Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:
Let me make this really simple for anyone who still doesn’t get it.
(C) Rothschild-funded Civil Society (NGOs, MSM)
+
(I) Rothschild-front International Capital (banker-speculator mafia+corporate fat-cats)
+
(A) Rothschild-related Anonymous web (cyberhacking, espionage, blackmail, secret services, Wikileaks/Assange (?) & Anonymous (?))
= C.I.A.
ADDED (APRIL 18 2015)
The source of Christian Identity and other British Israel-related race theories is actually no where in the Old Testament.
It is in the Talmud (Babylonian and Palestinian), the Rabbinical oral commentaries on the Torah that were put down into writing between the 3rd and 5th century AD.
The authoritative work, The Sages: Their Concepts,” Ephraim Urbach (Author), I. Abraham (Transl), Hebrew University Magnes Press, 1975, informs us that in the Rabbinical tradition the original sin/guilt of mankind, induced by the Serpent’s copulation with Eve (which gave birth to Cain, according to the Rabbis), was alleviated at Mount Sinai for the Israelites, but not for Gentiles.
This tradition is the source of the Rabbinical/Jewish belief in the descent of Gentiles from Cain and not, like Jews, from Adam.
Christian Identity simply reverses the two-seed theory and makes Jews the descendants of Cain.
ORIGINAL POST
British Israelism, which I believe is the best way to call all the various theories claiming that Anglo-Saxon man is tied racially to ancient Israel, is fundamentally a post-hoc justification for political supremacy, since DNA and linguistic evidence completely contradict it, and the folk derivations it points to are largely anecdotal and tenuous.
BI arose after the conquest of the New World in its earliest form, and quickly penetrated many Protestant sects, or churches close to them, like Christian Science. Mary Baker Eddy accepted it.
Although some forms of it are benign and no more than a literary hobby, some forms, such as Christian Identity, which informs some of the Patriot movement in the US, are virulently racist, both toward Jews, and toward non-whites in general.
Jews, in this account, are said to be Satan’s seed (children of Edom in the Bible) and non-whites are said to even lack a soul.
Whites on the other hands are said to descend from the Biblical Israel.
Never mind that the DNA evidence, mapped globally since about 2000, has completely disproved this.
No doubt such beliefs colored Eustace Mullins’ own writings about Federal Reserve.
One wonders how these beliefs might have colored his perception of government and money.
DNArefutesbi.com:
In 2001, Sykes went on to write the popular book The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
, which described the seven major haplogroups of European ancestors.
This book more than any other indirectly takes British Israelism to task through the Mitochondria — genetic DNA tracing through the maternal line.
After being summoned in 1997 to an archaeological site to examine the remains of a five-thousand-year-old man, Bryan Sykes ultimately was able to prove not only that the man was a European but also that he has living relatives in England today. In this lucid, absorbing account, Sykes reveals how the identification of a particular strand of DNA that passes unbroken through the maternal line allows scientists to trace our genetic makeup all the way back to prehistoric times, to seven primeval women, the Seven Daughters of Eve.
There are other problems with equating DNA of the Western Europeans with those of Israel Descent. Studies are quite definitive about paternal lines from thousands of years ago. One such study evaluated the lineage of the Aaronic Priesthood through the line of “Cohen”.
Y-chromosomal Aaron is the name given to the hypothesised most recent common ancestor of many of the patrilineal Jewish priestly caste known as Kohanim (singular “Kohen”, “Cohen”, or Kohane). In the Torah, this ancestor is identified as Aaron, the brother of Moses. The hypothetical most recent common ancestor was therefore jocularly dubbed “Y-chromosomal Aaron”, in analogy to Y-chromosomal Adam.
The original scientific research was based on the discovery that a majority of present-day Jewish Kohanim either share, or are only one step removed from, a pattern of values for 6 Y-STR markers, which researchers named the Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH). However it subsequently became clear that this six marker pattern was widespread in many communities where men had Y chromosomes which fell into Haplogroup J; the six-marker CMH was not specific just to Cohens, nor even just to Jews, but was a survival from the origins of Haplogroup J, about 30,000 years ago.
More recent research, using a larger number of Y-STR markers to gain higher resolution more specific genetic signatures, has indicated that about half of contemporary Jewish Kohanim, who share Y-chromosomal haplogroup J1c3 (also called J-P58), do indeed appear to be very closely related. A further approximately 15% of Kohanim fall into a second distinct group, sharing a different but similarly tightly related ancestry. This second group fall under haplogroup J2a (J-M410). A number of other smaller lineage groups are also observed. Only one of these haplogroups could indicate ancestry from Aaron.
The J1e and J2a possible Cohen clusters (only one of them could indicate ancestry from Aaron), when including those tested who are of Sephardi background, have been estimated as descending from most recent common ancestors living 3,200 ± 1,100 and 4,200 ± 1,300 years ago respectively. Ashkenazis only have been estimated by the same article as descending from most recent common ancestors living 2,400 ± 800 and 3,800 ± 1,200 years ago respectively.
What is being analyzed are variations in DNA sequence called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced “snips” by the apparently very cute researchers who look for them). SNPs are passed down from generation to generation intact and thereby become markers of particular lineages. Those who have descended from the same ancient groups of people will share the same SNP markers. These ancestral lines have been classified into haplogroups. A haplogroup is all the haplotypes that share a single common ancestor, and these lineages can be traced back multiple thousands of years.
The two relevant lineages are haplogroup J and haplogroup R. The SNP markers of the former, J, are found most predominantly among speakers of Semitic languages in the Levant. J is the haplogroup most strongly associated with Israelite ancestry, while representatives of haplogroup R are found almost exclusively in Europe and Asia, where Indo-European languages flourished. The most recent common ancestor between haplogroups J and R is haplogroup IJK, which split off into IJ (progenitor of J) and K (progenitor of R, via K(xLT), via P) some 45,000 years ago. That’s long before the Hebrews coalesced into a discernible collection of tribes out of the Canaanite hill people from which they descended–long before there were Canaanites to descend from. The time referred to here is the Stone Age, before agriculture–before the extinction / absorption of Neanderthals. That’s how incredibly long ago these two haplogroups diverged from a common ancestor. They are about as unrelated as you can get within the same species.
Haplogroup J — that of the Jews / Israelites is nonexistent in the British Isles map of DNA Y-Chromosome distribution (see McDonald’s World Haplogroups Maps below).
The proof that DNA refutes British Israelism is given on their British Israelism Website under:
Compatibility with present-day research findings
Lack of consistency with modern genetic findings
Human genetics does not support British Israelism’s notion of a close lineal link between Jews and Western Europeans. Genetic research on the Y-chromosomes of Jews has found that Jews are closely related to other populations originating in the Middle East, such as Kurds, Turks, Armenians and Arabs, and concluded that:
Middle Eastern populations…are closely related and…their Y chromosome pool is distinct from that of Europeans. (Nebel, 2001.)
Y-DNA Haplogroups J2 and, to a lesser extent, J1 are most commonly identified in Jewish people, which is in contrast to Western Europeans. The more distant Haplogroup R1b is the most commonly identified in Europeans.”
“Your digital camera may embed metadata into photographs with the camera’s serial number or your location. Your printer may be incorporating a secret code on every page it prints which could be used to identify the printer and potentially the person who used it. If Apple puts a particularly creepy patent it has recently applied for into use, you can look forward to a day when your iPhone may record your voice, take a picture of your location, record your heartbeat, and send that information back to the mothership.
This is traitorware: devices that act behind your back to betray your privacy.
Perhaps the most notable example of traitorware was the Sony rootkit. In 2005 Sony BMG produced CD’s which clandestinely installed a rootkit onto PC’s that provided administrative-level access to the users’ computer. The copy-protected music CD’s would surreptitiously install its DRM technology onto PC’s. Ostensibly, Sony was trying prevent consumers from making multiple copies of their CD’s, but the software also rendered the CD incompatible with many CD-ROM players in PC’s, CD players in cars, and DVD players. Additionally, the software left a back door open on all infected PC’s which would give Sony, or any hacker familiar with the rootkit, control over the PC. And if a consumer should have the temerity to find the rootkit and try to remove the offending drivers, the software would execute code designed to disable the CD drive and trash the PC.
Traitorware is sometimes included in products with less obviously malicious intent. Printer dots were added to certain color laser printers as a forensics tool for law enforcement, where it could help authenticate documents or identify forgeries. Apple’s scary-sounding patent for the iPhone is meant to help locate and disable the phone if it is lost of stolen. Don’t let these good intentions fool you—software that hides itself from you while it gives your personal data away to a third party is dangerous and dishonest. As the Sony BMG rootkit demonstrates, it may even leave your device wide open to attacks from third parties.
Traitorware is not some science-fiction vision of the future. It is the present. Indeed, the Sony rootkit dates back to 2005. Apple’s patent application indicates that we are likely to see more traitorware on the horizon. When that happens, EFF will be there to fight it. We believe that your software and devices should not be a tool for gathering your personal data without your explicit consent.”
Posted at Veterans Today:
Let me first say that harassing Julian Assange for having published leaked government documents is completely wrong. There’s no evidence so far that anyone has been injured directly because of the leaks. National
security (even as understood by mainstream statists) hasn’t been damaged. As for the embarrassment some officials might be feeling, tough. Governments routinely subject their citizens to much worse for no valid reason. As for diplomacy, there’s none worth the name. All we have is blackmailers, bullies, and outright bandits in high places. Some outing and shaming of their public actions is in order. Exposing the crimes and blunders of the state is not only a right of citizens, but a
duty.
As enough people have argued, Assange is obviously not guilty of treason, since he’s not a citizen of the US. And, although some people think he’s guilty of espionage, that’s doesn’t seem true either. He didn’t hack any state computer or blow any agent’s cover to get his information. It was mostly given to him voluntarily by whistle-blowers and leakers. All he did was publish it. And, since New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), US law has protected the right of publishers to publish politically sensitive information without “prior restraints,” as long as it doesn’t cause “grave and irreparable damage”
to the public.
Having said that, though, I must admit that for almost a year now, as I’ve
blogged, I’ve found the whole Wikileaks operation strange, if not a bit fishy. Let me recount the ways.
1. Most of the documents seems to cover material already fairly well-known to informed people. The new material is mostly embarrassing stuff, nothing truly revelatory, say dozens of critics. Now, mainstream critics might just be trying to do damage control, but why would
respected alternative investigators who are outspoken critics of war and the police state, people like Wayne Madsen or co-founder John Young or Chris Floyd, among many others, also come to that conclusion? [Floyd seems to have “gone
wobbly” since then].
By Assange’s own account in the Australian, here are the most important revelations from Wikileaks:
“The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet
passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US Officials in Jordan and
Bahrain want Iran ‘s nuclear program stopped by any means available.Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect “US interests”.
Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept
from parliament.The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific
neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.”
Now, these disclosures would be nothing to scoff about on any activist’s resume. But is Assange telling us anything we didn’t already know? What has really been added so far except specifics and
details? Then why are the revelations being called a
new 9-11 ?
2. An overblown media story is not the only difficulty with Wikileaks.Consider that in all this welter of damaging information, whatever you think of it, there’s nothing that really damages Israel.
Justin Raimondo, a right-wing libertarian, has tried to suggest there is. He says there’s material in Wikileaks that reveals the sinister activities of the Israeli mafia. Big deal. Everyone knows the
Israeli mafia is everywhere, not just in Israel. The Russian mafia is a euphemism for the Russian and Ukrainian Jewish mafia, which has strong ties to Israel. The Colombian drug trade is run by this mafia. So is the Eastern European sex trade. According to Mark Mitchell, Wall Street is run by it. A leak about the
world’s most dangerous mafia, that everyone already knows about, doesn’t really damage Israeli foreign policy, does it? It even carries a good guy flavor about it.
That means what we really have in Wikileaks is a document dump slanted a particular way. So says at least one establishment figure, Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Secretary of State under President Carter.
Say what you will about him, Brzezinski, master-mind of the policy of luring the Soviet Union to its destruction in Afghanistan, is nobody’s fool. He spots the hand of an intelligence agency in all this.
Could this be a calculated subliminal “prepping” of the collective pysche by a state intelligence outfit, masquerading as an expose of states?
3. Now comes a
report that Julian Assange cut a deal with Israeli officials to keep anything damaging to Israel out of the revelations. I don’t know how well-sourced or credible this report is. But then there’s also Assange’s citation of Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish Israeli prime minister who’s praised Wikileaks. And there’s Assange’s statement in the Australian crediting Rupert Murdoch, a hard-line
Zionist and one of the biggest promoters of war with Iraq, as his inspiration. That alone should make people think twice . It’s not just that Israeli isn’t damaged by Wikileaks. A lot of the material on the site actually helps Israel’s global objectives. We now know that neighboring Arab states are alarmed by the idea of a nuclear Iran. We learn that the Saudi rulers are in bed with the Israeli government and are thoroughly corrupt. Pakistan is treacherous and a threat. There’s a hornet’s nest of terror in South India. This is news? And even if you think it is, who benefits?
Doesn’t all this simply amplify Israel’s hardline attitude to the Islamic world and justify the recent introduction of the biometric ID into India, Afghanistan, and the Af-Pak border? Don’t the revelations reflect most poorly on the Arab states and on America, but not on Israel? Don’t they channel global attention and anger away from the global economic collapse master-minded by Zionist financiers and their supremo, the Federal Reserve? Don’t they redirect anger at Israel for the slaughter in Gaza, for the massacre
on the Mavi Marmara, and for the AIPAC espionage case, as Gordon Duff, at Veterans Today points out? Even
liberal commentator Juan Cole writes that Assange is being tarred and feathered for giving to the public what AIPAC routinely gives to Israel.
And what is the ultimate result? Israel now claims that the US is too distracted to broker a deal on settlements.
Again, who benefits from that? Israeli hard-liners, of course.
4. But maybe all this is just the price Assange has to pay to get wide coverage in the Western mainstream, largely dominated by Zionist editors, writers, and publishers?
Maybe.
Is it also part of the price that he has to bash the 9-11 movement? If you’re against empire and exploitation, as Assange says he is, then shouldn’t you be interested in uncovering the truth about the attack that was the explicit trigger for the unjust
war on Iraq, the global war on terror, Homeland Security, and every police state measure since?
And if you’re not, what’s your excuse?
It’s not just that Assange is not interested in 9-11. He’s gone out of his way to mock people who’ve devoted countless unpaid hours of work to investigate it, with none of the media attention that follows every step Assange takes.
5. And that brings me to my fifth point. The fate of whistle-blowers and tellers of dangerous truth is rarely rock-star celebrity. Count them. Mordechai Vanunu, who exposed Israel’s nuclear program – imprisoned for nearly 20 years. Gary Webb, who exposed the CIA connection to the distribution of crack cocaine in the US – probably murdered. Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, who criticized Putin’s policies in Chechnya -assassinated. Lebanese journalists Samir Qassir and Gebran Tueni, who criticized the Syrian government –
killed in car bombings. In 90% of such cases, says the Committee to Protect Journalists, the killers are never brought to justice. Yet, Assange, “the
most dangerous man in Cyberspace,” according to the faux-alternative
magazine Rolling Stone, lives to tell the tale of his persecution from the cover of Time magazine and the podium of TED conferences, weighted down with awards and honors from such establishment worthies as Economist, New Statesman, and Amnesty International.
And now he is the center of an international man-hunt. Here too, the claims are bizarre. If Wikileaks hasn’t put lives at risk or seriously damaged “national security,” by even the government’s own account, what to make of all these feverish cries for prosecution under the espionage act, for imprisonment
and torture, even for execution?
Are they for real, or does any one else detect an element of theater?
The Wikileaks disclosures have been called cyber-terrorism by many. When before have we seen an international man-hunt for a rag-tag band of terrorists headed up by a charismatic mystery man with a striking appearance and a personal life shrouded in mystery? Now we have Osama-bin-Assange and Al-Wikileaks at war with Joe Lieberman and Sarah Palin, on one hand, and cheered on by David Frum, on the other. Notice that Frum points out that the disclosures actually support George Bush’s rationale for invading Iraq.
This is box-office gold. As some wide-awake journalist has noted, the big winner in all this is the establishment media. Before, it had one foot in the grave. Deservedly. Now it is a “truth-teller.” Readership is up, resurrected by proxy. And the major alternative press, the foundation activists, are bolstering the conclusions of the New York Times. How convenient.
I dearly wish Julian Assange were exactly as he seems – a brilliant iconoclast delivering the death blow to imperialism. But my memory is not so dim. I remember another media circus besides the one around
Osama. I recall the mass adulation of a man who exuded brilliance, youth, hope, and salvation. That was in 2008, and he was a young law professor from Chicago. How did that turn out?
6. Then again, if Assange’s message is so subversive to the state, why are the state’s most reliable mouthpieces plastering his message everywhere? Why did Assange himself choose the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel for his initial exposes?
These are left-center outlets, statist to the core. And Assange, the self-proclaimed libertarian chooses them? Perhaps, one could argue, the left-center is where the most powerful and influential media organs are located. Assange is just being a savvy marketer in picking those outlets.
Perhaps.
But perhaps not.
Perhaps, instead, he could have thrown in one libertarian or conservative newspaper, at least, to show even- handedness? How hard would it have been to send material to, say, the Independent?
7. But he didn’t, so again I ask you, how libertarian can he really be? And if he isn’t a libertarian, why does he go out of his way to proclaim he is? There’s nothing wrong, after all, with being a
socialist or even a communist, at least in most places outside the US.
Why doesn’t Assange just declare himself a left-wing peacenik and leave
it at that?
Ah, now things get even more interesting. Dig into Assange’s writings – most of it very engaging and thoughtful – and contradictions emerge.
On June 18, 2006, he writes:
“Rights are freedoms of action that are known to be enforceable. Consequently there are no rights without beliefs about the future effects of behavior. Unenforcable general rights exist only insofar as they are argumentation that may one day yield enforcement. Hence the Divine Right of Kings, the right of way, mining rights, conjugal rights, property rights, and copyright. The decision as to what should be enforced and what may be ignored is political. This does not mean that rights are unimportant, but rather, that politics (the societal control of freedom) is so important as to subsume rights.”
I will repeat that. Assange places societal control above the exercise of rights.
This is not libertarian. And it’s not an isolated statement. It’s repeated elsewhere.
“Technical people, good at stacking houses of abstract cards often look at the law and see rules, but this is a shadow, for law hangs from the boughs of politics, that branch of behavior involved with the societal control of freedom of action. Always consider the real politik
of law; who will push for change and who will resist.”
And then about global warming (Assange seems to believe in anthropogenic global warming), he says this:
“The bottom line is, as Benford notes, “we’re going to have to run this planet.”
Some libertarianism. One critic has pointed out that at the core of Assange’s philosophy is not openness and freedom so much as a left-leaning concern with “justice.” Nothing wrong with that. So why the dress-up in American-style libertarianism? At whom is the repackaging, if it is that, directed?
Authoritarianism emerges also in Assange’s work at Wikileaks, where he is technically the chief editor and spokesman. His associates complain of egotistic, autocratic behavior, much different from his anarchist professions.
Some have left to start their own sites. Others complain about the secrecy he maintains about his own work, also at odds with the transparency he advocates for others.
This secrecy might, at first, seem justified. Wikileaks, after all, is a private, not a public outfit. Maybe so. But that distinction hasn’t stopped the site from publishing the secrets of other private organizations, like the Christian Scientists and the Mormons. It’s also published the hacked private emails of Sarah Palin and the financial information of private clients of the Swiss bank, Julius Baer.
Wayne Madsen has argued that this ultimately benefits Democrat financier George Soros.
This is a performance that seems not only hypocritical but curiously partisan and parochial, especially when set against the generous intellectual sweep of Assange’s theoretical writing.
And that’s exactly the taste left in your mouth after a sampling of Wikileaks‘revelations.
After all the hype about “scientific journalism,” the conclusions Wikileaks
supports are downright provincial: our government lied us into war in Iraq; Hillary Clinton’s a bitch; Arab regimes are corrupt and deserve regime change; private contractors are bilking tax-payers; corporate corruption is the real conspiracy, not 9-11.
This is stuff that could have come out of the computer of any
government propagandist.
More to the point, some of us are wondering if it really did.
(To be continued)
Excellent piece at Mises blog by S. Oliva on the hysteria being whipped up against the great free-market success, Amazon, over wikileaks.
Oliva:
“The London Guardian reported:
The United States struck its first blow against WikiLeaks after Amazon.com pulled the plug on hosting the whistleblowing website in an apparent reaction to heavy political pressure.
The main website and a sub-site devoted to the diplomatic documents were unavailable from the US and Europe on Wednesday, as Amazon servers refused to acknowledge requests for data.
The plug was pulled as the influential senator and chairman of the homeland security committee, Joe Lieberman, called for a boycott of the site by US companies.
“[Amazon’s] decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material,” he said.
In response, I’ve seen a few libertarians who are now calling for their own boycott of Amazon — ”I won’t be shopping there this holiday season,” etc. — to protest the company’s capitulation. I’m sorry, but that’s childish and stupid. First of all, you’re adopting the very tactics the state used against Amazon. Second, what you’re basically saying is that you’re going to let statists like Joe Lieberman decide where you will and won’t shop. That’s asinine. Third, it’s one thing to boycott a firm that actively colludes with the state or, say, lobbies for political favors; Amazon was a victim here, not a belligerent.
Given that you have prominent political and media personalities demanding the outright murder of Wikileaks officials, I think it’s a reasonable act of self-preservation for Amazon to heed these threats. I’m normally the first to criticize companies that fail to stand up to bullying by government regulators. But for the moment, this is a much different, and much more volatile, situation. The anti-Wikileaks forces are led by mentally and emotionally unbalanced animals. Right now they are capable of anything. Amazon is under no ethical duty to stick their necks out in this context.
But back to my original point. While everyone has to decide for themselves where and when to “boycott” a company, I respectfully suggest a policy of punishing those firms that yield to state pressure does nothing to advance the cause of liberty. I know of many small businesses that were forced to sign “consent orders” at gunpoint. Would it be ethical to boycott these mom-and-pop stores as well to send a message to the aggressors? I think not. And I think that applies even to large, successful businesses like Amazon.”
“Everybody Knows,” by Canadian singer-poet-mystic, Leonard Cohen, is used on the Alex Jones show, a popular political site that devotes itself to the machinations (conspiracies?) of the power-elite.
The clip is from the ‘Man from U.N.C.L.E’ – a Cold War TV series from the sixties, featuring the intrepid spies, Ilya Kuryakin (David McCallum) and Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn). It perfectly suits the lyrics of “Everybody Knows.”
Everybody Knows – Leonard Cohen
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes/ Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose/Everybody knows……
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton
For your ribbons and bows/And everybody knows…”
The U.N.C.L.E. clip used in the video is interesting in both anticipating the globalist agenda and capturing the disenchantment of people awakening to the dialectic by which the power elites subjugate them.
Wiki has this description of the U.N.C.L.E. series:
“The series, though fictional, achieved such notability as to have artifacts (props, costumes and documents, and a video clip) from the show included in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s exhibit on spies and counterspies. Similar exhibits can be found in the museums of the Central Intelligence Agency and other agencies and organizations involved with intelligence gathering.”
Lila: This seems fitting, since the series accomplishes one of the ongoing tasks of the elites themselves, conditioning the popular mind to accept the need for a worldwide intelligence agency run by “good guys,” while distracting from the biggest “bad guy” of all – government.
“U.N.C.L.E.’s archenemy was a vast organization known as THRUSH (originally named WASP in the series pilot movie). The original series never explained what the acronym THRUSH stood for, but in several of the U.N.C.L.E. novels written by David McDaniel, it was expanded as the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity, and described by him as having been founded by Col. Sebastian Moran after the death of Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in the Sherlock Holmes story “The Final Problem“. Later, an alternate—and more plausible—explanation was offered, with THRUSH rising out of the fall of Nazism and founded by high-ranking Nazi officials—including Martin Bormann—who fled to Argentina when defeat was seen as inevitable, taking with them enormous financial wealth, including gold and precious works of art.”
“THRUSH’s aim was to conquer the world. Napoleon Solo said (in “The Green Opal Affair”), “THRUSH believes in the two-party system: the masters and the slaves”, adding in another episode (“The Vulcan Affair”) that THRUSH will “kill people the way people kill flies: a careless flick of the wrist — reflex action.” So dangerous was the threat from THRUSH that governments, even those most ideologically opposed such as the United States and the USSR, cooperated in the formation and operation of U.N.C.L.E. Similarly, if Solo and Kuryakin held opposing political views, the writers allowed little to show in their interactions.
The creators of the series decided that the involvement of an innocent character would be part of each episode, giving the audience someone with whom it could identify.”
Though executive producer Norman Felton and Ian Fleming had developed the character of Napoleon Solo, it was producer Sam Rolfe who created the organization of U.N.C.L.E. Unlike the nationalistic organizations of the CIA and James Bond‘s MI6, U.N.C.L.E. was a worldwide organization composed of agents from all corners of the globe…”
October 2, 2010
The NY Times now backtracks, claiming that Israeli cyber warfare experts are “too smart” to leave a clue behind. Thus..by inference…it must be a country that wants to implicate Israel, which..by inference…is Iran (surprise). Too clever by half, these folks. Another reason I believe Israel or an Israeli-backed team is behind Stuxnet is the fact that Wikileaks apparently had a reference to a possible nuclear “accident” in Iran in July 2009. That is around the time when some researchers argue Stuxnet infections first began.
October 2, 2010
Jeffrey Carr backs off from the allegation that Israel is the culprit, claiming that Ralph Langner was the sole source of the allegation and was irresponsible in posting it on his blog as though it were the opinion of the intelligence community. Carr quotes an earlier piece of his, along with these words:
“Last week I wrote about how the Israel-Iran conspiracy theory around the Stuxnet worm was built entirely on one security engineer’s personal conjecture (Ralph Langner) with absolutely no weighing of alternative possibilities for attribution, nor any objective assessment of the evidence.”
However, if you click on the earlier piece he cites, he wrote nothing of the sort in it. Nowhere in that piece did Carr claim that Langner was the sole source of the allegation; he quotes the NY Times as noting several people who’d reached the same conclusion. Also, there is no hint in the piece that he considered Langner’s allegation speculative or poorly founded. He cited it instead as a likely possibility. This is clear back-pedaling, probably provoked by the fear that the story might lead to a crackdown on Iranian dissidents and foreigners. Well, of course it will. But that’s not the fault of journalists reporting on the story. Or of Ralph Langner, who clearly states on his blog that he is “speculating” (see previous link).
The fault lies with the unknown cybercriminal/s who came up with Stuxnet.
“Stuxnet Speculation Fuels Crackdown By Iranian Intelligence,” Jeffrey Carr, The Firewall, Forbes, October 2, 2010/
*October 1, 2010
[See “Clues Emerge About Genesis Of Stuxnet Worm,” CS Monitor, October 1, 2010]
*October 1, 2010
[“Israel: Smart Enough To Create Stuxnet; Stupid Enough To Use It” War In Context, Oct. 1, 2010]
*October 1, 2010
Cryptome is arguing that Israel would never have done anything so sloppy as what’s alleged. Could it be that some group is deliberately playing off one side against the other, that is, playing divide-and-conquer? Or is this more “plausible deniability”?
On looking back, I notice that one of the first people to launch the “Israel did it” allegation is one Richard Falkenrath, who works for the Chertoff Group (my emphasis).
That makes me wonder.
Here’s Cryptome:
“Really? Personally I’d be surprised if a crack team of Israeli software engineers were so sloppy that they relied on outdated rootkit technology (e.g. hooking the Nt*() calls used by Kernel32.LoadLibrary() and using UPX to pack code). Most of the Israeli developers I’ve met are pretty sharp. Just ask Erez Metula.
http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-09/METULA/BHUSA09-Metula-ManagedCodeRootkits-
PAPER.pdf“It may be that the “myrtus” string from the recovered Stuxnet file path
“b:\myrtus\src\objfre_w2k_x86\i386\guava.pdb” stands for “My-RTUs”
as in Remote Terminal Unit. See the following white paper from Motorola, it examines RTUs and PICs in SCADA systems. Who knows? The guava-myrtus connection may actually hold water.
As you can see, the media’s propaganda machine is alive and well.”
I am completely out of my depth in the technical part of this. But not in the propaganda part.
As an instance of the way group conflicts can be set off, think of how during the financial crisis there were an inordinate number of Indians being trotted out to do the explaining…and taking the brunt of the public’s anger, although last I looked, despite a respectable number of Indian billionaires, the head honchos of the major banks (with one exception) and the biggest and most important speculators, managers, and international officials were not Indian, to phrase it as politely as possible.
Setting race and nation each against other is of course the modus operandi of the power elite, and both Kashmir and Israel have played that divisive role in the past….and continue to do so.
*October 1, 2010
A link to an Examiner piece is coming up right at the top of a Google search of Stuxnet and Israel. With all due respect to the author, who probably thinks he/she is on the side of the angels and simply preempting an outburst of anti-Semitism by this effort, the piece is quite misleading….and, apparently, deliberately so, as an examination of the other links listed here, from a variety of sources in the West (see this NY Times pieces) will prove.
For instance, the Examiner piece doesn’t cite the reports from many western security companies and research teams (see links below) that have extensively researched the issue, nor does it acknowledge that it was these sites that first advanced the claim that Israel/Israeli hackers were likely responsible. Instead, it cites a Times of India piece that republishes the claims.
The attempt, apparently, is to mislead the public into thinking that the allegation of Israeli involvement is one mainly advanced by untrustworthy foreigners with axes to grind (note the description “Iran’s friend, India”).
“Another of Iran’s friends, India, is pushing the notion that Israel did it. According to an http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com on Friday, “A Biblical reference has been detected in the code of the computer virus that points to Israel as the origin of the cyber attack.” It’s further explained that the word “myrtus” is in the code, and that this is a “reference to the myrtle tree”
In point of fact, it was western security companies and western researchers who came to that conclusion. Moreover, the targets of the worm fit very well with Anglo-Zionist imperial objectives – covering as they do the largest Muslim populations in Asia.
[See “German Firm Employee May Have Created Stuxnet; Israel Blames.” Examiner.com, October 1, 2010
*September 30, 2010
Quote:
“Buried in Stuxnet’s code is a marker with the digits “19790509” that the researchers believe is a “do-not infect” indicator. If the marker equals that value, Stuxnet stops in its tracks, and does not infect the targeted PC. The researchers — Nicolas Falliere, Liam O Murchu and Eric Chen — speculated that the marker represents a date: May 9, 1979. While on May 9, 1979, a variety of historical events occurred, according to Wikipedia “Habib Elghanian was executed by a firing squad in Tehran sending shock waves through the closely knit Iranian Jewish community,” the researchers wrote. Elghanian, a prominent Jewish-Iranian businessman, was charged with spying for Israel by the then-new revolutionary government of Iran, and executed May 9, 1979.”
Quote:
“Last weekend, Iranian officials confirmed that tens of thousands of PCs in their country had been infected by Stuxnet, including some used at a nuclear power plant in southwestern Iran that’s planned to go online next month. The Symantec researchers also revealed a host of other Stuxnet details in their paper, including a “kill date” of June 24, 2012, after which the worm will refuse to execute.”
[See “Stuxnet Code Hints At Possible Israeli Origin, Researchers Say,” by Gregg Keizer, Symantec, Sept. 30, 2010]
*September 30, 2010
Symantec puts out a dossier of information on Stuxnet that includes the following:- attack scenario and timeline, infection statistics, malware architecture, description of all the exported routines, injection techniques and anti-AV, the RPC component, propagation methods, command and control feature, and the PLC infector.
Eric Chien summarizes findings about the worm:
“Only more recently did the general public realize Stuxnet’s ultimate goal was to sabotage an industrial control system.
Analyzing Stuxnet has been one of the most challenging issues we have worked on. The code is sophisticated, incredibly large, required numerous experts in different fields, and mostly bug-free, which is rare for your average piece of malware. Stuxnet is clearly not average. We estimate the core team was five to ten people and they developed Stuxnet over six months. The development was in all likelihood highly organized and thus this estimate doesn’t include the quality assurance and management resources needed to organize the development as well as a probable host of other resources required, such as people to setup test systems to mirror the target environment and maintain the command and control server.”
[See W32.Stuxnet Dossier, Eric Chien, Sept. 30, 2010]
*September 25, 2010
Quote:
The director of the Information Technology Council of the Industries and Mines Ministry has announced that the IP addresses of 30,000 industrial computer systems infected by this malware have been detected, the Mehr New Agency reported on Saturday. “An electronic war has been launched against Iran,” Mahmoud Liaii added.“This computer worm is designed to transfer data about production lines from our industrial plants to (locations) outside of the country,” he said.
[See “Iran Successfully Battling Cyber Attack,” Mehr News, Sept. 25, 2010]
*September 24, 2010
A piece in the Guardian suggests that a government agency is most likely behind the worm but warns against leaping to conclusions. It notes that many hackers/criminals might have become sophisticated enough to create a worm of this type. The piece notes that attacks against Iran have increased and that the identification of the worm was originally made by a Belarus security firm for an Iranian client and that Iran had been experiencing problems with their nuclear facility at Bushehr for months. It notes that the worm uses a stolen cryptographic key from the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer Realtek.
[See “Stuxnet Worm Is The Work Of A National Government Agency,” Josh Halliday, Guardian, Sept. 24, 2010]
“Stuxnet: The Trinity Test Of Cyberwarfare,” War In Context, Sept. 23, 2010
*September 16, 2010
Symantec researchers say that Stuxnet had to be created by a state, because it was the most devious and sophisticated malware they’d come across.
Quote:
“I don’t think it was a private group,” said O Murchu. “They weren’t just after information, so a competitor is out. They wanted to reprogram the PLCs and operate the machinery in a way unintended by the real operators. That points to something more than industrial espionage.”
The necessary resources, and the money to finance the attack, puts it out the realm of a private hacking team, O Murchu said.
“This threat was specifically targeting Iran,” he continued. “It’s unique in that it was able to control machinery in the real world.”
“All the different circumstances, from the multiple zero-days to stolen certificates to its distribution, the most plausible scenario is a nation-state-backed group,” said Schouwenberg, who acknowledged that some people might think he was wearing a tin foil hat when he says such things. But the fact that Iran was the No. 1 target is telling.”
[See “Is Stuxnet the Best Malware Ever?” Gregg Keizer, Symantec Security Response, Sept. 16, 2010]
*September 13, 2010
German computer security research Ralph Langner speculates that Stuxnet is part of cyberwar:
Ralph’s theory — completely speculative from here
“It is hard to ignore the fact that the highest number of infections seems to be in Iran. Can we think of any reasonable target that would match the scenario? Yes, we can. Look at the Iranian nuclear program. Strange — they are presently having some technical difficulties down there in Bushehr. There also seem to be indications that the people in Bushehr don’t seem to be overly concerned about cyber security. When I saw this screenshot last year (http://www.upi.com/News_Photos/Features/The-Nuclear-Issue-in-Iran/1581/2/) I thought, these guys seem to be begging to be attacked. If the picture is authentic, which I have no means of verifying, it suggests that approximately one and a half year before scheduled going operational of a nuke plant they’re playing around with software that is not properly licensed and configured. I have never seen anything like that even in the smallest cookie plant. The pure fact that the relevant authorities did not seem to make efforts to get this off the web suggests to me that they don’t understand (and therefore don’t worry about) the deeper message that this tells.
Now you may ask, what about the many other infections in India, Indonesia, Pakistan etc. Strange for such a directed attack. Than, on the other hand, probably not. Check who comissions the Bushehr plant. It’s a Russian integrator that also has business in some of the countries where we see high infection rates. What we also see is that this company too doesn’t seem to be overly concerned about IT security. As I am writing this, they’re having a compromised web site (http://www.atomstroyexport.com/index-e.htm) that tries to download stuff from a malware site that had been shut down more than two years ago (www.bubamubaches.info). So we’re talking about a company in nukes that seems to be running a compromised web presence for over two years? Strange.
I could give some other hints that have a smell for me but I think other researchers may be able to do a much better job on checking the validity of all this completely non-technical stuff. The one last bit of information that makes some sense for me is the clue that the attackers left in the code, as the fellows from Symantec pointed out — use your own imagination because you will think I’m completely nuts when I tell you my idea.
Welcome to cyberwar.”
[See “Stuxnet is a directed attack: hack of the century,” Ralph Langner]
*September 8, 2010
German computer security expert Ralph Langner writes to a friend:
Historical document: Ralph informs Joe Weiss what Stuxnet is. Note the date of the email.
*July 22, 2010
Symantec analyzed W32.Stuxnet as a worm that uses a hitherto unknown Windows bug to attack and then searches the target for SCADA systems and design documents. SCADA is a network used to control utilities, transportation and other critical infrastructure. The worm then contacted Command &Control servers that control the infected machines and retrieved the stolen information. The servers were located in Malaysia and Symantec redirected traffic away from them to prevent the take-over of the information.
Within a 72 hours period Symantec identified close to 14,000 IP addresses infected with W32.Stuxnet trying to contact the C&C server. 58.85 % came from Iran, with the rest coming from Indonesia (18.22%), India (8.31%), with the Azerbaijan, US, and Pakistan making up the other affected countries, with under 2% each (this information is also provided at the Microsoft website).
[See Symantec Security Response,W32.Stuxnet – Network Information, Vikram Thakur, July 22, 2010]
*July 21, 2010
Quote:
“The zero-day vulnerability, rootkit, main binaries, stolen digital certificates, and in-depth knowledge of SCADA software are all high-quality attack assets. The combination of these factors makes this threat extremely rare, if not completely novel.“
Quote:
“The complexity and quality of the attack assets lead some to believe only a state would have the resources to conduct such an attack. However, the usage of the second digital certificate is a bit odd. One could make the case that once the first attack succeeded, a state would take cover and not waste the second digital certificate. Instead, by signing a very similar binary, security companies were immediately able to detect the second stolen certificate, making it useless in further compromises…..
Quote:
.. Hackers bound by a common cause may target another country, organization, or company that they feel are their enemies. Such hacking groups often have the patience and expertise to gather such attack assets. Further, their goals of continued attack may lead them to continue to refine their attack as they are thwarted or discovered, such as resigning their driver files with a newly stolen digital certificate, modifying their binaries to avoid security product detection, and moving their command-and-control hosts as they are decommissioned…..
Quote:
…..This scenario [terrorism] is like something out of movie and, while for most attacks we’d immediately dismiss this as a possibility, given the amount and quality of the attack assets, terrorism even seems within the realms of possibility in this case.“
[See “The Hackers Behind Stuxnet” by Patrick Fitzgerald, Symantec Security Response, July 21, 2010]
*July 17, 2010
Researchers find that Stuxnet targets industrial control systems of the kind that control manufacturing and utility companies. It targets Siemens management software called Simatic WinCC, which runs on the Windows operating system.
The systems that run the Siemens software, called SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems, aren’t usually connected to the Internet, but the virus spreads when an infected USB stick is inserted. If it detects the Siemens software, the virus logs in using a default password.
[See “New Virus Targets Industrial Secrets,” Robert McMillan, Computer World, July 17, 2010]
*July 16, 2010
Symantec starts a blog series on the Stuxnet infection that continues through the summer and into September
[See also Microsoft Security Advisory, July 16, 2010 and Krebson Security, July 16, 2010]
*July 7, 2010
Stuxnet could well have caused the glitch in the solar panels of India’s Insat-4B satellite on July 7, 2010. That led to the shutting down of 12 out of 24 of the transponders and 70% of the customers dependent on Direct to Home (DTH) including those using Doordarshan (Indian TV), Sun TV and Tata’s VSNL. The customers were redirected to point to the Chinese satellite ASIASAT-5, owned and operated by Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co., Ltd (AsiaSat) whose two main shareholders are General Electric (GE) and China International Trust and Investment Co. (CITIC), a state-owned company
[See “Did The Stuxnet Worm Kill India’s INSAT-4B Satellite?” by Jeffrey Carr, The Firewall, Forbes.com, Sept. 29, 2010]
*June 16, 2010
Symantec Security Response Team begins its investigation into the Stuxnet worm. The first sample dates from June 2010, but the team believes the worm dates back a year, or maybe even earlier.
*June 2010
The malware is first identified by a Belarus security company, Virusblokada, for its Iranian client.
[See Symantec Security Response, webpage, Sept 30, 2010]
*January 2010
Stuxnet infection begins, according to Symantec
*July 2009
Stuxnet infection begins, according to to Kasperksy
Wired.com has a piece on the collection of biometric data on hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan.
According to NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan commander Lt. Gen. William Caldwell (as reported to Wired’s Danger Room) the idea is to screen applicants for Army positions to keep out people with ties to the Taliban or criminal histories. But with biometric files are being compiled on Afghans at the rate of 20-25 per week, the process is likely to include a large number of ordinary citizens, especially as there’s now a plan in the works that aims to have biometric ID’s for some 1.65 million Afghans by May 2011 through the “population registration division” of the Afghan Ministry of the Interior. Apparently, Caldwell is taking a leaf out of the book of General Petraeus, who used biometric monitoring to keep on top of the Iraqi resistance. It’s also modeled on monitoring during the siege of Fallujah, when the only way to get in and out of the place was with an ID card that needed an iris scan.
Right now, there are apparently two biometric projects in the country, one run by the Afghans accounting for about a quarter of a million files and the other by the Americans, which has nearly half a million, but so far, there’s not been much integration between the two. The Afghan involvement is a change from the past, when Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has shut down biometric monitoring at checkpoints by NATO as a violation of Afghan sovereignty.
Meanwhile, neighboring India has already launched the first biometrically verified universal ID on a national scale. While not compulsory, it will be needed to access certain social and financial services, and is intended for the entire population of 1.2 billion. Biometric IDs were first used in India in 2002 to check corruption involved in accessing services and rations meant for the poor.
Earlier this year (July 2010), Afghanistan and Pakistan concluded a trade agreement that included the exchange of biometric data as part of the deal.
(MORE LINKS TO COME)
Reuters reports that ex-President Bill Clinton has raised a record $6 billion for a global philanthropic effort called Clinton Global Initiatives:
“Former President Bill Clinton secured a record 291 pledges worth more than $6 billion to tackle global woes at his sixth annual philanthropic summit, which wound up on Thursday.
The value of Clinton Global Initiative pledges for economic empowerment, education, environment, energy and health was $3 billion less than 2009, but the organization said that in previous years one or two big commitments represented a disproportionate share of the whole.”
So what’s the Clinton Global Initiative? Here’s the website
And here’s what its all about (my translation in italics)
“In 2005, President Clinton established CGI to turn ideas into action and to help our world move beyond the current state of globalization to a more integrated global community
[Lila: More centralization leading to world government]
of shared benefits, responsibilities, and values. [Lila: perks, taxes, and bureaucratic regulations]
By gathering world leaders from a variety of backgrounds [Lila: We’ve bullied, bribed, and blackmailed every pol on the face of the earth to join],
CGI creates a unique opportunity to channel the capacities of individuals and organizations to realize change [Lila: You want to make any money, you’re going to need to do business through us].
To fulfill the action-oriented mission of CGI, all members devise practical solutions to global issues through the development of specific and measurable Commitments to Action.
CGI Annual Meetings have brought together more than 125 current and former heads of state [Lila: OK, we’re missing a few islands], 15 Nobel Peace Prize winners [Lila: Now you know why they’re given Nobel prizes – they can lend their credibility to the CGI], hundreds of leading global CEOs [Lila: Right-wing fat cats], major philanthropists and foundation heads [Left-wing fat cats], directors of the most effective non-governmental organizations [Lila: Professional do-gooders and trojan horses], and prominent members of the media [Lila: The PR department].
These CGI members have made nearly 1,700 commitments valued at $57 billion, which have already improved more than 220 million lives in 170 countries
[Lila: 220 million reliable constituents and advocates of bigger government].
The CGI community also includes CGI University (CGI U), a forum to engage college students in global citizenship; CGI Asia; MyCommitment.org, an online portal where anybody can make their own Commitment to Action; and, CGI Lead, which engages a select group of young leaders from business, government, and civil society.”
Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynd III, in a speech on September 15, 2010, in Brussels, Belgium:
“To facilitate operations in the cyber domain, we have created a four-star command, the U.S. Cyber Command. A single chain of command runs from Cyber Command to individual units around the world, enabling it to oversee all cyber operations and to direct the training and equipping of our force.
The second pillar of our strategy is to employ defenses that can respond to attacks at network speed.
In cyber, milliseconds can make a difference. So we have deployed a unique defensive system that includes three overlapping lines of defense. The first two are based on commercial best practices. One is just ordinary hygiene: downloading the patch to keep your software up to date, and making sure your firewalls are operating. A second uses intrusion-detection devices and monitoring software to establish a perimeter defense.
Ultimately, these two lines of defense are not enough to stop high-end threats. For that, you need active defenses.
Active defenses work by placing scanning technology at the interface of our networks and the open internet to detect and stop malicious code before it passes into our networks.
But in cyber, we cannot be perfect. Intrusions will not always be caught at the boundary. Some will inevitably evade detection. To find intruders once they are inside, we have to be able to hunt within our own networks. This too is part of our active defense capability.
The key is that active defense works at network speed to neutralize malicious code, thereby helping prevent the most sophisticated attacks on our networks.
The third pillar of our strategy is to ensure our critical infrastructure is protected.
The best-laid defenses on military networks will matter little unless our civilian critical infrastructure is also able to withstand attacks. So in the U.S. we are working closely with the Department of Homeland Security to evaluate how to secure nationally-important networks, including the computer networks used by the defense industrial base.
Collective defense is the fourth pillar of our strategy. Given the global nature of the internet, our allies can play a critical role in cyber defense.
Indeed, there is strong logic to collective cyber defense—and this is what brings me to Brussels today. The more attack signatures you can see, and intrusions you can trace, the better your defense will be. In this way the construct of shared warning—a core Cold War doctrine—applies to cyberspace today. Just as our air and space defenses are linked with those of our allies to provide warning of airborne attack, so too can we cooperatively monitor our computer networks for cyber intrusions.
Some of our computer defenses are already linked with allies. But far greater levels of cooperation are needed if we are to stay ahead of the cyber threat. Expanding our working relationship with NATO and its member countries is critical.
Our strategy’s fifth pillar is leveraging our own technological base. Like NATO members, the United States enjoys unparalleled technological resources. We must carefully marshal these advantages into superior military capabilities.
One of the more recent illustrations of how technology can improve network security is DARPA’s national cyber range. In the military, we routinely exercise our units on target ranges and in a variety of simulations. However, we have not developed that capability in the cyber world. So DARPA, which helped build the internet decades ago, is now developing a national cyber range—in effect a model of the internet. Once operational, the range will allow us to test capabilities before we field them…..”