Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:59 am

trump found out yesterday that Mueller has talked to Steele about the dossier .....yes this is the calm before the storm

Someone set up Kelly

Rex is going to get fired
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Oct 06, 2017 5:28 pm

Wombaticus Rex » Thu Oct 05, 2017 11:17 pm wrote:Glad you brought that here. I couldn't stop laughing after I saw that footage.

Not sure if that's healthy, but it felt great.

I apologize if this has been brought up already, but, with respect to the OP: what do you think about the possibility that a, uh....Gulf of Trumpkin? Fuck, that's atrocious but it's the best I'll get at this hour.

What I mean is, do you think that merely triggering a large-scale foreign war, instead of a domestic threat, will be sufficient to legitimize Trump and ease the pressure of Meuller & his ilk? Verily, there are true believers and crusaders in DC, but the men and women they work for are anything but.

What gives me pause on this scenario is the exact carbon constraints you and Jack were discussing upthread. I'm not certain that DOD brass will tolerate just dumping another ten billion into air conditioning kids from Idaho in the middle of some desert. Strategic moves have to be made. Perhaps the era of the Infinite Beltway Feeding Trough is over -- all depends on how much the parasites will adapt & avoid the death of their host, I reckon.


Gulf of Trumpkin. All right, I liked that. Better than Trumppowder Plot or New Trump Harbor. :lol:

The longer Trump stays in power without an obvious Trumpstag (that the FBI were so quick to dismiss the ISIS claim of credit for Las Vegas shows how diminished that threat is), the more I start to think there will be no event to legitimize him. Not saying there won't be an event, just that what will occur will serve to ease the transition from the unpredictable madman to placid neo-con "normality."

But yes, the carbon constraints are a real factor in how this occurs. Taking your point into account, that means Iran is most likely not the target. Venezuela is definitely a possibility - it's closer to home and perhaps the DOD think it might be easier to successfully implement what they failed at in 2002 when Chavez was running things.

But all this might be on hold until Pence moves up. Which, of course, means the catalyzing event would no longer be a "Trump"stag.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 06, 2017 6:37 pm

ABC News: Robert Mueller's team met behind closed doors today w an unknown group of attorneys & chief judge of US District Court in DC





Renato Mariotti‏Verified account @renato_mariotti 2h2 hours ago

1/ This is an unusual meeting, so the purpose of this meeting—whatever it was—was out of the ordinary.

2/ The best I can do is give you some educated guesses about possible purposes for the meeting.

3/ The Chief Judge oversees the grand jury program, so this could be related to a leak or a security issue regarding a grand juror.

4/ This could be coordination of security for an upcoming event, such as the arraignment (initial hearing) after an indictment.

5/ Or defense counsel could be challenging a subpoena or order that Mueller served, and the Chief Judge heard the matter in private.

6/ If I had to guess, I’d pick the latter. Usually prosecutors wait until an investigation ends to indict, so they have all the evidence.

7/ Leaks or security issues with a grand jury are rare (but obviously this is a very unusual case).

8/ There may be other unusual possibilities that don’t come immediately to mind, but it’s certainly not something ordinary. /end
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Oct 06, 2017 8:03 pm

stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Jan 20, 2017 1:20 am wrote:The Endgame for all this struggle is China, whose oil imports were recently predicted by the Japan Times to increase by 500% before the year 2030."[/i]

-Michael C. Ruppert from The Truth and Lies of 9-11 Introduction filmed in 2004



China's Oil Production About to Peak: That's a Very Big Deal
Decisions on how China addresses its post-peak future will have great impact on political and energy security.
By Nafeez Ahmed / AlterNet
October 5, 2017

A new scientific study led by the China University of Petroleum in Beijing, funded by the Chinese government, concludes that China is about to experience a peak in its total oil production as early as next year.

Without finding an alternative source of “new abundant energy resources,” the study warns, the 2018 peak in China’s combined conventional and unconventional oil will undermine continuing economic growth and “challenge the sustainable development of Chinese society.”

This also has major implications for the prospect of a 2018 oil squeeze — as China scales its domestic oil peak, rising demand will impact world oil markets in a way most forecasters aren’t anticipating, contributing to a potential supply squeeze. That could happen in 2018 proper, or in the early years that follow.

There are various scenarios that follow from here — China could: shift to reducing its massive demand for energy, a tall order in itself given population growth projections and rising consumption; accelerate a renewable energy transition; or militarize the South China Sea for more deepwater oil and gas.

Right now, China appears to be incoherently pursuing all three strategies, with varying rates of success. But one thing is clear — China’s decisions on how it addresses its coming post-peak future will impact regional and global political and energy security for the foreseeable future.

Fossil Fueled-Growth

The study was published on 19 September by Springer’s peer-reviewed Petroleum Science journal, which is supported by China’s three major oil corporations, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), China Petroleum Corporation (Sinopec), and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).

Since 1978, China has experienced an average annual economic growth rate of 9.8%, and is now the world’s second largest economy after the United States.

The new study points out, however, that this economic growth has been enabled by “high energy consumption.”

In the same period of meteoric economic growth, China’s total energy consumption has grown on average by 5.8% annually, mostly from fossil fuels. In 2014, oil, gas and coal accounted for fully 90% of China’s total energy consumption, with the remainder supplied from renewable energy sources.

After 2018, however, China’s oil production is predicted to begin declining, and the widening supply-demand gap could endanger both China’s energy security and continued economic growth.

The lead author of the study is Jianliang Wang an energy systems expert from the China University of Petroleum’s (CUP) School of Business Administration, along with co-authors Jiang-Xuan Feng and Lian-Yong Feng of CUP; as well as Jiang-Xuan Feng of the University of Bedfordshire Business School and Hui Qu of CNPC.

Multiple Forecasts

The study, which says its aim is “to help policymakers better understand the future long-term supply of China’s fossil fuel resources”, conducts a thorough review of the scientific literature forecasting China’s oil, gas and coal production.

There are considerable differences in previous forecasts for a peak of conventional oil production, ranging from 2002 to 2037.

One of the main causes for such different forecasts, the authors find, is a failure to distinguish properly between conventional and unconventional resources.

According to a paper last July in Frontiers of Energy co-authored by Sir David King, the UK government’s former chief science advisor, conventional oil is relatively cheap, but on a global scale, production stopped rising around 2005. To meet demand, the shortfall is made up from unconventional oil resources, which despite existing in abundance, are “more costly to produce, provide less net energy and cause more GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.”

Often Chinese authorities carry out resource assessments which do not adequately account for the economic costs of production, thus overestimating the extent to which these resources might be commercially recoverable.

An oil reserve is said to "peak" when it reaches maximum production at a point when about half the reserve is depleted. After this it becomes geophysically more difficult and economically more costly to extract from the reserve, leading production to gradually decline.

The study does not argue that peak oil means China is running out of fossil fuels — rather as conventional fossil fuels decline, there is an accelerating shift to more expensive unconventional fuels. While these might exist in abundance, the economic costs of exploitation are far higher, leaving some economically unrecoverable.

The End of China’s Oil Boom

The study’s core finding is that China is about to become a post-peak nation. China’s conventional oil production most likely already peaked in 2014, and the country’s unconventional oil production is likely to peak in 2021.

Assessing China’s total conventional and unconventional oil production together puts its overall peak oil date at 2018.

The challenge is that China is simultaneously forecast to experience rapidly increasing oil demand, which would have to come from oil imports — dramatically impacting world oil markets.

Image

From now to 2040, the gap between domestic demand and domestic oil production will increase by 2.7% on average every year. Therefore, the authors conclude that:

“… oil supply security will remain a serious concern for China. Unless demand for oil falls dramatically, there is no other way to meet this supply gap except by oil imports. In such case, it can be expected that the international oil market will be affected significantly by China’s oil import trend.”

Gas

The paper also arrives at new forecasts of China’s gas and coal production. China’s total gas production is likely to peak around 2040, with unconventional gas production surpassing conventional gas around 2034.

Even this scenario could be an overestimate as actual gas production will likely be constrained by “water issues [which] may be the most significant constraining factor for China shale’s gas development.”

China suffers from “high” average exposure to water stress over its shale oil and gas area, the study observes.

Yet China’s gas demand is expected to increase so rapidly, that even “impressive” production increases from unconventional gas resources will not be sufficient to meet demand.

Image

By 2040, gas demand is projected at 600 billion cubic meters (Bcm) per year, nearly double China’s expected total gas production that year at 350 Bcm/year. From there, the supply-demand gap for gas will continue to increase rapidly as domestic production declines.

Climate Change?

The impact of water scarcity would not just affect China’s gas production. Other studies set out how it will likely impact on China’s food production.

Projections show that global warming along with land conversion and water scarcity could reduce Chinese food production substantially in coming decades.

Last year, a major study published by the Bulletin of the World Health Organization found that by the 2040s, climate change could reduce China’s per-capita cereal production by 18 percent, compared with 2000 levels.

Out to 2030–2050, loss of cropland resulting from further urbanization and soil degradation could lead to a 13–18 percent overall decrease in China’s food production capacity — compared with that recorded in 2005.

These declines could result in “continued or recurring food shortages” posing a “substantial threat to overall community health and well-being, social stability and human nutrition.”

Coal

Finally, the study takes aim at the government’s exuberance on domestic coal reserves. Coal currently accounts for some 66% of China’s total energy consumption.

China’s coal reserves are believed to be so huge that there is no risk of shortages. The study argues instead that such estimates have little meaning, as it is not clear how much can be produced commercially “under existing economic and political conditions with existing technology.”

Far from China’s coal resources supplying abundant energy for the foreseeable future, the new paper forecasts that China’s domestic coal production is due to peak imminently — around 2020.

This could change depending on domestic demand, as China is spearheading efforts to curb coal consumption.

“The production of coal may peak soon if the demand keeps increasing,” lead author Professor Jianliang Wang told me. “Thanks to the declining coal demand since 2014, China may not see a supply peak of coal if the demand keeps declining in the future.”

Economic Impacts of Net Energy Decline

Perhaps the study’s most salient implications are set out in relation to the concept of Energy Return on Investment (EROI), which measures the quality of a resource by calculating the amount of energy needed to extract energy out.

This calculation allows scientists to come to an assessment of a society’s ‘net energy’, and thus how much ‘surplus’ energy is available for investment in economic services outside of the energy system — such as manufacturing, health, food, and so on.

Earlier in the twentieth century, fossil fuel resources were of much higher quality, meaning that very little energy input was required to extract these resources. Their EROI values were at various times higher than 30 and sometimes up to 100 and over.

But the global picture has now dramatically changed “due to the rapid depletion of high-quality fossil fuels after about the year 2000”, which has reduced “the EROI, and hence the amount of energy surplus of fossil fuels to society.”

That’s the global picture, which goes some way toward explaining the inability of the global economy to escape consistently slow-growth.

Within China, available data demonstrates unequivocally that the EROI of fossil fuels exhibits “a declining trend mainly due to the depletion of shallow-buried coal resources and to the move away from conventional oil and gas resources.”

Image

Whereas in the 1990s, the EROI of China’s coal was at around 35, this had declined to about 29 by 2012. It is forecast to drop to 25 and below in coming years.

Similarly, the EROI of China’s oil and gas had reached a high of around 14 in the late 1990s, declining to 9.9 by 2012. It too is predicted to plateau slowly downwards in coming decades.

China’s largest field, the Daqing oil field, provides a clear case study of this process. Just to maintain existing production levels and to reduce the decline rate, China has had to use advanced enhanced oil recovery techniques known for their “high cost and environmental impact,” leading to a lower net energy yield.

This has led Daqing’s EROI to drop as low as 6.4 in 2012.

China’s Debt Bubble

The risk of China’s economic growth is compounded by the fact that it has been fuelled not just by high energy consumption premised on the availability of high-EROI fossil fuels, but also by the meteoric rise in non-financial debt, which includes household, corporate and government debt.

Image

This debt was already 242 percent of GDP in 2016, and according to the IMF will rise to 300 percent by 2022. Viewed in isolation, the unsustainability of this debt-bubble “raises concerns for a possible sharp decline in growth in the medium term," the IMF found in a report this August.

Risks

Funding for the Petroleum Science study came from a cross-section of Chinese state-backed institutions, including the National Natural Science Foundation, the National Social Science Foundation, the Chinese Ministry of Education’s Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation, and the China University of Petroleum, itself sponsored by the Ministry of Education.

I asked Professor Wang whether this indicated that Chinese policymakers were beginning to take seriously the risk of peak oil.

“Many experts, including those from the government, have already known about our papers and the peak oil issues,” said Wang, explaining that their research group were the first to have introduced the concept of peak oil to China. “The Chinese government has taken measures for years to deal with the problem that China’s domestic oil and gas production can’t meet its demand.”

But he added that while some official agencies supported the basic research, senior Chinese policymakers did not necessarily understand the problem.

Although a significant number of Chinese energy experts agree that “peak oil in China is real and may come soon, they don’t think peak oil in the world is real,” said Wang:

“Therefore, if China can import enough oil with reasonable cost, the impacts on the economy is not considered the key issue by the government. What they care about is the import cost, the world oil price. If the price is too high, this will affect the Chinese economy significantly.”

The study encapsulates this risk succinctly. The authors warn that:

"supply constraints of oil and gas resources are likely to have very serious impacts on China’s oil and gas security. The gap between domestic production and demand of oil and gas is forecast to increase rapidly. In addition, coal supply constraints show that that a high coal demand scenario is unlikely to be met from purely domestic production.”

These concerns are compounded in the context of China’s mounting debt-bubble, and the intensifying impacts of climate change on China’s water and food availability, which in turn would lead to an escalating dependence on imports of fossil fuels and food — amplifying the total costs on the economy.

Global Oil Crunch?

All these risks would be compounded if global oil markets experience a supply squeeze of some kind. According to Wang, a peak in total global oil production is likely to arrive sooner rather than later:

“Our group thinks the global oil peak may arrive much early than most people think. So if it happens, the import quantities and import cost will be the big issues that China must consider.”

Last year, INSURGE exclusively published in full a confidential HSBC report concluding that 81% of the world’s total liquids production is in decline, and that this could lead to an oil supply squeeze in 2018.

That view has been partly corroborated by Ed Morse, head of global commodities at Citigroup, who recently said that OPEC producers are for the most part already at maximum capacity, largely due to a lack of investment in exploration and development.

The HSBC report, however, went further than this, concluding that while economic factors are a major issue, most OPEC producers are now facing geophysical constraints which they are unlikely to be able to surpass.

Not everyone agrees with this, with some observers pointing out that even if a supply squeeze kicks in, the price hike could incentivize US shale producers to come online in a matter of days.

Yet either way, the overall picture is that as China’s highest quality fossil fuels are depleted, it will not be able to easily avoid growing pressure from rising energy costs.

China’s rapidly rising dependence on fossil fuel imports further suggests that after 2018, world oil markets will be increasingly strained by the country’s escalating demand. This could well be another potential major driver of a global oil squeeze in or after 2018, in a way that most mainstream forecasts have overlooked.

Highlighting the “steady declining trend” in the EROI ratios of coal, oil and gas, the study notes that this is “generally consistent with the approaching of peaks of physical production of the fossil fuels.”

A decline trend in EROI means that more and more energy inputs are needed to produce the same amount of energy output:

“Such a situation will be unsustainable for Chinese society if China cannot find new and abundant energy sources with high EROI values, or find some way to support one and one half billion people at a dignified standard of living by much less energy-intensive means.”

War for Oil?

In response to this looming challenge, China could buckle down on business-as-usual, seeking to consolidate access to new oil and gas sources as part of a wider ‘oil security’ strategy.

This could see China adopt a much more aggressive approach to untapped oil and gas resources in the South China Sea, where Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, alongside China, have contested claims to different offshore oil and gas fields.

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil, whose former CEO Rex Tillerson is now Secretary of State under President Donald Trump, has systematically forged oil deals with all these countries. This implicates the firm — and potentially the U.S. government — in a strategy of encroachment to access South China Sea’s fossil fuel resources.

All this heightens the risk of conflicts in the South China Sea related to energy resource claims, not only between China and local Asian powers, but potentially between China and the U.S.

Toward a Renewable-Powered Regional Super-Grid?

China could, of course, adopt an alternative strategy focused on deliberately reducing fossil fuel consumption. China’s current target aims to transition 20% of its energy supply to renewables by 2030.

The projected demand data put forward in the Petroleum Science study suggests, though, that this would still not be sufficient to meet the projected fossil fuel supply gap.

China is also working on a timeline to phase out oil-powered vehicles. For such an initiative to work, China may have to move even faster than it already is.

The study authors suggest that one option is for China to explore “much less energy-intensive means” to support its population, suggesting a concerted shift to lifestyles based on lower consumption.

According to Christian Breyer, professor of Solar Economy at Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), Finland, a rapid Chinese transition to renewables remains feasible and “would allow a high domestic energy supply.”

In 2016, Breyer and his colleague at LUT, Dmitrii Bogdanov, released a peer-reviewed study published in the Energy Conversion and Management journal, showcasing the findings of a detailed model simulation testing the feasibility of a 100% renewable energy system in Northeast Asia.

The model showed that a regional ‘super-grid’ interconnecting Mongolia, Japan, South and North Korea, China and Tibet could provide a secure, reliable energy supply from renewable sources, meeting projected demand-levels out to 2030. And it could do so at significantly lower cost than either nuclear power, or fossil fuel-based carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.

Breyer and Bogdanov’s model demonstrates that a 100% renewable energy system would be far more viable if countries in the region work together to share and distribute their available resources across an integrated transregional smart electricity grid.

But, Breyer told me, China’s mix of solar, wind and hydroelectric sources is excellent, and China would not need such a regional grid to succeed: “China can do that alone, without any doubt.”

He added, though, that “very high shares of renewables” — higher perhaps than China is currently aiming for — “are mandatory… for reasons of fossil fuel availability, energy economics, energy security constraints, military considerations, societal constraints, environmental impacts and health issues. The only question is how fast the transition can be done.”

Given the new study, this transition may well be a matter of survival — not just for China’s future prosperity, but for regional and international security.


It should go without saying on RI, but I'll say it anyway: Nafeez Ahmed is a top-notch researcher. His conclusions are most likely right on-target.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby Iamwhomiam » Fri Oct 06, 2017 9:58 pm

If they let Trump actually launch an attack that engages us in war, it will only serve to establish clear-cut cause to permanently retire him. Look what he did! He's nuts!
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Oct 11, 2017 7:48 pm

Iamwhomiam » Fri Oct 06, 2017 8:58 pm wrote:If they let Trump actually launch an attack that engages us in war, it will only serve to establish clear-cut cause to permanently retire him. Look what he did! He's nuts!

Sorry I didn't catch this before, Iamwhomiam. Of course, Vanity Fair today seems to be describing Cabinet members preparing for exactly what you're saying!

One former official even speculated that Kelly and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have discussed what they would do in the event Trump ordered a nuclear first strike. “Would they tackle him?” the person said. Even Trump’s most loyal backers are sowing public doubts. This morning, The Washington Post quoted longtime Trump friend Tom Barrack saying he has been “shocked” and “stunned” by Trump’s behavior.

...

Even before Corker’s remarks, some West Wing advisers were worried that Trump’s behavior could cause the Cabinet to take extraordinary Constitutional measures to remove him from office. Several months ago, according to two sources with knowledge of the conversation, former chief strategist Steve Bannon told Trump that the risk to his presidency wasn’t impeachment, but the 25th Amendment—the provision by which a majority of the Cabinet can vote to remove the president. When Bannon mentioned the 25th Amendment, Trump said, “What’s that?” According to a source, Bannon has told people he thinks Trump has only a 30 percent chance of making it the full term.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Nov 07, 2017 9:05 pm

Two different stories dealing with the same topic were being highlighted in the media today. One was from a Politico profile on Trump's longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller, the other was reported in USA Today from a Wall Street analyst with a source in the Secret Service. Both address Trump's terrible diet.

This seems somewhat trial-baloonish to me. Perhaps instead of Trumpstag, Gulf of Trumpkin, Trumppowder Plot or New Trump Harbor, we are about to witness Trumppot Dome with Trump playing out the Harding role of dying before all the real scandalous shit hits the fan.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 07, 2017 9:10 pm

yea and he tired to get Pompeo to push the theory that the DNC email hack was an inside job ...The Intercept reported and reporter Ken Dilanian is confirming the same story

Trumppot Dome with Trump playing out the Harding role of dying just rolling over and playing dead before all the real scandalous shit hits the fan.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3VW_aYfBqg

One year after Trump's victory, Virginia elected:

First transgender delegate in the country
First out-lesbian delegate in the state
First Asian American woman delegate in the state
First two Latina delegates in the state
First Democratic Socialist candidate in the state


“a transgender heavy metal singer defeated the notorious Anti-LGBTQ author of Virginia’s anti-trans bathroom bill incumbent

Image


Trumpite campaign gave Hoboken mayor Bhalla

Image
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby liminalOyster » Wed Nov 08, 2017 12:49 pm

seemslikeadream » Tue Nov 07, 2017 9:10 pm wrote:yea and he tired to get Pompeo to push the theory that the DNC email hack was an inside job ...The Intercept reported and reporter Ken Dilanian is confirming the same story


I wonder what Greenwald thinks of that piece. I'm not familiar with Duncan Campbell (maybe I should be) but according to his WP bio, he pretty much broke the ECHELON story thirty years ago. Here's a later piece by him. Seems, to me at least, to add an intriguing (perplexing maybe) dimension to this subsequent take-down of William Binney who, now framed as a "conspiracy theorist" of the "hack" will be forever associated with the adjective/noun syntactic structure: "hack conspiracy theorist."
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 08, 2017 12:52 pm

I wonder why trump thought the CIA was his personal property and why Pompeo agreed to his demands..you do understand trump is not allowed to use the CIA to hunt his political enemies no matter what he hears on Faux News

who does he think he is?

Image


do you think it was bizarre that Brazille questioned if Rich's death involved Russians? I do.
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Wed Nov 08, 2017 1:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby liminalOyster » Wed Nov 08, 2017 1:07 pm

seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 08, 2017 12:52 pm wrote:I wonder why trump thought the CIA was his personal property and why Pompeo agreed to his demands..you do understand trump is not allowed to use the CIA to hunt his political enemies no matter what he hears on Faux News



Indeed I do. But Campbell and Binney look to me like they should be comrades not adversaries, Trump and Pompeo notwithstanding. I just find it interesting.

edit: "Bizarre?" No. The Russian Seth Rich theory came out pretty early on IIRC. "Bizarre" to me is gay frogs for hillary demons and DMT harvesting for George Soros's eternal youth. Anything that would fit easily on a House of Cards episode can't earn that qualifier IMHO.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Nov 08, 2017 1:15 pm

This VIPS memo was hastily written based on a flawed analysis of third-party analyses and then thrown against the wall, waiting to see if it would stick.



and trump ran with it because he watches Faux News ...a president of the U.S. getting his facts from Faux News is bizarre and using those facts to get the Director of the CIA to do his bidding is really really bizarre

In a subsequent posting, the anonymous geek made it clear that his original research did not necessarily indicate that whoever made the 7-Zip file that Guccifer 2.0 put onto the internet was connected to a DNC server. The VIPS, in the Forensicator's view, had engaged in "over-ambitious extrapolations" from the original research. (Italics and brackets are in the original.)
Some reports in the media have been critical of aspects of the VIPS report, and then by implication have transferred their criticisms to the Guccifer 2.0 NGP/VAN Metadata Analysis. In the process, those reporters have demonstrated that they likely did not carefully read the Forensicator’s analysis or were not careful in making attributions. ...
No claim is made in the report that the data might not have been copied earlier nor whether it might have been copied or leaked. ...
No claim was made in the Forensicator’s analysis that this computer was connected to a DNC server. ...
No claim was made in the analysis that the estimated transfer speed “is much faster than what is physically possible with a hack” [VIPS]. Rather the statement was “this rate is too fast to support the hypothesis that the DNC data was initially copied over the Internet (esp. to Romania)." They’re close; they differ in degree of certainty and the Forensicator added the qualifier “(esp. to Romania)."
The Forensicator’s report makes no reference to “hack”, “leak”, or “server”.
This analysis was enough to convince Lisa Ling, a former Air Force technical sergeant who endorsed the original VIPS memo, to reverse herself and ask for her name to be removed from the list of signatories.
"I was willing to go with [the Russian hacking operation] being theoretical, not factual and definitely not irrefutable," she told Salon in an interview. Other VIPS members who had signed on told Salon that they believed the July 24 memo has raised credibility concerns for the group.
Cian Westmoreland, a former Air Force transmissions systems technician, said the memo was changed to become more declarative after several VIPS members and associate members had agreed to endorse it.
"I could not in good conscience agree with what was ultimately added to the letter after many of our members signed," he told Salon in an email.

"The memo should have then shown in this work that multiple scenarios were considered, and then how they were eliminated," Westmoreland wrote. "Then it should have been a unanimous decision by the signers as to what the end product would ultimately be, not edited post signature and ferried off to media with haste."
McGovern, Folden, Binney, and several other VIPS members are still standing by their conclusions. There's no question the holdouts have impressive credentials. But they seem to have gone beyond the facts and the currency of their expertise in their desire to fact-check an intelligence community that deserves it.
Ritter and several dissenting VIPS members published a response to the original memo that is required reading:
The environment around Trump, Russia, et al. is hyperpolarized right now, and much disinformation is floating around, feeding confirmation bias, mirroring and even producing conspiracy theories.
However, this VIPS memo could have easily raised the necessary and critical questions without resorting to law-of-physics conclusions that claim to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was an inside-network copy only and then asserting the “fact” that the Russians (or anybody else for that matter) did not hack the DNC.
The bottom line: This VIPS memo was hastily written based on a flawed analysis of third-party analyses and then thrown against the wall, waiting to see if it would stick. This memo could have cited the critical questions raised in the third-party analyses of “Guccifer 2.0” while also asking why the three US intelligence agencies have yet to provide any actual hard proof following their January 6, 2017, assessment.
https://www.salon.com/2017/09/17/was-th ... bably-not/



When Facts Are Not Facts

by Thomas Drake, Scott Ritter, Lisa Ling, Cian Westmoreland, Philip M. Giraldi, and Jesselyn Radack
.....

Conclusion: Good-faith efforts to parse the available data to provide insight into the unlawful extraction of documents from the DNC in 2016 are admirable and necessary. All parties, however, must exercise much greater care in separating out statements backed by available digital metadata from thoughtful insights and educated guesses. Walking nontechnical readers down any narrative path that cannot be directly supported by evidence must be avoided. At this point, given the limited available data, certainty about only a very small number of things can be achieved.

.......



A Leak or a Hack? A Forum on the VIPS Memo

A letter from dissenting members of VIPS, a reply from VIPS, and the results of our independent review.

By Various Contributors September 1, 2017
DNC HQ
The Democratic National Committee headquarters, October 27, 2016. (Sipa via AP Images)
Editor’s note, 9/1/2017: For more than 150 years, The Nation has been committed to fearless, independent journalism. We have a long history of seeking alternative views and taking unpopular stances. We believe it is important to challenge questionable conventional wisdom and to foster debate—not police it. Focusing on unreported or inadequately reported issues of major importance and raising questions that are not being asked have always been a central part of our work.

This journalistic mission led The Nation to be troubled by the paucity of serious public scrutiny of the January 2017 intelligence-community assessment (ICA) on purported Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election, which reflects the judgment of the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA. That report concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally ordered the hacking of the DNC and the dissemination of e-mails from key staffers via WikiLeaks, in order to damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. This official intelligence assessment has since led to what some call “Russiagate,” with charges and investigations of alleged collusion with the Kremlin, and, in turn, to what is now a major American domestic political crisis and an increasingly perilous state of US-Russia relations. To this day, however, the intelligence agencies that released this assessment have failed to provide the American people with any actual evidence substantiating their claims about how the DNC material was obtained or by whom. Astonishingly and often overlooked, the authors of the declassified ICA themselves admit that their “judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.”

That is why The Nation published Patrick Lawrence’s article “A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack.” The article largely reported on a recently published memo prepared by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), which argued, based on their own investigation, that the theft of the DNC e-mails was not a hack, but some kind of inside leak that did not involve Russia.

VIPS, formed in 2003 by a group of former US intelligence officers with decades of experience working within the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and other agencies, previously produced some of the most credible—and critical—analyses of the Bush administration’s mishandling of intelligence data in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The most recent VIPS memo, released on July 24, whatever its technical merits, contributes to a much-needed critical discussion. Despite all the media coverage taking the veracity of the ICA assessment for granted, even now we have only the uncorroborated assertion of intelligence officials to go on. Indeed, this was noticed by The New York Times’s Scott Shane, who wrote the day the report appeared: “What is missing from the public report is…hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack…. Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”

As editor of The Nation, my purpose in publishing Patrick Lawrence’s article was to make more widely known the VIPS critique of the January ICA assertions, the questions VIPS raised, and their counter-thesis that the disseminated DNC e-mails resulted from a leak, not a hack. Those questions remain vital.

Subsequently, Nation editors themselves raised questions about the editorial process that preceded the publication of the article. The article was indeed fact-checked to ensure that Patrick Lawrence, a regular Nation contributor, accurately reported the VIPS analysis and conclusions, which he did. As part of the editing process, however, we should have made certain that several of the article’s conclusions were presented as possibilities, not as certainties. And given the technical complexity of the material, we would have benefited from bringing on an independent expert to conduct a rigorous review of the VIPS technical claims.

Current Issue

We have obtained such a review in the last week from Nathan Freitas of the Guardian Project. He has evaluated both the VIPS memo and Lawrence’s article. Freitas lays out several scenarios in which the DNC could have been hacked from the outside, although he does not rule out a leak. Freitas concludes that all parties “must exercise much greater care in separating out statements backed by available digital metadata from thoughtful insights and educated guesses.” His full findings are published below.

We have also learned since publication, from longtime VIPS member Thomas Drake, that there is a dispute among VIPS members themselves about the July 24 memo. This is not the first time a VIPS report has been internally disputed, but it is the first time one has been released over the substantive objections of several VIPS members. With that in mind, we asked Drake and those VIPS members who agree with him to present their dissenting view. We also asked VIPS members who stand by their report to respond. Their comments are also below.

In presenting this follow-up, The Nation hopes to encourage further inquiry into the crucial questions of how, why, and by whom the DNC e-mails were made public—a matter that continues to roil our politics. We especially hope that other people with special expertise or knowledge will come forward.

—Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher

.

When Facts Are Not Facts

by Thomas Drake, Scott Ritter, Lisa Ling, Cian Westmoreland, Philip M. Giraldi, and Jesselyn Radack

The recent article published on August 9, 2017, in The Nation by Patrick Lawrence leans heavily on a July 24, 2017, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) memo published by Consortiumnews.com and then picked up by several media outlets.

However, a number of VIPS members did not sign this problematic memo because of troubling questions about its conclusions, and others who did sign it have raised key concerns since its publication.

The heart of the VIPS memo centers on two statements that relate to an alleged “Guccifer 2.0” cyber-attack against the Democratic National Committee (DNC):

“After examining metadata from the ‘Guccifer 2.0’ July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device.”
“Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying was performed on the East coast of the U.S.”
Two critical analytic issues emerge from these statements. First, the intelligence-community assessment from January 6, 2017, which reflects the judgment of the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, asserts as fact (absent categorical proof or evidence) that “Guccifer 2.0” accessed data from the DNC through a “cyber operation.” This could mean via the network, the cloud, computers, remote hacking, or direct data removal. However, “Guccifer 2.0” claimed access to the DNC server through remote hacking.

The third-party analysis of the “Guccifer 2.0” claims (including from Adam Carter and the Forensicator) analyzed in the VIPS memo directly contradict these conclusions (while raising legitimate questions), but the VIPS memo asserts as a “slam dunk” fact the categorical conclusion of a local leak that is not supported by the third-party analysis either. There is also no evidence from the available metadata that can definitively state when the transfer or copying of the data took place, nor does the data prove that “Guccifer 2.0” had direct access to the DNC server or that the data was located on the DNC system when it was allegedly copied on July 5, 2016.

The implications of this leap-to-conclusions analysis of the VIPS memo—which centers on claiming as an unassailable and immutable fact that the DNC “hack” was committed by an insider with direct access to the DNC server, who then deliberately doctored data and documents to look like a Russian or Russia-affiliated actor was involved, and therefore no hack occurred (consequently, ipso facto, the Russians did not do it)—are contingent on a fallacy.

Data-transfer speeds across networks and the Internet measured in megabits per second (or megabytes per second) can easily achieve rates that greatly exceed the cited reference in the VIPS memo of 1,976 megabytes in 87 seconds (∼22.71 megabytes per second or ∼181.7 megabits per second), and well beyond 50 megabytes, depending on the capacity of the network and the method of access to that network. Speeds across the network vary greatly, and sustained write speeds copied out to local devices are often quite a bit slower.

The environment around Trump, Russia, et al. is hyperpolarized right now, and much disinformation is floating around, feeding confirmation bias, mirroring and even producing conspiracy theories.

However, this VIPS memo could have easily raised the necessary and critical questions without resorting to law-of-physics conclusions that claim to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was an inside-network copy only and then asserting the “fact” that the Russians (or anybody else for that matter) did not hack the DNC.

In addition, no qualifiers, disclaimers, or dissenting views are provided in the VIPS memo, nor is any alternative theory presented.

It is important to note that it’s equally plausible that the cited July 5, 2016, event was carried out on a server separate from the DNC or elsewhere, and with data previously copied, transferred, or even exfiltrated from the DNC.

However, independent of transfer/copy speeds, if the data was not on the DNC server on July 5, 2016, then none of this VIPS analysis matters (including the categorically stated fact that the local copy was acquired by an insider) and simply undermines the credibility of any and all analysis in the VIPS memo when joined with this flawed predicate.

In addition, a subsequent post by the “Forensicator” actually backs away from the VIPS memo and provides additional caveats, including the following statements:

“The Guccifer 2.0 NGP/VAN Metadata Analysis describes a copy operation that (based on the metadata) occurred in the early evening on July 5, 2016. No claim is made in the report that the data might not have been copied earlier nor whether it might have been copied or leaked.”
“No claim was made in the Forensicator’s analysis that this computer was connected to a DNC server.”
“There may be other over-ambitious extrapolations made by the VIPS in their report.”
Furthermore, a recent article in the New York Post raises the specter of yet other alternative paths for one or more DNC data breaches. Scott Ritter, a VIPS member, also wrote an article in Truthdig that takes issue with the centerpiece claims of the VIPS memo.

The bottom line: This VIPS memo was hastily written based on a flawed analysis of third-party analyses and then thrown against the wall, waiting to see if it would stick. This memo could have cited the critical questions raised in the third-party analyses of “Guccifer 2.0” while also asking why the three US intelligence agencies have yet to provide any actual hard proof following their January 6, 2017, assessment.

The VIPS memo is now increasingly politicized because the analysis itself was politicized. It deals only with alleged “Guccifer 2.0” hacking and makes the classic apples-versus-oranges mistake. In an ideal world, VIPS would at least retract its assertion of certainty. Absent real facts regarding proof of leaks or hacks (or both), how many hypotheses can one copy onto the head of a digital pin?

Signed,

Thomas Drake is a former senior executive at the National Security Agency. Previously, he worked in industry as a principal and consultant in information management and technology, was a naval intelligence officer, served at the CIA as an analyst, and in the Air Force as a crypto-linguist and signals intelligence aircrew member.

Scott Ritter spent 10 years as a Marine Corps intelligence officer, with service in the former Soviet Union and under Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf during the first Gulf War. From 1991 to 1998, he served as a chief weapons inspector with the United Nations in Iraq. Today, he consults on energy-intelligence issues.

Lisa Ling (@ARetVet) served in the US military as a technical sergeant on drone surveillance systems before leaving with an honorable discharge in 2012. She appears in the 2016 documentary on drone warfare, National Bird.

Cian Westmoreland is an unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) whistle-blower. He is a former transmissions-systems technician who served in a unit establishing battlefield command, control, communication, computing, and intelligence (C4I) capabilities for Reapers, Predators, and other networked aircraft over the 253,000 square miles of Afghanistan in 2009, in the 73rd Expeditionary Air Control Squadron, before speaking out about the drone program.

Philip M. Giraldi is a former counterterrorism specialist who served for 19 years with the CIA and Army intelligence in Europe and the Middle East. He is executive director of the Council for the National Interest, a Washington-based advocacy group that promotes a foreign policy based on actual US interests. In 2008 and 2012, he was a foreign-policy adviser for presidential candidate Ron Paul. Giraldi is a contributing editor for The American Conservative and The Unz Review, where he writes about terrorism, intelligence, and national-security issues.

Jesselyn Radack is director of the Whistleblower and Source Protection Program (WHISPeR) at ExposeFacts. Previously, she was a legal adviser with the Justice Department.

* * *


Why This Is Important

by William Binney, Skip Folden, Ed Loomis, Ray McGovern, and Kirk Wiebe

We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) scientists make our technical judgments based on given facts and do not speculate without a factual basis. The main issue here is: Who gave the DNC e-mails to WikiLeaks? “Handpicked” analysts from three intelligence agencies “assess” that the Russians hacked into the DNC, but provide no hard evidence for this.

We think back to the evidence-free “assessments” 15 years ago before the attack on Iraq. Several “high-confidence” intelligence judgments had been fraudulently “fixed” to dovetail with the Bush/Cheney agenda for war. In June 2008, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee released a bipartisan report five years in the making. Mincing no words, he wrote: “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”

We worry that this may be happening again. Adding to our concern, in recent years we have seen “false-flag” attacks carried out to undergird a political narrative and objective—to blame the Syrian government for chemical attacks, for example. Forensic evidence suggests that this tried-and-tested technique (in this instance, simply pasting in a Russian template with “telltale signs”) may have been used to “show” that Russia hacked into the DNC computers last June.

For more than a year, we have been pointing out that any data acquired by a hack would have had to come across the Internet. The blanket coverage of the Internet by the NSA, its UK counterpart GCHQ, and others would be able to produce copies of that data and show where the data originated and where it went. But US intelligence has produced no evidence that hacking by Russia led to it acquiring the DNC e-mails and passing them on to WikiLeaks.

Historically, the United States has disclosed classified information when it has suited its purposes. One need not go all the way back to the release of U-2 photography during the Cuban missile crisis, or to President Ronald Reagan’s decision to sacrifice a lucrative source (which enabled us to intercept and decipher Libyan communications) to prove that Libya was behind the April 5, 1986, bombing of a Berlin disco that killed two and wounded 79 US servicemen. Much more recently, in 2014 and 2015, the United States released significant details to verify the successful hack by which China stole over 21.5 million official records, including security background investigations, from the Office of Personnel Management.

Independent research into the metadata associated with the July 5, 2016, cyber-event that was blamed on “Russian hacking” shows that what actually took place was a copy onto an external storage device, and that the copy took place on the East Coast of the United States by someone with physical access to the DNC server or computers. Most curiously, the FBI did not have access to the DNC computers to do its own forensics, even though prominent politicians were calling the alleged Russian hack “an act of war.”

After examining the recent forensic findings, Skip Folden, co-author of the VIPS memo titled “Was the ‘Russian Hack’ an Inside Job?,” sent a more detailed technical report to the offices of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, asking them to investigate the latest findings.

We will not dwell on the nontechnical evidence at hand, but we would be remiss if we did not mention something that has recently been in the public eye. Julian Assange has denied that the source is the Russian government or any other state party, and, truth be told, his record of credibility compares favorably with the records of those who demonize him. An associate of Assange, former UK ambassador Craig Murray, has said the WikiLeaks source was a leak from an insider. “To my certain knowledge,” said Murray, “neither the DNC nor the Podesta leaks involved Russia.” Oddly, Murray has not been questioned by any US official or journalist.

Commentary on the Dissenting Memo

What follows are our comments on the dissenting memo written by Thomas Drake, Lisa Ling, Cian Westmoreland, Philip M. Giraldi, and Jesselyn Radack.

In the words of the memo:

[T]he intelligence-community assessment from January 6, 2017, which reflects the judgment of the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, asserts as fact (absent categorical proof or evidence) that “Guccifer 2.0” accessed data from the DNC through a “cyber operation.” This could mean via the network, the cloud, computers, remote hacking, or direct data removal. However, “Guccifer 2.0” claimed access to the DNC server through remote hacking.

With this statement at the outset, the dissent injects uncertainty about what the words “cyber operation” might include in a way that clearly implies that the Russians could have gotten the DNC e-mails in some way other than through an Internet hack—a very key point. Yes, the January 6 report does use the phrase “cyber operation,” but President Obama’s intelligence chiefs, including former FBI director James Comey, have testified under oath that they accept CrowdStrike’s analysis regarding a “hack.” Moreover, intelligence officials have briefed The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other major news outlets about the alleged Russian role in a hack. In this light, focusing on the phrase “cyber operation” amounts to a word game.

Moreover, does the dissent have proof that the “Guccifer 2.0” “claim” is not fake news? Is the writer of the post at “Guccifer 2.0” actually the person(s) responsible for the data heist? The intelligence-community assessment was not backed up with facts; we cannot believe what it says until technical evidence is provided to prove it.

In the words of the memo:

The third-party analysis of the “Guccifer 2.0” claims (including Adam Carter’s (g-2.space) and the Forensicator’s (theforensicator.wordpress.com/guccifer-2-ngp-van-metadata-analysis)) analyzed in the VIPS memo directly contradict these conclusions (while raising legitimate questions), but the VIPS memo asserts as a “slam dunk” fact the categorical conclusion of a local leak that is also not supported by the third-party analysis, either.

If we understand this sentence correctly, and the “third-party” analysis refers to the Forensicator, this assertion is wrong. From the data given, the analysis does support the conclusion, as it demonstrates that the Internet on July 5, 2016, could not support such an international hack.

In the words of the memo:

There is also no evidence from the available metadata that can definitively state when the transfer or copying of the data took place, nor does the data prove that “Guccifer 2.0” had direct access to the DNC server or that the data was located on the DNC system when it was allegedly copied on July 5, 2016.

We have no evidence that the July 5 data was manipulated. Nor does the dissent present any. Furthermore, “Guccifer 2.0” bracketed it with his July 4 and 6 posts, which are repeatedly ignored by the dissent. The independent analysis makes no claim that “Guccifer 2.0” had direct access to the DNC server or that the data was located on the server at that time. The transfer rate was independent of the physical location of the data at the time of copy.

In the words of the memo:

The implications of this leap-to-conclusions analysis of the VIPS memo—which centers on claiming as an unassailable and immutable fact that the DNC “hack” was committed by an insider with direct access to the DNC server, who then deliberately doctored data and documents to look like a Russian or Russia-affiliated actor was involved, and therefore no hack occurred (consequently, ipso facto, the Russians did not do it)—are contingent on a fallacy.

There had to be direct access to the DNC server at some point, for that repository was the source of the data. The authors of the dissent are confusing the July 5 and June 15 incidents, for it was the latter that experienced the deliberate insertion of Russian “fingerprints.”

In the words of the memo:

Data-transfer speeds across networks and the Internet measured in megabits per second (or megabytes per second) can easily achieve rates that greatly exceed the cited reference in the VIPS memo of 1,976 megabytes in 87 seconds (∼22.71 megabytes per second or ∼181.7 megabits per second), and well beyond 50 megabytes depending on the capacity of the network and the method of access to that network. Speeds across the network vary greatly, and sustained write speeds copied out to local devices are often quite a bit slower.

The dissent misses the key point of the difference between available speeds in early July 2016 and now. In addition, the above shows no awareness of the degradation of speed with distance and no awareness of the problem of transoceanic connections.

In the words of the memo:

The environment around Trump, Russia, et al. is hyperpolarized right now, and much disinformation is floating around, feeding confirmation bias, mirroring and even producing conspiracy theories.

However, this VIPS memo could have easily raised the necessary and critical questions without resorting to law-of-physics conclusions that claim to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was an inside-network copy only and then asserting the “fact” that the Russians (or anybody else for that matter) did not hack the DNC.

The authors of the dissent may not like the conclusions, but that is exactly what the independent analysis demonstrated, not just via metadata but also by actual network field tests.

In the words of the memo:

In addition, no qualifiers, disclaimers, or dissenting views are provided in the VIPS memo, nor is any alternative theory presented.

The conclusions of our VIPS memo were definitive and included extensive support data if one looks at the websites that were referred to. The writers of the dissent made no attempt to weigh in on the article with a dissenting view or an alternate theory prior to publication of the VIPS memo. Like everyone else, they had two weeks.

In the words of the memo:

It is important to note that it’s equally plausible that the cited July 5, 2016, event was carried out on a server separate from the DNC or elsewhere, and with data previously copied, transferred, or even exfiltrated from the DNC.

Yes, the claimed “hack” could have been done on a secondary computer (not “server”), but in either case had to come originally from the DNC server. This has no effect on the transfer rate, which precluded a “hack”—a point the authors of the dissenting memo keep missing.

In the words of the memo:

However, independent of transfer/copy speeds, if the data was not on the DNC server on July 5, 2016, then none of this VIPS analysis matters (including the categorically stated fact that the local copy was acquired by an insider) and simply undermines the credibility of any and all analysis in the VIPS memo when joined with this flawed predicate.

The dissent refers to “independent of transfer/copy speeds,” but one cannot simply ignore them, as if they were irrelevant. Also, again, the “Guccifer 2.0” July 4 and 6 posts are being ignored. The dissent’s argument ignores the fact that on July 5, the data was transferred at a speed not obtainable from East Coast ISPs. The transfer rate, however, is entirely consistent with a USB port connected to a portable device such as a thumb drive.

As the author of The Nation article pointed out, our investigations continue. Recent data analysis gives additional support to our key finding—namely, that the speed of the data transfer from the DNC server (22.7 megabytes per second) far exceeded the capability of the Internet in early July 2016. We have now learned that the 22.7-megabytes-per-second speed was merely the average rate for the duration of the data transfer, and that a peak rate of 38 megabytes per second was reached during that transfer. A copy to a thumb drive could handle that peak speed; an Internet hack attempted from abroad could not.

In the words of the memo:

In addition, a subsequent post by the “Forensicator” actually backs away from the VIPS memo and provides additional caveats, including the following statements (among several):

“The Guccifer 2.0 NGP/VAN Metadata Analysis describes a copy operation that (based on the metadata) occurred in the early evening on July 5, 2016. No claim is made in the report that the data might not have been copied earlier nor whether it might have been copied or leaked.”

This is correct, but has no bearing on the conclusions. Direct access was required in either case, whether the alleged “hack” occurred on the DNC server or on a copy made earlier by a person with direct access. The Forensicator is trying, with these later details, to assist those who were confused.

In the words of the memo:

Furthermore, a recent article in the New York Post raises the specter of yet other alternative paths for one or more DNC data breaches. Scott Ritter, a VIPS member, also wrote an article in Truthdig that takes issue with the centerpiece claims of the VIPS memo.

He did, and without mentioning it to VIPS colleagues more technically experienced in these issues. And the Truthdig article contained misstatements of fact, as detailed in e-mails sent within VIPS, including to Ritter, on July 31 regarding claims that the VIPS conclusions are not supported by data, that the transfer rate is irrelevant, etc. It is not clear why the authors of the dissent think that referring to that article poses any challenge to the technical basis for the conclusion that the July 5 metadata was extracted onto a thumb drive. Again, no facts are presented to infer another path.

In the words of the memo:

The bottom line: This VIPS memo was hastily written based on a flawed analysis of third-party analyses and then thrown against the wall, waiting to see if it would stick. This memo could have cited the critical questions raised in the third-party analyses of “Guccifer 2.0” while also asking why the three US intelligence agencies have yet to provide any actual hard proof following their January 6, 2017, assessment.

Flawed analysis? The dissent has presented no evidence of that. Many of the points raised suggest the authors do not fully understand the analysis. With respect to the alleged hacking and the intelligence-community assessment, the VIPS memo pointed to the parallel report to both the Office of Special Counsel and the attorney general, which covers those issues.

In the words of the memo:

The VIPS memo is now increasingly politicized because the analysis itself was politicized. In an ideal world, VIPS would at least retract its assertion of certainty. It only deals with alleged “Guccifer 2.0” hacking and makes the classic apples-versus-oranges mistake. In an ideal world, VIPS would at least retract its assertion of certainty. Absent real facts regarding proof of leaks or hacks (or both), how many hypotheses can one copy onto the head of a digital pin?

This paragraph is not only misleading, it also impugns the core apolitical nature of VIPS. Again, the dissent seems confused about the main subjects of this discussion and the VIPS memo’s key conclusion—that the July 5, 2016, intrusion into the DNC e-mails, which was blamed on Russia, could not have been a hack—by Russia or anyone else. In that very important forest it is difficult to see through all the bushes and trees on which the dissent chooses to focus.

Signed,

William Binney was a civilian employee of the National Security Agency from 1970 to 2001. He held numerous positions, including technical director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group; Operations Directorate analysis skill field leader; member of the NSA Senior Technical Review Panel; chair of the Technical Advisory Panel to the Foreign Relations Council; co-founder of the SIGINT Automation Research Center; NSA representative to the National Technology Alliance Executive Board; and technical director of the Office of Russia, as well as working as a senior analyst for Warning for over 20 years. After retiring, Binney blew the whistle on the unconstitutional surveillance programs run by the NSA. His outspoken criticism led to an early-morning FBI raid on his home in 2007. Even before Edward Snowden’s whistle-blowing, Binney publicly revealed that the NSA had access to telecommunications companies’ domestic and international billing records, and that since 9/11 the agency has intercepted some 15 to 20 trillion domestic communications. The documents released by Edward Snowden confirmed many of the surveillance dangers about which Binney had been warning under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

Skip Folden (Associate VIPS) retired from IBM after 25 years. His last position there was as IBM program manager for information technology, US.

Ed Loomis is a former NSA technical director for the Office of Signals Processing. From 1996 to 2001, he led the SIGINT Automation Research Center. He retired in 2001 as senior cryptologic computer scientist after 37 years at the agency. He worked for the NSA as an enterprise senior system architect from 2002 to 2007 following retirement, and he was professionally certified in multiple fields at the NSA: mathematician, computer systems analyst, operations research analyst, and system acquisition manager. Loomis applied technical knowledge and experience in developing automated systems focused on producing intelligence supporting military operations and top US decision-makers from 1964 to 2001.

Ray McGovern worked as a CIA analyst under seven presidents and nine CIA directors after serving as a US Army infantry/intelligence officer in the 1960s, McGovern. His concentration was on Russia, one of the foreign posts in which he served. He was chief of the CIA’s Foreign Policy Branch in the 1970s and acting national intelligence officer for Western Europe in the ’80s. He prepared the President’s Daily Brief for Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. During Reagan’s first term, McGovern conducted the early-morning CIA substantive briefings, one-on-one, to the president’s five most senior foreign-policy advisers. At retirement, he was awarded the Intelligence Commendation Medallion for “especially meritorious service,” but gave it back in March 2006 to dissociate himself from an agency engaged in torture. After retirement, he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Kirk Wiebe is a former senior analyst at the SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA. He led the center’s response to National Security Decision Directive 178, ordering the NSA to develop a program to counter the threat posed by foreign relocatable targets, which earned him the DCI’s National Meritorious Unit Citation. Wiebe was awarded the NSA’s second-highest honor, the Meritorious Civilian Service Award, together with numerous other awards for work on the challenges of digital-age strategic planning. He held the NSA’s professional certification as a Russian linguist.

Live links to VIPS memos can be found at consortiumnews.com/vips-memos.

* * *


Independent Review of Reporting and Analysis on the 2016 Compromise of the DNC Computer Network

Nathanial Freitas
Founder, Guardian Project
Technical Director, Tibet Action Institute
Affiliate Fellow, Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University
keybase.io/n8fr8
PGP: 0x69B37AA9

Background: This document provides an independent technical review of statements made in Patrick Lawrence’s article “A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack” that appeared on The Nation on August 9, 2017. Claims made in the article were built upon a digital forensic analysis published by a pseudonymous researcher named “the Forensicator” and a memo published by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). In addition, related to documents provided by “Guccifer 2.0,” there was also a review of information provided by Adam Carter. The focus of the Forensicator’s analysis was on the NGP/VAN file archive, distributed by WikiLeaks, in relation to security compromises of computing resources managed by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2016.

This independent review was done at the request of The Nation and was undertaken without compensation of any kind.

Relevant Experience: I have developed security and privacy-focused software for enterprise and mobile communications platforms and services for nearly 20 years. I have also acted as a technical resource for a variety of targeted nonprofit activist organizations and communities for 15 years. These groups have faced some of the most sophisticated adversaries in the world, who have, on many occasions, successfully executed attacks against them. Through malicious software, remote-access trojans, and e-mail-link phishing attacks, the private data and communications of these communities have been compromised. The most well-known of these incidents are GhostNet, the targeted attacks on Google originating from China, and the use of Android malware against Tibetan activists.

Summary Findings: The work of the Forensicator is detailed and accurate. There are no significant errors in the specific findings, relating to the analysis of time stamps and calculations related to digital-transfer speeds (also known as “throughput”) between storage drives or over a network connection. The Forensicator has worked carefully with the limited set of data available, providing the means necessary for anyone to reproduce the work and analysis.

It is very important to note the set of evidence considered within the Forensicator’s analysis and the subsequent memo and articles based on his work. There are only documents and file archives that purport to have been extracted from DNC storage in 2016 along with the metadata contained within them. The metadata includes “Last Modified” timestamps at various levels of time resolutions (milliseconds, nanoseconds) that also include time-zone information.

Otherwise, there are no logs available that would provide an audit trail of network or system activity. There is no public copy of malicious software found on a targeted system that can be decompiled, reverse engineered, and analyzed. There is no information about where or how the extracted files were stored, what the operating systems involved were, or what the local, co-located, or hosted network configuration and speed might have been.

Most of this document focuses on the findings related to throughput. It also includes a brief set of findings related to the issue of revision save identifiers (RSIDs) and their role in tracking the edit history of word-processing documents.

Time Gaps and Throughput: The Forensicator proposes that all the files in the archive were copied in a single batch operation, and that time gaps in the file and archive metadata indicate that some copied files were not included in the final public archive. By removing the time those missing files would have taken to be copied from the total difference of time from newest to oldest in the archive, the Forensicator arrives at a specific total transfer time of 87 seconds. By then dividing the total size of the archive by that time, he arrives at the calculation of 23 megabytes per second (the amount of megabytes of data that could be transferred over a network or between storage drives per second).

In a recent comment, the Forensicator simplified his throughput theory by reducing the set of files the time estimate is generated from: “There is a series of files and directories that have no time gaps: it includes some top-level files and the FEC directory. The total size is 869 MB, which is 40% of the total. Using only the earliest last mod time and the latest in that series of files, the total elapsed time is 31 seconds. The transfer rate for those files works out to 28 MB/s.”

Nontechnical readers can be forgiven for not firmly grasping the difference between megabytes per second and megabits per second. The overall point of this portion of the analysis was to understand the kind of digital transfer speeds that were utilized by the adversary when extracting the files from the DNC computing resources. The Forensicator ultimately only provides a “right ballpark” number of 23 megabytes per second; that is enough to simply state that a high amount of sustained throughput was utilized during the copying of the files provided. Twenty-three megabytes per second (MB/s) translates to roughly 184 megabits per second (Mb/s).

While most home-network Internet service providers in the United States theoretically offer 100-megabits-per-second download speeds (and some such as Google Fiber offer higher), they rarely reach that full speed and definitely not speeds of up to 184Mb/s. However, that throughput could be achieved by a variety of other digital-communication configurations: a high-speed business-grade Internet service provider, an intra-office local area network, communication between servers within a commercial cloud provider or between high-availability data centers, or over a universal serial bus (USB) connection to an external storage device.

Claims Without Data: Lawrence’s article makes the following statement: “On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second. These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory.”

The VIPS memo makes the following statement: “July 5, 2016: In the early evening, Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device. That speed is much faster than what is physically possible with a hack.”

The only accurate portion of these statements, backed by metadata from the files and archive, is the total size of 1,976 megabytes. As stated before, the transfer time of 87 seconds is an informed theory by the Forensicator, and the 22.7-megabytes-per-second transfer rate is built upon that theory, along with some other educated guesses. While the “Last Modified” value of the files do indicate a copy operation occurred on July 5, 2016, and while the time zone does indicate the computing resources participating in the copy were set to Eastern Standard Time, there is no metadata showing they were downloaded from any specific server, on any specific network, or in any specific geographic location. Finally, the claim that 22.7 megabytes per second is “much faster than what is physically possible with a hack” needs to be addressed in greater depth.

Many Ways to 23 Megabytes per Second: Let us consider the “remote hacker” in this situation. The adversary in a remote intrusion can be physically located nearly anywhere in the world. They can be multiple people working in coordination, in control of a vast amount of physically diverse computing resources through vast networks of compromised machines (also known as “botnets”). They can also utilize a wide variety of network communication tunnels, proxies, and virtual private networks to mask their traffic and true network address. If this remote adversary was attempting to directly copy data from the compromised target server to their actual physical location, a very difficult-to-achieve high sustained throughput would be required to match the time-stamp metadata in the files.

But if the remote adversary was directly downloading the files from the target server to a temporary cloud server or otherwise compromised third-party server within close network proximity, that throughput speed would be possible to achieve. The cloud server could have been provided by a system like Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provide computing resources in the Eastern United States. Creating disposable server instances on cloud services like AWS is easy, cheap, and achievable with relative anonymity. The adversary’s remote-control connection to the cloud could have been slowed by multiple hops through tunnels and VPNs, but the connection between the cloud server itself and the target server need not be.

Another scenario that would more precisely match the 23-megabytes-per-second transfer rate is that of an end-user workstation on the local area network being compromised by a remote-access Trojan (RAT). This scenario has also been called “the local pivot.” The compromise would occur through an e-mail-phishing or document-attachment malware attack on a staff member operating the workstation. These attacks are extremely common and easy to execute. RATs provide full “remote control” over an infected target system. Data exfiltration via phished malware is something that has been happening for at least a decade, as proven by the 2009 GhostNet attack against the Tibetan government in exile and others.

If the attack is successful, the RAT would run on the internal workstation, which was likely running Windows 7, with a primary disk formatted as NTFS and another local storage disk formatted in FAT32. The specifics of the file-system formats matter when it comes to matching the format of time stamps analyzed by the Forensicator. This machine would have been connected to the local area network and would have had access to a file-sharing server (likely “Samba” or Windows SMB-based) from which the documents were copied. The RAT would utilize the authenticated user it compromised to invisibly access the files over the local area network, copy them in bulk to the local machine at 23 megabytes per second, and package them into an archive for remote transfer. The metadata matching the Forensicator’s analysis would have been fully generated at this point. The final copy to the remote adversary’s source machine could happen at any speed.

These are just two scenarios that could generate the file archive necessary to match the Forensicator’s findings. They are as much based on informed theories and educated guesses as the scenarios proposed by the Forensicator, the VIPS memo, and Lawrence’s article. While some may feel the simplest answer is always the most likely, the two alternate scenarios described above are common enough that they should be considered plausible. In either scenario, the adversary need neither be a state actor nor require an unusual amount of resources.

The Forensicator’s Leaker Boot-Drive Theory: Another way to reach the 23-megabytes-per-second speed is through a mass copy of files either from a local machine’s hard drive or a connected local network file server, such as in the RAT scenario, to an attached USB thumb or “flash” drive. This is the method proposed by the Forensicator in his analysis: “A Linux OS may have been booted from a USB flash drive and the data may have been copied back to the same flash drive, which will likely have been formatted with the Linux (ext4) file system.”

This last step is necessary to the leaker boot-drive theory—rather than just a standard drag-and-drop of files into an attached USB—because the Forensicator’s analysis of the metadata time-stamp changes shows that the copy operation was done by a “cp” command-line call typical of a Linux system. It is important to note that it is unclear why the alleged internal leaker would need to reboot into Linux in this manner if the leaker already had authorized access to the system and files in question. Additionally, necessitating the leaker to reboot into Linux raises other difficulties. If the documents were stored on a network file share, access to it would be secured and require authorized credentials. If the machine is rebooted out of Windows and into Linux, then there is no authenticated user on the machine. The alleged leaker’s Linux OS would need authenticated credentials in order to access the server file share. This means that there would be a record of the authenticated access on the target server, or of a compromised access from an internal network source.

The final complexity with the local-leaker theory is that the 23-megabytes-per-second rate is based on an assumption that the files are on the local machine or on a server in the local area network. If the argument that 23 megabytes per second would not be possible by a remote adversary is the key finding, then the local leaker would also have to have that level of throughput available. The target server, then, would need to be physically on site in the building—and not hosted in a remote data center. If the files were stored remotely “in the cloud,” then the same criticism of “it is not possible to get those speeds” would come into play, as the local desktop with the booted Linux OS would now essentially be a remote hacker’s PC.

Unfortunately, as stated at the beginning of this review, there has been little information shared about the location and configuration of networks, servers, and other DNC infrastructure.

On “Russian Fingerprints”: In a timeline on the g-2.space site, Adam Carter provides this entry for June 15, 2016:š
“Someone choosing to adopt the name of hacker recently in the news (‘Guccifer’, whom [sic] was in court the previous month), steps forward, calling himself Guccifer2.0 and claiming responsibility for the hack. He affirms the DNC statement and claims to be a source for Wikileaks. The first 5 documents he posts are purposefully tainted with ‘Russian Fingerprints’ and the first of those documents just so happens to be the ‘Trump Opposition Research’ the DNC announce on the previous day.”

The claim regarding “Russian Fingerprints” concerns a number of things, including the name the document author was set to, the type of keyboard used to edit the comments, and the existence of shared language style settings in multiple documents. It is accurate that the documents provided by “Guccifer 2.0” all contain the same revision-save identifier (RSID) related to a Russian-language style change.

The existence of identical revision-save identifiers within a Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format document indicates that the set of documents was created from a shared source. This shared lineage can occur when starting with a single formatted document template, or it can occur when copying and pasting a piece of content into multiple files. As discussed in this article [PDF], RSIDs can be used to detect plagiarized academic papers. Inspecting RSIDs can detect if students copy from each other, or from a previously submitted paper from an earlier year, for example. If multiple documents contain the same RSID, it means they have a shared lineage. It could mean they all came from one document that was copied and pasted into three documents. It could also mean that a small piece, say a header or appendage text, was copied from one document into the others. There are many ways RSIDs can end up being shared between multiple documents.

As in the case of the Forensicator’s throughput analysis, there is a kernel of accuracy in the “Russian Fingerprints” theory backed by the metadata in the documents. The documents provided by “Guccifer 2.0” show that they were created or edited through a process that caused them to have, in some small part, a shared document lineage. This lineage included markers related to encoding of data in the Russian language.

There is nothing in the metadata, however, to indicate the motivations of “Guccifer 2.0” or whoever created these modified documents. The fact that the documents provided were named with simple numbers in a sequential order (1.doc, 2.doc, etc.) could indicate that “Guccifer 2.0” was attempting to curate and edit content and not simply dumping exact copies of the same documents provided elsewhere. The fact that the documents were also saved as Rich Text Format shows that there was an attempt to format files in a “clean” state, and not simply share the original source files.

Conclusion: Good-faith efforts to parse the available data to provide insight into the unlawful extraction of documents from the DNC in 2016 are admirable and necessary. All parties, however, must exercise much greater care in separating out statements backed by available digital metadata from thoughtful insights and educated guesses. Walking nontechnical readers down any narrative path that cannot be directly supported by evidence must be avoided. At this point, given the limited available data, certainty about only a very small number of things can be achieved.
https://www.thenation.com/article/a-lea ... ps-dissent




Whose Team Is He On?

President Donald Trump meets with Russian Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, left, in the White House in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. At right is Russian Ambassador to USA Sergei Kislyak. President Donald Trump on Wednesday welcomed Vladimir Putin's top diplomat to the White House for Trump’s highest level face-to-face contact with a Russian government official since he took office in January. (Russian Foreign Ministry Photo via AP)
RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY
By JOSH MARSHALL Published NOVEMBER 8, 2017 1:52 PM
12981Views
I noted yesterday (sub req) that I think that even if Trump had or has come to hate Russia and Vladimir Putin he must know he can’t cross them now because of the compromising information they could easily use against him.

Here’s something else that needs to be flagged.

Yesterday news broke that President Trump had insisted his CIA Director Mike Pompeo meet with a former US intelligence analyst turned conspiracy theorist who says his independent analysis shows that the entirety of Russian interference in the 2016 election is a hoax. The hacking of the DNC was actually an inside job.

I follow Russian diplomatic Twitter and this morning I saw this. Lavrov is Russia’s longtime foreign minister. He’s the guy who met President Trump in the Oval Office earlier this year.
Image
Russian Embassy, UK @RussianEmbassy
FM Lavrov: all established facts point not to a “Russian trace” in 2016 US election, but rather to @TheDemocrats inside job
8:13 AM - Nov 8, 2017



In Trump’s semi-defense, this isn’t the only place you can hear this idea. The guy Trump made Pompeo meet with, Bill Binney, has frequently appeared on Fox News. But Russian bots and the Russian Foreign Minister is actively pushing precisely the same theory of what happened last year.

These actions aren’t inconsequential or merely retrospective. Russian efforts to tamper in US elections and sow division in American society continue apace. Repeatedly insisting to the people charged with preventing further intrusions that the first intrusion never happened can only be viewed as active complicity in future attacks. Sound alarmist? Sure. But think about it. If you keep telling the security guard that the break in the night before never happened and that they should just go home, what would you call that? Why he is doing this I can’t say. But what he is doing is demonstrably and on its face active assistance of future attacks. There’s no other way to put it.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/who ... re-1094537


Top former intelligence leaders dismayed over Pompeo meeting with conspiracy theorist

CIA director looking into DNC hack theory

Washington (CNN)Two of the nation's former top intelligence officials expressed surprise and dismay Wednesday that President Donald Trump prevailed upon CIA Director Mike Pompeo to meet with a former National Security Agency employee turned whistleblower who denies Russia interfered in the US election.

That position contradicts the conclusion of the intelligence community in both the Obama and Trump administrations and propagates the theory that the leak of Democratic Party emails in the 2016 election wasn't because of a cyberattack by Russian hackers but rather was an inside job.

Both retired Gen. Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA and National Security Agency under President George W. Bush, and retired Gen. James Clapper, the former director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama, wondered in interviews with CNN why Trump had asked Pompeo to meet with William Binney, who circulated the conspiracy theory, instead of his Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats.

"Why did the President turn to the CIA director rather than the DNI?" Hayden asked. "Structurally, this should have been a DNI question since the Binney article challenged an overall community assessment."

Clapper said that "this episode, I think, adds to the image (perhaps unjustifiably) that Pompeo is a political activist, as a 'go-to' guy for Trump." Clapper added that this is "not a good place for a director of the CIA to be."

As first reported by The Intercept and later confirmed by CNN, Binney met with Pompeo for approximately an hour on October 24. The CIA told CNN that Pompeo "stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment" that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
"I suspect that this is something that Director Pompeo never wanted to do," Hayden said. "He had to have been pushed" by Trump to have this meeting.

Clapper agreed. "I would imagine, given the length of time the President bugged Pompeo, that he saw him reluctantly."

The reluctance would have been understandable, Hayden added, speculating that Pompeo "understood how it would be viewed by intelligence professionals. All bad. At least the agency restated its commitment to the standing intel community judgement."

Hayden added that the CIA director had to have known that "there would be an internal price and Binney would never keep it quiet."

"The President's insistence that he pursue such an obviously weak argument suggests a grasping at straws here," Hayden concluded.

Clapper was heartened that Pompeo, at the end of the day, affirmed the intelligence community's finding, "the evidence for which was a lead pipe cinch."

Binney, who has theorized that the theft and release of thousands of DNC emails was actually carried out by a DNC employee, told CNN that Pompeo began the meeting with him by saying, "The President told me I should talk to you."

Intelligence sources told CNN that many people inside the CIA were very uncomfortable with the meeting. Binney said Pompeo concluded the meeting by telling him he would like Binney to meet with the FBI and the NSA as well.

He said he told Pompeo, "the entire intelligence community needs to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to the American public."

Binney added: "I think he took it in."

Trump has repeatedly questioned Russia's involvement during the campaign. During the first presidential debate on September 26, 2016, Trump said, "I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that hacked the DNC."

CNN's Jim Sciutto and Mary Kay Mallonee contributed to this report.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/11/08/polit ... index.html




Bob Corker announces Senate hearing to examine Trump's 'authority to use nuclear weapons' on November 14th
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Dec 14, 2017 9:52 am

stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Jan 25, 2017 8:18 pm wrote:^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Considering The Simpsons track record for predicting the future, if they actually did that episode, I'd start looking to invest in a bunker.



Image

'THE SIMPSONS' PREDICTED DISNEY OWNING 20TH CENTURY FOX 19 YEARS AGO
BY TUFAYEL AHMED ON 12/14/17 AT 8:44 AM


Is there anything The Simpsons hasn’t called first?

As of Thursday morning, Homer, Marge and the gang will call Mickey Mouse boss after Disney announced its purchase of 21st Century Fox for a staggering $52.4 billion. But, just like Matt Groening’s veteran animated comedy predicted a Trump presidency, The Simpsons also predicted its own future.

Back in 1998, The Simpsons aired the Hollywood-themed episode, “When You Dish Upon a Star,” that featured the 20th Century Fox logo with “A division of Walt Disney Co” underneath it.


In the episode, which featured Alec Baldwin, his then-wife Kim Basinger and director Ron Howard, Homer befriends Baldwin and Basinger and begins working for them running errands. However, when he publicly brags about the privacy-seeking couple, Baldwin and Basinger end their friendship with him.

The episode aired in November 1998 when The Simpsons was in its 10th season. The long-running animation is currently in its 29th season and will hit its milestone 30th next year.

Nearly two decades after the episode first appeared, the show was proved right: 20th Century Fox, as well as other major assets owned by 21st Century Fox, are now essentially divisions of The Walt Disney Company.

Disney announced Thursday it had acquired the 20th Century Fox movie studio, 20th Century Fox Television, which produces The Simpsons, and other media entities including National Geographic and FX.

In the running tally of things The Simpsons has successfully guessed, either through some divine cognizance or shot-in-the-dark luck, the Disney-Fox acquisition is just the latest.

The comedy’s most famous example of foreshadowing the future was a 2000 episode, “Bart to the Future,” in which Bart was shown his future. In it, Lisa was president and her predecessor was a “President Trump.”


After Trump actually won the presidency in November 2016, The Simpsons offered an update on its earlier prediction in a chalkboard gag. “Being right sucks,” Bart scribbled in the titles of the episode that aired immediately after the election.
http://www.newsweek.com/simpsons-predic ... ago-747975
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:55 pm

"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: Countdown to Trumpstag: Entering the Endgame

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Dec 19, 2017 5:51 pm

Could a U.S.-Russia Oil Showdown be Coming?

About a year ago, a seasoned U.S. oil leader with deep political connections explained to me that U.S. shale would be out of the woods by 2018. His thesis was straightforward: he thought the U.S. economy would see improved growth under President Trump, pulling up global gross domestic product—and with it, oil demand.

That growth would mean Saudi Arabia would be closer to maxed out on its capability to produce oil, no longer a significant threat to U.S. shale. Under this world view, American producers would be able wrest more market share in the future without fear of toppling prices, hence the Trump administration’s optimistic view of U.S. energy “dominance.”

At the time, it seemed like a rosy prognostication. I pointed out how easily Russia, armed with a cheap ruble and flexible tax policy, could also increase its own oil output.

But 2018 is now around the corner and that conversation now seems somewhat more prophetic. It raises the question: What would it mean for Saudi Arabia and U.S. shale producers if Russia does an about-face and makes a production push.

It’s something to watch.

Because, while Saudi Arabia might not be technically maxed out, global demand is on the rise and Saudi ability to flood the market to punish challengers is, at least for the moment, greatly reduced.

Not only is the kingdom boxed in to supporting higher prices because of domestic economic pressures and its planned initial public offering (IPO) of state oil giant Saudi Aramco, it is also facing long term oil field problems that will not be cheap or easy to fix. Already this year, an unexpected corrosion problem at a significant pipeline at the large Manifa field reduced Saudi spare capacity. Saudi Aramco’s hefty new capital budget reportedly targets increases at three offshore fields by 2022 to replace declining capacity elsewhere but past efforts to expand sustainable production capacity have been a painstaking process, stretching over more than a decade at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. The next tranche will be even more challenging.

Regardless of its handicap versus the United States and Russia at adding new producing areas in its oil fields, Saudi Arabia is not yet abdicating its leadership role. It took a pro-active stance towards recent deliberations to extend OPEC-non-OPEC production cuts into 2018. Saudi’s steadfast commitment to the deal was not initially reciprocated by Russia, which was more tentative in public statements leading up to the November OPEC meeting. The cat and mouse process led one seasoned journalist to note Russian President Vladimir Putin has “crowned himself king of OPEC.” The sequence of events prompted questioning whether Russia has finally achieved what four decades of sponsored military proxies failed to do—surreptitiously gaining sway over Saudi oil policy.

For its part, Russia’s stated concern about a production cut extension was linked in part to the advantage higher oil prices are giving to U.S. shale producers. Russian oil companies complained to Moscow about their excess of 1.2 million barrels a day (b/d) of new oil field projects they’d like to green light. A Citibank report, “From Russia with Love – A Crude Romance,” suggests that not only do Russia’s largest companies have 300,000 b/d in idled current capacity, they are sitting on some 23 fields that could add substantial new production in the next five years, including 14 fields on state firm Rosneft’s books aggregating 770,000 b/d. Russia also has untapped shale potential.

Any Russian increases will come head to head with rising U.S. oil production, which the U.S. Energy Information Administration said last week could hit 10 million b/d in 2018, up 780,000 b/d. Analysts at Cornerstone Macro are similarly bullish on U.S. supply, especially should prices be above $60 a barrel. They project U.S. tight oil production could rise by 960,000 b/d next year (ex-natural gas liquids) and an additional 770,000 b/d in 2019, if prices hold around $60, bringing total U.S. crude oil production above 11 million b/d over the next two years. Increases would be even larger in a $65 oil price environment, Cornerstone Macro suggests. Longer term, the upward potential for U.S. production could be substantially higher than that, with some estimates as high as 20 million b/d.

The storyline that lack of access to new funds would force capital discipline and thereby lower production gains, (e.g. focus on profits, not growth), looks increasingly questionable given that oil and gas exploration and production companies have raised more than $60 billion in bond sales so far this year, levels typical of pre-price drop conditions. Unlike past, higher risk efforts, this year’s borrowing is supported by hedging activities.

Right now, production disruptions in Venezuela, the U.K., and Iraq are supporting prices in addition to a war premium fueled by raging proxy wars across the Mideast. Traders, shale investors, and even reportedly Saudi Arabia, are betting that continued problems in Caracas, among other locales, will make ample room for U.S. rising production. Longer term, there are more producers in line to increase exports, including Iran, Iraq, Brazil, and Canada, to name a few.

But the real geopolitical showdown for market share will likely come down to Russia and the United States: who can bring on new oil fastest?

A looming U.S.-Russia oil and gas rivalry has deep geopolitical implications. It works against improvement in bilateral relations and is a delicate security matter for trading partners of both countries.

The possible conflict over market share is existential to Russian power. Washington’s energy dominance tack, which recently included an announced gas export deal for Alaska during the Trump visit to Beijing, sounds as threatening to Russian ears as NATO expansion did a decade or more ago. Not only does Russia rely heavily on its energy exports for its statist budget and as a diplomatic lever, but the commanding heights of Putin’s inner circle and his grip on power is intimately inter-linked with Russia’s oil and gas elite. Russian influence and economic health has suffered in the past from orchestrated alliances between the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar that targeted Russia’s energy earnings. The threat of rising U.S. oil and gas exports could be one factor encouraging increasingly risky Russian adventurism since doing nothing about it could neutralize a major tool of Russian foreign policy.

For now, Russia seems content to collaborate with Saudi Arabia on oil market stability which ironically also suits the current U.S. administration, whose America first jobs message is tied heavily to the economic engine of the shale revolution.

But that delicate oil truce rests on the back of Venezuela and its woes, which is making space for everyone. At some later date, if Saudi stability seems vulnerable to continuing proxy wars in the Middle East, Putin may be tempted to see if he can tip the scales further in Russia’s favor, making additional space for his long term export surge and rendering his giant reserves all the more important.

https://www.cfr.org/blog/could-us-russi ... ent=121917
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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