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Documents published with this article: LOVELY HORSE – GCHQ Wiki Overview INTOLERANT – Who Else Is Targeting Your Target? Collecting Data Stolen by Hackers – SIDtoday  HAPPY TRIGGER/LOVELY HORSE/Zool/TWO FACE – Open Source for Cyber Defence/Progress NATO Civilian Intelligence Council – Cyber Panel – US Talking Points

These accounts represent a cross section of the hacker community and security scene. In addition to monitoring multiple accounts affiliated with Anonymous, GCHQ monitored the tweets of Kevin Mitnick, who was sent to prison in 1999 for various computer and fraud related offenses. The U.S. Government once characterized Mitnick as one of the world’s most villainous hackers, but he has since turned security consultant and exploit broker. Among others, GCHQ monitored the tweets of reverse-engineer and Google employee, Thomas Dullien. Fellow Googler Tavis Ormandy, from Google’s vulnerability research team Project Zero, is featured on the list, along with other well known offensive security researchers, including Metasploit’s HD Moore and James Lee (aka Egypt) together with Dino Dai Zovi and Alexander Sotirov, who at the time both worked for New York-based offensive security company, Trail of Bits (Dai Zovi has since taken up a position at payment company, Square). The list also includes notable anti-forensics and operational security expert “The Grugq.” GCHQ monitored the tweets of former NSA agents Dave Aitel and Charlie Miller, and former Air Force intelligence officer Richard Bejtlich as well as French exploit vendor, VUPEN (who sold a one year subscription for its binary analysis and exploits service to the NSA in 2012).

The U.S., U.K. and Canadian governments characterize hackers as a criminal menace, warn of the threats they allegedly pose to critical infrastructure, and aggressively prosecute them, but they are also secretly exploiting their information and expertise, according to top secret documents. In some cases, the surveillance agencies are obtaining the content of emails by monitoring hackers as they breach email accounts, often without notifying the hacking victims of these breaches. “Hackers are stealing the emails of some of our targets… by collecting the hackers’ ‘take,’ we . . .  get access to the emails themselves,” reads one top secret 2010 National Security Agency document. These and other revelations about the intelligence agencies’ reliance on hackers are contained in documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents—which come from the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters agency and NSA—shed new light on the various means used by intelligence agencies to exploit hackers’ successes and learn from their skills, while also raising questions about whether governments have overstated the threat posed by some hackers.

And while now he promises to replace Obamacare "with something terrific," other than mentioning something about state lines, his rhetoric reeks of a big-government program and has nothing to do with market economics.

Trump is sounding like Bernie now and as Obama sounded in 2008-9-10.  We have to elect Trump to know what is in him, I guess.  But actually, we don't.  When you sound like a Marxist on health care and attack someone like Cruz the way a Marxist would attack someone like Cruz, then it follows logically to apply "the duck test."

Trump has promised to allow the government to negotiate drug prices — a common position among Democrats but rarely heard at nominally Republican events.

Abaaoud, a citizen of Belgium of Moroccan descent, was well known as a violent radical miscreant linked to an Islamic cell in Verviers, Belgium, that did all sorts of mean, murderous crap.  As far as Belgian and French authorities were concerned, he had been an item long before Paris.

Washington believes the group is responsible for the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed the ambassador and three other Americans.  In November, the United Nations blacklisted Ansar al-Sharia Benghazi and its sister group, Ansar al-Sharia Derna, over links to Al-Qaeda and for running camps for the Islamist State group.  So there you have your soundbite.  The Paris outrage: Made in Libya.  Not Syria.  And brought to us by the people who killed Christopher Stevens in Benghazi. I am sure that Hillary Clinton is grateful to the French police for botching the raid to capture Abaaoud and pumping 5000 rounds into his apartment instead of capturing him; otherwise, he might have become a lively topic of interest and curiosity and the right wing could have cooked off the Benghazi! munitions through election day.  For that matter, it seems unlikely that the governments of the West, or the media cheerleaders thirsting for a rousing good vs. evil narrative, are very interested in exploring the morally fraught issue of blow back from the spectacular Libyan disaster, either. To sum up: the alleged and now reportedly deceased architect of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, did not fight “for IS.”  He fought “with” Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, a Libyan outfit whose presence in Syria predates that of ISIS.  Even after Katibat al-Battar al-Libi decided to pledge allegiance to ISIS, it retained its independent identity.  And it would appear unlikely that Abaaoud, as a European of Moroccan descent, would be a central figure in the brigade, whose personnel, funding, and mission seem to have largely emanated from Libya.

Despite his seemingly junior status in an autonomous militia, it is possible that Abaaoud was recruited by al-Baghdadi to commit the Paris outrage.  But foreign fighters flock to Syria not only to accumulate general jihadi merit, but also to acquire skills they could apply in their own struggles.  And Abaaoud may have gone to the Syrian war zone to hook up with an extremely capable Libyan outfit and acquire the experience and connections to fulfill his own ambitions for mayhem in Europe, and not necessarily to support the global or even local objectives of the IS caliphate.  So it is by no means axiomatic that Abaaoud returned to Europe with the mission to execute a high-level ISIS strategy. Instead, Abaaoud might have been an angry guy with the skills, resources, and inclination to commit mass murder on his own kick.  The police were already after him big time after the Verviers raid in January (we are now told that Abaaoud was “on” or a “candidate for” a spot on the drone assassination assignment list, but I wonder if this is post-hoc ass-covering).  So maybe he and his friends decided to pull the pin, and go out in a big way. I doubt we’ll ever get the full story.  But “Paris: Made in Libya” is an honest hook.

"No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort”, a former Green Beret writes of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian insurgents, “they know we are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’”. “I don’t want to be responsible for Nusra guys saying they were trained by Americans,” the Green Beret added. ... Murphy states bluntly: “distinguishing between the FSA and al-Nusra is impossible, because they are virtually the same organization. As early as 2013, FSA commanders were defecting with their entire units to join al-Nusra. There, they still retain the FSA monicker, but it is merely for show, to give the appearance of secularism so they can maintain access to weaponry provided by the CIA and Saudi intelligence services. The reality is that the FSA is little more than a cover for the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra. ... It is one thing when Russia says somesthing, but another when Reuters, WSJ, and independent German and U.S. subject experts report this as facts. The first can be shunned as "Putin lies" but the others are extremely hard to refute. The Russians are right. The U.S. did not separate the "moderate rebels" from al Qaeda, as it had agreed to in the ceasefire agreement, because the "moderates" and al-Qaeda are the same. The "moderates" are al-Qaeda. This was not unknown. The 2012 Defense Intelligence Analysis said as much. The CIA of course knew this all along. But the Saudi tool heading the CIA, John Brennan, can not admit such as his masters in the Gulf are also the ones who finance al-Qaeda. They buy the weapons Brennan's people hadn over to al-Qaeda. The "end-user" according to this certificate for a weapon buy in Ukraine is Saudi Arabia. But who will believe that the Saudi dictators need for example 100 obsolete T-55 tanks? The weapons on the certificate, for an estimated $300-$500 million, are obviously for al-Qaeda in Yemen and in Syria. (Did Joe Biden or his son, both heavily engaged in Ukraine, get a provision from the deal?)

As the facts accumulate how long can the New York Times and Washington Post keep up with their propaganda claims. One has to admit, they really try their best. Unfortunately for them, their best is only mediocre. The NYT today found out that Vladimir Putin Relishes His Role as Disrupter. How does the NYT know what Putin "relishes"? The reporter did not ask Putin himself. But he did ask some knowledgeable experts with insight into Putin's inner mind and those assured the author that this is indeed the case. They know exactly how Putin feels. They are Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director and Robert Kagan, leading voice of of the neocons and Clinton promoter. Some "experts". Add that to dozens of stories on how "Russia indiscriminately bombs civilians/hospitals/bakeries in east-Aleppo" but never hits any "rebels" because none occur in these stories at all. A recent NYT piece of that kind had 14 "voices" in it. Eight belonged to various propagandists associated with the "White Helmets", four were "western" diplomats, one Syrian government official and a Russian spokesperson were quoted at the end. No Russian military and no one from west-Aleppo, where by far most people in the city live under government protection and daily rocket hail by the "rebels", were even asked. But all those tales we hear about the devilish Russians MUST be true! Even the 7 years old Bana Alabeb now tweets from east-Aleppo about her tragic fate under indiscriminate Russian assaults. This in perfect English and with an excellent WiFi and Internet connection as her many "White Helmets" photo attachments and her videos attest. But the whole city is devastated and in ruins she says, with phosphor bombs going off right in front of her house.

But Bana is a very responsible little lady: Bana Alabed @AlabedBana Dear world, it's better to start 3rd world war instead of letting Russia & assad commit #HolocaustAleppo 1:53 PM - 29 Sep 2016 Here "mother" phoned up the Daily Mail for an "exclusive" and assures us that this is all true. The Telegraph has her in a slideshow with sad music and the Guardian promotes her too. Another Gay Girl in Damascus media fail. In 2011 the Guardian also was part of that scam. If that 7-year old girl is in east-Aleppo and not in Denmark or the UK, I must be on Mars. No sane reader will take such a stunt serious. What Public Relation company came up with this sorry flimflam? Like the "moderate rebels" fantasy, such tales and the nonsense the "White Helmet" propaganda outlet distributes, are starting to fail. The UAE's National, a well established international newspaper, recently dug a bit around the White Helmet's creator, a "former" British military agent working for Gulf defense interests. That does not sound charitable. This is noticeable report, even as it still lacks any details, as it is the first in a major paper that shows some auspiciousness against that outlet. The Obama administration's lies about the "moderate rebels" are now openly discussed in major media. The propaganda of #HolocaustAleppo (isn't abusing the holocaust meme anti-semitic?) is turning into a laughing stock.

Russia is upping its stake in Syria. Additional Russian SU-24, SU-25 and SU-34 jets are arriving. Nearly 6,000 Russian soldiers are on the ground. The CIA's  al-Qaeda "rebels" are losing in east-Aleppo and are in stalemate and under pressure elsewhere. They will be bombed to smithereens. A few new BM-21 multiple missile launchers and heavier anti-air artillery was delivered to them. But those are just band-aids on lethally bleeding wounds. Even MANPADs will not change the situation one bit. The U.S., the Saudis and especially Brennan's CIA have lost that fight. Will Obama and Kerry admit it? Or will they throw another Hail Mary and do something crazy?

For all his incapacity to formulate thoughts above the language skills of a third grader, Trump has been piling up astonishing proposals that resonate wildly, way beyond the “basket of deplorables” spectrum.

The bottom line is that to recover US manufacturing jobs – as Trump has been forcefully promising – he will have to stare down the whole Wall Street finance oligarchy.So no wonder these oligarchs – responsible for shipping all those US manufacturing jobs to Asia and lavishly profiting from bailouts to the 'Too Big To Fail' racket – hate him with all their golden-plated guts.

Trump’s attention span is notoriously minimalist. If his advisers managed to imprint – tweet? - a few one-liners on his brain, he would be able to explain to US public opinion how the US-China game is really played, something that all relevant parties in both nations know by heart.And the – crucial - missing link in the whole game is Wall Street.This is how it works.

He is against Cold War 2.0 and the pivot to Asia, when he says “wouldn’t it be nice to get along with Russia and China for a change?”He no less than pre-empted WWIII when he said he would be against a US nuclear first-strike.He totally abhors global “free trade” – from NAFTA to TPP and TTIP - because it has “hollowed out the lives of American workers”, as US corporations (under Wall Street’s “incentive”) delocalize and then import back into the US tariff-free.

Trump was even open to nationalizing Wall Street banks after the 2008 financial crisis.

So we’re faced with the ultimate surrealist spectacle of a billionaire denouncing corporate globalization, which has been responsible for stripping the US lower middle classes of countless, decent blue-collar jobs and social benefits – not to mention turning them into hostages of rotting public infrastructure. And all that with absolutely no one among the US establishment condemning the most astonishing wealth transfer to the 0.0001% in history.If in the next two presidential debates Trump points to the crucial missing link in the whole plot – Wall Street - he might as well lock on as a surefire winner.

Perpetrators of more recent attacks have latched onto U.S. foreign policy to justify violence. The journals of Ahmad Rahami, accused of bombings in Manhattan and New Jersey last month, cited wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. In a 911 call, Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people in an Orlando nightclub earlier this year, claimed he acted in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike on an ISIS fighter. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told investigators that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated his and his brother’s attack on the Boston Marathon. In many of these cases, pundits and politicians focus on the role of religion, something Marc Sageman, a former CIA officer and author of “Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century,” describes as a “red herring,” citing a history of shifting ideologies used to justify terrorist acts.

The U.S. government has announced plans to spend millions of dollars on “Countering Violent Extremism” initiatives, which are supposed to involve community members in spotting and stopping would-be extremists. These initiatives have been criticized as discriminatory, because they have focused almost exclusively on Muslim communities while ignoring political motivations behind radicalization. “Politicians try very hard not to talk about foreign policy or military action being a major contributor to homegrown terrorism,” Sageman says, adding that government reticence to share raw data from terrorism cases with academia has hindered analysis of the subject.

As Paul Antonopoulos of Al-Masdar News wrote: […] in the above picture, the White Helmets are handling the corpses of people without sufficient safety gear, most particularly with masks mostly used, as well as no gloves. […] Within seconds of exposure to sarin, the affects [sic] of the gas begin to target the muscle and nervous system. There is an almost immediate release of the bowels and the bladder, and vomiting is induced. When sarin is used in a concentrated area, it has the likelihood of killing thousands of people. Yet, such a dangerous gas, and the White Helmets are treating bodies with little concern to their exposed skin. This has to raise questions.” While Western governments and the corporate media have already assured themselves of Assad’s guilt, this latest discovery – along with other notable evidence – suggests that the basis for this assumption is faulty at best. The warehouse was discovered less than a day prior to a UN Security Council emergency meeting over Tuesday’s gas attack, leading many pro-interventionist governments to suggest that Russia is merely trying to protect its ally from international criticism and retaliation. Though the timing could be construed as suspect, Assad – on the verge of reclaiming nearly all Syrian cities from the opposition – stands little to gain from using internationally banned weapons, while the increasingly desperate NATO-armed and funded rebels are the greatest beneficiaries from the renewed calls for foreign intervention in Syria following Tuesday’s attack. At the very least, this latest discovery of a chemical weapons warehouse demands that world leaders, pro-intervention and otherwise, must wait for a complete investigation of the incident before taking drastic action. As Antonopoulos noted: “Before the war cries begin and the denouncement of the government from high officials in power positions begin, time must be given so that all evidence can emerge.”

One slide from a May 2010 NSA presentation on getting data from smartphones – breathlessly titled "Golden Nugget!" – sets out the agency's "perfect scenario": "Target uploading photo to a social media site taken with a mobile device. What can we get?"The question is answered in the notes to the slide: from that event alone, the agency said it could obtain a "possible image", email selector, phone, buddy lists, and "a host of other social working data as well as location".

The latest disclosures could also add to mounting public concern about how the technology sector collects and uses information, especially for those outside the US, who enjoy fewer privacy protections than Americans. A January poll for the Washington Post showed 69% of US adults were already concerned about how tech companies such as Google used and stored their information.The documents do not make it clear how much of the information that can be taken from apps is routinely collected, stored or searched, nor how many users may be affected. The NSA says it does not target Americans and its capabilities are deployed only against "valid foreign intelligence targets".The documents do set out in great detail exactly how much information can be collected from widely popular apps. One document held on GCHQ's internal Wikipedia-style guide for staff details what can be collected from different apps. Though it uses Android apps for most of its examples, it suggests much of the same data could be taken from equivalent apps on iPhone or other platforms.The GCHQ documents set out examples of what information can be extracted from different ad platforms, using perhaps the most popular mobile phone game of all time, Angry Birds – which has reportedly been downloaded more than 1.7bn times – as a case study.

Other apps choose to transmit much more data, meaning the agency could potentially net far more. One mobile ad platform, Millennial Media, appeared to offer particularly rich information. Millennial Media's website states it has partnered with Rovio on a special edition of Angry Birds; with Farmville maker Zynga; with Call of Duty developer Activision, and many other major franchises.

The Macedonian police were clearly well-informed before they launched their operation. According to the Minister for the Interior, Ivo Kotevski, the group was preparing a very important operation for the 17th May (the date of the demonstration organised by the Albanophone opposition in Skopje). The identification of the suspects has made it possible to determine that they were almost all ex-members of the UÇK (Kosovo Liberation Army) [1].

Among them were : • Sami Ukshini, known as « Commandant Sokoli », whose family played a historic rôle in the UÇK. • Rijai Bey, ex-bodyguard of Ramush Haradinaj (himself a drug trafficker, military head of the UÇK, then Prime Minister of Kosovo. He was twice condemned for war crimes by the International Penal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia, but was acquitted because 9 crucial witnesses were murdered during the trial). • Dem Shehu, currently bodyguard for the Albanophone leader and founder of the BDI party, Ali Ahmeti. • Mirsad Ndrecaj, known as the « NATO Commandant », grandson of Malic Ndrecaj, who is commander of the 132nd Brigade of the UÇK. The principal leaders of this operation, including Fadil Fejzullahu (killed during the assault), are close to the United States ambassador in Skopje, Paul Wohlers.

To eliminate any doubt about the identity of the operation’s sponsors, the General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, intervened even before the assault was over - not to declare his condemnation of terrorism and his support for the constitutional government of Macedonia, but to paint a picture of the terrorist group as a legitimate ethnic opposition : « I am following the events in Kumanovo with deep concern. I would like to express my sympathy to the families of those who were killed or wounded. It is important that all polititcal and community leaders work together to restore order and begin a transparent investigation in order to find out what happened. I am calling for everyone to show reserve and avoid any new escalation of violence, in the intersts of the nation and also the whole region. » You would have to be blind not to understand.

In January 2015, Macedonia foiled an attempted coup d’état organised for the head of the opposition, the social-democrat Zoran Zaev. Four peole were arrested, and Mr. Zaev had his passport confiscated, while the Atlantist press began its denunciation of an « authoritarian drift by the régime » (sic). Zoran Zaev is publicly supported by the embassies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Holland. But the only trace left of this attempted coup d’état indicates the repsponsibility of the US. On the 17th May, Zoran Zaev’s social-democrat party (SDSM) [2] was supposed to organise a demonstration. It intended to distribute 2,000 masks in order to prevent the police from identifying the terrorists taking part in the march. During the demonstration, the armed group, concealed behind their masks, were supposed to attack several institutions and launch a pseudo-« revolution » comparable to the events in Maidan Square, Kiev.

This coup d’État was coordinated by Mile Zechevich, an ex-employee of one of George Soros’ foundations. In order to understand Washington’s urgency to overthrow the Macedonian government, we have to go back and look at the gas pipeline war. Because international politics is a huge chess-board on which every move by any piece causes consequences for all the others.

The United States have been attempting to sever communications between Russia and the European Union since 2007. They managed to sabotage the projet South Stream by obliging Bulgaria to cancel its participation, but on the 1st December 2014, to everyone’s surprise, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a new project when he succeeded in convincing his Turkish opposite number, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to sign an agreement with him, despite the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO [3]. It was agreed that Moscow would deliver gas to Ankara, and that in return, Ankara would deliver gas to the European Union, thus bypassing the anti-Russian embargo by Brussels. On the 18th of April 2015, the new Greek Prime Minister, Alexis Tsípras, gave his agreement that the pipeline could cross his country [4] . As for Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, he had already conluded discrete negotiations last March [5]. Finally, Serbia, which had been a partner in the South Stream project, indicated to the Russian Minister for Energy Aleksandar Novak, during his reception in Belgrade in April, that Serbia was ready to switch to the Turkish Stream project [6].

To halt the Russian project, Washington has multiplied its initiatives :  in Turkey, it is supporting the CHP against President Erdoğan, hoping this will cause him to lose the elections;  in Greece, on the 8th May, it sent Amos Hochstein, Directeur of the Bureau of Energy Ressources, to demand that the Tsípras government give up its agreement with Gazprom;  it plans – just in case – to block the route of the pipeline by placing one of its puppets in power in Macedonia;  and in Serbia, it has restarted the project for the secession of the small piece of territory - Voïvodine - which allows the junction with Hungary [7]. Last comment, but not the least: Turkish Stream will also supply Hungary and Austria, thus ending the alternative project negotiated by the United States with President Hassan Rohani (against the advice of the Revolutionary Guards) for supplying them with Iranian gas [8].

In America, 93 million credit union member-owners control $920 billion in assets.

“Cooperatives, in their various forms, promote the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of all people, including women, youth, older persons, persons with disabilities and indigenous peoples, are becoming a major factor of economic and social development and contribute to the eradication of poverty.” - UN Resolution 64/136, 2010

The trend is well-established: The cooperative model is expected to be the world’s fastest-growing business model by 2025.