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Paul Merrell

The Still-Missing Evidence of Russia-gate - Consortiumnews - 0 views

  • A changing-places moment brought about by Russia-gate is that liberals who are usually more skeptical of U.S. intelligence agencies, especially their evidence-free claims, now question the patriotism of Americans who insist that the intelligence community supply proof to support the dangerous claims about Russian ‘hacking” of Democratic emails especially when some  veteran U.S. government experts say the data would be easily available if the Russians indeed were guilty. One of those experts is William Binney, a former high-level National Security Agency intelligence official who, after his 2001 retirement, blew the whistle on the extraordinary breadth of NSA surveillance programs. His outspoken criticism of the NSA during the George W. Bush administration made him the subject of FBI investigations that included a raid on his home in 2007. Even before Edward Snowden’s NSA whistleblowing, Binney publicly revealed that NSA had access to telecommunications companies’ domestic and international billing records, and that since 9/11 the agency has intercepted some 15 trillion to 20 trillion communications. Snowden has said: “I have tremendous respect for Binney, who did everything he could according to the rules.”
  • I spoke to Binney on Dec. 28 about Russia-gate and a host of topics having to do with spying and America’s expanding national security state.
  • Bernstein: Your expertise was in the Soviet Union and so you must know a lot about bugging.  Do you believe that Russia hacked and undermined our last election?  Can Trump thank Russia for the result? Binney:  We at Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) published an article on this in July.  First of all, if any of the data went anywhere across the fiber optic world, the NSA would know.  Just inside the United States, the NSA has over a hundred tap points on the fiber lines, taking in everything.    Mark Klein exposed some of this at the AT&T facility in San Francisco. This is not for foreigners, by the way, this is for targeting US citizens.  If they wanted only foreigners, all they would have to do was look at the transatlantic cables where they surface on the coast of the United States.  But they are not there, they are distributed among the US population. Bernstein: So if, in fact, the Russians were tapping into DNC headquarters, the NSA would absolutely know about it. Binney: Yes, and they would also have trace routes on where they went specifically, in Russia or anywhere else.  If you remember, about three or four years ago, the Chinese hacked into somewhere in the United States and our government came out and confirmed that it was the Chinese who did it, and it came from a specific military facility in Shanghai.  The NSA had these trace route programs embedded by the hundreds across the US and all around the world.
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  • The other data that came out from Guccifer 2.0, a download from the DNC, has been a charade.  It was a download and not a transfer across the Web.  The Web won’t manage such a high speed.  It could not have gotten across the Atlantic at that high speed.  You would have to have high capacity lines dedicated to that in order to do it. They have been playing games with us.  There is no factual evidence to back up any charge of hacking here. Bernstein: So was this a leak by somebody at Democratic headquarters? Binney: We don’t know that for sure, either.  All we know was that it was a local download.  We can likely attribute it to a USB device that was physically passed along.
  • Right now, our government is violating the first, fourth and fifth amendments in various ways.  Mueller did it, Comey did it, they were all involved in violating the Constitution.
  • Bernstein:  There seems to be a new McCarthyite operation around the Russia-gate investigation.  It appears that it is an attempt to justify the idea that Clinton lost because the Russians undermined the election. Binney: I have seen no evidence at all from anybody, including the intelligence community.  If you look at the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) report, they state on the first page that “We have high confidence that the Russians did this.”  But when you get toward the end of the report, they basically confess that “our judgment does not imply that we have evidence to back it up.” Bernstein:  It was initially put out that seventeen intelligence agencies found compelling evidence that the Russians hacked into our election.  You’re saying it was actually selected individuals from just three agencies.  Is there anything to the revelations that FBI agents talked about taking action to prevent Trump from becoming president? Binney: It certainly does seem that it is leaning that way, that is was all a frame-up.  It is a sad time in our history, to see the government working against itself internally. Bernstein:  I take it you are not a big supporter of Trump. Binney:  Well, I voted for him.  I couldn’t vote for a warmonger like Clinton.  She wanted to see our planes shooting down Russian planes in Syria.  She advocated for destabilizing Libya, for getting rid of Assad in Syria, she was a strong backer of the war in Iraq.
Paul Merrell

Turkey Joins Russia's Ruble-Based Alternative To SWIFT | Zero Hedge - 1 views

  • After repeated warnings over the past couple of years, Turkey and Russia have signed a pact to increase use of the ruble and lira in cross-border payments, with Turkey signing on to Russia's alternative to SWIFT, the international telecommunications protocol used by banks and central banks the world over. Though SWIFT is an international cooperative owned by its members, with more than 10,000 banks worldwide relying on its system for handling sizable inter-bank transactions, the safety of the network was brought into question after a series of cyberattacks in 2015 and 2016 resulted in the theft of $101 million from the Central Bank of Bangladesh. For the first time since SWIFT's laucnh, the hacks stoked doubts about the system's safety, and prompted many US rivals, including Russia, to ramp up work on their alternatives to SWIFT.
  • In addition to Turkey, China and Russia have signed agreements to bolster trade between the two countries, including settling a larger percentage of their bilateral trade in rubles and renminbi. For China, bilateral trade with Russia grew from $69.6 billion in 2016 to $107.1 billion last year. China is Russia's biggest partner for imports and exports. There has also been talk about India joining Russia's SWIFT alternative as Washington continues to threaten New Delhi with sanctions over its decision to purchase Russian-made missile-defense systems. According to Reuters, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov signed the agreement with Ankara on Tuesday. The agreement, signed on Oct. 4, will encourage the two countries to start using Russia's system in mutual settlements.
Paul Merrell

Four in 10 Americans Embrace Some Form of Socialism - 0 views

  • Americans today are more closely divided than they were earlier in the last century when asked whether some form of socialism would be a good or bad thing for the country. While 51% of U.S. adults say socialism would be a bad thing for the country, 43% believe it would be a good thing. Those results contrast with a 1942 Roper/Fortune survey that found 40% describing socialism as a bad thing, 25% a good thing and 34% not having an opinion.
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