top.
Money is not everything: neither is (the illusion of) Power.
I agree with you, Anthony, that almost all working in the intelligence field are dedicated to do good. What gets them into trouble is when they assume the opposite about the people working in the FSB and GRU. How can mortal enemies both be in the service of the Lord? This is an age-old question. My answer is to reverse the destructive conundrum is trust building. If that is the case then making false flags, which lead to false accusations is the devils work, regardless of patriotism.
A relatively recent example would be America’s War between the states.
Robert E. Lee is a sterling example with him being offered command of the Union armies, but chooses to side with Virginia; his home, his relations and his friends.
Don, the flaw with moral equivalence is the premise that there is no ultimate objective that is morally superior to another thus all actions must be judged on their immediate merits. My argument is different; I believe there are legitimate ultimate ends. However, I think it’s universally apparent they are easily clouded with pride, tribalism and self-interest. The virtue of the USA is derived from diversity and openness and the ideals of its founding that preserved liberty. The USA has flawed but is also a great distillery of ideas, a finder of common ends. The only universally agreed upon common ends I can see are the expansion of truth and trust. The justice system’s aim is to instill trust and civil discourse.
Having a secret agency with the aim of securing and preserving a nation is understandable. The price of doing so with active measure is extreme. The reason: false flags, attacks and secrecy undermine the only agreed upon universal virtue of trustworthiness.
I’m talking about inside the U.S., what’s being done against U.S. citizens on a wholesale basis. If the public were aware, there would be universal outrage directed against the IC. The worst offender is the DHS. Have you not heard about what’s been done against Trump?
There is no refuge anywhere. Without the critical faculties and the disposition to employ them, all so necessary to good judgment, intelligence types aren’t as smart as they like to think. The ones at the top are political appointees and after twenty eight years of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama see what you get.
Hi Steve,
I don’t care whether you post this or not. Having had great respect for your auditing, your insights and your blog demeanor in the past, I’m saddened by what I now read here. I typically go the the last comments of a posting and reel upthread at the many forums I monitor. In this thread the last hundred comments seem to be dominated by about six individuals who seem to be refugees from the InfoWars website. The anger, conspiratorial ideation, wild accusations, weakly supported allegations and blanket vitriol against individuals and various agencies of the American government is disturbing to me. Rarely do I find in their comments the key words that I believe skeptics should use, “I believe, I think, probably, maybe, it seems, apparently, etc.” You seem to be a man of measured belief and prose, your recent comment threads undermine that estimation in my opinion. Trading contemplating scientific considerations for angry political mud-wrestling is not something I’m willing to do. Thanks for the past. Good luck in the future.
The truth is emerging, but by bit. It now appears that Obama, the DoJ, the FBI conspired to obstruct justice in Hillary’s case and then proceeded to weaponize the DoJ and the IC against candidate trump in order to secure her election.
Ironically, Mueller is investigating Trump for obstructing justice and so arms a future special counsel with the precedent of investigation of a president for this crime. Prison for Obama and his DoJ following.
And that’s not all. Obama violated the same security law that Hillary did when he corresponded with her through her private server. Prison for both of them.
There is much more to come and I am confident that it will be coming for years. Just imagine, we have yet to hear about Nellie Ohr and her ham radio escapade. It will all come out.
Is there any substantial evidence that Obama (using a pseudonym) sent confidential information to HRC’s clintonmail.com email address? I doubt it. McCarthy at the NR link below has a story that makes little sense. Was this email turned over to the DoS with the rest of HRC’s work related email? Was it found by the FBI when searching the records of others at the DoS who might have received a copy? In both of those cases, the records would have been outside the control of WH and HRC and unlikely to have been suppressed. If Republicans had subpoenaed Obama’s (not HRC’s) records of emails with HRC over Benghazi, I suspect any president would have asserted executive privilege. In none of these situations would McCarthy have any way of knowing that Obama had written (or even received) classified information
If the DoJ and IC had been weaponized against the Trump campaign, the rumors about the Russia investigation spread by the DNC, GPS, and Steele (and shared with some Congressmen) would have been confirmed by “anonymous sources” the press could trust. This would have created an uproar BEFORE the election. The uproar actually occurred in January, when news of Trump’s briefing was leaked to the press and Buzzfeed followed up by publishing the Steele dossier, still without confirmation from any official source. I have seen one minor story from before the election that wasn’t picked up by any major news organizations. As best I can tell, the DOJ and IC properly refused to confirm their investigation into the Steele dossier until Comey informed Congress. If the Steele dossier (which had reached many) had been published on November 1, I doubt Trump would have won the election.
You are wrong, Frank. The Steele so-called “dossier” is ludicrous. That is why the media did not run with it, until the desperation set in over Trump’s glorious victory. The Dem team, including Obama’s lackey intell sttoges didn’t think it was possible hillarity would lose. Why risk making fools of themselves over the ludicrous Steele “dossier”? And it is a well-known fact that Obama exchanged emails with hillarity through her homebrew server:
Frank also seems unaware that the FBI contacted David Corn of Mother Jones (James Baker, FBI General counsel) just prior to his October 31 article which revealed the dossier against Trump. My guess is that Baker vouched for the reliability of Steele, who had presented the dossier to Corn. Steele had been peddling the dossier all over, trying to sucker anyone he could, without success. Comey, who knew that the dossier was partisan invention, was trying to keep this peddling effort at arm’s length. But, in desperation he had Baker contact Corn in mid October. Baker would not have done so on his own initiative. Bottom line: Comey made a belated effort to get the dossier publicized before the election. So David Corn bought and Mother Jones published on October 31, thanks to Comey/Baker. It will all come out. The IG report will likely expound on this episode.
Now Comey is Professor of Government Ethics at William and Mary College. hahahoho.
mpainter: “Is it your position that Obama never exchanged emails through her personal server? Is that what you believe, Frank?”
More strawmen from mpainter. Such tactics are unworthy of this website.
“And of course Obama corresponded with Hillary over her private server. They had lots to talk about, don’t you know?”
According to McCarthy, there were a total of about 20 emails – about one every three months. So no, they didn’t have “lots to talk about”, at least by email via an insecure server. Obama allegedly was somewhat of a techie for a politician, with a staff that provided him with a secure Blackberry for his use at anytime and access to secure communications every minute he was outside of the WH (both his office and home). There is no reason to assume that his communications were insecure. HRC was a neophyte, with secure email available only when she was in her office via a PC, a device she never learned how to use. (HRC’s paranoia and secrecy were additional complications.)
McCarthy provides no evidence that Obama’s email security was sloppy. McCarthy merely cites (normal) concern among Obama’s staff when Obama denied knowing about HRC’s clintonmail.com email address, an address Obama had an opportunity to notice about 20 times between 3 and 7 years earlier. (I’m sure his technology didn’t force him to personally type that email address.) Perhaps Obama lied about not knowing, but that still doesn’t demonstrate that his personal email practices were insecure. When McCarthy can cite evidence showing that several of the passages Obama sent to HRC were latter classified (or one was highly classified), then I’ll pay attention.
The Ohrs and others are further evidence that the Obama DOJ was filled with insiders with conflicts of interest – and conclusive evidence that Comey was wrong when he told Congress that the email investigation was carried out in a manner the FBI could be proud of.
Rather than draining the swamp, Trump hired some of its bottom feeders (Manafort, Flynn, Bannon, Stone), NYC billionaires married to Marie Antoinettes, and family members naive enough to meet with Russians about HRC’s email and the Magnitsky act and then dissemble about it. Since Trump hasn’t disclosed his taxes or put his holding in a blind trust, as most recent presidents, he obviously cares less about conflicts of interest and an appearance of propriety than any recent president.
Frank says that Obama would never obstruct justice like Trump, no, not that sacred icon of purity and goodness. Well, I have a different view of the man.
Obama’s main methods depended on deceit and subterfuge, Frank. This fact apparently escapes you. It will all come out. Grassley has just demanded from Hillary and John Podesta a comprehensive accounting touching on the Steele dossier. The trail leads to Obama’s White House. Lots and lots to come.
We will eventually learn everything that Obama has to hide. Will Hillary make a deal with special counsel? Somebody surely will.
And if Obama pseudonymously discussed classified matters via Hillary’s insecure server just once, that is all it takes. Gross negligence is the formula. The courts will disallow any claims of privilege by Whitehouse staff. Obama knew he had transgressed in this matter. It will all come out. That is why there are so many panic-stricken democrats running around screeching their lungs out. It will be hugely entertaining, the next year or so. Sacred icon of purity and goodness gets sent to the septic tank.
mpainter wrote: “Frank says that Obama would never obstruct justice like Trump”
Didn’t say that either, but I agree that Obama would never obstruct justice as stupidly as Trump may have. I say “may” because we don’t know whether Trump knew about any crimes that may have been committed by those working for his campaign. Obama could count on the loyalty of Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch and others to side-track investigations; he didn’t need to get his hands dirty.
Likewise, I doubt HRC or Podesta had any personal involvement with the Steele dossier. They are smart enough to have others handle such activities. An attorney at Cole Perkins handled the Fusion GPS contract. There is nothing illegal about paying for opposition research, though the possible mischaracterization of opposition research in a FISA court appear problematic. (The Steele Dossier is unlikely to be a Russian disinformation campaign, because it might have helped HRC get elected.) Perhaps the renewed investigation of the Clinton Foundation will bear fruit.
Frank, Obama publicly exonerated Hillary, claiming that the law did not apply to her case. A public lie. And you say that he did not get his hands dirty. Prison for Obama for public obstruction of justice. Someone will turn states evidence, Frank, don’t you know? Surely Obama was advised on the law. You had best return to your old position where you repeated Obama’s lie: Hillary had no intention therefore she is innocent.
No, Trump did not obstruct justice by firing criminal James Comey. It was his constitutional prerogative and you have run up your jolly Roger by trying out such nonsense on this blog. It won’t work. Frank.
Also prison for Obama for violations of security law. And no telling what else, once the special prosecutor gets going. There are scores of Obama types that he will methodically pick off, one by one, and of course they try to save their necks by telling everything. It will be havoc, a pyramid of skulls with Obama’s on top.
You are counting your chickens, paint. You are bound to be disappointed. It takes evidence and squealers to put folks in jail. The Dems are good at hiding sheet destroying evidence and lying. Obama in particular will very likely skate. He enjoys the same Constitutional protections for his actions in office as does Trump. I predict that some relatively small fish will fry. Hopefully, a lot of left loon ‘civil service’ politicized hacks still in the govt. will be thrown out. That also won’t be easy. Trump 2020! MAGA!
Don Monfort, supporter and booster of Ukrainian neo-natzis, calls me a right wing loon. This is about the ninth occasion on this thread that he has resorted to name calling or some other type of personal aspersion against me or somebody else here.
Whenever I wish to win a debate with this juvenile, I deliberately nettle him. It works every time and he never wises up. Good entertainment, that montfort.
mpainter: “No, Trump did not obstruct justice by firing criminal James Comey. It was his constitutional prerogative and you have run up your jolly Roger by trying out such nonsense on this blog. It won’t work. Frank.”
Mr. Trump was always free to fire Mr. Comey. In our system of checks and balances, it is Congress’s constitutional prerogative to impeach presidents for interfering with criminal investigations that involve the president – and thereby placing the president above the law. If Congress wants to call Mr. Trump’s action “obstruction of justice”, they are free to do so. They did so with Nixon (who believed he had authorized $1M of “humanitarian aid” for the families of the Watergate burglars) and Clinton (who certainly failed to tell the whole truth about Monica when under oath). If Mueller doesn’t uncover any serious evidence of collusion, then Trump IMO had the right to try to dissuade the FBI from wasting time on an investigation that was initiated by speculative opposition research funded by the DNC and lacking any basis in fact. Trump may have known that he was not personally involved in any form of collusion – but he was an idiot for interfering: He could never be sure what his associates had done!
Our system of justice does not allow any potential defendant – even a president – to decide: what is “humanitarian assistance”, what is hush money, what is a non-monetary political campaign contribution from a hostile foreign government, what might be a quid pro quo deal to exempt certain Russians from the Magnitsky Act, or whether publicly asking the Russians to release HRC’s stolen email was “soliciting a valuable campaign contribution from a foreign government”. Whenever ANY President suggests that he is empowered to make such decisions himself – say by firing Mr. Mueller – then it is time for a new president. To some extent, it doesn’t matter whether Mueller’s team can be tarred with charges of partisan prejudice. Although that team will prosecute Trump’s associates, they are merely investigating the President and reporting their findings to Congress.
In any case, this “left wing loon” will be happy to see Pence take over, if necessary. He is qualified, hasn’t made any major mistakes since being chosen, and optimistically could perform better domestically than anyone since Reagan and better in foreign affairs than anyone since Bush I.
If Congress desires, they can subpoena Obama’s email to and from clintonmail.com. Obama can claim executive privilege and the case can move to the courts. If the email potentially contains evidence of criminal activity, the courts should eventually rule in favor of Congress. Then we might learn if anything Obama wrote violated rules about handling of confidential material, something we don’t currently know. At that point, we would still be stuck with the intent issue: Did Mr. Obama knowingly ignore the law? And the gross negligence problem: How many emails showed negligence? Should we prosecute gross negligence In the absence of intent, a private server and the destruction of government records requested by Congress. Should Congress proceed down this hopeless path?
mpainter fantasizes that this could lead to the uncovering of a vast areas of wrongdoing that could put Obama and many of his associates in jail. I personally would like to know more about: What Obama was doing minute by minute when he failed to send help to our people in Benghazi while they were under attack. Were Tru-the-Vote and other Tea Party groups abused by other agencies besides the IRS? Were dozens of Americans mentioned in intelligence reports unmasked for political purposes? Why did the CIA issue a definitive and erroneous statement about protesters at our embassy less than 48 hours after a terrorist attack?
Don wrote: “We have ourselves another impeachment hallucination. Frank would like to go from hero to zero. We expect better from you, Frank. Trump 2020! Ivanka 2024! Dishrag Pence never!”
I thought you would approve of my preference for Pence over Obama, Bush II, or Clinton. The scariest thing for me about impeachment is the sense of betrayal that many Trump supporters like you will feel. Unfortunately, I don’t see anyway out of a number of tricky situations.
1) If his family is threatened, I expect Trump to fire Mueller and/or pardon his family or Manafort. IMO, Trump will also likely fire Mueller if he tries to look into Trump’s finances. Will Sessions and Rosenstein refuse Trump’s orders? Manafort is facing the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison unless he cooperates or is pardoned. It will be difficult for Congress to ignore one standard of justice for the president’s family and his criminal associate and a different standard for everyone else.
2) In 2019, a Democratic House could impeach with even a flimsy partisan case – as the Republicans did in 1998 with Clinton. The Dems are united in their hatred of Trump and (unlike me), they don’t care about the “deplorables” who supported Trump. Those competing for leadership can’t afford to be rational about impeaching Trump. Trump’s response is certain to be ugly.
3) Mueller is interviewing members of the WH staff relevant to a charge of obstruction of justice. Does Mueller think he has evidence showing that Trump knew about crimes that took place?
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Russians – specially RU government – are being paid to hack into opponents sites, just like the CIA does, its their job.
My conclusions: US cyber defence is weak. FBI etc. response to known intrusions is weak. The DNC’s and Hillary’s systems were so weak they basically invited anybody to enter, so many did. Trump & co had nothing to with this: everybody including the Russians were surprised that he won the elections.
One reason why the Dutch could have pull this off (my speculation) is that their laws prevented them from tapping into fibre optic cables: only satellite Internet traffic was allowed to be trawled. As these Russian hackers used precisely satellite links to retrieve hacked data, the Dutch might have gotten lucky.
The NSA and GCHQ were wading through their humongous fibre global “haystacks” meanwhile, easy to miss stuff.
But the NSA fingered the Russians as the hackers of the DNC in the summer of 2015 and continued to monitor and repeatedly warn the DNC up until the DNC revealed they had been had. You obviously are oblivious to the capabilities of the US intel apparatus. The NSA knows about satellite internet traffic. If the Dutch stumbled onto something, it was very likely after the NSA already knew about it.
Obviously the NSA knows satellite traffic: the difference is that data returned from a satellite can be captured by many dishes, not only the intended ones. The Dutch story is that these Russians directed their hacked (and marked) data to remote but un-involved business companies in Europe known to use satellite up links only to snoop back these packets onto Russian dishes as well.
You said the NSA could easily “miss stuff” because they “were wading through their humongous fibre global “haystacks” “. Wrong. They don’t wade though stuff. They sweep it up and sift it with humongous computer power and many thousands of egghead hackers/data analysts. Capabilities far beyond the Dutch boys. It is possible that the Dutch stumbled onto something before NSA, but not likely.
The Russian trick was to use neutral IP addresses to ex filtrate data; even they could only recognize these packets just because their (phishing e-mail entry) target installed software gave each an innocent looking inner mark. Also a Dutch Ministry was targeted before by Cozy Bear, so the Dutch cyber guys had some extra experience with APT-28.
Massive NSA hardware only follows known programmed patterns.
The Dutch newspaper writes casually as if hacking the DNC apart from Foggy Bottom and the White House etc. was interfering with the US elections. Not in my view. Cozy Bear was inside Washington ever since 2014; the CIA hacked the German parliament in 2015, including Merkel’s mobile phone. Standard unrestricted spook business on both sides.
This is why you are a non-entity. The NASA hardware and software systems are a very big very expensive very sophisticated tools. Like a very big hammer and very sharp chisel. And then they got a lot of highly skilled very creative sculptors. Then they have there little helpers in several other agencies. You underestimate their art. You should get somebody to read that foreign policy article to you.
The NSA brags and Moonfart slurps. Myself, I would build a scaffold a quarter of a mile long and start hanging intelligence types. Nothing in the world poses such a threat to our freedoms and liberties as does this evil all-powerful intelligence apparatus operating in the perpetual dark, unaccountable, unchecked, the ultimate force of an evil empire with absolute power. Nothing the U.S. faces in the world justifies this evil force. And you applaud this maignancy. So much for you.
Don, good to hear that the NSA & co are infallible and see and hear everything. To do all US taxpayers plus all other Internet connected people in the US and abroad a favor president Trump should cut the NSA & co budgets to maintaining levels. Like what he is planning for climate research which is equally sure it knows everything about “global climates”, taper their funding – the goal is reached.
What is puzzling to me, is that if the Dutch knew about it, it seems like the Americans would have been informed much earlier than January of 2018. Does anyone have any ideas that would explain the delay?
The Dutch (not part of the 5 eyes) informed the NSA liaison in the US embassy in The Hague already in 2014. Plenty of cooperation follows; the Dutch might have gotten some info regarding flight MH17 in return.
My view: The security mess on the DNC’s servers is not fully the US government cyber agencies domain; it is also a political mine field. “Russia, Russia” was just a convenient excuse for the Clinton fan club to plaster over her unexpected loss and mask the mess inside the DNC.
The leading Dutch journalist in this story told that the mini Dutch “nsa” is till now legally confined to hacking, unlike big brother NSA which can trawl and store all fibre data. He also repeated that the Americans and Brits hack even more than the Russian government. He does not believe that Trump’s election victory is due to Russian hacking. The DNC hack was just routine stuff for Moscow (no need for any Trump prompting).
His newspaper Volkskrant is a la NYT/Guardian quite anti Trump as president.
For DNC hacking by Russia, we have only the word of a politically corrupt U.S. IC and CrowdStrike. I need better than that. I don’t claim that the Russkies did not or would not, just that my skepticism will not allow me to swallow this claim without convincing evidence. There are too many actors who would have a motivation to do this, including our friends and allies.
Now the news is that State Department employees are “lawyering up”. They complain of being unappreciated.
My take: there are lots of liabilities in the DoS, some criminal. ha ha ho ho. The handwriting is on the wall and they are frightened. Some will no doubt turn states evidence.
Recall Obama’s month long sojourn in Tahiti last spring? Tahiti is a French protectorate which means they devise their own civil laws and procedures. What an opportunity for an secret transfer of funds. Pretty dumb, because he will not outsmart Trump.
And, irony of ironies, Steele claimed a Russian source for his dossier and now everyone tied to this affair can be FISA’d.
For collaboration with foreign interference in a presidential election: a UK intelligence type working with Russian intelligence sources to overthrow the trump candidate. AND then used against the duly elected President of the United States.
Obama has Tahiti for asylum, where he made arrangements last spring for this eventuality. The U.S. has an extradition treaty with France but “political refugees” are excluded. Obama knows exactly what’s coming.
The top echelon of the FBI has criminal liabilities and they are fighting desperately against Trump. It just released their files on Ailes. This is an unprecedented occurrence, the FBI has never before done such a thing. It is going to get very ugly. They have challenged Congress and Trump both. Desperados run the FBI.
See the latest article on the FBI by Politico. Implied threat against Trump administration. The destruction of the Democratic party is imminent. Obama, Clinton, others are going to prison. Fox has started their series “Scandalous” and will do the next on Obama. Thus the release of the Ailes files. The Democrats are desperate. Interesting times.
Today’s Guardian : “Trump’s Attack Against the FBI is an Attack Against the Constitution”. Screechy despair from the doomed Democrats, through their UK connections. Interesting times. I predict lots more of this sort of screeching. It is an index of the fright that grips these Desperados.
And Fox news is not biased? Give me a break. The Dutch have shown that the Russians were the hackers (the Bears).
You make many claims, but no hard evidence. This is not the first time. Your credibility is worthless.
Jerry, little painter is on the emotionally overwrought fringe. Sensible Trump supporters will stipulate that it was the Russians what done the DNC. It doesn’t matter. Trump had nothing to do with it.
However, the real story is that the DNC and Hillary paid the Russians to make up the phony dossier to use against Trump and it seems likely that high level DOJ and FBI officials used that crap to get FISA court approval to spy on Trump and campaign associates. That looks like some bad sheet, Jerry.
Trump is not attacking the FBI. The FBI will be around another hundred years. We want to weed out the cabal of felonious left-wing political hacks who have been trying to overturn an election. We can’t have that sheet in our country.
Jerry, you choose to believe an unsourced and and unverified (and unverifiable) report on Dutch cyber intelligence. They do not believe it in the Netherlands. There is a plebiscite on cyber security in that country, you see. The voters will vote against the proposed NSA affiliations that is being peddled to them by their government.
Now, what were you saying about credibility? Look up the definition of “credulous”.
Now comes Foreign Policy, another Democratic stalwart, claiming that Trump “ordered his aides” to smear Comey, Baker, and McCabe. Comey and McCabe will probably be charged with obstruction of justice in connection with the Hillary fix and Baker is the one who contacted David Corn of Mother Jones in October, 2016, regarding the Steele dossier in the FBI effort to smear Trump before the election.
It is obvious that the last ditch of the Democrats is their friendly media, and it is very friendly, indeed. When these hard core FBI democrats are called to account, the MSM will resound with shrieks. When Obama and Hillary get indicted, there will be a wave of suicides amongst journalists, no doubt. Interesting times.
Mueller has fat chance against Trump. Trump is smarter. Mueller has the authority to charge Trump with obstruction of justice on any pretence, however flimsy the pretense.
Trump, as a criminal defendant, can claim as a defense a political prosecution and thus has the power to subpoena any and all records that he chooses from any individual, including personal correspondence, bank records, foreign and domestic, etc., etc. It would be a shortcut to achieving his goals. Withholding or deleting such records would be grounds for dismissal, but would Trump ask for a dismissal? So, be careful what you wish for.
The Steele dossier is an utter embarrassment – unbelievable that such a document could have been used to set up a Special Counsel yet such seems to be the case.
But Guys, what of Liz Crokin’s idea that Mueller and Trump are actually working together in a bait and switch operation – fantastic if true!!! And also seems to have been hinted at in the QAnon intel drops – what exciting times we live in!!!
For example, those individuals associated with the Atlantic Council. Alperovitch, for example. Takes imagination but you realize that everything is known about such a group. Trump will have all the resources of intercepts, etc. Then from Alperovitch to others in CrowdStrike. This sort of thing can be repeated as often as needed. One big clustef*ck is the swamp. It will be easy. As I said, you need imagination to visualize it but, yeah, I know, you have none, poor, dull fellow that you are. With your Johnny one note Putin fixation. Tsk, tsk.
The possibilities are vast. Trump is not the unimaginative type and he will find ways to mine the whole swamp and more. Do not underestimate Trump. He will have an insuperable advantage as a criminal defendant.
What you have is not imagination. Clinically, it’s called hallucination. Stop the clowning. You are worse than clueless.
Trump is not going to be a criminal defendant. That is just a left wing nut and right wing nut hallucination. The worst that Mueller can do is concoct a phony political case for unindictable obstruction. I suspect he is inclined to do that, but might consider that his own place in history would be better served by playing it straight and simply announcing no crimes have been done. But I know this will sail way above your little pointy conspiratorial head. Put on your tin foil hat and think about it. Or, not.
The “smoking out” phase is over. Jeff Sessions in a speech yesterday pledged to “de-politicize” the DoJ. He also welcomed outside criticism of the DoJ. Finally, the recumbent Sessions has bestirred himself.
He also announced the appointment of a new General counsel at the FBI. The Obama holdovers will not accept their fate quietly, but kicks against their fate won’t help. IG report is due in a month or so.
We shall get to the bottom of the FBI “secret society”.
This was likely an informal grouping convened for the purpose of discussion and decisions on tactics, etc. This one has the media screeching full volume but Johnson says that there is an informant.
Trey Howdy calls for Strzok and Page to testify before the House. Here is the crunch..will they take the fifth?
My hunch is that they will give testimony and not lie and face dismissal, prison, etc. Strzok and Page are hostage to the situation. They are in the position that many are in. Bruce and Nellie Ohr, for example. They will be dismissed if they refuse to testify. Their best hope would seem to be cooperation. The awful “obstruction of justice” hangs over the head of all, and they are dependent on their jobs for support.
Their will be lots of plea bargaining, I imagine, and the trail leads to the Whitehouse. Screeches galore.
The matter of the Ohrs, Bruce and Nellie, intrigues me. Bruce no doubt was interviewed by the DoJ IG in December. He would have cooperated because he has no choice. This man was high in the Obama DoJ, as Associate Deputy Attorney General. He knows a lot. Nellie, the Russian specialist with her ham radio, must have communicated with some source in her help in preparation of the Steele dossier. I imagine that the IG has a good idea of what Nellie was up to. Bruce Ohr would not have refused to answer any question.
Did Nellie communicate with Russian sources with her ham radio? I’ll bet she did.
Now Feinstein threatens to mob Trump’s State of the Union address with illegal aliens. Screeches and shrieks galore.
The FISA memo revealed nothing about Nellie’s use of her HAM radio. It only referred to her role “to assist in the cultivation of opposition research”
If sources were derived from Russian intelligence, then the Democrats, the FBI, and the IC have conspired with foreign intelligence to overthrow the presidential election process. That is criminal. It is treason. Is this what Trump meant when he uttered the word “treason”? We needed to know whom Nellie communicated with on her radio.
The destruction of the Democratic party is imminent. If Feinstein carries out her threat to mob Trump’s address with illegal aliens, she deserves expulsion from the Senate. The Democrats are in an absolute panic and they have lost their heads; probably because they see doom inexorably stalking them. They are in a room without doors or windows and the walls are closing in. Thus the Democratic party implodes.
I suspect that Nellie Ohr was the main author of the ‘Dossier’ though – with Christopher Steele simply providing a veneer of “Intelligence” .
Though one wonders how anyone could possibly describe such a document as “Intelligence” and how any judge could issue a FISA warrant based on such. So much corruption. Trump certainly faces a mammoth task.
One urgent priority though must be to clear the Soros rigged fractional voting counters. No wonder he thinks that 2018 will bring a landslide for the Dems!!
More Screechy headlines: second Trump dossier, this one written by Cody Shearer, a journalist, haha. No doubt this will be known as the dirtier dossier.
Next comes the dirtiest dossier, haha. Screeches galore. Maybe they will have a contest and award prizes. Hollywood can institute another awards ceremony and pass out little golden cudgels.
Don wrote about mpainter: “You just keep making crap up and ignoring the facts. Ukraine did not invade Russia. I never claimed that Crowdstrike and Alperovitch are reliable and honest. Admiral Rodgers is reliable and honest. That is why he is Trump’s Director of NSA. And your “feeling” that Ukrainian fingerprints are all over the DNC hack is a very foolish feeling. If the Ukrainians are against Trump why would they expose the DNC emails? Try to come up with a coherent and logical story. That is all the time I have for your foolishness. Just be very happy and grateful that Trump won. You don’t need to make up a lot of dumb crap to defend him.
Don, haven’t you noticed the parallels between mpainter and the Donald. Both believe that “the truth” is whatever they need or want it to be on any given day, even if they read it at some fringe website. Admiral Rodgers proved the Russians hacked the DNC, followed later by Putin tells me they didn’t. I taped my conversations with Mr. Comey; maybe not. Mexico will pay for the wall … I’ll agree to a deal on DACA if it includes money for a wall. Re-tweeting fake anti-Muslim videos from a British hate group. Perhaps both exaggerate for political effect, something that makes a scientist like me uncomfortable. There may be some merit – as well as risk – in making our enemies feel uncertain about what our president might do, but I don’t think it helps with friendly foreign leaders or Congress.
Don wrote: “Don’t let the trumped up impeachment drumbeat get to you, Frank. It’s left loon fantasy. Seven more years! The worst that Mueller can do is concoct a phony political case for unindictable obstruction.”
Senator Graham said on one of last Sunday’s talk shows that firing Mr. Mueller would be the end of Trump’s presidency. Graham may be a RHINO, but he isn’t a left loon.
Brace yourself Frank, it’s going to get a lot worse. There are only stagnant pools left of the swamp. The bellows, croaks and hisses only reveal the distress of the swamp crawlers. Have you ever seen how a harpoon works? Bloody, but effective.
There’s more to come in House and Senate investigations. By the time it all comes out, Mueller & Goons will be wishing that they were doing something else. Weissman is in the crosshairs. He will go, and all his work will have to be reviewed. Trump and the Republicans have this in hand, no sweat.
Getting defendants to cooperate was Weissman’s specialty. That doesn’t make him a “goon”. If he departs, the confessions of Flynn and others aren’t going to disappear as evidence.
IMO, however, Weissman’s public praise for Acting AG Sally Yates should have disqualified him from this investigation. The DoJ is supposed to work under the direction of the president and help him implement policies to protect us from terrorists. Based on the campaign, Sally Yates judged that the president was motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice, refused to implement his new policy, and encouraged others in the DoJ to do the same. Outside attorneys challenging the new policy have the responsibility for presenting evidence of Trump’s prejudice to the courts. It was the job of the DoJ and Yates to advise and defend the president, not judge him. Yes, the president didn’t consult with the DoJ before deciding on the new policy and that policy was so poorly devised it needed to be withdrawn and revised within months. IMO, the policy is probably hurts us more than helps us. Those were reasonable grounds for quietly resigning. However, the Supreme Court has shown no sign of wanting to interfere with the president’s constitutional responsibility to protect the country through immigration policy – meaning Sally Yates was grossly wrong in her assessment of the fundamental issues. Anyone who felt an urge to publicly support her was equally wrong.
And now Rosenstein maneuvers to make himself the darling of the MSM by appealing to Trump to suppress the memo because it would “set a dangerous precedent”.
Making sure, of course, that the WaPo has the story before he sees Trump to deliver the appeal.
The WH announced that the DoJ had no role in the decision. May that wretched Sessions rot.
I didn’t like it when Diane Feinstein’s committee issued a biased report about the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation, which the CIA and Republicans objected to. I don’t think the Republicans should be politicizing this investigation in a similar manner. Hopefully a compromise statement agreeable to all or one summarizing both areas of agreement and disagreement can be devised.
You don’t yet know if the Republicans have politicized the investigation in a similar manner. Get back to us after you have read the report. And there is not going to be any compromise. The dims report will come out following the same procedure as the majority report. Trey Gowdy is a prosecutorial impresario, he doesn’t BS and he has nailed those suckers. The dims are running scared. They looked pathetic sitting on their hands being schooled by The Donald last evening. Trump rules!
Don: You are correct that I don’t yet know if the Republicans have politicized their report. However, I do know that the FBI claims there are errors of omission, some of which they may not be publicly correctable because the omitted information is confidential. I personally am very frustrated that they haven’t been able to release anything telling us how the Steele dossier was used to obtain FISA warrants. Did the tell the judge that Steele was being paid by the DNC? If they didn’t, admit that they made a mistake and move on. Either the FBI does have some legitimate reasons for holding back on this material or they are incredibly stupid. The truth will emerge sometime.
The really interesting question was whether or when the told Trump that Steele was being paid by the DNC when he informed Trump of the dossier’s existence.
Gowdy is a sharp dude. He has criticized the DoJ for holding back information on how the Steele dossier was used. FWIW, he has also expressed confidence that the Mueller will produce reliable information.
My guess is that the reflexive bureaucratic institutional response of the FBI/DOJ will continue to be a defensive with a claim that the operation was done more or less by the book. Maybe some mistakes were made, but nothing was nefarious. Of course, that is possible. They don’t want names named, because the alleged culprits are their co-workers and pals. The blue wall syndrome. My opinion is that if they used the Steele BS in any warrant application they should be disposed of with as much prejudice as possible. They are either complete idiots or traitors.
I believe Trump found out the DNC and hillarity funded the Steele crap when the rest of us found out. Haven’s seen any credible report on when the FBI/DOJ and other intel agencies knew. That will be very interesting to find out.
Meanwhile, the dims are in the deep doo doo and it is likely to get deeper tomorrow.
In desperation they have turned to this callow youth:
The current bearer of the Kennedy Crown. The clown has the crown, but he doesn’t have the family jewels that Jack had. And that’s no silver tongue in his mouth. It’s just the spoon.
Let’s take this up again tomorrow, Frank. Should be fun. Trump rules! Yuuger and yuuger. Atlanta Fed forecasting 5.4% first quarter GDP growth. Wow! MAGA!
Trey Gowdy has just announced his retirement from Congress. He finds the partisanship distasteful and seeks fulfillment outside of politics, naming the justice area.
Many of his colleagues do not share his view of Mueller. Mueller has loaded his team with democrats and leaks every development to the media. He is too obvious, but Gowdy lacks the stomach for partisanship.
Don: The Steele dossier has always been described as paid opposition political research – even back in the Mother Jones article before the election. The details of that funding – from the DNC through Fusion GPS, rather than privately through some rich Democrat contributor – don’t appear to have been known until late summer 2017. So Trump could have been have been tweeting about paid opposition political research since January. Mr. Comey had an ethical obligation to inform Trump and eventually Congress and the public about the DNC funding when he first discussed the FBI’s investigation.
The fact that the money came from the DNC (which hired an established organization with a reputation to preserve) should have made us take the research more seriously than if it had been paid for by a private donor and carried out by someone with little to lose. But it certainly looks far worse politically.
mpainter wrote: “Many of [Trey Gowdy’s] colleagues do not share his view of Mueller. Mueller has loaded his team with democrats and leaks every development to the media. He is too obvious, but Gowdy lacks the stomach for partisanship.”
Mueller has worked most recently in New York and DC, where the vast majority of attorneys capable of working on his investigation as Democrats. Qualified Republicans would not have been eager to join his team, and those from red states wouldn’t want to move to DC for a temporary position. The composition of his team reflects this reality. If the investigation were being run out of Houston, there would be more Republicans on it.
Every investigation in every jurisdiction leaks. That is why you see videos of dozens of arrests on the nightly news every month. Other leaks are meant to signal to defendants that your last chance to cooperate before indictment is about to end.
Gowdy has been one of the Republican’s most effective interrogators of witnesses from the Obama administration. He was extremely critical of Comey’s email decision. However, having worked as the US Attorney for South Carolina, he objects to the idea being spread by the WH and other Republicans that the DoJ as a whole is too politically biased to do their job.
Frank, new angle: Tom Fitton today characterized it as DNC $ was used by the DOJ and FBI to secure illegal FISA warrants. This is even more serious, a sort of political racketeering. Lots of legal questions, criminal and otherwise. There is no doubt that the salacious parts of the dossier were fabricated. This trail leads to the Obama Whitehouse through Bruce Ohr. As do many other trails.
Mueller will not be a party to any frame up of Trump, now. He will be thinking of himself. Soon there will be no democratic party left.
Upon reflection, it seems obvious that Gowdy is destined for the next Supreme Court opening, which should be soon.
Naturally Gowdy knows this and makes public remarks appropriate for such a nomination.
Bottom line, Gowdy’s remarks on Mueller, etc. are not necessarily representing his real beliefs. All of his colleagues will understand the reason for this posturing.
In the meantime, Chairman Gowdy, with his powerful discretion of subpoena, will be working hammer and tongs on the scandals within the Obama/Hillary crowd.
As for the democratic Mueller goons, they must be desperate. Also, Rosenstein renewed the FISA warrant in April, 2017, when it was known to be flawed.
And Frank, it’s no good trying to explain away Mueller’s goons. The DoJ does not breed honest types, if Ohr, Lynch, Rosenstein, Holder, Comey, Strzok, Page, Baker, Priestap, McCabe, Sally hoosit, and others are what come up on the dipstick. A disgusting cluster of Obama swamp crawlers.
I currently suspect that Priestap is a good guy. There was no negative mention of a bad action by Priestap in the memo. He was said to have described the corroboration of the dossier as being in its “infancy” at the time of the initial FISA application. Also, Comey testified to Congress that they had not been notified of the dossier because Priestap suggested that it was too sensitive to be revealed during the election. I suspect that he was more concerned about Democrats leaking the story than Republicans, who would have had not motivation to sink Trump-excepting the never Trumpers, who he might have also been concerned about. What do you think, genius? Maybe Priestap is working for the Ukrops? Let’s lock him with the others, just for general principle.
Show some evidence that Priestap approved of any FISA application. He didn’t sign any, according to the memo. The only mention of Prietstap in the memo indicates that he told the truth about The Steele dossier. Nothing negative about Priestap in the memo. D[*]
Well, Strozk and his girlfriend apparently met with Andy in his office. Andy is Priestap’s boss. There was a cabal of Trump haters at the top of the FBI and DOJ. Priestap was not necessarily one of them. I currently suspect that he wasn’t. I have not seen any accusation of wrongdoing against Priestap.
mpainter: Trey Gowdy might make an excellent Supreme Court Justice, but getting him approved would be a big fight. Running as a Republican in South Carolina, he must have a vocal record on the right-to-life. He hasn’t clerked for a Supreme Court or other influential justice, so he doesn’t have practical experience with constitutional law. Gorsuch had a less public record as a conservative and more expertise on constitutional law. He would make a great AG.
And the “da ngerous precedent”? Is Rosenstein thinking of himself? We have Bruce Ohr; who else in the DoJ have liabilities when everything is put in the light?
Rosenstein was involved in the Uranium One whitewash, was he not? In fact, Rosenstein is a holdover that shares liabilities from the Obama era. There are many in the DoJ that will be discomfited by the light of day. Piss on Sessions for allowing these worms to gnaw away.
Mueller is going out with a whimper. Some say that the FISA memo will obviate the basis of Mueller’s work. The Russian “interference” will be exposed as a deep state sham, a fabrication.
The congressional investigations will continue. The memo (to be released soon) is just the beginning of a series of colossal rockets to be exploded in the camp of Mueller, deep state, democrats.
We are witness to the destruction of the Democratic party. Guess what famous icon of purity and goodness is responsible. By the time Obama reaches the slammer, the exploded and scattered Democrats will be reviling his memory.
And democrats like Maxine Waters of California is giving a big boost to the dismantling of her party.
It’s just been reported that she demands that a “parental advisory” be issued on each occasion Trump is shown on TV. Children need to be protected, she said. The woman is deranged by hate and fright.
Thus the Democrats remove themselves further and further from mainstream America.
Obama is more likely to take refuge with his pal Putinksi, a la the lesser traitor Snowden. After all, Obama did let Soviet KGB dictator Putinksi run wild. He even let Soviet KGB dictator Putinski help negotiate the the farce that gave the Iranians the assured path to the bomb and the big cash payoff. Yet there are some misguided Americans, who think they have to defend Putinski, for Trump’s sake. How dumb is that.
I am not sure about Comey. He may just be a misguided delusional bumbling idiot. But Obama stooge lying Clapper is definitely a traitor. I would be perfectly happy if Comey is nailed by the memo. I don’t like that big crybaby.
Frank question: “The really interesting question was whether or when the told Trump that Steele was being paid by the DNC when he informed Trump of the dossier’s existence.”
I’ll expand on my reply above. I am almost certain that they didn’t tell Trump that the DNC and HRC had funded Steele. The Donald would not have kept that to himself. That story didn’t come out until October, 2017. The blockbuster question is: When did the FBI, CIA, DNI et al know and was the source of the funding and the impetus for the so-called dossier revealed to the FISA court?
Now comes the first of a barrage of colossal rockets to explode amongst the dems. IG report due in March. Much more to come.
The most powerful committee chairman is Gowdy of House Government Oversight. He has complete discretion of subpoena. He can issue a score or more at once, on his own discretion (no other chair has such power of sole discretion). The fun begins.
Don and mpainter: As I read page 8 of the document Don linked on the powers of committee chairs, Trey Gowdy has the power to issue subpoenas on his own, but he is not the only chair with this power.
Of course, subpoenas are often challenged, ignored or delayed. I believe a vote of the whole House or Senate is required to undertake legal proceedings to enforce a subpoena and months (to years) to resolve a case. In very contentious situations, the serious negotiating about what information will be delivered only occurs after the House or Senate vote to enforce the subpoena (contempt of Congress?). That could take us into 2019, potentially giving the Democrats the power to stop any enforcement action.
I suspect that all this maneuvering will merely set the stage for Mueller’s report on Russian interference with our election and the IGs report on the email investigation. The most serious charge – the FBI or IC tried to influence the presidential election – is a joke. Despite all of the rumors spread by Democrats, no news organization reported that someone currently working for these organization confirmed the existence of an investigation into Steele’s allegations. If none of Steele’s novel revelations are ever confirmed, we were within one “anonymous source in the FBI confirmed the existence of an investigation …” away from the biggest, and possibly most successful, dirty trick in our election history.
Frank, one of only three chairs with that power, right. A new law provides expedited subpoena rulings and court imposed sanctions on those defying subpoena. Government personnel can no longer defy subpoena. The Republican Congress is armed to the teeth. Contempt of congress now carry court imposed fines and these cannot be paid by government funds. See Wikipedia.
Gowdy, other committees are involved. Senate too. Never before has congress teamed with executive in such an investigation. Absolutely unprecedented. The swamp will be slaughtered in State, IC, DoJ, wherever. Much more to come. FISA memo only tip of the iceberg. Trump claimed treason on January 11. He knows what happened. Obama orchestrated treason? He was the motive force behind it all. There is no question that the Page FISA was contrived illegally. It will all come out. If Sessions or Wray do not cooperate fully, Congress will act. All Trump Republican critics now overawed by Trump’s success.
Another player: Tom Fitton and Judicial Watch. Fitton is very close to Trump, is very effective. He is point man in a lot of the investigation. The democrats will be scattered. We witness their deaththroes on tv. Their defenders dwindle. Poor Democrats.
Judicial Watch has just sued the DoJ for all documents related to the Page FISA. Most inclusive and comprehensive demand for all related material. We shall see if DoJ, FBI prepared to cooperate with investigation. This matter is a test of sessions, Wray, and where they come down.
mpainter wrote: “Contempt of congress now carry court imposed fines and these cannot be paid by government funds.”
It took more than six months for a subpoena to deliver information about the use of the Steele dossier in the FISA warrant for the Russia investigation. Perhaps the rules are tougher now, but a subpoena can always be challenged and will always require House or Senate approval before going to court.
Meanwhile, in the UK, Theresa May is under the gun. I think that the FISA memo will implicate her government in the Steele dossier matter. If so, May will be popped out of 10 Downing like a cork from a bottle.
Trump’s power grows day by day. Leadership depends on the man. Projected first quarter growth of 5.4%!! This will have a profound effect on the leaders of the world. Adios, climate scientists, alarmism,and such garbage.
Note the date of the Page FISA: October 21, over three weeks after the FBI learned of the last trove of Hillary emails. This Page surveillance is the “insurance”. The Weiner affair panicked them into the Page FISA, hoping to get some dirt on Trump. It did not pan out, but they maintained the fiction, renewing the (flawed and illegal) FISA every ninety days. This surveillance supported the fiction of Russia Russia Russia and the investigation of Trump by the FBI (which Comey lied to Trump about). Rosenstein renewed the FISA last April. It will all come out.
Mueller has no basis for an investigation. There is no evidence of Trump collusion with Russia, no reason for suspicion.
mpainter fantasizes: “Meanwhile, in the UK, Theresa May is under the gun. I think that the FISA memo will implicate her government in the Steele dossier matter. If so, May will be popped out of 10 Downing like a cork from a bottle.”
Ms. May is “under the gun” because she lost a gamble calling an early election and now needs to shepherd a coalition government through the reality of Brexit. Polls for the last year have the Conservatives and Labor in a dead heat, despite the presence of Jeremy Corbyn at the head of Labor. The UKIP is polling 3%.
Steele last worked directly for the UK government in 2009.
After Trump’s exchange of Tweets with PM May at the end of November 2017, the UK was united behind May in her battle of words against Trump. Even Nigel Farage said:
No question the May government is part of this. Upon Steele’s exposure a year ago, he fled to a safe house and the head of British Intelligence abruptly resigned while the government invoked law to suppress publication of this. None of this worked and the goofball May is left holding the bag. I suspect Trump of secretly undermining her. I do not expect her to last much longer.
What Trump haters will never recognize is that Trump is a president of surpassing ability with the most acute judgment in government. He will go from success to success, outsmarting his opponents at every turn.
One of the mistakes many make is assuming that politicians are divided left and right, representing the voters of their respective countries – far from being the case. Rather all parties seem to have been infiltrated by those representing global special interests, many with meteoric career rises promising much but delivering nothing but pro-globalist policies – true of Blair, Brown, Cameron, Obama, Merkel, Gillard and yes Theresa May. So whichever party one votes for the resulting policies appear to be virtually identical. (Climate Change nonsense being one of them and thank god for those such as Steve McIntyre in his search for the truth – Trump is not the only one who has had to bear the brunt of many slings and arrows hurled in his direction!!) )
Both Cameron and May could have had huge majorities in Parliament but seem to have deliberately opted for policies that would result in coalitions. May’s manifesto was so bad even true blues were having trouble supporting it, if Labour under Corbyn hadn’t been in such an utter mess it could well have swung their way. By doing so they were able to hide behind the fig leaf of coalition to follow unpopular globalist policies
Which is why Trump won the election in the US – for the first time in a long time it seemed there was someone who was prepared to represent the people rather than global vested interests.
This was an amazing speech telling it as it is – if only we had a Trump in the UK!!
Right, Marion and I suspect May, smooth-face Dave and those types have fostered anti-Trump sentiment in the UK. And that Trump knows this, of course. They have connections to the Clinton’s and Obama, no doubt, and all will be exposed.
Unfortunately the media – especially the BBC and the Guardian along with May, Bercow, Khan etc. Somewhat exasperated with UK politics – our main hope is James Rhees-Mogg who’s kept down in the back benches.
Many of the public are simply unaware – media has kept them fed on a ‘celebrity’ diet – ‘bread and circuses’ come to mind.
And yet we voted for BREXIT despite the overwhelming majority of the media, political establishment, business community, educational establishments, religious groups, monied interests pushing for REMAIN so perhaps my fellow citizens are more aware than I give them credit for.
Many of us have turned to the internet for our news and are following US politics with great interest – President Trump bears the hopes of so many in the world on his shoulders!! A great man indeed!
Desantis missed. The whole key to understanding this is the “insurance” that Strzok mentioned. It was not bias, but a deliberate political move against Trump. That is not the same thing as mere bias. It is corruption, but Desantis didn’t really make that explicit. He kept saying bias. Bias is no fault. Prosecutors are supposed to show bias in the courtroom, etc.
[*] Desantis uses the word bias or biases three occasions, or “conflicts”. Not once does he use the word corruption. Strzok reported to Priestap, who is eat up with Russia Russia Russia. Like you. [*]
Trump says treason on January 11. There is much more to come. Involving British Intelligence. This is collaborating with foreign intelligence to use the authority of the FBI to overthrow a presidential election.
The stakes are enormous.
Wray has decided to be a problem. Trump and Congress together need to work on a form of administration for the FBI with a board with executive authority, instead of a sole director. The FBI and the DoJ have been stonewalling Congress for a year. An act of congress is needed. I suggest a board with staggered terms. Something needs to be done.
Congressman Gosar, R Arizona, has publicly declared Comey, McCabe, Yates, and Rosenstein to be ___traitors___ and demands criminal proceedings against them for treason. So the screeches and shrieks of the Democrats are to be trumped and over bid by the pronouncements of Republicans. Can’t beat __treason__ for attention getting. It’s the Ace of Trumps.
When Trump used the word __treason__ during his January 11 interview, I doubt that he did so unadvisedly. Lord knows that he has enough attorneys working for him. This means that this business is all but settled. The democrats cannot outscreech that. This is the Ace of Trumps, stark, simple, deadly. Washington, D.C. is now become a killing field for the Republicans.
I’m reading Scott Adams’ book: “Winning Bigly. Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter”. He (the creator of Dilbert) has been blogging about Trump’s powers of persuasion since he first announced his candidacy. He is a big advocate of the idea that everyone perceives reality differently and makes decisions on the basis of emotions, not facts (hence the title). It is distressing that parts of ClimateAudit are becoming fact-free zones, but Nic just had a wonderful post.
p140: When asked about the Pope’s recent comments about morality of capitalism, Trump replied that ISIS was coming to get the Pope and had plans to take over the Vatican. A great answer that made everyone totally forget the question – unless one is looking for a president with a philosophy of governing that can answer this question.
The chairman of the committee is one of only three committee chairmen in the House with the authority to issue subpoenas without a committee vote or consultation with the ranking member.[4]
From Wikipedia. When I researched this question while Darrell Issa was chairman, it was given that he had sole discretion, alone of House chairman. Things change, and I am dated on this information. Issaquah used his power so freely that Harvey Frank called him a thug.
To clarify, the excerpt is from the article on the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform.
Darrell Issa is reportedly the wealthiest man in Congress, a self made man. He was reelected by a close margin in his San Diego district. He is one who should benefit from the slaughter of the Democrats. Of Lebanese descent, he is a good man and well regarded in Washington.
The Republican Congress is loaded for bear and primed. It knows that Trump will lead it to heights that has never experienced. Trump’s leadership is now established and welcomed among Republicans. Except for McCain, Flake, a few more. There are 24 democratic senators facing reelection this fall. Whoops!
Trump specifically named Strzok in his charge of __treason__ made in his January 11 interview. The implications are clear, however. Those who signed off and or approved the illegally contrived Page FISA are complicit in this act of treason. This includes Comey, McCabe, Yates, Rosenstein, others.
I believe that this is something that Trump and the Republicans intend to pursue with vigor, when the time is ripe. Trump has intentionally foreshadowed what will be exploded upon the Democrats in the months ahead.
Midterm elections in nine months. In the meantime, committees in the House and Senate (I count six, altogether) diligently dig into the reeking pile that was the Obama administration. Poor Democrats.
Include Priestap who oversaw the activities of Strzok and participated in manufacturing the “intelligence” that was used to frame Trump and the Republicans with charges of collusion. Also General Counsel Baker, others. The big question now is when Rosenstein will exit.
What is clear now is that Mueller and his DoJ goons have been neutralized. Mueller will never risk a frame up of Trump at this point.
The DoJ Office of the Inspector General is said to have over 400 personnel. Their investigation commenced a year ago. Poor Democrats.
Judges normally discard evidence obtained by means of an illegal search. OK, let’s discard that evidence. Or let’s suppose the FBI had been more candid with the FISA court and the judge had refused to allow Page to be wire-tapped. What would be different today? NOTHING! The FBI learned nothing from this source.
Steele appear to be fanatically opposed to Trump. What’s new here? Sources and informants are OFTEN highly biased. That is why we don’t disseminate raw intelligence, and have professional analysts and investigations.
What would be different if McCabe, Ohr, and Strzok had recused themselves from this investigation – as they should have? NOTHING! We received intelligence for a respected source who apparently uncovered the FIFA bribery scandal. There was a serious need for an investigation – whether or not the DNC funded Steele.
Steele and leading Democrats desperately tried to bring the unconfirmed allegations in the Steele Dossier to the attention of the American people. Only Mother Jones and Yahoo News published stories based on the Steele allegations before the election, so the vast majority of Americans voted without having heard anything about the Dossier. What would have happened if the media had reported on those allegations? Trump probably wouldn’t be president. Let’s PRAISE the media for not spreading these unconfirmed rumors. The Cosmic-Ping-Pong-Pizzeria-sex-ring mentality that infects both right wind and left wing websites and social media fortunately hasn’t totally taken over the real media.
Why didn’t TV and newspapers spread the Yahoo News and Mother Jones stories? No anonymous source currently working for the FBI would confirm the existence of an investigation into Steele’s allegations. If just one of those Trump-haters in the intelligence community had told the truth – an investigation was underway – Trump probably wouldn’t be President today. This is why the FBI normally declines to comment on investigations – it may turn out there was nothing to investigate. At the moment, the Steele Dossier appears to be a total fabrication that almost became the biggest dirty trick in US election history. We can thank the FBI and MSM that it didn’t.
The FBI got a lot of inconsequential things wrong and one big thing right. They kept their mouths shut before the election! (Even the Obama WH did.) Those mistakes hurt the FBI, not Trump.
Even the Obama administration kept quiet until January.
I suspect Mueller finished investigating the Steele Dossier several months ago. However, he was asked to investigate all aspects of Russian interference in our election. The best way to do that was through vulnerable insiders like Flynn, Manafort and Papadopolous. Steele, McCabe, Ohr, and the Carter FISA warrant have nothing to do with these investigations. Strzok was dismissed.
The excitement might already be over – if Trump Jr., Kushner, and Manafort hadn’t met with the Russians. If the Steele Dossier was correct about collusion, that meeting would never have occurred. You can’t blame that meeting on any of Nunes’ villains: Steele, the DNC, McCabe, Ohr, Strzok, or any other so-called swamp creature. And if The Donald knew about this meeting, then obstruction of justice comes into play. If someone like Trey Gowdy were running the FBI, the DoJ or the Mueller investigation, I think we’d still be right where we are today.
Frank, you seem unaware that McCabe testified before congress that no FISA would have been granted without the Steele dossier.
That being the case, it is difficult to see how the FBI presented the dossier to the court as verified and reliable. Because it was not verified.
As McCarthy explains at National Review, the FISA judge is interested in the verity of the evidence (the dossier), which means the reliability of Steele’s source. The FBI reportedly did not even know who Steele’s sources were.
So it’s hard to understand how the FISA judge was convinced. But, it will al come out. Judicial Watch has just sued for all relevant documents, information, etc. pertaining to the Page FISA matter. They will get it, so hold tight, all questions will be answered.
mpainter wrote about Trump’s accusations of treason. It would be treasonous for a candidate to make a deal with a hostile foreign power to get himself elected. It would also be treasonous to fail to properly investigate the possibility that such a deal had been made. Most of all, it would be treason to wrongly prosecute a sitting president on trumped up charges. It happens elsewhere in the world all the time.
However, in our system of checks and balances, presidents are never prosecuted. No one in the judicial system has the power to commit treason by trying and convicting a president. That power belongs to our elected representatives.
President Trump’s use of the term “treason” displays his authoritarian tendencies. It is “treason” to oppose him.
Frank wrote: “Judges normally discard evidence obtained by means of an illegal search. OK, let’s discard that evidence. Or let’s suppose the FBI had been more candid with the FISA court and the judge had refused to allow Page to be wire-tapped. What would be different today? NOTHING!
mpainter wrote: “you seem unaware that McCabe testified before congress that no FISA would have been granted without the Steele dossier. That being the case, it is difficult to see how the FBI presented the dossier to the court as verified and reliable. Because it was not verified.”
The FISA warrant for Carter Page was only a tiny portion of the investigation into the Steele dossier. Whether the FBI should have been more candid presenting evidence to the FISA judge turns out to be irrelevant – it didn’t harm Trump in any way.
IIRC, Bannon arranged funding for the author of “Clinton Cash”. If information from that book may have been used to obtain warrants for investigating the Clinton Foundation. If no one told the judge issuing the warrant about Bannon’s involvement with the book, would you complain?
And, no, it’s not hot air. It’s treason, according to Trump (see his January 11 interview). I assume that Trump knows some things that have been kept secret for now.
There is another requirement for a FISA : the court must be shown that Page was engaged in criminal activities as defined per federal statute. This is the second condition that must be satisfied for a FISA. What did the FBI say to the court in this regard? It will all come out.
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Don: I’ll wait patiently for your response. This “rock” occasionally can incorporate new facts into his worldview. For the record, I don’t watch CNN or have the slightest idea of what the liberal media is saying right now. I did read the full text of the Nunes memo.
And I’ve just learned something very interesting from Michael Mukasey. By the terms of Rosenstein’s letter, Mueller is not conducting a criminal investigation.
Nope. He is conducting a national security investigation. Hahahoho. He is to determine if there were any “links” or “coordination” between members of Trump’s campaign staff and Russia. Well, “link” or “coordination” are not crimes. But, if he finds any crimes, he can have at. But the main justification for the investigation initiated by Comey was to determine if national security was jeopardized (and Mueller simply took over). The idea that Trump or anyone could “obstruct justice” when there was no criminal investigation is ludicrous. Trump knows this. So does Mueller, Rosenstein, and damn few others. The “collusion” clamor is nothing but fodder for the lowing herd. No crime, no “obstruction of justice”
What’s going on? Trump is playing on this “obstruction of justice” b.s. purposefully. He uses it as a distraction while he and Congress and Judicial Watch and the DoJ IG do the real investigation. At the end, Mueller will give Trump a clean bill and the tables will be turned on the Democrats and the swamp. Journalists will be committing suicide. Interesting times.
By the terms of the Rosenstein letter, Mueller is to investigate any matter that rises “directly” from his investigation. We know that Trump’s legal team is in touch with Mueller, we know that the two legal teams have met at least once.
It seems that if Trump provides Mueller with details on wrongdoing in the FBI or the DOJ, then Mueller must pursue that, by the terms of the letter. Things may not be as they seem, as presented in the media (no surprise there). If Trump has “captured” the Mueller investigation, I would not be surprised. Nor would I be surprised if that was the original intention.
Trump is a very subtle man, a profound dissembler, and a most dangerous opponent for the Democrats. I believe that he will utterly destroy them.
The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted and –
(a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances; and
(b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.”
Criminal investigations only. Rossenstein has 0 respect of the law. He gave Mueller and illegal general warrant.
Tom: Collusion with an enemy could involve bribery, treason, or merely non-monetary campaign contributions. These are potential criminal charges, enough to justify a special counsel. From one perspective, I would have been better if Rosenstein had mentioned the criminal charges that could be associated with the term “collusion”, but that would have caused an unnecessary uproar. I suspect Mueller will need to discuss all of these in his report.
“The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted and –”
The Assistant Attorney General acting because the Attorney General recused himself, appointed a Special Counsel, when he determined that a criminal investigation was warranted, period. Proof of the crime is not a pre-requisite. That is what the investigation is about.
Speculation is not the legal basis. The legal basis is that the AG, or next in line in case of AG recusal, has the authority to “determine” that a criminal investigation be done by a Special Counsel.
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You’ve got to have a crime, otherwise it’s a fishing expedition. No crime, no legal basis for an investigation. DoJ cannot assign itself unreasonable powers. Manafort’s suit will provide court decision on this principle.
Trump will have an interest in Manafort’s suit. It would not surprise me if they have their heads together on this.
It is a civil suit that addresses a civil matter (DOJ special counsel protocol), yet involving criminal jurisdiction. Most unusual. The suit basically challenges Rosenstein’s authority to put Mueller on a fishing expedition.
Frank is not correct. This is not complicated. There must be a known *crime* to be investigated. Not proven, but a crime must be the basis of the investigation. Not investigation in search of some unknown crime.
If it were the latter, I guarantee almost any adult in the USA can be examined with a fine toothed comb and some kind of crime can be either discovered or invented in the course of the investigation. That is literally what often happens with special counsels — they “get” someone for lying to the FBI… a crime that would not have existed if the investigation had not taken place.
Mr. Pete has not read the DOJ regulation governing appointment of a Special Counsel:
§ 600.1 Grounds for appointing a Special Counsel.
The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted and –
(a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances; and
(b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.
OMG painty, are you saying that Rosey invented a crime to justify appointing a special counsel? What crime did Rosey invent? What are you going to do about it? Probably just keep repeating talking points you picked up from Infowars.
Read the regulation and tell us who has the discretion to determine that a criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted. Do you think a person or a matter is necessarily a crime? Try to use your head.
“In my capacity as acting Attorney General, I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a Special Counsel to assume responsibility for this matter,” said Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. “My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination. What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command.”
The law you keep quoting requires, as its first parameter, a “criminal investigation.” There must be an alleged crime. Period.
What DAG Rosenstein wrote, as you nicely quoted, was that he was placing “this matter” or “this investigation” under a Special Counsel. Note how carefully he worded his statement.
He doesn’t call it a “criminal investigation.” Because it is not a criminal investigation. Pick your dictionary. A criminal investigation is an investigation into a crime. There MUST be an alleged crime.
In this case there IS no alleged crime. Never in US history has there been a special prosecutor investigating… looking for a crime.
That’s the very definition of a fishing expedition. And in reality it is illegal.
Senator Grassley responded to Comey’s tweet thus: “There is no such thing as a DoJ that is independent of constitutional authority and oversight”. Rosenstein has taken all upon his independent authority.
Indeed, it is a constitutional issue as to whether Sessions can rightfully absolve himself (recuse) from his appointment as AG, confirmed by the Senate,, on a particular issue. Deputy Attorney General is not a constitutional authority.
Manafort’s suit against Rosenstein will address all these issues. There’s lots more to come.
You two are hilarious. According to you [] there can’t be Special Counsel investigation. Yet there is. What you [] cannot grok is that the regulation says it is up to the discretion of the AG, or acting AG, to decide if something needs to be investigated by a Special Counsel. It does not say that there has to be a crime as a predicate. The investigation is to determine if there has been a crime and who done it.
You are ignoring the reality. The Special Counsel named Mueller has been investigating the Most Powerful Man in the World for some time and ain’t no one stopped it. Do you [] think Trump would have put up with this dark cloud hanging over his head for so long if it is so obviously baseless and illegal, as you [] think it is? The investigation will continue, until Mueller gets tired and closes it down. Period. Get over it.
[Don. First, time to settle down again. No need to call people names.
Second, nobody’s saying it “can’t” exist as in “impossible.” Obviously it does exist. However, allowing something to exist is not evidence that it is appropriate, legal or constitutional. The previous administration did a whole host of inappropriate, illegal, and unconstitutional things. Only a few of them were actually considered worth fighting over.
Third, you’re imagining that the President would immediately put a halt to something dumb if baseless and illegal. There are many reasons why he would allow it. Among others, he has a track record of giving plenty of room for his opponents to hang themselves.
Don, the special counsel law is not the only law. When Grassley refers to the Constitution he is likely meaning the 4th Amendment protecting individuals from unreasonable search. Warrants must have probable cause that a crime has been committed. Also, the 14th Amendment gives equal protection of the law and prevents specific targeting application to deprive life and liberty.
Ron, if you believe that the Special Counsel investigation of the Trump campaign and whatever else it is they are looking at is unconstitutional or lacking in a lawful basis, you should let Trump and his legal team know that they do not have to co-operate with that investigation.
Trump is actually saying he will testify under oath. Up to now, The Most Powerful Man in the World and his legal team have co-operated with the investigation and have not challenged the legality of the investigation in any court in the land. Do you think they are not aware of what you and painty and petey know about the law? Maybe they are not watching Hannity and Infowars. Likewise, all those dudes who have pleaded guilty to Mueller’s charges must have some very poor legal teams.
As for painty’s stupid reference to Grassleys comment, the DOJ starts investigations every day without getting advance approval from the Congress. The Congress is very well aware of the Mueller investigation that started in May 2017. Has the Congress done anything to stop it? The Congress is well aware of the DOJ’s Special Counsel policy that has been in force since 1999. Plenty of time for the Congress to supersede the regulation by passing a statute. Congress has done nothing. You all should get on them.
You guys sound like your understanding of the law is on the level of so-called sovereign citizens:
Don, one of the things that still makes America great it that we don’t mind assuming experts have no more insight than a well informed layperson. I can’t tell you how many times I found success by ignoring expert advice. Just because the President, who is the target of the investigation, does not dissolve it does not mean what Rosenstein and Mueller are doing is legal or proper. It would only take a dozen establishment senators to stand up to end it — or an AG that suddenly realized he’s lost his man parts and wants them back.
You don’t know what you are talking about, Ron. Tell us how twelve Senators could end the Mueller investigation. You just made that up. We already have an AG who was very helpful to getting Trump elected and he could end it. He hasn’t and he won’t. We have a Deputy AG, who named the Special Counsel to continue an investigation that was already well under way. He could end it and he won’t. They are both Trump appointees. They serve at his discretion. They manage the DOJ largely at their discretion. The Special Counsel was appointed at Rosey’s discretion, because Sessions recused himself at his discretion.
Trump and his legal geniuses have not challenged the legality of the investigation. Where do you get off making up BS? Conducting an investigation does not violate the Constitution. The authorities do not need a warrant or to prove probable cause as a predicate to conducting an investigation. You are conflating legal principles that you do not understand. Stop the foolishness.
Trump should also stop the foolishness. Undermining his own Justice Department is not good:
Oh, you want The Big Orange Fella to literally own the DOJ. Maybe he should have put somebody in charge who would be subservient and loyal like Obama’s stooges, Holder and Lynch. Trump is in charge of the DOJ. If he is not satisfied with the people he put in charge, he should get rid of them and pick somebody else. Write him a note reminding him of his power and stop whining.
Don, you know very well that holding an office or position is not the same as holding power. Subversion is an aim not limited to the intelligence profession work. BTW, it’s not coincidental that a corrupt regime (eventually dictatorship) always has come first from control and expansion of its IC, secret police. I’m not saying the US is on the brink but only illustrating a spectrum of effect.
Laws and constitutions are simply ideals that can be strayed from as far as individuals will allow themselves to be coerced into acquiescence, silence and conformance.
Another consideration:
If the investigation is one of “national security” (counterintelligence), then it was originally in the hands of Bill Priestap, head of FBI Counterintelligence. To assign this counterintelligence investigation to a special counsel is to take it put of the hands of the very suspect Priestap. This move would certainly have the approval of Trump. Is this Mueller vs Trump fracas a ruse? Big advantage for Trump to have the MSM to idolize and uphold Mueller if Mueller is his choice. I consider Trump capable of such subtleties.
Thanks, Marion. Excellent, most lucid and cogent. This guy gave the whole scope of this business.
Mainstream media accepted $ from Fusion GPS to spread their lies. The WaPo, NYT, who else, have civil liabilities out the yingyang. They will screech until they have lost all credibility. Interesting times.
My guess: the swamp enlisted British Intelligence to spy on candidate Trump, president elect Trump and ? President Trump? I won’t guess at the details, but I’m sure about the British. Trump just took a swipe at UK health care and May foolishly responded. I think something will soon come out on this. Trump plays the MSM, and his opponents like a fiddle.
I think that now there should be a renewed focus on the attribution of the DNC hacking.
#1 In the 11th hour of the Obama administration Obama violated all procedure on intelligence assessments we have had since the WMD debacle and hand picked 3 analysists one each from the FBI, CIA, NSA.
#2 The analysts with no access to the servers “relied” on CrowdStrikes analysis. In other words they rubber stamped the analysis the DNC bought and paid for. This is exactly what was done with the Steele Dossier.
#3 The CrowdStrike attribution has two Key legs. First, the hacking of Ukrainian artillery. This was used to link Malware they “found” with GRU. We found out a month later the hacking never happened. Second, the hacking of La Monde by Cyber Caliphate. CrowdStrike relies on the analysis of a second company FireEye which has a minority opinion that Cyber Caliphate is actually FSB. Most private and public experts agree that Cyber Caliphate is a branch of ISIS. James Comey testified to congress in 2015 that Cyber Caliphate is ISIS.
#4 This contradiction of the IC’s official stance on Cyber Caliphate makes me believe that the hand picked 3 analysts didn’t even read CrowdStrikes analysis.
Also, it is surmised that CrowdStrike is one of the two private contractors who were allowed unfettered access to the FSA intercept data base. I have no doubt that CrowdStrike is part of this whole illegal and criminal racket contrived by the Democrats. It will all come out. Also, I have no doubt that Trump knows all of this, down to the last detail.
They did not rely on Crowdstrike. The NSA had notified the DNC via the FBI in summer of 2015 that they were under attack by Russkis. Hello! The hacking was being monitored in real time and the FBI continued to warn the DNC up to the time the hack was revealed in the newspaper. The NSA doesn’t need any help from Crowdstrike and they would not rely on Crowdstrike.
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” FBI Director James Comey acknowledged Tuesday that his agency failed to get access to Democratic National Committee servers and the smartphone of Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman allegedly hacked by Russia in the 2016 presidential race.
Thousands of emails from the servers and Chairman John Podesta’s device were stolen, then made public during the race, which Clinton lost to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
But the FBI’s repeated requests for access to the devices were denied. So the agency instead had to rely on the findings of a “highly respected private company,” Comey said.”
They 100% relied on CrowdStrike.
The IC did with CrowdStrike exactly what they did with the Steele dossier. They rubber-stamped it without even bothering to look at it. How else do you explain the contradiction over Cyber Caliphate?
Comey never said they relied on Crowdstrike to make the determination that the hacking was Russkis. You made that up. The information on the devices was not necessary. NSA already had it. The FBI assessment relied mostly on the NSA, who had been monitoring in real time the DNC hack traffic to and from for a long time. The NSA through the FBI had told the DNC they were being hacked by Russkis. This is really not that hard to understand.
Because cyber security @ popular target DNC was low many people / groups hacked the place with ease. Why wouldn’t Cozy Bear do its normal job, just like the NSA or CIA?
Same for HRC’s closet server & other obvious targets. Nice to show off for beginning hacks.
That most of Wikileaks’ Democratic material was copied after Crowdstrike came “into full action” makes the whole circus even more hilari-ous.
US Deep State saw a good opportunity to settle a bill with Wikileaks (called Snowden), imply old foes Russia and tackle Trump too as bonus. The Dutch AIVD had given them a perfect window into Cozy Bear activities, plus they had the Steele fig leaf from sympathetic Democrats.
This would be easier if you knew how to read, or you stopped pretending to not know how to read.
You misquoted me: “Comey never said they relied on Crowdstrike”
I said:”Comey never said they relied on Crowdstrike to make the determination that the hacking was Russkis.”
Your other quote is also not useful: “rely on the findings of a “highly respected private company,” Comey said.”
The only part of that quote that is actually Comey speaking is “highly respected private company,”. The context for that is Comey testified that the FBI relied on Crowdstrike for a copy of the relevant info from the DNC servers. He did not say that the determination that the Russkis did the hacking was based on that info. Find that quote and I will give you a cookie.
I already told you that the NSA and FBI had determined the Russkis were hacking the DNC from the previous year. The NSA had monitored the whole thing in real time. The ins and the outs. Try to catch up. OK, now just keep repeating your lame misinformation. Here, I will help you. The FBI and the NSA, CIA etc. relied on Crowdstrike. Now you can stop the foolishness. I hope you are happy. End of story.
The Ukraine. Vice President Joe Biden got a lucrative position for his troubled son, who now gets to stick his thumb into a Ukraine pie. What else did Biden get?
And what did Obama get? The genesis of the Maidan coup will eventually be revealed. Regime change for a fee.
Sidney Blumenthal was an official of the Clinton Foundation when these events transpired.
Boom! Scandalous!
__Treason__ said Trump. He never would have uttered such a word if he did not have something to put behind it.
Correction, I omitted Cody Shearer, who received the Steele memo from the “foreign sub-source” and passed it to Sidney Blumenthal who passed it to Jonathan Winer of the State Department who gave it to Steele. Steele stated in his court brief that he received two documents this way, I think.
Jonathan Winer is a Kerry man, having spent ten years with Senator Kerry as his top assistant. So now Kerry is involved in this. Would Winer have acted on his own initiative? Or was he carrying out Kerry’s instructions? Boom!
It’s been reported that Hillary and the Democrats funneled $12 million through Perkins,Coie. How much of that was paid out to journalists, media, etc. For planting stories. The House Committee on Intelligence has the bank records of Fusion GPS and they know, but they have not told.
All broadcasts, cable transmissions, internet is through the airways and this is controlled and regulated by the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. This regulatory body issues the licences that all the media must have to broadcast or otherwise transmit their programming through the airways (cable and telephone transmission is via microwave towers).
This is not freedom of the press. This is a transmissive facility regulated by the FCC. The news media uses these facilities only through their licenses. If a news company has accepted money to plant false stories designed to further __Treasonable__ activities, then these media outlets are complicit in the __Treason__.
mpainter asked: “How much of that [$12M] was paid out to journalists, media, etc. For planting stories?”
Right now Fusion GPS has admitted paying three journalists for “performing research”. We don’t know their names, so no one can say whether anything these journalists published had anything to do with the either candidate. At best, this was a serious mistake.
There are a number of non-profit tax-deductable organizations (Pro-Publica and ClimateWire) who research environmental topics and provide their stories FOR FREE to various publications including the NYT. Scientific American gets the majority of its environmental and climate stories from Pro-Publica and ClimateWire (including perhaps a dozen stories about a well in Pavilion, WY allegedly contaminated by fracking and the ongoing investigation. The last story covered criticism of the investigation that found no connection.)
So activists like Tom Steyer are paying for stories appear in Scientific American unchanged and even in the NYT! (The NYT adds a co-author, but I don’t know if the story is modified.
Frank, according to NYT article P,C was paid $12.4 million in 2016 by DNC and Clinton campaign altogether. That is the $ that I am interested in. There can be no doubt that there were $millions laundered through P,C.
I expect this to be pierced after lengthy court battles.
Great. $12.4 M went in to Fusion GPS. Some it went to Steele. Some of it went to pay three journalists for “research”. When we know what happened to the rest, the maybe we will learn if any of it was used to plant any stories in the press. If you read my comment, you will see that environmental activists have been paying for “research” that is given free to the MSM. This scam has been going on since the Internet began decimating the revenue of the MSM.
Nope, only one $ million was paid Fusion GPS, according to Perkins, Coie. That leaves 11.4 $ million. Figure one million for legal fees ($500 x 2,000 hours = $ 1 million) and that means ten $ million for?
The Clinton Foundation needs looking into, as well. How much money did it funnel through attorneys? It will all come out. Trump will see to it.
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Another dubious husband/wife combination in the FBI (as in McCabe & wife).
So this is the sort of thing that’s been going on in the Comey FBI. So far, there has been very little mention of Priestap in the media. I predict that will change.
Evermore curious: Sabina Menschel joined Nardello & Co in 2015, the same year that James Comey named her hubby as head of FBI Counterintelligence. Sabina has some very interesting family connections, according to reports on the web. Background of much wealth and a connected family. This Priestap/Menschel family affair is a window on part of the swamp.
Correction, she is COO (chief operating officer) of Nardello & Co., not CEO. She was promoted to her present position. Her company is essentially a gumshoe grown large (“gumshoe” is an old expression for a private eye, meaning a sleuthing who snuck around in soft soled shoes (gum rubber)).
One curious aspect is that Sabina was promoted to president and COO two months ago, on December 7, 2017.
This seems risky because when the special counsel is authorized by the DoJ to investigate the FBI, he will surely delve into this family affair. He will want to know whether FBI Counterintelligence found its way into the work of Nardello & Co. As a gumshoe, this company cannot take too much light and survive. Their clients will surely flee to darker corners.
The US had negotiated regions in Syria where the rebels still supported by the US – including those who took Raqqa from ISIS – would not be attacked by Assad’s forces (including his Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah allies) in return for the rebels not attacking Assad’s forces. That allowed both sides to focus on getting rid of ISIS and Al Qaeda. Now that ISIS holds no major population centers, Assad decided to see if he could get away with violating the agreement. Someone, presumably Trump, approved the counterattack. One Russian newspaper report that 13 Russian civilians (potentially mercenaries) were killed along with about 100 Syrians.
Indeed, has Putin lost his marbles? The Russians were mercenaries under contract to the government. Reported 80+ killed, 200+ wounded with wounded evacuated to hospitals in Russia. The U.S. used glide bombs and apaches, poor mercenaries. Baffling.
That was Obama’s foolish and costly policy, Frank. The Trump rules of engagement allow battlefield commanders to make those decisions, in cases of real or perceived threats. It’s called “When in doubt, light ’em up.”
This one compels painter to get on the right side, for a change. Has the Stalinist KGB dictator Putinski lost his marbles? No water carrying, today. Reality: it’s just typical Soviet style double dealing treachery.
80 killed according to whom? My figure of 13 came from the WSJ citing a major Russian newspaper. The majority of those killed were Syrian. With all of the fake news running around – including an entire organization in Leningrad set up to influence the US election and create distrust of our government and dissention – sources are critical. (Or are you perhaps part of that group?).
Don: I know that Trump has correctly delegated many battlefield decisions to local commanders. However, any responsible field commander would not have chosen to knowingly attack a target with a large number of Russians without getting approval from Washington or without been fully briefed ahead of time on how to handle this situation. Such incidents have started wars. Trump may wish to be irresponsibly detached from such decisions, but his SoD likely is not that reckless.
Obama did not understand or trust the military and feared they were trying to drag him into bigger commitments.
Positive benefits already from that engagement:Now Erdogan has stopped threatening to attack Manbij, Russia says Iran should leave Syria when the civil war is over. Putin is coming around. Assad has been shown a reality.
Another secret: it was a Russian missile that downed the Israeli F16 last week, fired from Hmeimim airbase.
Another mistake by Putin because Israeli response took out the southern half of the “integrated air defense system” installed by Russia (the S-400 system). This was another test by Putin, as he had previously refrained from using the long range S40N6 missile against Israeli jets but now Israel has taken out half of that system.The limits of Russian power in Syria has been starkly exposed these lasts two weeks.
Also, just in “Russia will stand by Israel if it is attacked by Iran”, Russian diplomat. Putin will swing in line as Trump’s plan pays out. Assad has no option in Iran, he is stymied, Hezbollah will be destroyed while Assad sits on his hands. He now is made to understand that he depends entirely on Putin.
Yes, lying deceitful treacherous Stalinist KGB Dictator Putinski will stand by Israel if it is attacked by his Iranian accomplices. We would be interested in knowing who is going to destroy Hezbollah. Oh wait, Trump is going to use the Jedi mind trick on Iran and they are going to do it. What a plan.
Putin’s reliance on mercenaries in Syria has blown up in his face and it will prove an acute embarrassment for him domestically, as he has kept this reliance hidden from the public. He faces re-election one month from now. The last several months has shown that Russia is in a tenuous position in Syria. Putin no doubt knows this. Assad will realize that he is in the most difficult position yet as Israel and Trump continue to apply the heat. Trump’s methods seem to be working.Interesting times.
According to Reuters the Russian commander in Syria was given 20 minutes warning by US forces. That commander is quoted as saying the time was too short to turn the mercenary column around but he did not say whether he had tried to or contacted them. One would think an intentional probing of American forces would have been a sensitive enough operation for Putin to be monitoring and calling the shots in real time. If that was the case then it seems like Putin wanted a definitive answer on what would happen and got it.
The Kurds want a federal arrangement with a Kurdish State. They will probably get it. Assad will have to bargain if he is to remain in power. __IF__
Latest report: Syrian army is to enter Afrin Monday for the sake of the Kurds, as per agreement between the Kurds and Assad. They will drive Turkey out of Syria, I imagine. Trump and Putin will have given their input, probably as guarantors. So things are happening.
Possibly the Russian mercenaries reported to a Syrian chief. Their tanks were Syrian equipment (old t55’s and 72’s). Anyway, poor mercenaries, they faced A130 gunships, Apaches, glide bombs and got slaughtered. Putin will pay a price for that mistake.
Putin is not relying on mercenaries in Syria, anymore than he relied on mercenaries in Georgia, Chechnya, Crimea, Donbass and elsewhere. Everybody knows there are regular Russian military units, including ground forces, operating in Syria. As in Donbass and Crimea, if Putin wanted to employ ground forces with some facade of deniability, he would simply order them to take off their shoulder patches and do whatever dirty deeds they were ordered to do. If there are any “mercenaries”, they would be Spetsnaz types nominally separated from regular service, but not really. We have done the same thing.
Putin’s interference has been quite successful from his Neo-Soviet Stalinist KGB dictator perspective. Assad was saved and Putinski holds his strings. Russia’s naval base on the Med was saved. The Russian drones who vote for Putinski like this. He will be re-elected in a landslide. Putinski has been a very successful Stalinist KGB dictator. He holds onto power with relative ease. Others do the dirty work and the dying. Putinski gets richer.
There seem to be two stories about the fighting around Khusham. Official Russian sources say that perhaps 10 Russian mercenaries were killed. Western reporters in Russia report that several plane loads of Russian casualties were flown to Russian hospitals and that a 550 man unit (mostly or all Russian) was attacked and that up to 300 were killed and wounded.
The SDF force with American advisors says they were “attacked” by a column of tanks and artillery. Whether “attack” meant anything more serious than closing within 3 miles (serious enough), isn’t clear. AFAIK, we haven’t acknowledged knowing that such large Russian forces existed in Syria or that we knew the composition of the force we were attacking. (Whose flag or markings did they use?) We just followed the standard procedures for informing the Russians of our air attacks.
I’ll repeat my skepticism that Sec Def Mattis would be willing to have anything to do with a system that would allow US forces to knowingly make such a devastating attack Russian or Turkish (or possibly even Iranian) units simply because they felt threatened, but were not under fire. I suspect such probing would be dealt with by first by attempting to discourage further approach with a show of force or a limited response far short of killing or wounding half of the force. I’m sure our forces are always allowed to return fire (while making an attempt to minimize civilian casualties). One summary of Trump’s new policy says:
“outside of areas of active hostilities there must still be “near certainty” of no civilian harm but only “reasonable certainty” that the target is present. And the important requirement that lethal force only be used against individuals who pose an imminent threat to U.S. persons has been eliminated and replaced with broad authority for conducting strikes on a country-specific basis.”
This isn’t what mpainter called “complete discretion on how to respond”. An advancing armored column 3 miles away would represent an imminent threat that could have been attack under Obama.
Frank, it’s quite simple: the administration formulates the rules of engagement and allows the local commander discretion in applying those rules. I’m sure that you can understand if you really try to.
Also, you should try to better inform yourself: you don’t seem to be aware that The mercenaries opened fire with artillery. The coalition responded to this attack.
And Frank, your poor mouthing of Trump only makes you look foolish. I predict that he will achieve his aims in the mideast and the ayatollahs eventually toppled. Europe’s coming around, Macron makes threatening noises at Assad, Iran, Trump will succeed. Obama was a none-too-bright rabbit, the puppet of incompetents.
“However, any responsible field commander would not have chosen to knowingly attack a target with a large number of Russians without getting approval from Washington or without been fully briefed ahead of time on how to handle this situation. Such incidents have started wars. Trump may wish to be irresponsibly detached from such decisions, but his SoD likely is not that reckless.”
Wrong. I know the rules of engagement. You are just guessing. Can you give an example of killing a Russian or two starting a war, other than a made up scenario so the Russkis could attack a weaker neighbor? We killed them in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan and other places. Oh wait, maybe you are talking about the recent war started over Turkey shooting down a Russian Su-24. Putinski is not stupid or suicidal, Frank. He will tolerate a lot of Russians being killed. You don’t know how the game is played.
The Mexican-American War started with a skirmish between small forces in disputed territory north of the Rio Grande and south of the Nueces.
The Marco Polo Bridge Incident began WWII between China and Japan.
Less relevant, an explosion on the Maine in Havana began the Spanish American War.
AFAIK, neither government these conflicts was looking intending to initiate war on the scale it was fought. Other wars were begun with intentional surprise attacks: Korea, WWII (Poland, Russia, Pearl Harbor).
Don wrote: “Putinski is not stupid or suicidal, Frank. He will tolerate a lot of Russians being killed. You don’t know how the game is played.”
Putin’s hold on power will weaken if he looks weak. An election is coming next month. Anything but a landslide will be a big disappointment. Thus, official Russian sources are denying that more than a handful of Russians were killed. If the Russian people learned that more than half of a 550 man Russian force lacking air defenses was slaughtered by US air power (IF this version of the story is correct), Putin might respond by launching a few cruise missiles at Krusham.
I said: “Can you give an example of killing a Russian or two starting a war, other than a made up scenario so the Russkis could attack a weaker neighbor?”
No, you can’t. You can call skirmishes between Russians and Chinese in 1969 a war, but it was not a war. I gave you many examples of us killing Russians, in recent times. You have just seen another example. When does the war start, Frank?
We aren’t talking about the Mexican War or Japan aggression against China back in the old days, Frank. Mexico and China did not have thousands of deliverable nuclear weapons. We are talking about the era of MAD. Try to catch up, Frank.
You are clueless, Frank. Putin is on notice. He won’t be sending any cruise missiles our way. That is just plain foolishness. You should know better. No more Obama weak sister BS. The rules of engagement have changed. Our strategic policy has changed.
Nice one, non-entity. It’s our fault, because as Bill Clinton’s Sec. of Def. in the mid 90s, old Bill Perry was all for the expansion of NATO. Guy is a clown. At the time, it was conceivable that even Russia could have joined, or been closely associated with NATO. Russia was in a democratic interlude and was not ruled by a treacherous Stalinist KGB dictator.
NATO is not and has never been a threat to Russia. The problem that we and other democratic countries have with Russia is that it is once again being ruled by a treacherous Stalinist KGB dictator, who is trying to re-assemble the Soviet Union by hook or by crook.
“NATO is not and has never been a threat to Russia”
The US can have their Monroe doctrine for over 2 centuries and 2 continents but Russia should not protect even a few ice free harbours like on the Crimea, Baltic or Mediterranean. Stalin is gone; Putin can’t fill his dirty boots.
Siberia is hugely vulnerable to Chinese influence; the Caucasus is a smoking Wahhabi rubble pile thanks to the KSA (and CIA?!).
Try sometimes to look through the eyes of a Russian patriot Don once in a while, you will survive, I guarantee you. To ease the transition start watching “Masha and the Bear” on Youtube 😀
Anthony, are you saying that if you had a choice of the USA or Russia to be your country’s neighbor it would make no difference to you? If you do in fact find one more attractive why is that? Are you simply prejudiced or are there objective reasons one can cite about the two country’s ideals of governance and the foreign policy that flowed from them?
We had fairly cordial relations with the Soviet Union in the latter years of the Gorbachev era. We had a very cordial relationship with democratic Russia in the 90s, when Yelstin was head of state.
As was the reality during most of the history of the Soviet Union, we have problems when a treacherous aggressive Stalinist KGB dictator is running the show in Russkiville. It makes our weak-kneed European allies who can’t stand up to Russia fearful and we have to help them. Then there are many weak-kneed Euro non-entities who actually resent us for being powerful. Go figure.
The patriotic Russians are the ones who want to live in a peaceful democracy.
Ron, I am saying that for neighbour I would prefer a Putin ruled Russia over a Xi ruled China. If I would be Canadian I might prefer a HRC + Deep State ruled US slightly over a Putin ruled Russia as neighbour. The gap is lessening though: secret courts, 24/7/365 all citizens surveillance, mafia like untouchable MNCs, etc. The zillions of US lawyers have protected the 1% well at the cost of the 99%: like Judas it was about the money.
Both Canada and Russia have plenty of oil so the US could be free of Wahhabi blackmail but the profits will be less….
Antony, I mostly agree. BTW, remember, the reason you are hearing such dirty laundry about the US is that we are in the middle of a pretty heated domestic dispute. And we don’t don’t drape the windows. I’m sure Putin would like to believe he is the cause but in reality he is just the convenient bad guy because almost all agree he is one, though I don’t know if he feeds hungry dogs his rivals (and former friends) yet.
China is a greater geopolitical threat but Russia is more threatening to more neighbors. N. Korea wins the prize of the current worst threat for nuclear exchange. Out of Russia, China and N. K. which do you predict has the best chance of shaking or replacing the leadership toward democratic reforms and civil liberty?
Russia as there the State apparatus is less tight than in China or N. Korea.
No CIA “spring” interference please like in the Irak, Libya, Syria or Ukraine please! A Russia with that kind of civil war would be a super gift to Xi – China. I am sure he can find some old maps to support claims on whole Siberia for a start. Wasn’t Genghis Khan actually Chinese 😉
Syria has been a very interesting place the past several months. On December 31, a mortar attack damaged seven Russian jets at Hmeimim. This base is surrounded by alawites, far from rebel controlled territory. This was probably an Israeli operation carried out by Alawites! Also, a Russian jet was brought down by a shoulder fired missile for the first time. Just one, because Israel only wanted to make a point (these weapons had not previously been in the hands of the rebels). Bottom line: Putin is mated. So Putin has seen the moving finger writing on the wall. He will cooperate with Trump in Syria. Some people win and Trump’s a winner. Obama & Co were losers.
Also, Assad has started using Chlorine gas again. I predict that will stop, as Macron has declared that a “red line”. Big results for Trump on the way, will be realized by November. The EU will join Trump in his demands against the ayatollahs.
From Mueller’s indictment:
“U.S. law also bars any agent of a foreign entity from trying to influence us elections without first registering with the Attorney General.”
Did Christopher Steele register with the Attorney General? Because he peddled to the media unverified and salacious material on candidate Trump with the expressed intention of preventing Trump’s election.
Mueller interviewed Steele in October. There needs to be some answers to this question.
Legal blog Law & Crime says no, Steele did not register with DoJ. The article examines the novel approach in Mueller’s indictment and claims that this forms the basis for indicting Steele, Fusion GPS, the DNC, and Hillary for the same crime. A firestorm brewing? Because I find it very implausible that Mueller did not carefully consider the implications of his indictment of a bunch of unreachable foreigners.
FWIW, Fusion GPS, the DNC and its law firm are not “foreign entities”. Mr. Steele is a foreigner who was hired and paid by US entities. He was hired for his expertise and contacts in Russia, originally to research Trump’s business activities in Russia. I’m not aware of any crimes he committed by coming here and talking with the press, but the FBI stopped using him as a source when he did so.
Those indicted by Mueller were hired and paid for by Russians. Read the indictment.
Let’s see if we understand you, Frank. If the Russian trolls had been hired and paid by U.S. entity Trump, they would have violated no law, if they had just stuck to trying to influence the election without resorting to stealing identities etc.? In other words, a U.S. entity could hire a billion foreigners to troll our elections, or make up phony dossiers to pass out to the press and no foul? Is that about right, Frank?
Use the translator. This describes the same Russki operation that did the election meddling in the recent Mueller indictment. Address and picture of the HQ building included.
You can bet big money that Mueller didn’t have to do much investigating to discover this huge sinister criminal-spy organization. His info surely came from the NSA, CIA etc., who have undoubtedly been monitoring this operation from it’s beginning. Probably half the workers were on the CIA payroll, as well as Putinksi’s. Double dippers.
I wonder how long it will take the mainstream media to discover this story. I will help myself: They will avoid it like the plague.
Now, why would the U.S. intel community allow this thing to go on for years and not go after those dirty Russkis. Mostly because it was insignificant and they can’t arrest the perps, anyway. The indictment is a joke. A sham.
Don, I agree that anyone with some degree of intelligence should realize that the Russian trolls are not likely influential, a drop in the bucket. The reality is that the only significance of the “Ministry of Truth” could have on the west is the opposite of its goal in the hundred times blow-back effect upon its exposure. This was a lesson learned in the 20th century. The Shah of Iran Coup was a success until its monumental blow-back finally led to the horrific Iranian Islamic revolution 26 years later. Anything Nixon’s campaign could possibly have gained from bugging a few phones at the DNC headquarters in the Watergate were dwarfed by the cost of being exposed. But I guess the temptation is too great for some, especially if they get away with it for a while. It looks like Hillary and company could be in that camp.
The reason the Russian troll op was not exposed earlier (officially) is that it was being saved for the right opportunity. Mueller needed to produce something. But if there are no collusion indictments and the expected IG report in March exposes the Steele dossier even more as a Hillary op, and one that was embraced by the US IC, it will be interesting how CNN and MSNBC play it.
“The Americans are very emotional people, they see what they want to see. I have great respect for them. I am not at all upset that I am on this list [Mueller indictments]. If they want to see the devil, let them,” RIA quoted Prigozhin as saying.
I am a U.S. person and one of the rights I cherish is to be secure and inviolable in my person, including a right to privacy. A corrupt intelligence community has threatened that right. The IC has no checks, no oversight as has recently been proven. There must be board oversight of these monstrosities with board members liable for abuses.
The IC has a lot of checks and oversight. Everybody who works in the agencies is responsible for their own behavior and they are obligated by their oath to follow the rules, do the right thing and report inappropriate behavior of their co-workers, including their bosses. There are internal checks on the behavior of personnel in the agencies. There is IG oversight. There is Congressional oversight by both House and Senate committees. But hey, abuses still happen.
So, we get a board with it’s members liable for the abuses of the folks they are overseeing. Who would be crazy enough to serve on that board? They would have to be suffering under a God delusion, that they could see all and know all.
Easy enough. If things are hidden or withheld from the board, it has no liabilities. However, the board will be responsible for diligent oversight and any failings in this duty must be sanctioned.
Those who answer to the board will face criminal penalties for hiding any matter that falls within the purview of the board.
Priestap would never have happened under such oversight. The present system of unaccountable chiefs is a threat to our society.
The 1947 National Security Act set up the CIA and National Security Council to bring the IC into Truman’s WH control. The problem with the National Security Act is that it did not build in enough oversight. Congressional committees are not powerful or resourced enough for that job. Congress needs its own office of inspector general just to watch the IC.
The U.S. intelligence apparatus is a relict of the cold war, no longer justified and occupies itself in spying on various and sundry, including our friends and allies. Our political system has failed us in allowing this incubus to thrive in our midst.
OK, if misdeeds are hidden no problem. But if offenses aren’t hidden, then the board has to be sanctioned. Lock ’em up? So, we will need a board to decide if the initial board has to be sanctioned. Of course, the board that needs to sanction the initial board will need a board to make sure they do their job, or they will have to be sanctioned. How many boards are we up to now?
On the surface this seems like a very hairbrained scheme, but it could be a very cushy job for the board members as long as the miscreants stay hidden. We certainly know that the miscreants have an incentive to keep their mouths shut. Why would the board members want any misdeeds to be revealed creating potential liabilities for themselves? How much would these board members get paid? I would accept a position on the board with the ultimate authority to decide on what’s hidden and what ain’t, if the money was right.
A collateral issue also touching on corruption of the intelligence community is the case of General Michael Flynn, who left his position as the head of Defense Intelligence to start his own business as a __intelligence__consultant__. I feel no sympathy toward Flynn.
Additional issue is the Obama IC chiefs who have plunged into the politics of the nation. Away with such types. They also spied on members of Congress. Punishment is their due and I pray that they receive it.
How many watchers to watch the watchmen was a central question facing the founders.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. –Alexander Hamilton
Don, the founders settled on the number three. If you have one branch (board) that becomes corrupted your have the other two to support each other in the battle to correct it. We have the three branches and three layers, federal, state and local, all to be watched by the people themselves and be reported on by a free press. The fly in the stew is national secrets. But my answer is to repeat the model we already use. Executive investigates citizens, congress investigates the executive and judicial controls the adjudication and final verdict.
I predict that Gen. Flynn will be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea. And if that happens I predict the case against him will be dropped. I suspect it will be found that Mueller’s team failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense.
Regarding Priestap, the whole 7th floor had to be involved and in the know. The problem was that Obama and the White House was too, as well as the Lynch and Yates at DoJ. Let’s say Priestap had anxiety about what was being done, who would he complain to? Devin Nunes?
Yes, and that would be prosecutorial malfeasance and that should mean the end of Mueller, if Rosenstein is worth a hoot. If Rosenstein does not remove Mueller, it would justify his removal, or Sessions removal, imo. Interesting times.
Yep, vesting in one person the complete, autonomous power of the FBI, or the CIA, or the NSA would obviously invite corruption. We are smarter than that. There is no one person with complete, autonomous power over any of those agencies. There is no group of people with that power. Somebody is hallucinating, again.
Priestap is the only one of the suspect crew who has not been fired, demoted or “resigned”. He either had a lessor role or nothing to do with any nefarious plot, and/or he is remorseful and has been very usefully co-operating with the IG. I suspect that all the goons who still remain on the payroll are co-operating to some extent. Pointing fingers at each other and playing cya. The IG report will be very entertaining.
The Supreme Court has never ruled on whether exculpatory evidence needs to be turned over to defendants during plea bargaining, only before trial. Lower courts are split. After all, Flynn doesn’t need to see that evidence to know whether he is guilty or innocent. He only needs that evidence to defend himself at trial. However, the judge involved has chosen to apply a strict standard in this case.
I gather Mueller has ALREADY learned whatever cooperation Flynn provided about collusion with Russia. Mueller will report that information to Congress no matter what Flynn choses to do. Muller no longer needs Flynn’s cooperation, he’s given up his leverage. (:))
Now Mueller can charge Flynn with the other crimes he likely committed: failing to register as a paid foreign lobbyist, not reporting $45,000 paid by the Russians for speaking, incorrect security disclosures and violations, etc. Then we can hear Strzok’s testimony impeached by his texts and Flynn’s testimony impeached by VP Pence! And possibly by his own guilty plea. Will Flynn’s attorneys even be able to let him take the stand on his own behalf? (Perhaps he won’t withdraw his plea.)
Don’t forget that the suspect crew at the FBI turned down the chance to anonymously confirm the existence of an investigation into the Steele Dossier before the election and produce widespread publicity that would likely have defeated Trump. Even after the election, the possibility of a President-elect aided by Russians might have prompted “faithless electors” in the Electoral College. The Steele dossier was mostly ignored by the press until January. Instead your suspect crew announced the re-opening of the email investigation.
Franchisee, all that matters is Sullivan’s ruling. There will be no appeal. Prosecutorial malfeasance is ample grounds for dismissing Mueller and replacing him with someone who is honest _and_ unconflicted, who can then have at Flynn, Manafort and whomever with some credibility.
Don’t forget the DOJ IG.
My reading of all the info is that Mueller’s case is not in any danger as long as he follows Judge Sullivan’s order and turns over all his evidence for review. If he has not revealed possible exculpatory evidence to Flynn’s lawyers prior to Sullivan’s order, so what. My guess is that Flynn will not withdraw his plea.
We don’t know that the suspect crew at the FBI and DOJ did not leak on the Steele dossier. I am not going to spend time looking for it but I believe I have seen significant evidence in the Strozk-Page texts that they were routinely yakking with the left loon press. Somebody with inside knowledge talked to Issikof, Corn and who knows how many others in the media who did not choose to do stories on the obviously phony Steele dossier. Does anybody seriously believe the left loon press herd would not have run wild with dirt on Trump, if it had appeared to have any credibility?
Don wrote: “Does anybody seriously believe the left loon press herd would not have run wild with dirt on Trump, if it had appeared to have any credibility?”
The “left loon press” would have gladly printed ANY negative story about Trump regardless of its plausibility – if they could confirm some of the information. No reporter or editor needed to personally believe most of the Dossier to print the story. They needed Steele’s Russian sources to confirm the information Steele had passed on, but that was impractical. Lacking that confirmation, they needed an official to assert that the FBI took that material seriously enough to investigate: “A high-level source in the IC told the XYZ paper that evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Putin’s inner circle had been received from a reliable British source. The FBI is vigorously investigating these allegations…”
Mother Jones and Yahoo News apparently were the only ones willing to print something based on Steele’s word alone. Given that Steele was paid by the DNC, that could demonstrate a “reckless disregard” for the truth.
Everyone had that story, except for the high-level source, in October 2016 (courtesy of the DNC and Steele), but waited until January 2017 to print the story. Why? Some anonymous source in the outgoing Obama administration presumably confirmed that the FBI took the dossier seriously enough to investigate it and disclose that investigation to the President-Elect. (It probably wasn’t Comey, since the first stories concerned only the plan for the meeting, but admitted not knowing exactly what Trump was told.)
Ron wrote: “Obviously, most reporters who were given full copies of the dossier thought it was junk after reading it. (They get handed junk all the time.) … But once Trump took the oath of office they could brief him on the dossier setting up a pretext to leak it the press presented as an intelligence document”
However, the story broke before Trump was inaugurated. And the first CNN story admitted that they didn’t know what Comey actually told Trump about the investigation – CNN just knew that a briefing had just taken place.
Issikoff:”U.S. intelligence officials are seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials — including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president, according to multiple sources who have been briefed on the issue.”
Corn:”On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid upped the ante. He sent Comey a fiery letter saying the FBI chief may have broken the law and pointed to a potentially greater controversy: “In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government…The public has a right to know this information.”
There is more in each article claiming some sort of confirmation from multiple government sources.
Read both stories long ago when the WSJ started complaining about pre-election Steele stories. They are shockingly similar to what I (and you?) heard only in January, yet none of the major networks and newspapers published a word about this. Ask yourself why.
Reid sent a letter to Comey complaining that the FBI was holding back information that the American people needed to know before the election. Leading Democrats tried to get leading Republicans to issue a joint statement about the problem. Steele gave interviews to the press, almost certainly including the NYT, WaPo and reporters for the major networks. (This caused the FBI to cut off contact with him.) What went wrong (actually right)? Based on my limited experience (All the President’s Men, the Plame scandal, (:))), the MSM won’t print a major story without two sources. A guy like Steele can’t go around creating fairytales (if indeed they were fairytales) and get the press to publish unless another credible source backs his story. AFAIK, Mother Jones and Yahoo News were the only ones to do so (and dodged issues of confirmation), but the rest of the press didn’t follow. The big story was the re-opening of the email investigation, not Steele.
Am I rIght about the timing? Or am I nuts? It seems to me that Trump (and even the WSJ) are trying to re-write history that I thought I was following closely. I certainly didn’t miss the stories that exploded in January and that were clearly known by the press in October. Why didn’t I know? If I didn’t know, could most Americans have known?
I already told you why the mainstream dummies didn’t jump on it initially, Frank. The Steele dossier is not credible. You can bet that many wanted to run with it, but senior editors and legal departments put the kibosh on it.
I am not sure what you are talking about Trump trying to rewrite history. His main complaint is that government agencies in cahoots with the D party, FBI, DOJ, CIA etc.) used that phony dossier to try to destroy him and his associates, his political allies, his family, his pets, etc. etc. And that is exactly what they have attempted to do. And the press has been extremely complicit.
I am sure the left loon media partisan hacks are very remorseful over not taking full advantage of the chance to destroy Trump, before the election. They had convinced themselves he could not win. Fools. I think I’ll go to youtube and watch, for the hundredth time, the videos of the shell-shocked tearful clowns disintegrating on election night.
“Some credibility” meaning an investigation untainted by partisanship. Of course the Trump haters will howl incessantly and spew bloody froth, but Republican Congress will close ranks on Mueller’s demise.
“Don’t forget that the suspect crew at the FBI turned down the chance to anonymously confirm the existence of an investigation into the Steele Dossier before the election and produce widespread publicity that would likely have defeated Trump.”
Obviously, most reporters who were given full copies of the dossier thought it was junk after reading it. (They get handed junk all the time.) Leaking that the Trump campaign was under surveillance was not a viable option by the plotters. But once Trump took the oath of office they could brief him on the dossier setting up a pretext to leak it the press presented as an intelligence document. The dossier was so bad it needed to laundered twice, once by Steele and the McCabe crew to get the FISA and again by Comey to get it into the MSM.
mpainter wrote: “Trump has just tweeted a new complaint about Sessions. I am sure that he bitterly regrets appointing him as AG.”
I’m sure Trump has regrets. He deserves a loyal protector like Eric Holder (Marc Rich, Fast&Furious, IRS), Loretta Lynch (email), Sally Yates, Alberto Gonzales, Janet Reno (foreign contributions), and John Mitchell (Watergate). Someone like Andrew McCabe, who didn’t recuse himself when his wife received $0.5M campaign donations from Podesta. Like Bruce Ohr, whose wife was paid by Fusion GPS, and a Republican version of Strzok, who constantly texts praise of Trump while investigating his campaign. People who will go easy on Trump’s associates, like the FBI appears to have done with Clinton and her associates. Based on precedent, Trump deserves such loyalty.
Hypocrites like you don’t care about Swamp Creatures; you just want Swamp Creatures who are on YOUR side.
Americans deserve people like Sessions and Rosenstein, who have correctly placed the investigation outside of Trump’s control and in the hands of someone who will have credibility when he clears Trump of major wrongdoing and judges the Steele Dossier implausible. (Or not, as the case may be.) Someone who has forcefully and quickly gained the cooperation of most of the major figures likely to have known about collusion.
So why is Trump complaining about Mueller? Oh yes, his son, son-in-law, and indicted campaign manager did meet with some Russians to discuss HRC’s email and the Magnitsky Act. That arguably was collusion, but not necessary criminal. To be honest, the fact that the meeting was held in Trump Tower suggests the absence of any criminal intent. Which leaves the final problem, was Trump thinking about this meeting when he fired Comey?
Mueller was not appointed by Obama, but his term was extended by two years by Obama. Mueller was a Bush and Trump/Rosenstein appointee. Comey was an Obama appointee, probably because Obama wanted someone non-partisan and Comey had resisted the Bush WH about unconstitutional domestic surveillance as deputy AG. With Holder and Lynch supervising Comey, Obama thought he would be safe from investigation. I’ll bet he was shocked when Comey announced that the AG and WH don’t know what I’m about to say about indicting HRC at this press conference.
I refuse to add Mueller and Comey to the above list of Swamp Creatures simply because they show no systematic bias for or against the administrations they served. Any mistakes or poor judgments they made were “honest” mistakes. There were many during the email investigation, but not always benefiting the same party. The IG’s report should be interesting.
Wray is being idiotic resisting Congressional Oversight. The truth is going to come out about all the mistakes that have been made, so there is no point in resisting. The FISA warrant and the Nunes memo didn’t need to be suppressed. Trump has almost all new people at the DoJ and FBI. Tell him to stop whining and let them do their jobs
Frank is correct in that we don’t want to replace Obama with a Nixon. I think this was the appeal for many Americans of bringing in an outsider as president. I was not for Trump in the primary but the wisdom of my fellow conservatives is showing through in hindsight. Having an outsider invited every insider to use their influence inappropriately to thwart him, and thus exposing themselves in the longer-run. Ironically, Trump was absolutely correct when he claimed he alone could fix Washington [aka the swamp]. Trump in 10 years could be a dictator (if he had the media in his pocket like the Dems). But thankfully term limits prevent that.
You seem to be proposing that Trump wants to be a dictator, Ron. Why would you go there? And please tell us what makes you think Trump, if he wanted to, would be so foolish as to think that he could become dictator. Do you think he is not aware of our Constitution, our history? We don’t have dictators here, Ron. You must be joking.
Don, regarding Trump becoming a dictator, I should have qualified my opinion that history shows that almost any alpha personality is capable of becoming a dictator if checks and balances are removed or become eroded over time. FDR was getting close, for example, which is why term limits were enacted. Gorbachev was the exception and perhaps not an alpha personality. It also helped to received adulation of the world for not cracking down. Reagan had something to do with playing on his conscience as well.
After U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged 13 Russians, a Russian propaganda arm and two other firms on Feb. 16 with tampering in the election to boost Trump, McMaster said the evidence of Moscow’s meddling was “incontrovertible.
Trump publicly chastised McMaster in a Twitter post, saying McMaster “forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted by the Russians.” -Newsmax
That’s an interesting theory, Ron. It may actually have some validity, if restricted to shady third world s#!thole countries of Africa, Latin America etc. But I gave it a little thought and could not think of an example of an alpha personality becoming a dictator in any first world country that had a history and tradition of adhering to democracy. I am not a big fan of Roosevelt’s politics, but I see no reason to believe he was close to becoming a dictator.
I never said anything about Gen. McMaster. I said that Trump is relying on Adm. Rogers NSA-CYBERCOM “moderately confident” assessment that Russia was behind the hacks.
I am sure that the wikileaks did affect the election. And I am moderately confident that it was the Russkis. First thing those @#$%$$#@%$ers have ever done that I appreciate.
I am worried about your memory lapses and other apparent cognitive issues, Ron:)
Don, yes it was Adm. Mike Rodgers of CYBERCOM and NSA. Your still sharp. 🙂
Still I would interchange Trump’s feelings and position with Rogers and McMaster, Pompeo and definitely Wray. They all trust the swamp more than they do Trump. That makes us about as far from danger of a dictatorship than our country has ever been (at the moment). Trump deserves more respect by his subordinates and would have it but for it being dangerous to be close to an enemy of the press and the swamp. People guard their careers.
Regarding first-world countries with a tradition of democracy, that’s not a very large or particularly old club. And, our country (and world) is changing fast. I couldn’t imagine that ideas about socialism would be so mainstream in America 30 years ago looking forward. Most students are no longer taught about the great American experiment. Instead large numbers are getting indoctrinated to look sympathetically at communism and told white people stole the country from the peaceful indigenous people by giving them diseased blankets as gifts. Think about the demographics that will be counted on to preserve democracy in America 50 years forward.
Trump might work out as a miracle if he can facilitate the reform of dynamics that created the swamp, including the US IC. Sorry, I am not putting down the people in the IC. All of us are born with potential to develop vices and virtues. It’s our job to hone the culture and the establishments so they can in turn hone the virtues of our children’s nature (without coercion).
The press proclaiming Trump as a dictator is doublespeak. A thinking person knows dictators use the treasury to bribe the masses for popularity to be used to cleans opposition parties and institutional checks. (Hugo Chavez was laughably transparent at this.) Then once power is consolidated they promise the current suffering and despair is just medicine — Utopia is only 100 year away.
Don: One of us apparently has been mesmerized. I’ve been reading Scott Adams book about Trump’s masterful campaign, subtitled “Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter”. One of his points concerns confirmation bias and the inability of humans to retain and recall information that conflicts with their deeply held beliefs: Cognitive dissonance. I’m sure you are aware of the meeting between Trump Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Russia’s chief lobbyist for the Magnitsky Act and an ex-KGB agent. Trump Jr. was told the meeting would discuss “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.” You aren’t stupid enough to believe the cover story that they discussed allowing Americans to again adopt Russian orphans. You must be aware that the existence of this meeting was kept secret for six months after the Russia investigation became public. What word would you use to describe that meeting?
Why do you think Kushner still doesn’t have a security clearance?
The problem of cognitive dissonance makes it difficult for people to a retain information that disagrees with their deeply held beliefs. mpainter, for example, knows that Comey has hurt Trump badly – and therefore must be a Trump-hating Swamp Creature. mpainter seems incapable of remembering that Comey re-opened the email investigation a few weeks before the election. Nor of recognizing that Comey could have badly damaged Trump’s chances by publicly or anonymously announcing the Russia investigation before the election.
Frank holds forth on “cognitive dissonance” while repeatedly proclaiming that Comey is guilty of nothing more than “honest mistakes”. When I agree that Comey made big mistakes, he gets exercised, haha ho ho.
Ah, Kushner still does not have a security clearance? That has Russia Russia Russia “collusion” written all over it. That meeting in Trump tower. Hmmmm!
Someone told Trump Jr. that they had dirt on the old hag and he agrees to meet with them. They didn’t have any dirt, Kushner got bored and left, the conversation shifted to orphans, was soon over and blah blah blah. This is the heart of the “collusion” meme. Frank is hooked on it.
Tell me what I am supposed to believe happened in that Trump Tower meeting, Frank. Is that meeting the “collusion”? There is no beef there, Frank. It is not illegal, or even unethical to meet with Russians, to talk about the old hag, or orphans. Period. Stop with the Adam Schiffless BS, Frank. We expect better from you.
Don wrote: “Tell me what I am supposed to believe happened in that Trump Tower meeting,”
Don, you need to figure it out for yourself, before dismissing the idea of collusion. Or, have you rejected the idea because it is incompatible with your belief in Trump?
Don: “It is not illegal, or even unethical to meet with Russians, to talk about the old hag, or orphans.”
Of course, but it is illegal to discuss circumventing the Magnitsky Act in return for dirt on the old hag. And someone, presumably the Russians, delivered the dirt on the old hag’s campaign manager, John Podesta, in October. So we potentially have half of quid pro quo. Right?
And it was illegal for Kushner to fail to inform the FBI about this meeting when applying for a security clearance. And it is suspicious to have lied to reporters about this subject and kept it secret for the first six months of the Russia investigation. Doesn’t secrecy suggest collusion (or idiocy) to you?
Kushner failed to report his meeting with the Russians to those researching his security clearance until April. Two months after submitting this info and the FBI’s investigation of it, the NYT has the story, prompting Trump Jr. to publicly release his email and go public with the dubious story we have today: The Russians supposedly arranged a meeting to discuss dirt on HRC and allegedly had none to offer (when we know they had Podesta). I’d guess that the failure to issue a security clearance means the FBI isn’t satisfied with the story. Can they refuse a clearance without a polygraph?
Oh, we potentially have half of a quid pro quo. That is really stupid. You are talking foolishness, Frank. What we are looking for is evidence of a quid pro quo. A quid pro quo requires both a quid and a pro, not suggestions of maybe this and maybe that, along with your guesses and suspicions. Where is the freaking evidence, Frank?
Oh, we potentially have half of a quid pro quo. That is really stupid. You are talking foolishness, Frank. What we are looking for is evidence of a quid pro quo. A quid pro quo requires both a quid and a pro, not suggestions of maybe this and maybe that, along with your guesses and suspicions. Where is the freaking evidence, Frank?
mpainter wrote the following nonsense: “Comey bet on Hillary and lost. A big mistake.”
The hypothesis that Comey consistently acted in favor of HRC is refuted by the facts.
Comey publicly announced re-opening the email investigation 2 weeks before the election. HRC and other observers show that this is when the polls swung in Trump’s direction. (Yes, I know the material was discovered much earlier. The idea that Comey was pressured by fear of leaks from his staff or investigators, like Strzok, now appears to be a bad joke. Threats of leaks sounds like a good cover story to appease what they thought would be an angry President Hillary Clinton. We’ll have to wait for the IG’s report.)
To ensure he won his bet, your hypothesis would be that Comey maneuvered AG Lynch out of the way and did everything he could to obscure HRC’s wrong doing when testifying in front of Congress. Did this testimony help HRC? (Trey Gowdy is a sharp dude and Comey did nothing to filibuster, misdirect or obscure this line of questioning: the best case for prosecuting anyone made.)
Many (including Senator Graham and likely the forth IG’s report) have criticized Comey for disclosing so many of Clintons mistakes, when no charges were brought. They assert that the FBI doesn’t publicly smear ordinary citizens after an investigation produces no charges and that HRC shouldn’t have been treated any differently. AG Lynch might have adopted this position. Comey chose transparency and candidly disclosed what the FBI had learned, presumably so interested voters would be better informed about the allegations.
The exculpatory evidence is from the DOJ IG. This will show that McCabe proceeded against Flynn for reasons of animus and designed a trap for him. The charges against Flynn will be dismissed. Mueller and the FBI will be excoriated by Sullivan and … sproing! Adios Mueller.
You could say that Comey wasn’t entirely in the tank for the old hag, but he is ultimately responsible for the pathetic pseudo-investigation into the email crimes. A real investigation would have revealed multiple prosecutable offenses. Period.
Comey sees himself as a boy scout and defender of whatever it is he thinks he is defending. If he thinks he was defending the integrity of the DOJ and FBI, he is delusional. Much of what he did was done to keep his job. When that hag Lynch told him to call it a matter instead of an investigation, he went along like a little chump. When his underlings softened the story he was going to tell about hillary’s crimes, he went along. By having the “independent” FBI take responsibility for the non-prosecution, he tried to create the illusion that it was an impartial non-political decision letting the DOJ, Obama, hillary somewhat off the hook for what was an obvious partisan fix.
Comey eventually informed the Congress about the Weiner email story, because he had testified that he would notify them if something else came up. He had to tell them or risk them finding out from the NYPD or some conscientious FBI guy, or the IG. What he did for hillary was to not conduct a proper investigation of the new emails, just as he had done in the main case. He put Strozk on it to do a biased go-through-the-motions cursory search. That was done very fast to be able to exonerate old hag, before the vote. Later we found out there were classified emails there that could have led to more problems for old hilly and her toadies.
Bottom line is that Comey bent over backwards to let old hilly slide and went after Trump as if he were the devil.
Article in today’s Washington Times utterly condemning of the FBI. Great reeking stench, that organization. Do away with single Directors. Wray is doing the same cover-up type stuff that his predecessors did (Comey and Mueller). Board control with criminal penalties for the FBI, other IC, is only remedy. Wray is an ass who only compounds their problems. Another Trump mistake at the DOJ. Wise up, Trump.
Judicial Watch has filed a FOI suit against the Department of State demanding information on the Samantha Power “unmaskings” (260!of them), one per day in the last months of Obama!). Strange that congress has not subpoenaed this information.
I’ll disagree. I don’t think there is enough evidence to know what effect they had. The idea that our election could have been manipulated by the Russians arouses strong emotions, making it difficult for both Trump-haters and -supporters to see the situation clearly. Ron: How many pages did the trolls create? How many people saw them? How persuasive were they? If you don’t know, what is the basis for your statement?
Before ridiculing some of mpainter’s claims, I have checked some see if I have missed something. Checking has led me to a swamp of lunatic fringe web sites. The most startling post I came across was entitled: “Trey Gowdy Just Announced Undisputable Evidence Found During The Clinton Compound Raid”. It was dated June 2017. As best I can tell, there hasn’t been a raid on the Clintons and the results of such a raid would certainly not be announced by Mr. Gowdy. Was this the product of Russian trolls???
Anyone want to guess how may websites have published this title word for word? How many Youtube videos? Would you believe that one video (Hot News) has 82,000 views? Others with thousands of views. How many times has this been forwards through social media? Or paraphrased and not found by my exact quote search?
If this is one of perhaps thousands of stories produced by the Russian trolls, perhaps they could have had an impact. I certainly wouldn’t have thought so two years ago. Perhaps paranoia has set in.
Frank, the Rosenstein press release indicting the Russian troll masters had some interesting facts that you are not considering.
1) Most of the Russian financed ads were after the election.
2) Almost all of the ad money was spent outside of the critical battlegrounds of PA, MI and WI.
3) Rosenstein, (who signed a Page FISA extension and appointed Mueller,) emphasized that there was not a single US cut-out involved in the troll campaign.
4) He also declared the (the all Dem) Mueller investigation concluded the Russian aim was not to elect Trump but to so domestic division and discord into the country and political process.
5) Point 4 is backed up by the support of the Trolls for Bernie Sanders in the primary as well as organizing anti-Trump rallies after the election.
Although the Dem MSM savored Mueller indictments they missed that they provide strong circumstantial evidence against Trump collusion and in favor of meddling for the sake of destabilizing America. There is no doubt that the inexperienced Trump campaign would have been a target of dangles by agents but there is no evidence they bit (like Schiff did). Manafort is surely being offered a “get out of jail free card” if he will attest to any collusion at Trump Tower.
There is strong circumstantial evidence that Clinton bit on a Russian dangle in the Steele dossier and facilitated the US IC’s compromise as well. Natalia V’s close ties with Fusion GPS and her meeting with them before and after the Trump tower meeting strongly suggests that Russia was setting up both Trump and Hillary.
Don’t hit Frank too hard with facts, Ron. He prefers the meme. Let’s just pretend that the Trump Tower meeting was the “collusion”. Donald Jr. and Kushner et al. met in their own building with a gaggle of people they didn’t know from Adam and discussed a plot to somehow pay off the Russkis to do whatever. So, all these rich billionaires and scions living the good life with their own jets and helicopters risked it all to win a freaking election, so they could work without pay to what end? Make more billions? The Russia Russia Russia meme is ludicrous BS.
Don’t hit Frank too hard with facts, Ron. He prefers the meme. Let’s just pretend that the Trump Tower meeting was the “collusion”. Donald Jr. and Kushner et al. met in their own building with a gaggle of people they didn’t know from Adam and discussed a plot to somehow pay off the Russkis to do whatever. So, all these rich billionaires and scions living the good life with their own jets and helicopters risked it all to win a freaking election, so they could work without pay to what end? Make more billions? The Russia Russia Russia meme is ludicrous BS.
Ron: Thanks for the reply. You didn’t provide a source for your statements. When I did my own search, I found a video and transcript of Rosenstein’s press conference that differs substantially from items 1) 2) and 4) in your comment:
“There’s no ALLEGATION IN THE INDICTMENT of any effect on the outcome of the election.”
“The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.”
Of course, spreading distrust about the political system in general would favor outsiders like Trump and Sanders.
“AFTER THE ELECTION, the defendants allegedly staged rallies to support the president-elect, while simultaneously staging rallies to protest his election. For example, the defendants organized one rally to support the president-elect and another rally to oppose him, both in New York, on the same day.”
As best I can tell, Rosenstein said nothing about whether or not this effort mostly favored Trump. Since it started in 2014 and continued after the election, there were perhaps six months when the main focus may have been on electing Trump. Even if it were true, Mr. Rosenstein won’t want to anger Trump by making this statement, and he dodged this question.
So who is providing you with a misleading summary of what was said? You don’t strike me as someone who is easily duped, but it is getting extremely hard to separate fact from fiction and spin these day. (Ignore Don and feel free to criticize my mistakes. I’d like to know the truth even if it challenges my biases.)
Mueller’s team is not all Democrat: three are independents, and the most powerful member is Republican. Given the fact that many attorneys are Democrats, that even more attorneys in NYC and DC (the locales Mueller could easily recruit) are Democrats, and that Democrats would be more likely to accept an offer to join the special counsel’s team, it is not surprising that there so many Democrats. Ken Starr’s team was also mostly Democrats.
Technically, Mueller may not have been allowed to ask about party affiliation when hiring. If so, the hiring process could have been unbiased.
If Mueller uncovers wrongdoing by President Trump, his team will not prosecute. They will present a report to the House, and the Judiciary Committee will serve as a Grand Jury. The Chairman and Ranking-Member coordinate the preparation of charges and function as prosecution and defense. The President is somewhat protected from any bias in Mueller’s team.
Mueller’s main objective with some of the other [Republican] defendants is to gain their cooperation, so that he can accurately report on whether President Trump colluded with the Russians. These campaign insiders are the only ones who can tell us what happened. Rat, and you’ll get a good deal. Otherwise …
Frank, here is an article by Byron York who actually dug a little deeper than simply reprinting the press release. I had to dig for it so I don’t blame you. If you are a Dem it’s very hard to find all the facts to the MSM narrative.
About 25 percent of the ads were never seen by anyone, Facebook said. And of the total ads, “The vast majority…didn’t specifically reference the U.S. presidential election, voting or a particular candidate.”
Looking at key states, the total spent on ads targeting Wisconsin was $1,979, according to Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr. Ad spending in Michigan was $823. In Pennsylvania, it was $300.
That is not the stuff of rigging elections.
Regarding Mueller, he walks like a duck, quacks like a duck but claims he’s a penguin. Rosenstein reportedly brought Mueller to Trump to be FBI director and when Trump refused appointed him special counsel to investigate Trump. I didn’t make that up but don’t feel like searching for it. Maybe Don or Painter can do it for me. Anyway, with Schiff, Feinstein and all of CNN threatening to scream obstruction (again) if Trump fires Rosenstein one can hardly say Rosenstein is a WH puppet.
Frank is splitting hairs in defense of the ludicrous Russia Russia Russia meme. Another Adam Schiffless. Pathetic. DOJ IG Horowitz, The Destroyer of Moronic Memes, report coming out in the next few weeks. Let’s see how they spin that one.
Thanks for the article. It helped me differentiate between the ads paid for by the Russians, as compared with the free activity on social media and on web pages.
I found some campaign spending figures that disagreed with York’s, but I think that, on a total dollar basis, the Russia effort was puny. However, if dollars bought votes, HRC would have won. And webpages are a totally different phenomena that ads.
I guess I am concerned about the effectiveness pro-Putin propaganda and the alliance between the alt-Right and Russia. Russian attempts to tear down our institutions and create distrust in our government is much more effective combined with Trump’s MAGA. America is already great (though it can be greater). When in the past was America greater, Mr. Trump? Under LBJ? Nixon? Ford? Carter? Bush 1? Clinton 1? Bush 2?
I’m not a Dem, but it is still difficult to find reliable news these days. Fox News can’t afford to have any conservatives who aren’t 100% behind Trump. If Trump turns on him, the network faces financial ruin and they both know it. (See Megan Kelly.) In the primary, Trump’s outrageous behavior sucked all of the attention from his opponents. With today’s war between Trump and the Democrats, there is no room for centrists or conservative opponents of Trump. I occasionally come across a paper copy of the WaPo and feel like vomiting. Don’t those liberal elites know their non-stop ranting counterproductive and is going to get Trump re-elected?
Frank, you are correct about MAGA. It’s natural to look back nostalgically and there were many things less than great about the US at all times. I think the gist of MAGA is the change from the traditional consensus that America’s ideals are great. And thus we can be a leader rightly (but of course not without mistakes).
There are liberals at Fox, Chris Wallace, Shepard Smith, Jessica Tarlov, Doug Schoen, Juan Williams, Heraldo. Of Course Fox is a conservative dominated network, but it wouldn’t work if they didn’t present both sides. Megyn Kelly left on her own. She was offered gobs more money by Fox but wanted more family time.
What alliance between the alt-right and Russia, Frank? That’s WaPo huffpo BS. You may vomit when you read that crap but it obviously sticks in your head.
Trump’s outrageous behavior that differentiated him from the gaggle of impotent also-rans was his addressing of the real concerns of voters and offering real solutions. Having the guts to stand up to the left loon national fake media mob didn’t hurt him either. Trump is going to get re-elected in 2020, because he is delivering the goods.
Ron, I believe you’ll find that the centrists you cited are complaining that the war between Trump and the Dems is removing all the attention from anyone with a nuanced position. The excitement, ratings and money are dominated by the WAR. When was the last time you heard one speaker praise AND criticize Trump (for different actions) in one show?
The Bushco twins, Mueller and Comey, like Democrats, just love them. Comey loaded the seventh floor with them, Mueller selected an all-democrats team as special counselor. It is often a matter of asking the right questions, if one seeks to make sense of things.
Question: Why do these two Bushco stalwarts load up on democrats and exclude Republicans?
Question: Why would Obama choose these two Bushco stalwarts to run his FBI?
Obama was on the Senate Judiciary Committee that investigated AG Gonzales. There he learned that deputy AG Comey had stood up to Gonzales (then WH counsel) over the constitutionality of domestic surveillance programs while his boss, AG Ashcroft, was in the hospital. Both Comey and Mueller informed a surprised Bush that they would resign if the AG was bypassed while re-authorizing existing programs. I suspect that this is what brought Mr. Comey to Obama’s attention. When Gonzales became AG, Comey left for private practice.
You don’t even get the basic facts right, Frunk. Obama did pick Mueller. His term as FBI head had expired and Obama kept him on. And Obama didn’t learn anything as a rookie clowning on the Senate Judiciary Comm. He first learns about everything in the newspapers.
You don’t even get the basic facts right, Frunk. Obama did pick Mueller. His term as FBI head had expired and Obama kept him on. And Obama didn’t learn anything as a rookie clowning on the Senate Judiciary Comm. He first learns about everything in the newspapers.
Don: Sorry I omitted his re-appointment by Obama for an additional 2 years after his 10 year term.
Comey and Mueller kept their confrontation with Bush and Gonzales over domestic surveillance out of the news. This was in 2004, an election year. WH Counsel Gonzales had hidden from Bush the seriousness of the opposition in the DoJ to his plans to re-authorize an expiring program without AG Ashcroft’s signature while the AG was in the hospital. Bush heard about the seriousness of the dispute and called in Comey – as it turns out with resignation letter ready iin his pocket. Bush asked if anyone else agreed with Comey and was shocked to learn FBI Director Mueller might also resign (and others). Bush immediately called in Mueller. Bush ordered Comey and Gonzales to find a mutually agreeable compromise. The press heard none of this story, and Comey quietly left the dAG job when Gonzales was soon promoted to AG.
When the Senate was investigating other dubious conduct by AG Gonzales several years later, Mueller was being questioned under oath when he revealed the previously unknown confrontation. Later Comey testified. Very likely, this was one story Obama learned about first in person, not from the press. Under attack on many fronts, AG Gonzales soon resigned.
Bush says that Bill Clinton is like a brother, said this several times, said this last summer on TV. Bush endorsed Hillary during the campaign. Does his best to cut down Trump. Why ? What’s this close affinity between Bush and the Clintons? Puzzling.
Does Bush likewise have some affinity for Obama?
Obama retained Bushco Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Gates longtime Bushco stalwart. Way back. Why did Obama not name his own Democratic supporter to this important position in his administration? Why did he keep the Bushco Gates? Puzzling. Why the Bushco twins, Mueller and Comey to run his FBI? The answers to these questions will explain why Trump was targeted by the IC, the FBI, the unmasking, and the desperate coup d’etat attempted against him.
When Trump tweeted last year that Obama had him “wiretapped”, the MSN heaped ridicule and scorn on him. We now know what Trump knew a year ago. Last month Trump used the word _Treason_. What does Trump know that we have yet to learn? A political firestorm is coming. The Democrats and the Bushco Republicans will be consumed. Everything will be revealed.
John McCain and Mitt Romney, the two past Republican presidential candidates. Both of them poured disdain on Trump, showed him much antipathy during the campaign, as did Bush. Why? Why do these three hate and fear Trump? How big is Bushco?
Bushco was started over forty years ago, when the senior Bush was Director of the CIA. Bushco is vast.
Painter, I disagree there is a vast coordination against Trump or any outsider, though I agree that it’s implausible that Bush got the CIA director job without any prior IC connections. Perhaps the reason for Romney and McCain’s curious disdain for Trump is that they themselves are natural targets of information ops by the IC. For example, we got a rare glimpse of tradecraft witnessing McCain’s selction by Steele (HRC) to be given the dossier. How many other secret documents to these important people get privileged to see that they can never discuss?
Coming back to Russia’s 2016 op, they succeeded beyond their intention. I mean the point was for the dossier to remain sub rosa to infect Hillary and allow her to influence a growing circle from the 7th floor to the GOP establishment. They made it salacious and unpublishable (they thought) to prevent ever a daylight investigation, which would be the only way the op gets exposed. Now Russia (Putin) will suffer public supported blowback. Russia failed in the end.
Get your facts right Painter! Neither President Bush endorsed Hillary OR Trump. Laura Bush did. A family member claims to know HW intended to vote for Hillary. A large segment of the Bush foreign policy establishment endorsed Hillary because they know an alliance of democracies requires mutual trust and respect. Trump’s unpredictability, unilateralism, trade sanctions on South Korea in the midst of threats to attack North Korea, etc. scares the he11 out of the foreign policy establishment of both parties (and probably Trump’s own administration. This strategy works well for autocrats like Putin, but is dubious (though satisfying for the impatient) for the USA.
Bush II kept this father at a distance while he was President. He picked his father’s rival, Rumsfeld, as his SoD and offered no position to Gates at first. Gates believed the secretary of Homeland Security was a beaucratic monstrosity and backed out of taking that job when offered in 2004. After six years on the outside and happy as President of Texas A&M, he took the job as SoD because the nation was losing a war and he was asked to help. (He used to go running with ROTC students who were now fighting and dying in Iraq.) The Dems on Congressional oversight comittees were so impressed with Gates performance, that they urged Obama to keep Gates for continuity until he identified a successor he could trust and promote. Having worked personally with two Bushes, Reagan and Carter, Gates knew a lot about how to work with Presidents on national security issues. I recommend both of his books. He is the kind of author who praises SoS George Schultz as Reagan’s most effective cabinet member before explaining the root causes of their disagreements (Gates reported on the USSR as it was at the time, Schultz as he hoped it would and did evolve), before discussing how Schultz tried to have Gates fired.
Yes, a sneak endorsement by Bush. He had it put out in September that he intended to vote for Hillary. You call that no endorsement? I call it an endorsement.
Concerning Robert Gates, he is Bushco, like I said. The reason Obama kept him as Secretary of Defense was Bush and he made a deal on the rake-off from Kellogg, Brown & Root, the corrupt Houston based defense contractor. Long time corrupt, starting with LBJ; see Brown & Root. Does Gates smell sweet to you Frank? Strange that you would spill so much ink defending him.
I note that you confess your error above, having denied that Obama appointed Mueller his FBI Director. You apologized to Don when you should have apologized to me. But, don’t worry, I don’t need one.
My point stands: Why the affinity between Bushco and the Clintons? And Bushco and Obama? There is a reason and other will come out.
Mpainter: Yes, I do think Bob Gates is probably the most extraordinary public servant of his generation. Middle class family, non-elite university, and rose from entry-level job in the CIA to director, kept Dems from cutting off funds for Iraq, avoiding a second Vietnam. Fired Sec of Army over Walter Reed hospital and Sec of Air Force over insecure handling of nuclear weapons.
Poor Frank. It was public notification of Bushco that Trump was their enemy. Bushco has got the message. By the way, Frank, Bush is allied to the Clintons. In case you didn’t notice. And Obama, not as obviously but they are in it together in this never Trump intrigue.
In other words, why did Obama cede control of the Defense Department to Bushco, by retaining Gates? And why did Obama cede control of the FBI to Bushco via Mueller and Comey? That gave Bushco control of the FBI for sixteen long years. The political corruption of the FBI did not just “happen”.
Looking back at the question of who was behind the election hacking, (which coincidentally is the topic of this post,) I am now leaning toward totally accepting the Russians were the sole perps. If Russia was actively trying to play both campaigns against each other it makes sense that Guccifer 2.0 was Russian. The timing is well after the Trump Tower meeting and the handing of the fake kompromat to Steele. G2 played the perfect clown, appearing to be pro-Trump Russian to Dems while appearing to be a Hillary dirty trickster to GOP and to Julian Assange, who was made to believe (I he is honest) that his source was a leaker. That many of the trolls were Bernie Sanders supporters makes it plausible that one may have befriended Rich online and presented him assistance in leaking the DNC, if Rich was involved. That would explain why he would need to be silenced. At the same time it would look bad for Clinton for the body count to be adding to in the eyes of her non-fans. It even caused the implication to pass through Donna Brazile’s and into her book.
Hillary would never have put Warren Flood’s name in the G2 document meta-data. That looks like Russian mischief to have eyes looking at him. Also, the Fancy Bear’s use of MSDepartment misspelled as their domain name smacks as another racial slight. That is an all minority business who were Hillary and DNC’s contractor for network setup and security. They suffered huge embarrassment at ignoring the FBI warnings, thinking it was a crank and telling Podesta that his phishing screen was a “legitimate” email rather than illegitimate, the later event was included in Wikileaks emails, rubbing their faces in it.
If Guccifer 2.0 was Russian he could have been playing a critical role to support the Steele dossier claims, cementing suspicions into beliefs and encouraging Clinton and Steele to go all in, alert the FBI and media. Without the WL and G2 Clinton’s suspicions might have remained unacted on. The seventh floor believed the dossier because Clinton and Steele believed it. If there was no Trump collusion or Hillary collusion then they and we were all duped. Good play Vlad!
Vlad has the advantage of having waaay less money available for secret (cyber) services than the US, so his club of hackers and management is “small” making leaks less frequent. Remember Chelsea Manning being 1 of ~100,000 people having access to that ocean of sensitive data? US leaks balance this scale a bit.
Still a lot of hardware and software backdoors and errors remain left in popular US IT products and they will stay in NSA/CIA hands as long as they think this is to their advantage. Vlad & Xi looove that mentality while Microsoft, Apple, Intel etc. hate it.
Mueller interviews Trump and wraps up his investigation by indicting Trump for lying to the FBI but it is a sealed indictment because the proof purportedly comes from classified information. With this sealed indictment Mueller erodes Trump’s popular support because it provides the basis for endless stream of fake news. Mueller proceeds to defy all comers and Rosenstein refuses to do anything and the wretched Sessions can’t. The democrats combine with thirty never Trump Republicans in the House to impeach Trump. Mueller plays the game out until 2020 and the Senate trial is unresolved at election time.
Trump and his attorney, Ty Cobb, I’m sure have the same dream. That’s why they will stall the Mueller interview until the IG report comes out, hoping it will blast Comey’s 7th floor. That would provide a basis to publicly call on Mueller to end the investigation, especially if judge Sullivan throws out the Flynn indictment.
The only fly in the stew is if Papadopoulos brought a specific offer the Russians to the Trump campaign, which seems extremely unlikely. (If he had brought any message from Trump the other way the Trump indictment would have happened long ago.) But if a clear offer was dangled that would be cause to further investigate the response. I have never heard anyone speculate on what Trump could have been persuaded to give Putin. Syria? the Black Sea? Ukraine? dissolution of NATO? higher oil market? pleas to congress to repeal Magnitsky Act?
When Putin was asked if he tried to help Trump he answered with a straight face that it would make no difference to Russia who was president of the US. Even a dictator can be truthful once in a while.
Papadoofalous is a non-entity footnote in this story. The FBI basically ignored that clown and did not interview him or otherwise investigate his connection to the alleged “collusion” until January, 2017. This former never-Trumper thoroughly destroys the Adam Schiffless memo and details the FISA warrant abuse:
Don, thanks for the very detailed article dissecting Schiff’s Dem memo. It’s hard to know if the Dems are intentionally muddying the water or really don’t see what happened, that not only was Hillary compromised, the dossier was a dangle that was swallowed by the whole of the US IC. And, because of the Obama politicization of the pretty much every federal agency there was no effective resistance to the infection of DoJ, DoS and the WH. But, it went further. Almost the entire Dem party and their (our) media swallowed as well. This leaves our country now in the dilemma of having to admit the establishment was fooled. Or, they can slowly get revealed as idiots as they desperately make more and more outrageous rationalizations and Russia Russia accusations. The real rationalization, of course, is that the damage to their credibility will damage the cause. And nothing is more important than the cause. We will survive it and emerge stronger for it. Thanks Vlad — and wipe that grin off your face.
Ron, The Steele Dossier isn’t likely to be a Russian dangle. First, it helps Hillary and Putin hates her. Second, the Steele has several sources and the Russians can’t be sure who all of them are. They can manipulate Steele that effectively. I think Steele saw a chance to ensure that the Americans made what he saw as the right choice and took it. He combined rumor you could hear anywhere with other fake or unreliable info and sold the package.
Frank, if Putin had gotten wind of Steele’s inquiries from even a single one of his sources he would have focused his IC to find everyone Steele was talking to. If Putin at this time is holding the Podesta and DNC time sensitive assets wondering how to play them he would be extremely interested Steele. Looking at the timing of the approaches of Natalia V to Trump Campaign and Guccifer 2.0 it’s pretty clear, even if Mueller had not just confirmed the Russian active measures campaign’s motive to undermine integrity.
DaveJR has an interesting hypothesis. Putin dangles tales information and uses it to discredit President Hillary when she wins. First, if you are like most Americans, you didn’t hear about The Steele Dossier before January 2017. So falling for Putin putative dangle did not change the outcome. If Trump believed your hypothesis, he would be very angry at Putin for attempting to sabotaging Trump’s candidacy. So Trump does not believe the dangle hypothesis.
However. If there had been nationwide publicity before the election and HRC won, she could claim she had nothing to do with publicizing the Dossier (others did the dirty work), that everyone believed Trump’s candidacy was doomed (which is true), and that the Access Hollywood video doomed it, not Steele. In desperation, she could claim what you believe to be the truth, that Steele had fallen for Putin’s trap. Steele WAS paid to expose the truth about Trump’s business in Russia, not make up phony stories or be fooled.
I personally prefer the simplest scenario: Putin would not directly harm the candidate who openly praised him and promoted isolationist policies that would help Russia.
If Putin’s goons had gotten wind of Steele’s activities and wanted to feed Steele a false story of collaboration, they would have created a more plausible story: One main contact between Russia and Trump, not a half dozen people Trump hired as advisors and whom Trump barely knew. Steele claimed Trump had been cultivated for many years. The only Steele uncovered who had known Trump for years was his attorney, Cohen, who has family in Russia. OK, Cohen makes a plausible go between. So why does Steele learn Cohen met with Russians on his summer trip to Italy, rather than in August in Prague, when he has an alibi. The Russians would have concocted and fed Steele a much more effective story than Steele got from his sources.
Everyone knows that the Russians use honey traps, compile dossiers on major figures and try to subvert influential people. Steele could hear those stories about Trump from a hundred sources. He added true facts about some of Trumps advisor and rumors about them. The result was sensational, but did not paint a consistent picture of a realistic plot.
Trump’s attorneys are unlikely to let Trump be interviewed by Muellers team – he could say almost anything that comes to mind and that often isn’t the truth. Mueller has no way to compell Trump to agree to answer questions on Mueller’s terms. That means Trump sacrifices his chance to tell his side of the story in the report Mueller writes and sends to Congress. Nixon didn’t talk to his special prosecutor, nor I think did Clinton. Special prosecutors usually don’t indict presidents (Nixon was named an “unindicted co-conspirator”). Clinton settled after he left office without being indicted.
Nevertheless, Trump should not be indicted for perjury because his self deception prevents him from recognizing truth as something that does not change. Did Putin interfere in our election? Steal emails? Is Mexico going to pay for a wall? Obama not a natural born citizen? When suing for slander because an author underestimated Trump’s wealth, Trump TESTIFIED (in a deposition) his net worth varied with his mood.
Thanks for the name calling. When those who disagree resort to name calling they have no facts to reply with. For info on Trump as a witness, especially testifying that his net worth varies with his mood, see the NR link below. (I didn’t make it up.)
A professional realty appraisal valued of a piece of property of mine at $265 k. A realtor recommended that I ask $390 k. It sold for $338 K, two months after the appraisal at $265 k. When I reported this to the licensed realty appraiser, he shrugged and said that he sometimes felt pessimistic. Poor, Frank, your understanding is that of a child.
“…understanding of a child.” We all have bias. Points that get wide press and fit in with our opinions get picked like cherries while we give high scrutiny to those ideas that don’t fit our views. Trump’s comment to me was a witty way of making the point of how subjective it would to try to value his real estate empire. To Huff Po or NYT the comment is as a brazen lie because everyone knows their own net worth.
Maintenance and Ron correclly points out that assessments of Trump’s wealth have a subjective component. Nevertheless Trump sued the author of a book for libel because he underestimated Trump’s wealth, hurting his reputation as the best deal maker. It was Trump’s job to prove that even the most conservative estimates of his wealth were much higher than reported with reckless disregard for the truth.
Trump blasted Sessions again and Trump is right. It looks like Sessions has pulled a stall. The DOJ IG has been nearly fourteen months without issuing a report on their findings. Sessions needs to demand a preliminary report. Turning the FISA abuse investigation over to the DOJ IG will stall any report for another year. Sessions knows this. His motives are suspect.
It should be kept in mind that Trump has an expert legal team to advise him on such issues as well as friends in congress who understand these things very well. In other words, Trump has expert opinion behind such tweets.
The IG report is soon to be released. The Big Orange Fella should have kept his mouth shut, at least until it comes out. He appointed Sessions AG. Didn’t his team of brilliant legal advisers tell him that Sessions would be obligated to recuse himself from things related to the Trump campaign? How is it “disgraceful” for the AG to refer to the IG an internal investigation? That is what the IG is for. Trump is stepping on his own dick. He should stfu, or fire Sessions.
He already looks really really dumb. You are suggesting he goes for really really dumber and dumber. If he fires Sessions, Rosenstein is in charge. Are you so dim as to think that the Senate is going to approve somebody else? You get zero Dims and about 47 Repub votes to confirm anybody that the Big Orange Fella will nominate.
This is entirely Trump’s doing. He nominated Sessions and had a chance to withdraw the nomination anytime up to the time Sessions was approved, after testifying to the Senate and telling them exactly how he would operate. Sessions actually has integrity and some credibility. If anyone on Trump’s legal team is advising him to keep attacking his own AG, or not telling him to STFU, then they need to go. Start with partisan hack, Jay Sekulow.
Trump and his sycophant fanboys need to wake up to the fact that POTUS works for the people. He is not running a sole proprietorship, or a freaking TV show.
Who do you think runs the DOJ if there is no AG? I will have to help you. It’s the Deputy AG. Do you know who appointed Rosenstein Deputy AG? How many people do you want the Big Orange Fella to fire? You will have a janitor running the DOJ. I know you are an overwrought fanboy, but let’s not have a complete circus, at least until after the mid-terms.
I guess Trump never thought that after winning the presidency and a year into his term he would be up to his neck in alligators. But he’s a fighter. Sessions is up to his neck and he is simply holed up in his office with the door locked. Rosenstein already is the acting AG. I see the worst news of the day being Hope Hicks being compelled to leave the WH team. She was reportedly seen in tears today. Could be she wants to live free of fear of being targeted by the Dem-MSM state.
Et tu, Ron? Sessions is running the DOJ. He is only recused in matters related to the 2016 Presidential election campaign. Deputy AG Rosenstein is in charge of that. Both Sessions and Rosey were appointed by Trump. If he doesn’t have the guts to face the consequences and fire them, then he should just STFU and let the process roll on.
Undermining his own AG is not going to do Trump any good. It’s not going to do anything good for the country. Undermining the DOJ IG is also counterproductive and stupid. Horowitz is the guy who is revealing all the dirt inside the FBI and DOJ.
Don wrote that Trump works for the American people. Perhaps he should. However, Mr. Trump has (with one exception) never worked for anyone but himself. Trump as public servant? The one exception was the public company he founded to invest in casinos. He sold properties he personally owned to this company (self-dealing) with the approval of the BoD he handpicked, the company went bankrupt and his shareholders lost $0.90 on the dollar.
Does Trump tweet early in the morning for the benefit of Americans or his ego? Was Trump thinking about ordinary Americans when the tax bill was being passed. How come the middle class tax breaks phase out in a few years, but the ones that mostly benefit the wealthy are permanent. (We desperately needed a competitive corporate tax rate, but it should have been paid for by closing loopholes used by those benefitting most from the lower corporate tax rate. All Trump wanted from tax reform was ANY legislative victory.).
Mr. Trump thrives on controversy; it has kept his name in the limelight for decades. The American people don’t need to lose faith in the FBI, Trump needs them to do so for political reasons. MAGA means replacing leadership with better leaders, not tearing down those HE has appointed.
Trump has done an excellent job of appealing to those who feel that the political elites of both parties have neglected them. He has given them a voice, but so far done little to help them IMO.
I am sure that POTUS Commander in Chief and Most Powerful Man in the World is worried that a non-entity anonymous little nevertrumper on an obscure blog thinks he hasn’t done anything to help the folks. Seven more years, Frankie. Eat your heart out. The Donald has his obvious flaws, but the people knew that. He delivers. But you can blame the failure of Atlantic City on him, if it makes you feel better.
Frank, there is a grain of truth in many of your points about Trump’s imperfections. I worried too until after I saw how badly our institutions have gone off the rails. The media that slept while it happened continue to be determined to keep blind to their own culpability. Trump is really our country’s only hope to start back toward integrity. Trump tweets because he believes the press are not honest. For the most part I have to agree. Example: Gen. Kelly eliminates overextend interim security clearances for everyone to reform Bush-Obama abuse, (as Mr. Pete informs us) but the media report “Jared Cushner loses security clearance.”
It might help to remember that the executive branch (such as the AG and dAG) exists to implement the laws Congress has passed, not Trump’s latest tweet. Given the current 51-49 split in the Senate, Trump has little ability to successfully replace someone like Sessions with a “yes man”, say like Nunes (or Lynch or Yates in the previous administration). That is reality, though Trump may choose to ignore it and fire Sessions. With his reply, Sessions appears to have decided to ignore tweets and do what he feels is required under the law.
Other presidents (esp Obama) have bent the executive branch to reflect their will, rather than Congress’s. The liberal permanent bureaucracy made this easier. That is why so many of Obama’s orders were and are being overturned in court. With only a 40% approval rating, a Special Counsel, and the current Senate, Trump does not have the same clout Obama did. (For an example of a Prez without clout, see W’s last two years.)
Mr Trump may not care about the opinion of “an anonymous never-Trumper” expressed on this blog. However, I wrote in the name of my favorite politician rather than choosing from the insane collection of candidate I was offered in 2016. My vote in 2020 isn’t predetermined and there are relatively few such votes available to be earned by PERFORMANCE. Unfortunately, the preferred strategy today (popularized by Rove) is to rev up your base, and not appeal to the center. Mr. Trump’s divisive and intellectually insulting strategies for appealing to his base are a significant handicap.
He even won 10% of liberals, but they must have been racist libs. Actually, looking at exit poll numbers it’s difficult to make a case that he won. How is it possible? I will help you. He convincingly won independents. And exit polls miss this: It was a guilty pleasure for a lot of nominally Democrat black, hispanic, union members and self-identified moderates and liberals to vote for the Big Orange Fella. They wouldn’t share their secret with some stranger approaching them with a clipboard out in the street. Somebody might overhear. What if their Trump hating friends and family found out?
Hmmm, The Donald’s divisive and intellectually insulting strategies for appealing to his base have curiously forced that fat boy with the nuke missiles to come to the negotiating table. Frank was wondering why there haven’t been any fat boy nuke tests and missile launchings lately. Trump’s crushing sanctions and credible threat of a military solution are having an effect. Frank will call it bullying. | {
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About
A selfie taken in 2018 during a walk up Dog Mountain on Daddy Daughter Day.
Hi! My name is Thacher Schmid. I’m a freelance journalist and musician whose life is a tale of two cities: Portland and Milwaukee. In homage to the “talking blues” tradition of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, here are All The Things I’ve Never Been:
• Never been a hoodlum or a tramp, but I’ve hopped a few freight trains outta Old Milwaukee, including to St. Paul to see a dying uncle.
• Never been a rock star, but I’ve held 2,500 writhing dancers on the tip of my fingers, violin bow, amplifier and electronics — and once played Hava Nagila for a chair-borne bride at a Jewish wedding so fast the challah caught fire.
• Never been a selfless person, but I’ve helped hundreds of poor families, mostly single moms and kids, and many Spanish speakers, to get warm food, keep a roof over their head, and/or overcome barriers.
• Never been an athlete, but I rode the bench on the Carleton Ultimate Team that finished third at the 1994 national ultimate frisbee tourney in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
• Never been a traveler, but I took so many “chicken” buses during a six-month trip from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico to Bocas del Toro, Panama that I got a callous on my ass.
• Never been good with words, but I’ve had stories published in the Guardian, Los Angeles Times, The Onion, Adbusters and Portland and Milwaukee’s favorite media.
• Never been a social scientist, but two departments at Carleton College awarded me distinction for 100 carefully-distilled-to-absolute-boredom pages I researched during six months in Costa Rica studying UPANacional, the nation’s largest sindicato campesino.
• Never been bilingual, but Spanish has been my second language since San José y Los Simpsons, and I still give an employee at my favorite Mexican restaurant shit about the “pedo” (fart) joke she assumed I wouldn’t get.
• Never been a disciplined Buddhist, but the Buddha, the dharma and the sangha have been my ray of hope in hard times, like when my brother Kyle committed suicide.
• Never been a manly man, but I was the first male to work in the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Washington, D.C. office—as a media intern, a.k.a. “fax boy.”
• Never been a risk taker, but there was a moment in La Libertad, El Salvador when I thought my goose was cooked, before a farmacista saved my life with a few pastillas.
• Never been rich or poor, but I’ve spent enough time with people in so-called high and low places to know good people come in all shapes, colors, genders, sexual orientations, sizes, ages, ability levels and income/wealth categories. | {
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Offshore Sportsbooks takes "responsible gambling" very serious and we are committed to help you enjoy gambling as a fun activity. Most people are ok with enjoying betting on sports in a responsible manner, but there are times in can become a problem.
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Set Limits - some of the offshore sportsbooks will actually let you "set limits" on your own betting activity. If you feel like this would benefit you, talk to support at one of our trusted offshore sportsbooks about what limits you would like placed on your own account.
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Don't Borrow - Only bet on sports with YOUR OWN money. Don't use credit or other peoples money to wager on sports.
Take Breaks - Balance in life is everything. Don't let sports betting consume your life. Walk away from the computer and skip making that bet from time to time.
Don't Chase - This is betting strategy 101 but it's also a healthy tip for responsible gaming. Do NOT chase your losses. Doing so will put your mindset in a very unhealthy state.
Ask for Help - There are several gambling support lines available. Your state or country may have a place to call. Or sometimes a simple call to a loved one or family member to talk about your issue can help. Get someone to put some accountability on your unhealthy gambling actions. | {
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Sugar Bytes recently announced a new bassline synth, Cyclop, that they call ‘the future of bass’.
They released this promo video for Cyclop today. While it doesn’t provided any new details on the synth, it does offer a preview of the bassline synths’s sound.
Here’s what they have to say about Cyclop:
It’s a monophonic monster, armed to the teeth with jaw dropping effects and wobblier than a jelly on a space hopper. CYCLOP is the scratch-looping, sample-mashing, sub-generating, harmonic-splicing mothership of the twisted bass alliance and it’s landing on your desktop soon.
With masses of new sounds for you audio-junkies, from screaming analog syncs through brutal FM sounds to scintillating spectral shimmers. The integrated sampler also works as wavetable synth and pitch transformer for creating unbelievable and disturbing monster voices. CYCLOP is more than massively loaded with features: 10 incredible filters, unique wobble generator, feedback processor, 3 overdrives and an effects sequencer.
CYCLOP is expected to be released in spring 2012. Pricing is TBA.via SugarBytes:
That is an impressively well-crafted teaser. Makes it look like this is a pretty flexible and powerful synth. Not clear what’s new about it– other than a space invaders game built-in. The dancing projector-bot was fun.
Dubstep, for the most part, is not about traditional musicality in any sense; it’s about making kids go nuts on the dancefloor, and to that end it is well suited. This genre is completely visceral, designed to illicit an adrenaline charged response from young people. The ebb and flow of trance is here, but with a much quicker build and a massive explosion of bass at climax. This is something that just flat out works on the dancefloor. I’m guessing, given that you have referenced disco, that you are an older fellow, and probably have not experienced this music in a festival/rave type setting with thousands of smoking hot, half naked girls going ballistic to these sounds. It’s like the punk rock of EDM; anyone can do it on some level, but it still takes a talented producer to make the good stuff.
ive seen this kind of thing come and go plenty of times… some years down the road, when the next “big thing” comes along, i wonder if youd be surprised to find the “old school” brosteppers bitching about it
For me,Dubstep ain’t my bag,however I don’t feel any great compulsion to trash it or go around deriding it.It’s just not for me.
That being said I think creating a synth designed for only one genre is a fantastically bad idea.
Do you think Moog would still be a big name if all those synths could be used for was Prog Rock and Fusion? Much as I love those genres,short answer no.
I like most of the stuff this dev produces,so here’s hoping the internal architecture of this prog is not just limited to wobble basses,and provides wider scope for wider expression.
Just looked at the spec,(rather than just the video). It seems like my concerns were for naught.
Although it would be good if it were made clear for your average user who (unlike me) doesn’t roll their own presets.A campaign that had all the other types of sound that such a synth could produce then had a bunch of wobbles near the end may be less alienating for potential customers of an Anti-Dubsteppist denomination.
I believe one of the highlight features to emerge will be the sample transformer. Load in a sound — it could be the sound of your voice — and sculpt it into something very nasty while scrubbing the waveform back/forth. I’ve had great fun with this while I was “beta testing”, as heard at the very beginning: http://bit.ly/K4wQqL
“Dubstep” is a useful reference and common familiarity, which facilitates discussions of going beyond any limiting genre labels. Like science popularizing, it helps to communicate in ways that appeal, then transition open minds — and ears — from there.
Me I would rather hear some wobbles them the same kick/snare or amen break a MILLION times over. But thats just me. Yes dubstep is starting to become lame. But at least it doesn’t sound like ever other electronic music.
Ugh… Can we just have a final knock down drag out argument about dubstep and be done with it. Every time a synth is featured here and it has even a second of dubstep somebodys got to spout their mouth about it. Thread gets hijacked and ends up with the same people arguing over a genre instead of talking about the synth. I don’t really see anything ground breaking with this vst. It’s a bummer seeing good company’s bolt on features to make it easier for people to be unoriginal. However it pays the bills. So it goes…
Anyone have any opinions on the actual sound quality of Cyclop? I can’t make my mind up for some reason. Im not quite sure if it stands up to the quality and clarity of other top synths from the like of NI and U-HE. Not that it doesnt have a place of its own in any VST collection anyway.
Anyone that cant look past the genre specific advertising and terminology within cyclop is a fool. As a monophonic synth it seems quite fun for creating bass, leads, sound effects and noises of all kinds for any genre. | {
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Don't call it group. People will get confused. Aleister personally negotiating with him seems abit off. An indirect subordinate, but he knows where his info goes would be better.
Other than than, it sounds quite cool.
He is going to be so jelous of Kamijou....
Spoiler for Kamiko:
Taken note of. GROUP is a temporary name until I come up with a proper one. Indeed Kamiko being called by Aleister is off, but it has its purpose. I just haven't explained it yet.
Oh and indeed he will be envious of Kamijou. After the big first arc, Accelerator and Touma unwillingly get deported to England (long story...) and they both end up in the Necessarius woman's dorm. Kamiko meanwhile is in England after a job for the higher-ups, and sees Accelerator on the streets with Touma. Things happen, and when he discovers where they are staying (and after seeing Orsola) he blows up and proceeds to reverse-punch Accelerator repeatedly. Touma joins in to save his "buddy" Accelerator.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsukino Kage Spectre
It seems to me like Kamiko is a foul mouthed Lelouch without the tactical genius, and Nayuta is his Nunnally... but since Lelouch is so awesome, I won't complain.
That's not exactly what I was going for...
__________________
The One Who Has Snuffed God's Crack.
Believer of the Great Sumeragi.
One Does Not Simply Make Touma A Good Protagonist ~ The Truth.
"Kyon has set his 'enemy that must be defeated' to be 'bad writing' of the world. The more there is, the stronger his Holy Crack " ~ Chaos2Frozen.
Plus, small preview of the next chapter of To Aru Kagaku no Accelerator.
Spoiler for Kihara-kun gets owned by an egghead (lesbian?) obasan.:
“What the fuck is it now, Kihara-kun?”
A younger Accelerator, clad in a stripped shirt given to him by that glasses-wearing egghead-chan, asked that question.
“Another super-awesome test I got in store just for you. Come on, I don’t have time to fucking drag you there myself, you stupid tit.”
It was another day at the Special Ability Holders Multiple Alteration Technologies Research Institute.
Short is Special Ability Institute.
It’s a laboratory dedicated to the research of the theoretical phenomena known as Dual Skill; where an esper manifests two separate abilities at once. It’s a place Accelerator is forced to call ‘home’ as much as it disgusts him to admit. This is a place where he has been locked-up in ever since he surrendered that day; a place where orphans of this city, Child Errors, die in the name of so-called ‘science’. It’s a place where countless scientists tried to understand his power, got too cocky and got blown to pieces. About a good two dozen or so?
Well, these is someone who got too cocky and managed to survive: Accelerator’s Power Developer, Kihara Amata. The guy is a larger-than-life figure – one heck of a large ham – somebody that casually deals with the strongest of Academy City and can openly berate and push him around without consequences, like getting his eyes gouged out.
Day after day, Accelerator is subjected to tests designed by him. These tests were designed to test his Vector Control, and his Redirection against all sorts of attacks. Kihara tried his damn best to kill Accelerator with those, but failed every time.
Today’s just gonna be another one of his prick-waving power trips, he thought.
Accelerator stood in the gigantic testing arena reinforced with state-of-the-art materials so he couldn’t escape.
Not than he needed to.
Kihara and other researchers watched from the above-ground booth separated from the arena.
Accelerator tried his very best as his life was riding on it, but even he couldn’t properly fight back against this… indescribable matter. One hard hit landed on his face, and he started to bleed profusely from his nose and cut lips.
“KIHARA!”
The laughter continued.
“HAHA! Yeah, you thought I couldn’t do it, didn’t you? HA! You thought you could fucking mock me eh? You shitty self-important brat, I got news for you…”
Almost licking the microphone in his hands, he spelled out the next words with long awaited anticipation.
“You’re going to get torn to pieces!. Say you prayers, meatbag, and get ready to have the devil chew on your fucking balls! HAHA! Useless fuckhead! GWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
At that moment, Accelerator was hit by the unknown matter that kept on wailing at him mercilessly. He tumbled with a loud grunt of pain onto the cold metallic floor.
Then he felt an emotion he had not felt in a long, long time – genuine fear.
It finally came to him.
He was going to die.
He really was going to die here.
Another hit came, and Accelerator was propelled against a wall, some back muscles getting torn in the process.
“UWAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
His pained scream resonated through the arena, some blood came from his severed lips, and a sharp pain stabbed his abdomen.
He heard Kihara’s guffawing, and the cold indifference of the other researchers through the speakers.
That bastard had won, and controlled AND destroyed the monster that stood before him.
“Shithead…”
“Ah? STILL SPEAKING YOU BRAT? Ohhh how strong! FUCKING KILL HIM!”
All that was needed for his death to be sealed was for one of Kihara’s monkeys to press a button to unleash another attack.
It was happening.
The death of the strongest of Academy City.
“Ha…”
He accepted that as a fact.
But then, among the darkness, appeared a faint light.
“I can’t allow you to do that.”
A woman’s voice spoke against Kihara, who in turn looked at her with a quizzical look.
“Huh? Who are you, bitch?”
The dark lavender-haired woman stood in the doorway, hands in her pocket as she approached.
“I’m afraid that Accelerator isn’t under your jurisdiction anymore,” she said in a cool voice.
“Who ordered a stinkin’ hooker in here? Anyone of you?”
He paid no attention to her and asked his subordinates that, who forced chuckles.
The woman took out a single sheet of paper from her labcoat, got in Kihara’s face, and shoved it in his view for his eyes to see.
“See that signature? He’s under my care now.”
One of the researchers besides Kihara took the sheet from the woman, and read it.
“She’s… S-She’s right Kihara-san.”
“What!” he let out in disbelief.
Kihara took back the formal letter and adjusted his glasses, and once he finished, his entire face twitched in anger.
“’THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE BITCH!” he roared, tightening his fists.
He took a nearby coffee cup and dashed towards the woman, and was about to knock her head with it. She gave him a clean punch to the face – right between the eyes – then a blunt kick to the groin, sending him tumbling backwards in pain, his eyeglasses flying off from the hit, broken in half.
“Do that again and I’m suing you,” she softly spoke, looking at the floored Kihara with a scorn as she rubbed her lightly bruised knuckle.
Before he could say anything back to this cold bitch-like woman, she left and the door slammed shut.
The researchers, passing the letter around, looked floored as well, in a different way.
Not left with any choice – and with Kihara’s legal authority over them close to none now – they stopped the experiment that should’ve killed the number one level 5 esper.
Through the haze, a battered and beaten Accelerator saw the halls of the institute; it’s ceiling that is. He was pinned to a stretcher, and there were some doctors who he hadn’t seen before monitoring his vitals. Plus, that woman who’s voice he heard over the intercom – the one that had surely ruined Kihara’s day – was besides him as he was carried away.
“Wh-Who…are…you?” he mumbled weakly, nudging his head toward her.
She turned to Accelerator, and said this with a grin: “A motherly scientist perhaps?”
With that, Accelerator had found someone – an adult he could put a meager of trust into.
The self-declared motherly scientist named Yoshikawa Kikyou.
Shortly after that fateful day, the Special Ability Institute was raided and dismantled by an Anti-Skill unit after it’s commander had been tipped off by an old friend of hers.
The commander’s name was Yomikawa Aiho.
__________________
The One Who Has Snuffed God's Crack.
Believer of the Great Sumeragi.
One Does Not Simply Make Touma A Good Protagonist ~ The Truth.
"Kyon has set his 'enemy that must be defeated' to be 'bad writing' of the world. The more there is, the stronger his Holy Crack " ~ Chaos2Frozen.
Looking at all this fanfics has given me the idea for an extreme prequel that detail the life of the first person to develop powers. Was wondering what you guys think about this or suggestions as to what I should probably put on it (like settings, types of characters, situations etc..).
Hard to say; the first ever Esper would probably be a super weak Level 1 that can only bend spoons, or a precog that can tell the colour of the card.
In terms of the setting... Let me put it this way- The time when the first Esper possibly was created, there was still an East Germany...
Well It would be assume that most of the so called psychics and telepaths in the past are espers but I was considering the first one to actually reach a high level to actually reveal actual devastating powers that first brought the scientific community into studying and training them which eventually led to the creation of Academy City. In timeline I would be considering late 1980's or early 1990's, because from the To Aru timeline I'm usually thinking its set like in the future like 2020 or 2030 or are we suppose to assume thats its occuring in our time?
*Havent read the light novels so sorry it this always already revealed in those*
Hmm... You'll need abit of a history lesson then, but here's the summarized points.
The inception of Academy City by it's 'founder' was just after WWII, around 1945 (no exact date), the specific reason for picking Japan is because there isn't a strong Christianity population or really any strong religious group.
No they didn't immediately start producing Espers... We don't know when exactly was the first Esper created, but there was already research being done in the Cold War by the Americans and the Russians, we do know that at the very least there were Espers 20 years from this current timeline, of which you can assume it's around our era.
...And no, we don't know what happens to adult Espers.
...And no, the outside world has never been about to create their own Espers.
Hmmm.. might be difficult but I could probably make it work. It'll be fun to explore the relationship between Heaven Canceler and Aleister Crowley. Also Crowleys objective as to why he chose to switch sides.
I kept working on that abomination of a fic that i posted the other day and I came up with this:
Spoiler for Yep, it still has lots of bad language and sex references:
Vento opened her eyes as wide as they could to gaze at the horrible death machine that stood in front of her; so terrible even the fearsome member of God’s right seat could do nothing but shiver in fear and try her best not to pee herself; suddenly she felt a hand gently posing on her shoulder so she slowly turned around only to find that bastard she now called her husband.
“Let’s go…”
She was so terrified she couldn’t even protest as he gently pushed her towards her living nightmare.
That same morning.
Accelerator slowly turned around on his sleep, waking up when he felt his hand was grabbing a medium sized object that was really soft and squishy.
“The hell are you touching you pervert?”
He didn’t even open his eyes and answered her like it was a reflex.
“That pathetic thing that you like to call a left breast.”
“Pathetic? The only thing that is pathetic here is the size of your… Wait a minute! How the fuck do you know you’re grabbing the left one?”
He didn’t answer her but rather just squeezed the thing on his hand which caused his wife to give him a sound that was between a moan and a scream; then he turned around without letting go of the treasure in his hand until he was facing Vento; her face showing something that was half anger and half arousal.
“How? What a stupid question bitch! It’s only obvious that I know how to tell my stuff apart.”
“Ha perfect! Now if only you knew how to handle it proper…”
But before she could finish snarking at him he just squeezed it again, getting exactly the same reaction as before, only this time a little stronger.
“What? You mean this is not enough for you…”
He let go and then moved until he was completely on top of her, gazing at the naked body she refused to dress when she slept.
“Then I guess I’ll have to take special care of you…”
He got one of his hands on his chocker and pressed the button with an evil and lustful grin on his face.
“You won’t even last 5 minutes… no, make that 3…”
About 3 minutes later:
Accelerator was getting dressed so he could go to take a bath and get the fluids his wife had gotten all over him cleaned up (Quite frankly he enjoyed the scent, but it was not something he’d want wear around as a cologne, not to mention the thought of somebody else smelling her scent bothered him a lot) as he felt a couple of arms sneaking around his body.
“Where do you think you’re going you little piece of shit?”
“You awake bitch? I thought I made you pass out back there.”
“Only for a second… I think I had one of those ‘Petit morts’ or something, I don’t know I’m no good at French. ”
Then she clung to him, pressing everything she got against his back.
“But I’m up and running again and guess what…? 3 minutes is nowhere near enough!”
“’Tsk!’ If you want more then why don’t you begin by sucking my big, giant c…“
“Big? Giant? ’Chuckle!’ You know, I’ll admit I’m not the most knowledgeable person in the world about those things, you being my only one and stuff and that yeah! I’m extremely satisfied with it… but… come on! At the very best that’s slightly above ave…”
“Ha! Yeah complain now if you want; we both know that wasn’t what you were saying a few seconds ago.”
“Don’t mind that… It’s just that you’re so sad I just felt like stroking your ego.”
“And that wasn’t the only thing you were stroking bitch.”
As she heard that, she stopped pushing herself on him and just pulled his husband back to the bed, where she got on top of him, a huge grin eerily similar to the one he had a few minutes ago appearing on her face.
“And what’s wrong with that asshole? Listen I’m tired of this stupid game, so if you want me to stroke that something of yours ever again you better tell that little friend down there to stand up.”
Yet Accelerator remained completely unfazed.
“The hell are you complaining about you fucking nympho… I already told you how to wake him up, so why don’t you use that mouth of yours to do something useful for once!”
But contrary to his expectations, Vento’s grin just got even wider.
“If that’s what it takes, then I’ll just help myself…”
Then in an unexpected twist instead of just lowering herself she turned her body 180° so that her bottom would be right on his face.
“But don’t think for a second I’m doing this without you returning the favor!”
About 20 minutes and a quick bath later:
“So you know kids, why don’t you take the day off today? I’m going to make a little remodeling around the house and I need you guys to be out jan.”
Currently the strongest esper in the world and a member of God’s right seat were having breakfast, just yesterday their lives had taken a sharp turn after waking up to an entirely new situation, as they were now married with children; a situation they had taken a remarkably little time to get used to, it was like they were living together for a long time.
“What’s with you doing remodeling out all the sudden?”
Yomikawa just sighed.
“It’s not my fault, recently a couple of rabbits took nest in the house and they’re so noisy during their baby-making that now I need to soundproof the entire room they’re living so I can sleep again… and maybe the bath too.”
The couple just got a little embarrassed and kept eating their breakfast in silence.
“Don’t worry about that, Mommy and Daddy promised me that they’d take me to the amusement park the day after the adoption was approved, says Misaka as Misaka remembers a promise they made.”
Accelerator grunted at her daughter.
“I don’t remember…”
Yet he stopped as he noticed her eyes getting watery.
“But… You promised me just before the wedding, says Misaka as Misaka is about to cry!”
“Ok, ok… I’ll take you, just don’t cry; just let me get your ‘mother’ out of her hiding place and we’ll go.”
Everyone but Accelerator was surprised as they turned around and notice that the newest member of their family was nowhere to be seen.
“Give me a second.”
He ate the rest of his breakfast in a hurry and then went back to his room, where just like usual everyone could hear everything they said and in what was now an instant reflex, Yomikawa covered Last Order ears so she couldn’t listen.
“Vento, could you get out of the closet!”
“No!”
“I said: get out of the fucking closet!”
“Eat me!”
“Again…? Well ok, but I need you to get out of the closet first.”
“The hell I’m falling for that, you get in the fucking closet and do it.”
“I’m not going in the closet is too cramped and dirty in there! You come out!”
“…I’m not going to a fucking death park!”
“Everything is going to be fine!”
“That’s the same thing they said last time!”
”But last time was different, this is Academy City bitch!”
“I don’t care!”
“The hell! Even if something happens that weird habit of yours should protect you, you’re like freaking tank when you’re wearing that thing… I should know it’s a fucking pain to get you out of it.”
“I know that! But…”
“But…?”
“Nothing…!”
“The hell is nothing! Speak up bitch!”
“I… I… I just don’t want someone important to me dying again, ok?”
…
“’Swallow followed by a small chuckle!’ Ha! You’re worried about me…?”
“Who’d be worried about you idiot… I was just worried about Last Order… yeah Last Order; as if anyone would be worried about you… because I’m not…”
After this both Yomikawa and Yoshikawa chuckled at the most obvious Tsundere performance they had ever hear.
“'Tsk!’ As I’d let anything happen to the brat! Now come on, you need to face your goddamn traumas.”
Closet door opening.
“Don’t use God’s name in vain you…”
“Got you now bitch!”
“Hey that’s cheating! Let me go, I’m going back in the closet!”
“The hell you are! You’re coming with me to face your childhood traumas once and for all.”
“Make me!”
“You know… we promised Last Order we’d take her… You wouldn’t break a promise you made to your daughter would you… I’m sure the lord wouldn’t like that…”
“’Sigh!’ Ok, you win…”
“Great… Why are you taking off your skirt?”
“’Pout!’ You said you’d eat me if I got out of the closet…”
“But you… oh well I suppose there’s no harm on it, but only if you return the favor… ”
“Sure why not…”
“Get your asses out of my apartment already!”
So what do you guys think? I still need to write the rest of the chapter but I'd appreciate any feedback I could get.
hey guys. I finished my fanfiction and will post 5 pages from it every week. It's 21 so it will continue 4 weeks , right? The problem is that I drew sketches for it which are part of it. How can and where can I post it with the pics without problems? | {
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} |
Thursday, May 27, 2010
LaWendula (LW) of Woven Letters started the College Box Project which you can read about here.Basically the idea is that LW sent off a box with 144 "snippets" of paper to the first participant, who can take out 12-20 snippets and put back in the same number from her own stash. Then she makes a collage with the snippets she removed and (I think) whatever else she wants to use (that's the part of the directions I need to read soon). Hopefully, I will make my collage this weekend and post it here!Here's some photos of the box (above) and what I took out & what I put in.This is what I took out.
This looks like FUN!! I have hoards of snippets! Hoards and masses and piles and mountains of snippets!! Maybe I'll start one of these projects in the near future. I'm already involved in 2 round robins and couldn't handle throwing another in the mix just now, though. But thanks for sharing about this excellent idea for a project! | {
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You can use 3d Analise to emulate pixel shaders, allowing the game to run, but it will run very slow and look bad. But hey, I played through DX1 at 4 FPS, so if you're dedicated to getting it to work you have an option. | {
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Diwali: One festival, many customs
By Naomi Canton, for CNN
Updated 1743 GMT (0143 HKT) November 17, 2012
Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds.
Photos:
Celebrating Diwali – Diwali is a five-day Hindu festival, known as the Festival of Lights, that takes place this year from November 11-15. It is a contraction of the word Deepavali, which means row of lights in Sanskrit.
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A cause for celebration – Diwali is not only celebrated by Hindus, it is also an occasion for celebration by Jains and Sikhs (pictured). The Sikhs celebrate Diwali to mark the return of the Sixth Guru, Guru Hargobind Ji, who was freed from imprisonment and also managed to release 52 political prisoners at the same time from Gwalior fort by Mughal Emperor Jahangir in 1619.
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Lighting the way – These small clay oil lamps are known as diyas. Hindus in India adorn their homes with lots of these lamps during Diwali to commemorate the Hindu legend of the return of Lord Rama from his 14 year-long exile after murdering the ten-headed demon Ravana.
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Festival of lights – According to Hindu mythology everyone lit oil lamps along the road to welcome Lord Rama home. Diwali has come to symbolize the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness and even the illumination of the soul and attainment of higher knowledge.
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Colorful rangolis – Brightly-colored rangolis are drawn on the ground at the entrances to homes and offices during Diwali, using the fingers and colored flour, rice power, rice grains, flower petals, powders and chalk. They are usually geometric symmetrical designs and symbols of nature such as peacocks, butterflies, animals and flowers.
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Dung drawings – In villages the rangolis are drawn on top of fresh cow dung. The purpose of the rangoli is to welcome guests and to encourage the Hindu goddess Lakshmi inside.
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Enter Laskshmi – Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity, both material and spiritual. She is the household goddess of most Hindu families, and a favorite of women. Both the oil lamps and the rangolis are used to try and encourage Lakshmi to come inside the home, and of course to welcome guests.
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Blessing of the account books – Diwali marks the start of the new Hindu financial year. During this time many businesses open new accounts books and on the third day of the festival businessmen in some states worship their accounts books and work laptops. This ritual is called "Chopda Pujan", and blesssings are sought from Hindu deities Lakshmi and Ganesha.
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Cracking festival – During Diwali it is common to set off fire crackers as the noise is believed to herald the defeat of evil and catch the attention of the gods.
Golden fortune – Indian women buy gold jewelry on Dhanteras - the first day of the five-day Diwali Festival in the belief it will bring them good fortune.
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Village life – In the tribal villages of Jharkhand in the east of India the Festival of Lights is associated with the harvest of rice in November and the celebration of cattle which have brought food to the village according to Bulu Imam, environmentalist and author, who lives in Jharkhand. Women also paint beautiful art murals on the walls of their mud homes at this time and the cows are decorated.
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Story highlights
Diwali is a Hindu festival that takes place between mid October and mid November each year
Lights are lit to commemorate the legend of the return of the Hindu god Rama to his kingdom after 14 years in exile
Hindus also believe Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, enters their homes during this period
In Indian villages Diwali is more a celebration of the end of the harvest and many months of hard work
Diwali is one of the most important Hindu festivals in India -- but the colorful customs and meanings associated with it can vary dramatically depending on whether you reside in the countryside or the city.
On the streets of densely populated conurbations like Mumbai, Diwali -- popularly known as the Festival of Lights -- is often a raucous affair, marked by a cacophony of firecrackers on the streets and a flourish of ceremonial gambling in the home. The wealthier urban dwellers splurge on gold, jewelry, clothes and expensive gifts such as electronics, which they buy for themselves and their loved ones.
In the quiet tribal villages, such as those dotted around the vast state of Maharashtra in the west of India, the celebration is generally a more simple affair, defined by humble offerings and wholesome feasts. Few, if any, firecrackers are burst and many follow their own particular tribal traditions. Most villagers try and buy new clothes, but few can afford gold, jewelry or elaborate gifts.
There are some Diwali rituals common across most of the subcontinent. In both city and countryside, small clay oil lamps (or diyas) are placed at the thresholds of homes, shops and offices throughout the five-day affair to celebrate the legend of the return of the Hindu god, Lord Rama, to his kingdom after 14 years in exile. According to mythology his people lit diyas to welcome his return.
Hindus in cities and villages also believe that during Diwali the Hindu goddess of wealth, Lakshmi, will visit their homes if they are lit, clean and beautifully decorated.
Windows and doors are left open to let the goddess in and homes are cleaned from top to bottom.
Brightly-colored rangolis are drawn using fingers on the ground at the entrances to homes and offices. These geometric designs are usually symbols of nature and their purpose is to welcome guests and to encourage Lakshmi inside.
Gambling card games are often played in both villages and cities, as it is generally considered auspicious to gamble during Diwali.
This springs from a legend that a Hindu deity played a dice game with his consort on the fourth day of Diwali and she won. Some Hindus believe Lakshmi can be invoked through gambling.
Place your bets
Gambling parties are an especially popular pastime during Diwali in Mumbai. The parties typically start at 10pm in bungalows and farmhouses and continue until 5am.
"Bets can start as small as Rs 20 (40 cents) and as big as Rs 5,000 ($93). In a night people can lose up to Rs 50,000 ($930)," explains Vikram Mehta, 30, founder of Red Om Entertainment in Mumbai.
"People don't mind losing -- it's part of the ambiance and people are having fun. Everyone dresses up, everyone is on holiday, everyone is inviting each other to their homes, there is a lot of warmth."
A range of games are played, the most popular being Teen Patti (three-card brag) with Blackjack and poker also favorites.
"People sit on mattresses on the floor. There are rooms where the kids play for fun and then other rooms with the higher stakes," Mehta says. The houses are decorated with diyas, people dress in traditional Indian dress, servants wander round with platters of kebabs, biryani and Indian sweets, he adds.
Across the country Indian sweets -- known as mithai -- are exchanged and people have large family gatherings in their homes.
Diwali also marks the start of the new Hindu financial year and many businessmen, traders and shopkeepers, open new accounts books. Businessmen in certain states, particularly Gujarat, worship their accounts books.
There are various other rituals celebrated in towns and villages on each of the five days. For example, on the last day of Diwali in many parts of India, a sister cooks for her brother and he bestows gifts on her in celebration of the love between siblings.
"The modern world is changing and festivals are the only way to keep our culture and traditions alive. For us Diwali is the victory of good over evil, the returning of good back into our lives and starting a new year with a positive approach and forgetting all the bad that has happened," says 45-year-old Mumbai housewife Heena Damle.
"You have tables ready with sweets to offer if someone comes to your home," adds her nephew Pranav Damle, 29.
Typically fire crackers are set off from dusk, often throughout the night. The noise is believed to herald the defeat of evil and catch the attention of the gods.
19-year-old rag picker Santosh, whose family migrated from a Maharashtrian village to Mumbai, says: "People in the villages have limited means, so it's not very spectacular. In Mumbai, the rich celebrate it with a lot of pomp. We witness huge fireworks and can get such fancy crackers."
Some, however, are concerned that the original traditions of Diwali are being lost in cities.
Inir Pinheiro is managing director of Grassroutes, which promotes responsible village tourism, and will take 60 urban Indians on trips to three tribal villages in Maharashtra this Diwali. He says many of them want to "see an unadulterated way of celebrating Diwali, a less noisy place and to reconnect with the people."
"I think people in the cities are beginning to realize there is a lot of show in the way it is celebrated and a large materialistic aspect to it. People want to see if there is something more to the celebration," Pinheiro says.
Hopes for the harvest
In the 500-person village of Purushwadi in Maharashtra, one of Pinheiro's selected rural destinations, families of five typically live in two-bedroomed stone houses. Dutta Kondar, 27, a farmer from the Mahadeo Koli tribe, says that Diwali is a "celebration of the end of the harvest of kharif (rain-fed crops)."
Since harvest is when the villagers make money, villagers carry out Lakshmi puja (prayer ritual) on their assets at Diwali, giving thanks and praying for a good harvest to come.
"We conduct a small puja of our cattle, grain and cash," Kondar says. Family members hold a plate of offerings to the gods and chant prayers while rotating the plate around the assets, he explains.
"To make sure our bodies are prepared for the winter, we eat lots of oil and sweets," Kondar adds.
"Whenever anyone enters their house, the villagers offer each other sweets. But they don't buy presents for each other - money being a big constraint," Pinheiro says.
Village values
Like many rural villages across India, Purushwadi has its own particular rituals. Pinheiro says one of the most popular is the local singing ceremony.
"This is when children go round the houses holding hand-made lanterns made of sticks and twigs and they sing Marathi songs for the benefit of residents of the homes. In return they are given oil and grain," Pinheiro says.
"The difference in how Diwali is celebrated in the villages is that it is done with more simplicity. It is the rare occasion when they buy clothes and eat nice food and they are celebrating after many months of hard work.. In the cities it is less community-oriented, noisier and more about spending money and showing off," Pinheiro adds. | {
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Sonic Riders is on all 3 consoles (Xbox PS2 and GCN)
But I think It will do best on and.. is deffinitly needed more on GC so I post it here.
Sonic Riders Hands-On
What happens when the world's fastest hedgehog gets outrun by a hoverboard? Well, if you can't beat 'em...
Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the oldest non-Nintendo game mascots still kicking, having been created way back in 1990 for the Genesis. Over the years, he and his cast of teammates have starred in a number of different types of games, including side-scrollers, fighting games, party games, and even a pinball game. In Sonic Riders, the blue-haired hedgehog tackles a multitude of gameplay styles including snowboarding, skateboarding, and racing.
Riding in turbulence streams gives you a huge speed boost.
You'll be forgiven if you need to read through that again: Sonic Riders definitely sports a pretty bizarre mixture of influences. Overall, the game plays as something of a mixture between an SSX-style snowboarding game--complete with jumping tricks and railgrinds--and a Hydro Thunder-esque arcade racer. It's certainly a unique experience and is looking like it might be worth checking out, if you're into arcade-style racing games. We had a chance to sit down with a build of the game recently and took away these impressions.
The plot of the game begins with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles hanging around in Metal City, where they witness a chaos emerald being stolen by a mysterious trio of thieves known only as the Babylon Rogues. To retrieve the emerald, Sonic and company agree to go head-to-head with the Babylon Rogues in the Ex World Grand Prix, a racing tournament set up by none other than Dr. Eggman. For what it's worth, the game does a good job of integrating the plot into the heroes mode, which intersperses cutscenes between the races and sets up the rivalries between the two trios of characters.
As far as the racing goes, there are many aspects of Sonic Riders that set it apart from the pack, not the least of these being the inclusion of different classes for the characters. Each character is assigned to one of three categories: speed, air, or power. Racers of different categories will experience the race and interact with the course in fundamentally different ways. Speed characters, such as Sonic, are capable of jumping their airboard onto rails and grinding for an extra speed boost, while air characters, like Tails, can jump into accelerators suspended in midair to propel forward. Power characters don't get any special movement powers, but can instead knock aside obstacles that would normally trip up other characters, and they can even knock through weak sections of the walls to reveal shortcuts.
Anyone looking for a madcap racing game will probably want to take a look at Sonic Riders.
One of the interesting aspects about this system is that you'll really have to know the various courses in order to take advantage of the movement system that's available to your character; it's very difficult to hit all of the accelerators, rails, or shortcuts that are available to your character on your first trip around a track (though there are signs for each kind of shortcut scattered around the track, pointing out their presence). When you learn their positions, though, you'll be able to take better advantage of them; but even if you know where all the spots are, it's still tricky to use them. For instance, when grinding a rail, you can't just sit on a single rail and grind your way through; you often have to jump between numerous smaller rails. The same goes for airborne accelerators--you have to maneuver through multiple accelerators to complete your speed boost. Failing to complete an entire set of rails or accelerators will send you plummeting back to the track, or on some levels, dropping off into empty space, which will reset your position and cause you to lose a lot of time.
The reason you want to take a chance on these risky maneuvers is that they'll add to your air tank. Your air tank in Sonic Riders is somewhat like the boost meter in a game like SSX--you can use it to go faster when needed, or even attack your opponents, but it will run down when you attempt to speed up or make a sharp corner. You'll be forced to constantly recharge it, either by performing your maneuvers or by jumping into one of the air pits that are scattered around the tracks (which gradually fill up your tank at the cost of keeping you immobilized).
You can also increase your air tank by attempting to perform tricks during jumps. When you approach a jump, you have to hold down your jump button while approaching it. As is standard, the longer you hold the button down, the higher you'll eventually jump, but if you hold it down too long, your speed will be sapped. If you jump with the right timing, you'll rocket into the air and have a chance to perform your tricks. Tricking out isn't as complicated as it might seem, since everything is controlled by pressing directions on the left analog stick. The more tricks you pull off during a jump, the bigger the charge you'll receive to your air tank when you land. You're also ranked on the strength of your landing, so if you happen to try too many tricks, you'll hit the ground awkwardly and take a big speed penalty.
Taking advantage of your character's special abilities will be key to winning races.
Lastly, one of the cooler aspects of Sonic Riders is the inclusion of turbulence. When a character starts to move especially fast, he or she will leave a tunnel of turbulence behind. If other characters hop into the tunnel (which acts essentially like a long halfpipe), they'll be able to ride inside the turbulence instead of on the track itself. There are some huge advantages to riding inside turbulence, such as the fact that it's much easier to make sharp turns while you're in the pipe. You also get a fairly large speed boost, allowing you to eventually catch up to and overtake the character that started the turbulence. If you're skillful, you can even jump up out of turbulence, do a few tricks, then land back inside the air trail to gain an even greater speed boost.
One of the high points of Sonic Riders at this point is the graphics. Everything looks very sharp, with a bright color palette and a good sense of speed, especially when you're sliding through a turbulence pipe. The drawbacks include a limited number of tracks (only five are initially selectable, although we're hoping more are unlockable) and that there's apparently no way to turn off the somewhat grating announcer's voice.
Sonic Riders is currently on point for release in late February, so check back with GameSpot for a full review when it hits store shelves.
Print this StoryBy Matthew Rorie
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/driving/sonicriders/news.html?sid=6143182
A few points worth knowing that they didnt say is:
1)When you collect Rings in the level they level up your attack power
2)Rings also act as money you can buy new boards and equiptment
even Skates and A hover bike.
3)There are 17 Characters to choose from.
4)When someone is rideing your terbulance you can alternate it so that
they get sent flying off corse if they hit it.
Nem
01-29-2006, 09:00 PM
sounds fun. Im gonna get it!
17 characters sounds nice too...
Seraph
01-29-2006, 10:02 PM
as long as the 17 characters dont include those retards from Knuclkes Chaotics.
Ill still wait for the sharky seal of approval before I buy this game.
Dr. Bombay
01-29-2006, 10:20 PM
Seraph, you are the only person in the world who doesn't like the Chaotix.
Anyway, I'll wait for a price drop, then pick it up for xbox.
Joe Redifer
01-29-2006, 10:34 PM
I am not reading all of that.
Vegetto
01-29-2006, 11:47 PM
lol me either
Soba
01-30-2006, 12:49 AM
as long as the 17 characters dont include those retards from Knuclkes Chaotics.
Ill still wait for the sharky seal of approval before I buy this game.
I wish it would include the Chaotix and not those retards such as Amy, Big, Cream, Shadow, and every other character that sucks.
Mistatee
01-30-2006, 01:39 AM
Sorry but, Amy and Metal Sonic from Sonic CD rocks, but Amy from Sonic Adventure is a tramp.
Soba
01-30-2006, 01:53 AM
The young Amy is okay, but the preteen one is just too annoying for her own good.
Dr. Bombay
01-30-2006, 02:03 AM
Sorry but, Amy and Metal Sonic from Sonic CD rocks, but Amy from Sonic Adventure is a tramp.
Hehe.
"Sphinx so cute, I had to shave it."
Seraph
01-30-2006, 02:46 AM
I like Amy and Shadow.
The Chaotix characters all look uninspired and dumb to me. Reminds me of characters like WaLauigi. Come on. A Aligator with a Gold bling bling necklace?
"Sphinx so cute, I had to shave it."
I always wondered what she said. Although now that i know its still over my head :lol:
Soba
01-30-2006, 03:07 AM
"Sphinx so cute, I had to shave it."
Another line is "He reminds me of parsley when he's standing there all alone"
Um....parsley?
I wonder how the heck they come up with that stuff, heh.
sharky~
01-30-2006, 07:18 AM
Ill find a list of which characters have been announce so far.
Here:
In the Story mode you can eather Pick 'Hero' or 'Villan'
Hero are:
Sonic
Tails
Knuckles
Villan are 3 new characters who are the best in the world at this hover board sport
Jet the Hawk (Male)
Wave the Swallow (Female)
Storm the Albatross (Male)
You can visit the offical site here:
http://www.sega.com/gamesite/sonicriders/
Seraph
01-30-2006, 11:00 AM
Anyone else not happy with the multi-platform stuff for sonic? To me any game franchise that used to be exclusive and goes multi-platform makes it feel like a cheap game to rake in money.
There are still 4 more unknown characters.Please let the chaotix team die. seeing them in Sonic Heros made me sick.
B.B. Gambini
01-30-2006, 11:19 AM
who remembers the classic dialogue for House of the Dead??
"Rember, theres no such thing as a second chance" hahaha :lol: wtf?
and of course who could forget the greatest character name in a video game "G" :thumb-up: :thumb-up:
i dont think Sega would be Sega without their amazing voice acting
sharky~
01-30-2006, 11:32 AM
Anyone else not happy with the multi-platform stuff for sonic? To me any game franchise that used to be exclusive and goes multi-platform makes it feel like a cheap game to rake in money.
Please let the chaotix team die. seeing them in Sonic Heros made me sick.
Well I know what you mean in a way, I normally just asume that a game
that goes multiplatform is going to suck but thats not usually always the case.
The thing is with Sonic is that he is such a popular Character when one
console gets a sonic game and the others dont everyone crys and bitches.
Notice what happened when Sonic the Hedgehog was announced only
for Xbox360 and everyone made a big fuss.. Expically the Nintendo croud
even though they very well know no Revolution games have been announced yet.
Seraph
01-30-2006, 11:37 AM
Since Sonic dosent have a home anymore, I think he should stay at Nintendos house.
Seeing him go to Sony or Microsoft would just feel wrong. If he has to go someplace, Nintendo is the best home hes got.
sharky~
01-30-2006, 12:04 PM
I would have agreed if the Revolution was different.
I cant say Im a graphics whore but I would like Sonic games to have as awesome
graphics as possable. I also have a feeling that the Revolution controller
will get pretty old fast.
At first there will be a hole host of interesting new games for it
But it WILL be a bit of a gimmick in the end.
All developers will automaticlly asume they need to make wacky games based around
the controller and I would much prefer a Sonic game that ISNT based around the Revolution Contoller.
But as for handhelds I agree Sonic on DS all the way.
Seraph
01-30-2006, 12:39 PM
I cant say Im a graphics whore but I would like Sonic games to have as awesome graphics as possable.Look at Sonic 1-3 on the genesis, MarioWorld 1 and 2 beat the crap out of them visually. Graphics arent really a concern with me when it comes to sonic games. As long as it goes fast im happy.I also have a feeling that the Revolution controller
will get pretty old fast.I think everyones just a bit worried. Kind of like the DS. Yet it took Nintendo to show us how their gimmick could be done right, and look at the DS now.
Have faith in sonics new home sharky!
camac
01-30-2006, 03:00 PM
Look at Sonic 1-3 on the genesis, MarioWorld 1 and 2 beat the crap out of them visually. Graphics arent really a concern with me when it comes to sonic games.
I disagree completely.
And also about Sonic's new home being Nintendo... also disagree, so the first 2 sonic adventure remakes were on the Gamecube exclusively.. then the next two are multiplatform? I'm just speaking out of my ass here since I don't know the numbers, but I'd assume when a company does something like this it'd probably be because it wasn't selling as much as they had hoped on their first choice. Kinda like RE4. Sonic would do just fine on PS2.. though can't say the same about Xbox... it feels like they let Jet Set Radio die. bleh. I want more Jet Set Radio.
Alexander
01-30-2006, 07:47 PM
Speaking of Jet Set Radio...I just bought it for Xbox and it doesn't work on 360. I thought everyone had that game at one point; it has to be a best seller!
For this game...well, I have a feeling it will be a lot like F-Zero for the Gamecube. I liked that one a lot, so here's hoping it will be.
Joe Redifer
01-30-2006, 08:57 PM
Look at Sonic 1-3 on the genesis, MarioWorld 1 and 2 beat the crap out of them visually.
Uh, no. Not even close. Although certainly some argument can be made for Yoshi's Island (that's Marioworld 2, right?) I've seen Sega Master System games that look similar to Super Mario World 1. Mario World is an AWESOME game however. I do not consider Yoshi's Island a Mario game proper. It should not be called Mario World 2.
Nem
01-30-2006, 09:35 PM
Please let the chaotix team die. seeing them in Sonic Heros made me sick.
Oh, stop whining already!
A ninja chamelion is cool! And an aligator with a ding ding necklace is funny!
Do all Characters in Sonic have to hedgehogs for you to like them? These are different and refreshing. And i hope to see them many more times!
There, chew on that :P
Soba
01-31-2006, 01:11 AM
Look at Sonic 1-3 on the genesis, MarioWorld 1 and 2 beat the crap out of them visually.
Funniest thing I've read all day.
Sinful Sam
01-31-2006, 04:45 AM
Mario World 2 had awesome visuals but I don?t' know about MW1 it was nice and colorful but nothing spectacular. It?s more of a personal opinion anyway.
sharky~
01-31-2006, 08:57 AM
Oh, stop whining already!
A ninja chamelion is cool! And an aligator with a ding ding necklace is funny!
Do all Characters in Sonic have to hedgehogs for you to like them? These are different and refreshing. And i hope to see them many more times!
There, chew on that :P
I agree, However the Bee can go.. I can't stand it.
The Ninja is cool and the Croc is cool he reminds me of a fat new york
taxi driver for some reason.
They should have braught back the Armadillo from Chaotix not the Bee.
FinalSolace2
01-31-2006, 02:23 PM
samll robot sonic, and small robot squirrels plus chaotix and the bee guy are the best sonic characters,
cream can go and they can keep blaze. plus the bionic evil white echidna is cool too.
shadow i filler,
super sonic in split form is cool, the non evil one.
oh and porker lewis and the rabbit with the poll that went evil.
Soba
01-31-2006, 02:24 PM
I agree, However the Bee can go.. I can't stand it.
The Ninja is cool and the Croc is cool he reminds me of a fat new york
taxi driver for some reason.
They should have braught back the Armadillo from Chaotix not the Bee.
It would have been cooler if they brought back Mighty instead of Charmy, but they needed to have a character that can fly, so... :thumbdn:
sharky~
01-31-2006, 02:31 PM
I WOULD LOVE a return of the Character called Nack/Fang the Sniper
The purple one with the cowboy hat and gun.
He was awesome!!
Nem
01-31-2006, 02:48 PM
I agree, However the Bee can go.. I can't stand it.
The Ninja is cool and the Croc is cool he reminds me of a fat new york
taxi driver for some reason.
They should have braught back the Armadillo from Chaotix not the Bee.
I wanna see mighty again and i couldnt care less about charmy :sweat: . Charmy falls in the same category has Cream, Big the cat and the recent Amy... so he can go anytime! Vector and Espio have to stay though :P
Im all for Nack too :cool guy:
sharky~
01-31-2006, 03:25 PM
Any of these Missing in Action Characters would have been better then the Bee.. | {
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Kabul urged to end 'moral crimes' prosecutions
New York, June 24: The government of Afghanistan should adopt recommendations from UN member countries to abolish prosecution of women for so-called "moral crimes," Human Rights Watch said Tuesday.
Afghanistan rejected the recommendations in its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) Outcome Report issued on June 16 at the UN Human Rights Council. Other issues addressed include the death penalty, anti-gay discrimination, and impunity.
The government's rejection of the recommendations to end prosecutions for "moral crimes" undercuts its acceptance of recommendations supporting women's rights and its explicit avowal that "women's rights and gender equality remained a top priority," Human Rights Watch said.
The action also runs counter to directives from Afghanistan's attorney general and the justice ministry to decriminalize "running away" and "attempted zina," or sex outside marriage.
"The Afghan government's rejection of recommendations to protect women from 'moral crimes' prosecutions underlines the glaring gap between its women's rights rhetoric and its frequent failure to actually protect women from serious abuses," said Phelim Kine of Human Rights Watch.
"Afghanistan's failure to protect women adds insult to the injury endured by the hundreds of women and girls victimized by the 'moral crimes' prosecutions."
The Universal Periodic Review involves a review of the human rights records of all UN member countries under the auspices of the Human Rights Council.
The UPR obligates countries to list the actions they have taken to improve the human rights situations in their countries and to fulfil their human rights obligations. | {
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April 24, 2005
Goodbye, Syria
Posted by Michael J. Totten
Yesterday I took a much-needed day off (my first since I got here) and cruised over Mount Lebanon to the Bekaa Valley to look at the Roman ruins at Baalbeck. As my tour bus approached the city our guide pointed out a small garrison of Syrian troops off to the right. Soldiers huddled around tents in the rain below a gigantic portrait of their goon-in-chief Bashar Assad. "Don't take pictures of them," she said. "It will cause trouble."
I decided to take some pictures anyway. To hell with them. What were they going to do? Shoot down a tourist bus as their final act in the country?
I raised my camera to the window. The soldiers looked like miserable dogs that had been kicked in the ribs with steel-toed boots. The popular uprising in Lebanon had totally thrashed and demoralized them. Every one of them stared into the windows of the bus as we drove past. Many saw my camera and stared at me personally. I decided then that I would follow the tour lady's advice and not take a picture. There was no way I was going to sneak in a photo without them knowing it. So I pointed my camera down and lowered it into my lap.
I did feel slightly intimidated. As individuals many of these men may be exemplary human beings. But the Syrian military is a monstrous thing that should probably not be messed with by anyone who isn't very well-armed.
That's the extent of my personal contact with the Syrian Baath regime. It sure isn't much. It's practically nothing at all - and thank Heaven for that. But it's just enough that I read the following article with a wee bit more satisfaction than I would have otherwise.
BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Syrian troops burned documents and dismantled military posts in their final hours in Lebanon Sunday, before deploying toward the border and effectively ending 29 years of military presence in the country.
A few score Syrian troops will remain in Lebanon for a farewell ceremony Tuesday that the Lebanese Army plans to hold in a town close to the Syrian border.
In Damascus, the Syrian capital, a government official said: "Within the next few hours, all the troops will be out of Lebanon."
"What will be left are those who will take part in the official farewell" on Tuesday, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In the border town of Anjar, home of Syria's chief of military intelligence in Lebanon, Syrian officials appeared to be going about their business as usual Sunday.
But at the Deir el-Ahmar base, Syria's last major garrison in the Bekaa Valley, 15 tanks rolled on to flatbed trucks, ready for the drive home, witnesses told The Associated Press. Soldiers burned papers, knocked down walls and loaded ammunition on to trucks.
Syrian troops had already vacated at least 10 positions in the northern part of the Bekaa Valley on Saturday. Dozens of trucks carrying hundreds of soldiers and at least 150 armored vehicles, towing artillery pieces and rocket launchers, crossed the border into Syria, witnesses said.
"Tomorrow everything will be over," a Lebanese military officer said Saturday.
Michael,
You should have taken the pic without the flash?
Easy for me to say though.
QUESTIONS -1) They're even 'supposedly' pulling out of the Bekka Valley too? I thought most of Lebanon but were going to remain in the Bekka Valley? (I'm sure they've got tons of plain clothed agebts all over the Bekka and Beirut anyway)2) What was your impression of the Bekka Valley? There is a lot suspected to be there? Terror training centers, terrorists from the world over, Iraqi Wmd's, Hezballah 'militarists' etc...
They really are pulling out of the Bekaa. The city of Baalbeck (it's a modern Shi'ite city, as well as a ruins site) has now been retaken by the Lebanese Army. I only saw the one little outpost.
I am absolutely certain there are plainclothes agents all over the country. But after a free election and with the military ousted, they will no longer be able to intimidate people as they once did. The people here are really quite defiant.
The Syrian spooks could still plant bombs, but they will not be able to give orders to the Lebanese government once their puppet regime is beaten at the polls. Many of their old puppets have already switched sides partly because they can, and partly so they will get re-elected.
Every one of them stared into the windows of the bus as we drove past. Many saw my camera and stared at me personally.--MJT
Thanks for this post.I think you captured the 'feel' of being under the control of forces such as Baathist Syria.
Armed guys are,almost by definition,somewhat intimidating,but what makes the ' goons of the Assad regime,and others like it, so powerful is not what they will do.It's what they can do .
You are correct in saying:" What were they going to do? Shoot down a tourist bus as their final act in the country?"But if you were Lebanese,you would have to always have it in the back of your mind,that tomorrow, or next week,or next month,or next year,maybe,perhaps,possibly,someone might decide to make an example of YOU.
Who or what, after all,would stop them? Candidly,who would YOU be?
Your post makes it easy to see how pervasive fear can maintain these regimes almost indefinately.
The Syrian pullout is excellent news. And, yes, taking out Saadam, despite all of the problems it has caused, indeed may have contributed to the withdrawal -- focusing the mind of Assad in particular. So let's congratulate Bush. And Chirac and Annan, for supporting Bush in the effort to get Syria out. And Assad, for not being a fool. And most of all the Lebanese people.
Lebanon will need now to show that it can govern itself. It would be helpful if progress was made on Israel leaving the West Bank, so that the Palestinian refugees who make up 10% of the population of Lebanon could return to their own country.
Offpost: An interesting site about the little-known religion of Mandaeism, most of whose adherants live in southern Iraq. They are very concerned about possible Shiite oppression in post-Saadam Iraq.
http://www.mandaeanworld.com/
But after a free election and with the military ousted, they will no longer be able to intimidate people as they once did. The people here are really quite defiant.
Michael,1) I still look at the full Syrian withdrawal with a scant eye. Too quick, neat etc... what gives? Something must.. this is Assad's son, even if he is no Hafez poker player....
2)Do you really expect a 'free and fair election' or better how much of one can be reasonably expected?
3)Furthermore, I've read (Tony at Across the Bay & Jonathan Head Heeb) quite a bit about the districting or gerrmandering (if you will) problem of Lebanon which minimizes/splits/diminishes the voting impact of urban centers like Beirut as a voting bloc. And this assumably is where most of the moderate secularists are? But again, I thought there were in the 70's & 80's a large Maronite community in the South? Are they all gone now in SAmerica and the US?
Of course, any decent election in Lebanon will be great for the Middle East and the world.... defanging Hezballah, is another story.
unfortunately the palestinian leadership has for decades been unwilling to educate their people about the hard realities on the ground.
On the contrary, they believe they can use the refugee's unrealistic expectations to create a war of attrition, and for their own personal advantage and enrichment. The result is never-ending war because they think they can outlast the soft decadent westernized jews.
But they won't outlast the jews. They are an ancient people, and they have outlasted all their enemies, and they'll outlast the Arabs. Sooner the refugees are made to understand that, the sooner they can move on with their lives.
I'd be interested to know what you think of the elections in Saudi Arabia, where so much of the winning element was 'golden list', and so much of the campaign was conducted by private email. My understanding is that the winning candidates were of a religious though not terrifically reactionary character.
Michael, I can't say when I've enjoyed a series as much as your Lebanon posts. What a brave and courages peoples. Their new cross/crescent symbol may end up being a new icon for peace in the middle east. Now, if someone somewhere had the guts to add the Star of David to the other side of the cross...... | {
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We became aware of a potential fulfillment issue with the Ultimate Work Station Bundle. In the best interests of the community, and to avoid any undue complications, we've decided for now that we're going to shut this drop down. Once the issues have been sorted we'll be sure to bring this drop back. Thanks everyone. | {
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For this specialty toy store in Grand Central’s Lexington Concourse, Robin Andrade designed a playful, oversized oval-shaped floating counter and floor-to-ceiling shelves that maximized the display of inventory in a tiny, 400-square-foot space. With a base comprised of layers of bright, multicolored Corian, the counter was a dynamic element that besides displaying hundreds of toys eased circulation and served as a sales center, enabling staff to show merchandise and easily monitor the space. Even the lighting cables, hidden within a stainless steel cylinder and suspended from the ceiling, were used as a display element: attached to high-intensity lights, they were arranged in the pattern of a spider web, under which a toy bug could be tucked. Toy-packed shelves covering every square inch of wall space conjured up an old-fashioned candy store. The positive reviews garnered by the store, which stocked high-quality toys ranging from stuffed animals to wooden toys to board games to books, was in part a tribute to the design. “Claustrophobic in the best possible way” quipped New York Magazine, adding that “the studio-size shop’s categorized shelves are stocked to the ceiling with timeless, gimmick-free toys.” Other reviewers praised the space as “a cute little toy store” and “unique.” | {
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WHEN A POP SINGER/SONGWRITER JOINS FORCES with classical musicians, we usually know what to expect: luxuriant remakes of the artist's hits, augmented by lush strings, burbling woodwinds, and coloristic splashes of percussion. But when Ben Folds ventures into classical terrain, something far more compelling occurs.
WITH 15 YEARS OF INSPIRED GIGS in the '90s and '00s, Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals earned a reputation as one of the world's great roots-rock bands. Harper's accomplices conveyed the range and nuance of his passionate songs while bringing out the best in Ben's explosive guitar work. But after years of relentless touring, the band needed a break.
BILLY SHEEHAN IS ONE OF HISTORY’S MOST INFLUENTIAL electric bassists. With stunning virtuosity, he brings a guitar hero’s flash and flair to the instrument, exploring countless new techniques in his work with Talas, David Lee Roth, Steve Vai, Mr. Big, and Niacin. Yet Sheehan never loses touch with the bass’ foundational rhythm section role. His playing is a savvy blend of fretboard wizardry and good old-fashioned groove.
For all the great music that came out of the 1980s, it wasn’t the most inspiring era for players whose passion was jamming and improvisation. When the young members of Blues Traveler first ventured from their Princeton, New Jersey hometown to play New York City clubs, their raw, blues-based performances were far from fashionable. But the band had the right idea at the right time.
WHAT DO THE TOP 10 HITS of pop diva Halsey have in common with the virtuosic and metrically complex jazz-fusion of the band Polyrhythmic? Not much—except for the inspired participation of keyboardist/composer Greg Spero.
IT’S NO SURPRISE THAT THE BAND RIVAL SONS WAS PICKED TO TOUR with such classic rock acts as Aerosmith, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath. The band’s music harks back to an era when all you needed to rock the world were a muscular rhythm section, a leather-lunged singer, and blazing blues-rock guitars.
IT’S BEEN A HECTIC FIVE YEARS for Will Wells. Since arriving in Los Angeles in 2011 after studying at Berklee College of Music, he’s worked with Quincy Jones, Barbra Streisand, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, RZA, John Mayer, and many other artists. He completed a tour as keyboardist for Imagine Dragons and recently scored his first songwriting hit after co-writing “Can’t Sleep Love” for the a cappella group Pentatonix. Meanwhile, he helped make Broadway history as a sound designer for the smash show Hamilton. | {
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An opposition party resorted to quite an original way of disrupting the plenary meeting at the Kosovo Assembly – deploying teargas. The unorthodox parliamentary maneuver resulted in two people being hospitalized and one fainting.
The MPs in Pristina had just finished a reading of several drafts when the leader of the far-right ‘Vetevendosje’ (‘Self-determination’) party Aljbin Kurti suddenly threw a teargas grenade into the hall, Serbia’s Novosti.rs reports.
The move was meant to be in protest of a recent EU-brokered deal between Belgrade and Pristina that established Serbian-majority municipalities in Kosovo, and another deal relating to borders between Kosovo and Montenegro, another former part of Yugoslavia.
An MP from the majority Flora Brovina party fell unconscious shortly after the teargas was released. At least four ambulances were dispatched to the scene. In the end, two female MPs also had to be hospitalized.
The 120-seat Assembly has faced roadblocks since September owing to the activity of opposition MPs who control about a quarter of the seats. They have been physically obstructing the plenary sessions as well as trying to prevent majority MPs from speaking. | {
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Post subject: It ain't hype if it's true - the Cloud is the real deal.....
Posted: Wed Jul 24, 2013 4:13 am
Rare Poster
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2011 9:15 pmPosts: 13Location: Jupiter, FL
I'm a sold intermediate kiter, 6'4 225 lbs. Like many of you, I have work and family obligations that prohibit running to the beach every time the wind is on. Accordingly, when I can kite I want to have great sessions, and I want to get on the water no matter how light the wind is (not easy at my weight).
I've been intrigued by the new strutless Maui Boardriding Cloud kites. I have read and viewed everything online about them, most of which has been overwhelmingly positive. However, I wanted to try them before buying.
Two local kiters here in Jupiter were kind enough to loan me a 17M and 13M Cloud kite today. Conditions were light winds ranging from 10 – 15 mph at most. The fact that I could get up on my twintip was amazing, and the fact that I had a great day on the water that otherwise would have been a bust is priceless.
Some characteristics of the Cloud kites:
-Light and Stable in the air
-Smooth Seamless Power
-Quick Turning (Yes, even the 17M)
-Light Bar pressure, much less fatiguing
-Extremely Efficient
I got going on my regular twintip board in winds far lighter than I have with any other kite. You can kite in lighter winds and/or ride smaller kites
I watched an advanced rider shredding on a surfboard with the 13M Cloud in 10-14 mph wind, carving turns I like a maniac.
Some people have commented on the occasional “luffing” the kite exhibits. This is true, and it is analogous to a sail. When a sail is luffing, it needs to be sheeted to return to the optimal aerodynamic shape. A quick sheet adjustment tightens up the kite and you know you are back to optimum aerodynamic performance. Also, this kite needs some power for steering, if the kite is fully depowered your steering is limited.
If you need kites, I strongly encourage you to consider the Cloud. The fact that it's much cheaper than other kites is just a bonus.
I have no vested interest in this or any other kite brands or products.
Post subject: Re: It ain't hype if it's true - the Cloud is the real deal.
Posted: Thu Jul 25, 2013 3:23 pm
Frequent Poster
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:40 pmPosts: 266
Disclaimer: not ridden a cloud yet, just trying to make some sense of the feedback from riders who have ridden it.
CFS wrote:
I watched an advanced rider shredding on a surfboard with the 13M Cloud in 10-14 mph wind, carving turns I like a maniac.
Did he have to depower the kite so as to not be pulled off the pocket?Was there a moving wall pushing him towards the kite while he linked his turns?
CFS wrote:
Some people have commented on the occasional “luffing” the kite exhibits. This is true, and it is analogous to a sail. When a sail is luffing, it needs to be sheeted to return to the optimal aerodynamic shape. A quick sheet adjustment tightens up the kite and you know you are back to optimum aerodynamic performance. Also, this kite needs some power for steering, if the kite is fully depowered your steering is limited.
One of the most important characteristics of a surf kite is steering/reactiveness with slack lines.
There are two kinds of slack line scenarios: one is the slack of the backlines from depowering the kite (what you do in order to not pulled off the pocket), the other is the slack of all lines from riding towards the kite (which happens when turns are not tight enough and/or onshore wind components are involved). In the first, small angles of attack are involved. In the second, not necessarily.
Both kinds of slack (and usually a combination of the two) happen all the time in the surf. Which of the two happens the most will depend on style/conditions.
Am I wrong in assuming that a depowered slouch is also a slack line (in the riding towards the kite sense) slouch, or could it be that at higher angles of attack the kite behaves a bit better?
In other words: when you ride towards the kite and generate slack in the lines with the bar fully pulled in, how does it respond to steering? Does it also luff?
Post subject: Re: It ain't hype if it's true - the Cloud is the real deal.
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 8:03 pm
Frequent Poster
Joined: Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:40 pmPosts: 266
For the Cloud waveriders out there:
Decided to ressurect this thread, as I still haven't been able to try a Cloud (none around here!) even though this kite really intrigues me.
Almost all reviews say that it luffs (and thus creates a lot of drag) when depowered, and needs tight backlines in order get back on shape and react to steering. Many reviews also say this is a great wave kite because of its drift characteristics (which I assume is because of its light weight + low AR + drag when it luffs making it "go with the wind").
I guess my main question is, when all your lines go slack in the surf (which will happen sooner or later, much sooner in side-on and later in side-off), how fast does the Cloud react to steering input?
Post subject: Re: It ain't hype if it's true - the Cloud is the real deal.
Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 8:30 pm
Very Frequent Poster
Joined: Thu Jun 05, 2003 3:37 amPosts: 2543
When all the lines are slack, my experience is that the cloud hangs in the air and drifts back until sheeting in can tighten the lines, and does this more easily than most because it has a shorter bar stroke from depowered to full power. With 4 slack lines, I don't think any kite will steer much, but the cloud and other good wave kites at least will not hindenberg or backstall easily. If there is light wind and a big wave pushes you too fast under the kite though, no guarantees of a great result with any kite, to my knowledge.
It may seem that other kites turn better when depowered, but keep in mind, if you sheet them all the way out (meaning to full depower, not necessarily to limit of bar travel), do they still turn well? The difference is that with the cloud, sheeting all the way out is only moving the bar foot or so, not a meter. Another thing to consider: what will the cloud version 2 be like?The website shows a shorter, no-pulley bridle and thinner LE.To change the LE and bridle that much, a lot of work must have been done.It will be interesting to see how the new ones are...
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Anmer Lodge redevelopment in Stanmore to go-ahead
The redevelopment of a former day care centre for 120 new homes and supermarket has been given the go-ahead by councillors.
Planning permission for the Anmer Lodge site, in Stanmore, was granted by members of Harrow Borough Councils Planning committee last night.
Work on the site will include a new Marks & Spencer supermarket and cafe, a multi-storey car park and 120 new homes.
During the meeting Councillor Marilyn Ashton, who represents Stanmore Park, said: “This is an over development of the site and the traffic surveys are wrong.
“I urge the committee to defer this decision to give us more time to look at this.”
Cabinet member for planning and development Cllr Stephen Greek said: "I have lived in Stanmore all my life and when residents raise traffic issues I recognise them as they are the issues I have to deal with.
“Whatever happens this evening and if we do approve this project it will be up to all of us to make sure it works for everyone in Stanmore.”
Speaking in favour of the plans, Cllr Sachin Shah said: “I like these and I like the fact there is more housing for the borough.
“There is a shortage of housing in Harrow, London and the whole country. There is a housing crisis and this is what Harrow needs.”
The plans were passed with four members voting in favour of the plans and three others abstaining.
Proposals for the site in Coverdale Close were announced in August last year following a deal between Harrow Council, Notting Hill Housing and Marks & Spencer.
Since the announcement there have been concerns from people living near the site at the size and scale of the housing on the site and possible increase in traffic.
MP Bob Blackman had lodged his objections to the plans which included an excessive number of homes for the site and the increase in traffic in the surrounding area.
So this is the same Cllr Sachin Shah wishing an overdevelopment of a site with the ensuing traffic problems of squeezing a quart into a pint pot who objects to Barnet's stand which is in the middle of a field? Double standards and nimby - ist or what? Oh sorry she's taking Bob's line win votes by choosing your campaigns
So this is the same Cllr Sachin Shah wishing an overdevelopment of a site with the ensuing traffic problems of squeezing a quart into a pint pot who objects to Barnet's stand which is in the middle of a field? Double standards and nimby - ist or what? Oh sorry she's taking Bob's line win votes by choosing your campaignsDuke of Chandos | {
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Next story in Europe
Video: Vatican denounces reports as smear campaign
Closed captioning of: Vatican denounces reports as smear campaign
>>>now we turn to the latest crisis for the
catholic church
today as holy week approaches. the influential
national catholic reporter
published in this country urged
pope benedict
to answer growing questions about what it called mismanagement of
sexual abuse
cases in the '80s. there are other new publish reports tonight the
vatican
is denouncings a
smear campaign
. our own jim maceda has the latest.
>>reporter: it looked routine, but was anything but usual today facing questions about his role in a
sexual abuse
scandal that engulfed the
catholic church
. in today's "new york times," more revelations suggesting in
1980
in munich, the pope, then archbishop
joseph ratzinger
, was consulted by memo that a self-confessed priest would be allowed to continue his pastoral work, even with
young boys
. the church is fighting back, rejecting the "times" article as pure speculation saying
cardinal ratzinger
's deputy made the staffing decision, taking full responsibility for the ear rowan yus decision. that's little comfort for some 300 german victims whose story of
clerical abuse
that have come out since january. 40 years later this man is still shaken asking to describe life in
pope benedict
's home region. "the priest really
abused children
, sometimes every night in the dormitory." with every new case, the crisis grows, adding more cracks to the church's and the pope's credibility. some
vatican
insiders say only total transparency will work.
>>it will be really, really hard to take,
cold turkey
, total medicine, do it now, get it out of the way.
>>reporter: even if it means replacing bishops with a new generation of leaders.
>>whether that means reassigning bishops or priests, asking for resignations or rebuking individuals, the bar here is the church has to restore credibility for its own people. it hasn't done that yet.
>>reporter: until it does, some
vatican
experts say the biggest crisis in the church's
modern history
will likely spread. jim maceda, nbc news, london.
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican is facing one of its gravest crises of modern times as sex abuse scandals move ever closer to Pope Benedict XVI — threatening not only his own legacy but also that of his revered predecessor.
Benedict took a much harder stance on sex abuse than John Paul II when he assumed the papacy five years ago, disciplining a senior cleric championed by the Polish pontiff and defrocking others under a new policy of zero tolerance.
But the impression remains of a woefully slow-footed church and of a pope who bears responsibility for allowing pedophile priests to keep their parishes.
In an editorial on Friday, the National Catholic Reporter in the United States called on Benedict to answer questions about his role "in the mismanagement" of sex abuse cases, not only in the current crisis but during his tenure in the 1980s as archbishop of Munich and then as head of the Vatican's doctrinal and disciplinary office.
It all comes down to the question of what the pope knew and when. The answer will almost certainly determine the fate of Benedict's papacy.
Scandal in France
As he approaches Holy Week, the most solemn period on the Christian calendar, victims groups and other critics are demanding Benedict accept personal responsibility. A few say he should resign.
Some fear the crisis will alienate Catholics from the church, with a survey in Benedict's native Germany already showing disaffection among Catholics while there is deep anger in once very Catholic Ireland.
Another scandal broke Friday in France, where a priest in a town southeast of Paris was hit with sexual assault and child pornography charges after a 22-year-old former choirboy accused him of abuse.
The French probe was opened after the man told authorities that he had been assaulted by the priest as an adult, the prosecutor of Troyes, Alex Perrin, said Friday.
Police searched the priest's home and found two or three pornographic photos of a child parishioner in Marcilly-le-Hayer, the prosecutor said by telephone.
"This news is upsetting to everyone," the bishop of Troyes, Marc Stenger, wrote in a statement published in Friday in the local paper, L'Est- Eclair. But, he said, "this must not be the hour of judgment and condemnation. We must wait to know the truth."
The bishop asked the priest to be moved elsewhere during the probe, according to the prosecutor, who said the investigation could take several months.
Perrin said the priest was detained Wednesday for questioning. Preliminary charges of "sexual assault" and "illegal possession of images characteristic of child pornography," were issued Friday, opening the way for a formal investigation. The priest was freed after questioning, but ordered to receive treatment and forbidden any contact with minors, Perrin said.
Vatican: Smear campaignAs the climate worsens, the Vatican is showing increasing impatience and even anger, denouncing what it says is a campaign to smear the pope.
L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said this week there was a "clear and despicable intention" to strike at Benedict "at any cost."
But as attention focuses on Benedict, a perhaps thornier question looms over how much John Paul II, beloved worldwide for his inspirational charisma and courageous stand against communism, knew about sex abuse cases and whether he was too tolerant of pedophile priests.
John Paul presided over the church when the sex abuse scandal exploded in the United States in 2002 and the Vatican was swamped with complaints and lawsuits under his leadership. Yet during most of his 26-year papacy, individual dioceses and not the Vatican took sole responsibility for investigating misbehavior.
Professor Nick Cafardi, a canon and civil lawyer and former chairman of the U.S. bishops lay review board that monitored abuse, said Benedict was "very courageous" to reverse Vatican support for the Legionaires of Christ, a sex scandal-tainted organization staunchly defended by John Paul.
John Paul was already ailing from Parkinson's disease when the U.S. scandal erupted, a factor supporters say may have kept him from initially realizing its scope.
Denouncing 'filth'
While Cardinal Bernard Law became the most high-profile church figure to fall, resigning as archbishop of Boston over the scandal, John Paul gave him a soft landing, appointing him as head of a Rome basilica and keeping him on various Vatican committees.
The world-traveling John Paul has been put on a fast track for sainthood by Benedict in response to popular demand. Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the emeritus head of the Vatican's saint-making office, said this week that historians who studied the pope's life didn't find anything problematic in John Paul's handling of abuse scandals.
"According to them there was nothing that was a true obstacle to his cause of beatification. They are very strict," Saraiva Martins said.
For Benedict, a quiet intellectual who will be 83 next month, the scandal must be trying.
Until recently, Benedict had received high marks for his handling of sex abuse — seen as a bright spot amid turmoil over his remarks linking Islam to violence and his rehabilitation of an ultraconservative bishop who denies the Holocaust.
Shortly before his election as pope in 2005 he had denounced "filth" in the church — widely viewed as a reference to clerics who abused children. He proclaimed a policy of zero tolerance for offenders and met and prayed with victims while traveling in the United States and Australia.
Benedict won praise for moving against the Legionaries of Christ, the conservative order once hailed by John Paul that fell into scandal after it revealed that its founder had fathered a child and had molested seminarians.
Scandal spreadsThe Vatican began investigating allegations against the Rev. Marcial Maciel of Mexico in the 1950s, but it wasn't until 2006, a year into Benedict's pontificate, that the Vatican instructed Maciel to lead a "reserved life of prayer and penance" in response to the abuse allegations — effectively removing him from power.
But reaction changed as the abuse scandal moved across Europe and into Benedict's native Germany in recent months, touching his older brother and getting close to the pontiff himself with a case dating to his own tenure as archbishop of Munich.
The former vicar general of the Munich archdiocese has absolved the pope of responsibility in the case of the Rev. Peter Hullermann, accused of abusing boys.
While then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was involved in a 1980 decision to transfer Hullermann to Munich for therapy, Ratzinger's then-deputy took responsibility for a subsequent decision to let the priest return to pastoral duties. Hullermann was convicted of sexual abuse in 1986.
However, the New York Times reported Friday that Ratzinger was copied in on a memo stating Hullermann would be returned to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment. The archdiocese insisted Ratzinger was unaware of the decision and that any other version was "mere speculation."
Light discipline
In another case, documents show the Vatican office responsible for disciplining priests, while headed by Ratzinger, halted a church trial of a Milwaukee priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys from 1950-1975.
Two Wisconsin bishops had urged the Vatican to approve the proceeding against the Rev. Lawrence Murphy, arguing that even though it was years after the alleged abuse, the deaf community in Milwaukee was demanding justice. The trial was approved in 1997, only to be halted after an appeal by the priest to Ratzinger. Murphy died in 1998.
Murphy's eventual punishment was a restriction on celebrating Mass and on visiting the deaf community.
Such light disciplinary measures remain the norm in the majority of sex abuse cases.
Of the 3,000 cases the Vatican has received since 2001, only 20 percent have gone to a full canonical trial, the Vatican's chief prosecutor Monsignor Charles Scicluna said. Disciplinary sanctions were imposed in 60 percent, such as priests being ordered to live a retired life of prayer and not celebrate Mass publicly; in only 10 percent were the accused priests defrocked.
Covering up?
The abuse crisis in the United States, which involved 4 percent of the American priesthood, showed a pattern of bishops covering for errant clerics, at times moving them from parish to parish. The latest documents point to Vatican complicity, although the Vatican denies there was any cover-up.
Papal resignationsDefenders of Benedict, such as British Archbishop Vincent Nichols, say that as cardinal he made important changes in church law to crack down on offenders and was not an "idle observer."
French bishops rallied around Benedict in a letter on Friday, saying while they deplored clerical sex abuse, the issue "is being used in a campaign to attack you personally."
Still, it is in Germany where Benedict's popularity has taken a real hit.
A poll in Stern magazine released this week shows only 39 percent of Germany's Catholics trust the pope, down from 62 percent in late January. Some 34 percent trust the Catholic church as an institution, down from 56 percent in January. The margin of error was 2.5 percentage points.
Rainer Kampling, a professor of Catholic theology at Berlin Free University, says the idea that the pope might resign — slipping polls not withstanding — is hardly realistic. "The pope is not a politician," he said.
Herbert Kohlmaier, chairman of an Austrian Catholic group that has criticized Benedict, also said a resignation shouldn't be expected. "They certainly won't let a symbolic figure like that go."
While church law allows for the resignation of a pope, there are few precedents over the church's two millennium history. The last was by 15th-century Pope Gregory XII, and that was not over scandal but rather a schism in the church.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | {
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2015 Mille lacs edition 8x20 bought this brand new late last year used it for one season. Selling to go bigger. This does not have the artic package. Text or call me with any questions at 763 two two eight 7539. | {
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Question of the Day
Have you been impacted by the government shutdown?
Michael Jordan wants his young Washington Wizards teammates to keep an eye on him and watch everything he does. But he doesn't want them to take it to extreme measures, which is exactly what he and coach Doug Collins noticed the team doing in their last preseason game.
Jordan played 32 minutes Thursday night in the Wizards' 114-88 loss to the Detroit Pistons in Grand Rapids, Mich., his longest stint of the preseason. And there were too many times when his teammates just stood back and watched the action. They watched when Jordan went one-on-one and didn't make themselves available for what could have been better shots.
They made even more egregious mistakes at the defensive end, which is clearly their weak spot. In the fourth quarter when Detroit outscored them 31-10, the Pistons cruised by defenders for easy layups. And too often the Wizards' big men sat back and didn't attempt to play help defense when one of their teammates was beaten off the dribble. The porous defense resulted in the Pistons shooting 52 percent from the floor.
Making matters worse, the Wizards have not gotten consistent play from their big men. Rookie center Brendan Haywood is out for at least the next three weeks with torn ligaments in his thumb. Jahidi White, battling tendinitis in his left knee and at the same time mending from an Achilles' heel injury, has seen limited action so far.
Asked to assess the way the big men are playing, Collins noted the eight-point, 13-rebound effort by Etan Thomas, who is really a power forward disguised as a center.
"We cannot stand around and watch Michael," Collins said following the game. "I thought we got caught spectating."
The Wizards will try to reverse this trend tonight when they play their only preseason game at MCI Center against the New Jersey Nets.
"This team lacks defensive principles in terms of habits where collectively we're on a string and everybody knows everybody's tendencies," Jordan said Thursday. "This is what Doug's trying to institute so that everybody is on the same page. Defense wins games; defense holds games close until we can find our rhythm from an offensive standpoint."
Compounding their bad defense, the Wizards turned the ball over 19 times compared to just eight by the Pistons, a surprisingly low number considering the number of points Detroit scored.
"It's tough when you've got a lot of young kids. But we've still got 12 days to get us to where we've got to go," Jordan said. "We're going to make mistakes. We've just got to minimize those mistakes. So we'll struggle now and it hurts. But struggle in the season and that's a problem."
Note Richard Hamilton has a bruised right elbow and might not play tonight against the Nets. | {
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Tolix Marais Stool 18, Perforated
A new perforated version of the Tolix line, originally designed by Xavier Pauchard in 1934, the stool comes in two sizes and many colors - only a fraction of which is available here at DWR (but the DWR price and shipping is great). You can find the whole line at Melissa Edelman Antiquaire out of Chicago. | {
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Tag Archives: Cartoon Porn One Piece
Hentai Picture: Looks like for Boa Hancock this is not the first encounter with tentacles… but for Nami it’s definitely first! Undoubtedly, alcohol, confectionery and a schlong in her head and twat is all chick covets… Be on your guard because this One Piece stuff is much more skillful than you could have ever expected it to be: well-hung dudes pump firm pussies here! A whore from One Piece squeezed between a couple of monstrous baby-makers that have her face dumped with semen rain! | {
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Shenzhen One Among Nine Cities that Passed New Air Quality Standards
For the first half of this year Shenzhen is nine among 161 Chinese cities that has reached the goal of the new and stricter air quality monitoring standard that was implemented by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The nine cities are Zhoushan, Zhanjiang, Yunfu, Beihai, Sanya, Zhuhai, Lhasa and Shenzhen.
All of these cities have reached the standards and is around 6 percent of the 161 cities have passed the air quality standard that is deemed safe under the new stricter standards. The new standards are placed into use at the beginning of the year and at 161 cities across China.
The air quality in Shenzhen is at the excellent or safe level as 171 out of 181 days in the first half of the year was recorded. And of five of the major pollutants that are monitored the only average ozone density increased slightly compared to the same period last year. The city has recorded a PM2.5 density of an average 33 mg per cubic meters in the first six months which is significantly lower compared to a year ago. This figure is also the third lowest among the 74 major cities with air qualities that are being monitored by the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
In February 2012, China has issued a new air quality monitoring standard which includes monitoring carbon dioxide, the ozone layer and PM 2.5 particles in which they added PM10, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide.
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Although Mladenovic's campaign was ended swiftly, there were no such problems for defending champion Christina McHale, who overcame Danka Kovinic 6-2 6-4.
Three-time winner Samantha Stosur followed Mladenovic in becoming an early casualty, as Sara Sorribes Tormo fought back from a set down to prevail 3-6 7-5 6-1 while Zarina Diyas, runner-up to Stosur in 2014, came from behind to defeat Misaki Doi 3-6 6-1 6-1.
There were first-round wins for Kurumi Nara, Shuai Zhang and Yulia Putintseva while Elise Mertens, Aleksandra Krunic and Miyu Kato all booked their places in the quarter-finals. | {
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For the syrup
Oval in shape, with a pronouced bulge on one end, lemons are one of the most versatile fruits…
100g golden caster sugar
Method
Heat oven to 160C/fan140C/gas 3. Prepare the inside and outside of a 23cm tin, as before. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then gradually beat in the eggs a little at a time. Add a tbsp of the plain flour if it starts to split. Fold in the flours and a pinch of salt, followed by the lemon zest and juice.
Spoon the mix into the tin and bake for 1 hr 35 mins or until well-risen and golden and a skewer inserted comes out clean. Meanwhile, make the syrup by heating the sugar, lemon zest and juice in a small pan until the sugar dissolves. Set aside.
Once the cake is out of the oven, leave to cool until it’s just warm, then use a skewer to poke holes down to the bottom all over the cake. Pour the syrup over, letting it completely soak in after each addition. Leave to cool completely, then either wrap or fill and ice the cake. The unfilled cake will keep well if you wrap it with baking parchment and cling film for up to 4 days, or in the freezer for up to a month.
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Comments, questions and tips
I made this for my brother's wedding 6 years ago and since then has been my go to lemon cake recipe. I scale it up and down as needed and even make cupcakes with it. One of the best lemon cakes i've ever eaten (if I do say so myself :))
ginnypeace
6th Jan, 2017
I made the whole wedding cake for my daughter's best friend's wedding and it was very successful - everyone loved it! Have just used the Zingy Lemon Cake recipe to make a Baby Shower cake for the same friend. Again it worked really well. As a previous person commented, it is important that the eggs and butter are at room temperature. I always assume large eggs when baking. And yes, I have produced a great 4" deep cake each time!
KeinEngel
27th Nov, 2016
Lemon juice in cake mix meant it didn't rise at all. Went in the bin
The White Monk
20th Apr, 2017
Sorry to hear your cake did not go well. Don't give up. This recipe really does work but needs carful attention. Not suggesting you were not carful in anyway. Did you weigh out the correct amount of lemon juice in the recipe? If you put too much it can mean the cake becomes too moist and does not rise correctly. Weigh everything out carefully and don’t use more than 100 mL lemon juice. Just by the feedbacks on this page its worth having one more go :)
I have had my disasters too with cakes and I once doubled the lemon juice on this recipe with terrible consequences! I wanted even more lemon flavour!!
All the best with your future bakes.
Emzie_essex
25th Sep, 2016
5.05
My first attempt at a two tier cake...this is very easy and tastes of lovely zingy lemon.
licciem
2nd May, 2016
To all those who got a flatter, dense cake: I just made this for my wedding and my first attempt was about 2-3 inches tall and felt pretty dense. My mistakes were:
I didn't beat the butter and sugar together enough - for those using a kitchen aid, a flex edge beater attachment is a must for this recipe!
My butter was too cold
My eggs were too cold - make sure both eggs and butter are at warm room temperature when you start baking
Basically, because there is no rising agent in the cake (other than in the SRF), it relies heavily on the air you beat in at step 1. Another tip, gently fold in the flour, do not beat at this stage.
I followed the above, and my second attempt was a soft, bouncy, 4inch high cake that can definitely be sliced twice for filling.
Good luck!
vintagemunchkin
9th Apr, 2016
Made this for my wedding. As others have commented, there's no way this could be sliced into three, really didn't rise as much as I'd hoped. I made the lemon buttercream and added a layer of lemon curd too. Was all lovely. Flavours great.
Check out my blog for details: http://itsonlyvintagebutilikeit.com/food-2/its-only-a-wedding-cake-but-i-like-it/
lebrant
21st Oct, 2015
Why why why, when spending money on expensive ingredients to make this cake, do you not give the size of eggs? I'd love to see the cake "good food" made before it was decorated. I followed the recipe exactly and the result was an almost 2" height (once levelled) cake. The photos show a three layered cake, I would only get two layers from this cake. I used to rate this website, now I don't.
jantho61
6th Sep, 2016
I always weigh my eggs in the shell so it weighs a little over, to compensate the shell..... that way the weights are all the same!
Ghd22
17th Jan, 2016
It says if you click on eggs large eggs
Pages
I have made a 14 inch square fruit cake for my brothers wedding. next tier is going to be a 12 or 10 inch which goes better. Can anyone help which Size to go for and how to scale this recipe up. Thanks
melp7922
22nd Jun, 2017
Hi, I was searching for a 10" square lemon cake and this one came up. Is this recipe for that shape/size?
goodfoodteam
28th Jun, 2017
Hi there, we're not sure why this cake came up, it's actually a 9" round cake. The mixture will not be sufficient for a 10" square cake tin.
LindaFeatherby
28th Apr, 2017
Help.....I have made this cake with success before but today (when it matters because I am making it as a wedding cake for a friend's wedding) it is not working. The first one I cooked today seemed to have pockets of uncooked mixture in it and did not rise as much as usual and was denser. Any ideas? thank you
goodfoodteam
28th Apr, 2017
Sorry to here your wedding cake is not working out. How stressful! Make sure you follow the recipe really carefully, using the correct-sized tin. Have all the ingredients at room temperature before beginning and get plenty of air into the butter and sugar - it wants to be really light and fluffy. Add the eggs very gradually and don't be tempted to add too much flour while beating. Fold in the rest of the flour, you don't want to work it too hard. It's also important to make sure the oven is fully up to temperature before putting the cake into the oven. Don't be tempted to check the cake early, opening the oven door, wait until the full cooking time or a few mins before unless it really looks done. We hope these tips help. Good luck!
brinda100
26th Dec, 2016
Does anyone know please if this recipe would work if substituting the butter for a dairy free alternative, such as margarine (or something different if anyone else knows a good dairy free butter substitute!) Thanks :)
goodfoodteam
29th Dec, 2016
Thanks for your question. You can substitute the butter but check the side of the pack to see if whatever you are choosing is suitable for baking. If the substiute contains salt then don't add any extra along with the flour in step 1.
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As well as helping you decide what to cook we can also help you to cook it. From tips on cookery techniques to facts and information about health and nutrition, we’ve a wealth of foodie know how for you to explore.
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We’re all about good recipes, and about quality home cooking that everyone can enjoy. Whether you’re looking for some healthy inspiration or learning how to cook a decadent dessert, we’ve trustworthy guidance for all your foodie needs.
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All our recipes are tested thoroughly by us to make sure they’re suitable for your kitchen at home. We know many of you are concerned about healthy eating, so we send them to a qualified nutritionist for thorough analysis too.
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BBC Worldwide is a commercial company that is owned by the BBC (and just the BBC). No money from the licence fee was used to create this page. The profits we make from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. | {
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(Reuters) - Italian police have searched the Milan offices of Barclays as part of widening international investigations into alleged rigging of global interest rates, judicial sources and consumer groups said on Tuesday.
Barclays has been fined over $450 million by U.S. and British authorities for manipulating Libor benchmark rates, which are used to set prices for trillions of dollars of financial products across the globe. Its chief executive Bob Diamond was forced to quit over the scandal.
More than a dozen lenders, including UBS and Deutsche Bank, are being probed worldwide by investigators looking at whether Libor, which is priced in pounds, and other global benchmark rates were rigged.
The search at Barclays' Milan offices took place last Friday and was ordered by prosecutors in the southern city of Trani who earlier this month opened a criminal probe over suspected aggravated fraud and market manipulation, the sources said.
The Italian probe - one of a series of investigations in Europe, the United States and Japan - is focusing on Euribor, Libor's counterpart in euros and the base for mortgage rates in the country. The probe was started following complaints filed by consumer groups Adusbef and Federconsumatori.
The two groups said in a joint statement that documents, computer material and emails were seized at Barclays Milan offices "with the aim of looking for evidence that Barclays also manipulated Euribor, as it did with Libor, with a negative impact on mortgage rates paid by Italians."
Barclays declined to comment.
The judicial sources told Reuters neither Barclays nor any other bank had been put under formal investigation by the Trani prosecutors, who have made a speciality of high-profile investigations of international financial institutions.
The office is investigating the big ratings agencies, Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch over their downgrades of Italy's sovereign rating.
Adusbef and Federconsumatori estimate 2.5 million Italian households may have been hurt by the alleged lending rate manipulation, estimating the total financial damage at 3 billion euros.
"Those responsible for financial manipulations will have to pay for their mistakes," Adusbef's president Elio Lannutti told Reuters.
DEUTSCHE PROBE CLEARS MANAGEMENT
Forty-three banks, including Italian lenders Intesa Sanpaolo, UniCredit, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena and UBI Banca, sit on the Euribor panel, which is hosted by the European Banking Federation.
In Germany, Deutsche Bank said the initial findings of an internal probe into the rigging of rates had found no wrongdoing by management board members.
"Based on current findings, no current or former member of the management board was in any way inappropriately involved in the incidents surrounding interest rates," the bank's supervisory board chairman Paul Achleitner said in a letter to employees.
The bank said the probe had shown that "a small number of employees" had engaged in behaviour which did not meet the standards of the bank, without being more specific.
Three people close to the investigation told Reuters last week that the internal probe found former traders may have been involved in colluding to manipulate global benchmark interest rates but there was no indication of failure at the top of the bank.
With the threat of more banks possibly facing fines and lengthy legal battles, UBS said it had appropriate provisions for all litigation.
Specifically, UBS, which has previously admitted probes into the yen and Swiss franc Libor and euroyen Tibor, has secured leniency from some justice authorities in return for cooperating with probes into the setting of Libor.
UBS signalled its exposure to Libor probes is limited to the three reference rates, and not others such as the Euribor, where several banks are said to be cooperating with EU antitrust regulators. | {
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TWO male suspects facing attempted murder charges -- after a man was stabbed last night. It happened at THE PEARL RIDGE COMMUNITY PARK. Police say ... the 27 year old victim was stabbed in the chest -- and taken to the hospital in serious condition. The suspects -- ages 29 and 31 -- fled in a white car -- but was arrested on "Leo-wahine Street" in Wai-pahu -- about 10 minutes later. Police tell us the knife was found in the car -- and one of the suspects had blood on him. The suspects remain in police custody -- but has not yet been charged. | {
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GA – The Martial Arts of Avatar: The Last Airbender
Sifu Kisu leads a martial arts workshop at UMAS Karate Studios on Saturday May 31st from 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM! Open to all ages and levels! $20 per person (cash only-paid at door) Sign up to reserve your space today!
Sifu Kisu is the fighting instructor and consultant for the Avatar franchise. He is known for his extensive knowledge and abilities with various styles of martial arts. Sifu Kisu related the four bending arts to actual styles of fighting in real life, in order to give bending in the series authenticity. His extensive work with the series is highlighted in the behind-the-scenes featurettes Creating the Legend and The Essence of Bending. | {
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This is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.
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Informa UK Limited is a company registered in England and Wales with company number 1072954 whose registered office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG. VAT GB365462636. Informa UK Limited is part of Informa PLC. | {
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EU jobs crisis continues
A weekly visit to sign on at the local welfare office has become all too familiar for millions of EU citizens. The latest figures from Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, show that unemployment didn't go up or down in August but compared to a year ago the eurozone jobless rate has increased by 895,000. | {
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British Airways IT Outage Delays Hundreds of Flights Worldwide
A computer issue at British Airways on Tuesday left thousands of passengers stranded and caused massive delays across the globe.
Passengers were unable in many cases to book flights using the company’s website and app, to check-in at the airport, and some flights were simply unable to take off as a result of the IT problem.
“We apologize to our customers for the delay and we appreciate their patience as our IT teams work to resolve this issue,” the world’s favourite airline said on Twitter.
Not surprisingly, hundreds of travelers took to Twitter to complain. “@British_Airways – system down at San Diego manual check in and your staff haven’t got a clue what they are doing. It’s chaos!” posted Andrea Woolley.
One traveler was FBT Editorial Director Jonathan Spira, who tried to book a flight using the iPhone app and repeatedly got the message, “A system error was encountered during the confirmation of your booking.” The message, however, reassured him that “If the booking has been made then tickets will be issued, and travel can continue as normal.”
At airports, many passengers received hand-written boarding passes and baggage claim tags.
Finding a quiet corner in London is near impossible but in Marble Arch, a neighborhood replete with great shops and restaurants, the Arch London is a boutique property that evokes a quiet oasis a world away from the hustle and bustle of the capital city. Madonna and the Beatles seemed to think so too, as the former’s London abode is across the street. Nearby is a home purchased by Ringo …
Those who travel by air during the winter have undoubtedly seen this unusual dance before: trucks circling the aircraft spraying a strange orange-colored fluid, while passengers peer through the plane’s windows.
As your aircraft pushes back from the gate, you probably hear the captain announce, “Well folks, we’re just making a quick stop for deicing, and then we’ll be off.”
Deicing prevents a build-up of snow and ice on the plane’s wings … | {
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