Tag: conspiracy

NSA backdoors the tech world

The NSA appears to have been bent on destroying the ability of American companies to export hardware as well as sell software services internationally:

They claim the performance of the company’s special computers is “unmatched” and their firewalls are the “best-in-class.” Despite these assurances, though, there is one attacker none of these products can fend off — the United States’ National Security Agency.

Specialists at the intelligence organization succeeded years ago in penetrating the company’s digital firewalls. A document viewed by SPIEGEL resembling a product catalog reveals that an NSA division called ANT has burrowed its way into nearly all the security architecture made by the major players in the industry — including American global market leader Cisco and its Chinese competitor Huawei, but also producers of mass-market goods, such as US computer-maker Dell.

These NSA agents, who specialize in secret back doors, are able to keep an eye on all levels of our digital lives — from computing centers to individual computers, and from laptops to mobile phones. For nearly every lock, ANT seems to have a key in its toolbox. And no matter what walls companies erect, the NSA’s specialists seem already to have gotten past them….

The ANT division doesn’t just manufacture surveillance hardware. It
also develops software for special tasks. The ANT developers have a
clear preference for planting their malicious code in so-called BIOS,
software located on a computer’s motherboard that is the first thing to
load when a computer is turned on. This has a number of valuable advantages: an infected PC or server
appears to be functioning normally, so the infection remains invisible
to virus protection and other security programs. And even if the hard
drive of an infected computer has been completely erased and a new
operating system is installed, the ANT malware can continue to function
and ensures that new spyware can once again be loaded onto what is
presumed to be a clean computer. The ANT developers call this
“Persistence” and believe this approach has provided them with the
possibility of permanent access.

Another program attacks the firmware in hard drives manufactured by
Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor and Samsung, all of which, with the
exception of the latter, are American companies. Here, too, it appears
the US intelligence agency is compromising the technology and products
of American companies.

At this point, why would any European or Asian company buy products from an American company? The NSA is totally out of control and it has to be dismantled as soon as possible before the American tech sector is devastated.

And what are they doing with all this access? Stopping terrorists? Interdicting drug smugglers? Preventing bank fraud? No, they’re listening to American soldiers have phone sex with their wives back home.

The NSA has zero credibility at this point. Zero.

Federal interference: international edition

The unanticipated consequences of the NSA’s insane global spying are beginning to bite US corporations in the backside:

Some companies are apparently so concerned about the NSA snooping on their data that they’re requiring – in writing – that their technology suppliers store their data outside the U.S.

In Canada, a pharmaceutical company and government agency have now both added language to that effect to their contracts with suppliers, as did a grocery chain in the U.K., according to J.J. Thompson, chief executive officer of Rook Consulting, an Indianapolis, Indiana-based security-consulting firm. He declined to name the companies, which are using Rook to manage the segmentation and keep the data out of the U.S.

Thompson said the language began appearing in contracts over the past couple weeks, and could be an early indicator of things to come as businesses adapt to a landscape altered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks. Documents leaked by Snowden indicate that the NSA has tapped fiber-optic cables abroad, circumvented or cracked encryption and is massively collecting telephone records and Internet traffic. Facebook, Google, Apple and Yahoo were among 15 technology companies that asked President Barack Obama Dec. 17 to restrain the spy programs. Cisco said Nov. 13 that NSA spying has caused delays to networking equipment orders.

U.S.-based technology companies face a serious threat. The NSA disclosures may reduce U.S. technology sales overseas by as much as $180 billion, or 25 percent of information technology services, by 2016, according to Forrester Research Inc., a group in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This isn’t a hypothetical threat. Already funds are indicating that they disdain US owners and startups are building their business models around the assumption that no one outside the USA will want to use software services beholden to the US government. The USA is in the ironic state of professing free trade in goods while laboring hard to ensure that no one wants to utilize its services.

The extent of the effects will take some time to become apparent, but the problem is that once they become clear, there will be no returning from them. I suspect the revelation of the NSA spying, and not the Iraq or Afghanistan invations will one day be seen as the Peak Empire point for the USA.

And they do have oil

If anyone is looking for an excuse for another Middle Eastern war, it appears their casus belli is buried in a presidentially censored 2002 report.

President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood (this story by comparison is about 1,000 words).

A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.

Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally.

The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.

Of course, there could be other reasons to hide known Saudi involvement in the events of 9/11 besides a desire to invade Iraq. Once it is admitted that the Saudis were involved, this can’t help but raise the question of who else might have been involved as well.

Steve Jobs and the Case of the Donated Liver

Karl Denninger observes that his suspicions concerning Steve Jobs buying his way to the front of the donor list appear to be confirmed:

Remember my writing about how I didn’t believe, given the facts, that Jobs got his liver by pure “luck” (being registered in more than one place, for openers) and that his getting one likely meant someone else didn’t — and may have died as a consequence.

Now there’s always luck of the draw, and with a limited supply of livers (after all, we can’t wave a wand and make more of them) this is how it’s going to happen.  And if it happens via random draw and thus luck, well, that’s how it is.

But — did you know that the doctor who performed the transplant moved into a palatial mansion Jobs bought to recover in just a few months after the operation, lived in it for two years, paid the same price for it that Jobs did (no appreciation) when he bought it from Jobs and it is not clear if he rented it for those two years prior (at a market rate or otherwise) or if he literally was gifted living in the house!

It was remarkable how quickly a spare heart was found for Dick Cheney too, was it not?

I blame Howard Stern

This news report is so unbelievably awesome, it just makes me glad to be alive at such a glorious moment for humanity:

The interpreter who signed Nelson Mandela’s memorial on Thursday for deaf viewers was a fake, according to experts. The man, who signed for a portion of the ceremony including US President Barack Obama’s speech, was simply making up his own signs, the Deaf Federation of South Africa has said…. David Buxton, the CEO of the British Deaf Association, said the unidentified man, who was supposed to be signing in South African, was “waving his hands around but there was no meaning.”

I’m guessing that one of those signs had a meaning. And that meaning was “Baba Booey to y’all!”.

The Glory of Man is his instinct to take the piss out of the powerful and the self-important. About the only thing that would have been funnier would have been a U.S. drone attack accidentally ordered by Obama on the collection of “world leaders”.

That is what a hero looks like. If I were on the Nobel Committee, he’d get my vote.

The December verdict

As some will recall, on November 2nd Porky predicted that all the suckers were wrong and that the political supergenius and giant leap forward in human evolution that is Obama was simply luring everyone in with his suspiciously underachieving web site before leaping like a tiger and making his critics look like fools again:

Suckered again, I see. Are you incapable of seeing that the Obamacare rollout was a planned failure? Do you not understand the progressive tactic of lowered expectations?

The website will be functioning reasonably well by December (I suspect they’ve had the fix all along) at which time Obama will announce his glorious Christmas gift to humanity is “not perfect, but it’s improving every day and children and pregnant women are safe now.” The argument will have been successfully shifted from “should there even be socialized medicine” to “how can we make socialized medicine work.”

Mission accomplished. Another brilliant progressive tactic made possible by the type of foolishness we see in the OP. Call ’em savages if you want to. But they are playing this game like a grandmaster plays a patzer.  What’s that old saying about looking for the sucker in the room? If you don’t see him it’s probably you.

A readily testable prediction. It is now December. And how is the glorious Christmas gift to humanity doing? According to CNN, not so well.

GEORGE HOWELL, HOST: We know the first thing you have to do when you
go to this website you have to select your state. Is that working?
ALISON
KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: And what’s funny is I was talking
with Matt, and, yeah, that seemed to work, right, when you logged on.
But then came the road blocks. So tell me about what happened, because
we’re getting another error message here, and it’s supposed to be
running smoothly. We’re just not seeing that.
MATT SLOANE, CNN MEDICAL PRODUCER: Yeah, so, you know, we’ve been
trying to get into the site since October 1 on and off again. I have to
say it did work a lot more smoothly this morning. I got through. I
picked my state. I put in all of my information and I got through the
whole process in eight minutes. And then it said my status was in
progress. So I went to refresh it and I got the error message.

Ah, but it is entirely obvious that the progressives at CNN must be in on the great critic-trap! The fact that it is December and the website still isn’t working is only further proof of the superlative strategic brilliance of the progressive masterminds whose fearsome capabilities it is futile to resist, doubt, or even question.

In any event, this should suffice to demolish Porky’s tedious political wise-man act. Let that be a lesson to all: if you’re going to insist on calling everyone suckers and fools, and strike poses as if you are the only one who has cracked the code of American politics, then you run the risk of drawing my attention long enough for me to systematically destroy your credibility and expose your pretensions.

It’s only fair. I’m held accountable for all of my failed predictions, which is why I no longer attempt to predict how Americans will vote or the specific timing of expected economic events no matter how many people ask me to do so. I’ll stick to those areas where my predictions have been reliable. Now, if you think you know what’s going on, by all means, share your opinion with everyone here. If you have a new take on current events or an original hypothesis, I hope you will run it by us. But if you’re so convinced you, and only you, are correct that you’re constantly sneering and denigrating others, well, then you had better actually be correct.

The real story of JFK’s assassination

And in retrospect, it is so obvious:

 Jackie
oughtn’t watch. Yet she waited, heart in wild rhythm, for The Kennedy
Conspiracy Theories to begin. Anniversaries of the incident were hard,
the ten years intervening barely helped. She would finally watch. Jackie
set aside the stack of papers from her latest volunteer committee. She
made her way across the plush aquamarine carpet and pushed the intercom
button.

“I’ll have lunch now. In my sitting room…The
usual Thursday diet plate will be fine. What’s on Ari’s calender?… In
Paris until Monday. Okay, then. Consuela? Bring a pitcher of dacquiris,
too.”

Jackie opened the drapes. The cold steel and
concrete of Fifth Avenue below looked nothing like Dallas in March. That
unpleasantness belongs to a different time and place. It doesn’t matter
anymore. She lit a cigarette with the big ceramic table lighter,
inhaling deeply.

When the maid left, Jackie turned the
television’s volume knob up. Words and images veered in and out of her
focus. The Warren Commission. Lee Harvey Oswald. The KGB. Castro… Did
someone else show up as well, with an agenda of his own? Everything
afterwards was a blur. She only remembered her silly hat.

The real death of Erwin Rommel

This first-person account
of the death of the brilliant German general illustrates why one should
never believe the Official Government-Approved Histories:

A
seven-page report [Dr Friedrich Breiderhoff] made to Cologne police on
July 22 1960 has now been found in the city’s archive in which he
details how he was threatened with pain of death by an S.S. man to lie
on Rommel’s death certificate.

Dr Breiderhoff was
brought from his post at the reserve military hospital at Ulm where he
was the chief physician. He was told to inspect a person in a car
outside by two senior army officers. He told police: ‘It was Herr
Rommel.  His hat and his marshall’s baton were lying to the right of his
upper body on the floor.

“Then a man in civilian dress
appeared and ordered me to begin resuscitation attempts and told me
that I must not tell the staff that he was dead. I made a direct cardiac
injection and then attempts at resuscitation with heart massage and
breathing exercises, as if the Field Marshall had drowned.  I felt
completely that Rommel was a dead man already. Then an S.S. man ordered
me to remove the vomit from his mouth and I found an empty cyanide
capsule in his throat covered with brown and yellow mucus. I was then
ordered that I had to put ‘heart attack’ on the death certificate on the
express orders of the High Command of the Armed Forces.”

Now,
I very much doubt that anyone still believes that Rommel died of
natural causes, but the point is that even when the factual information
is documented and in the possession of the government authorities, it
often fails to make its way out to the public.

Conspiracy history, not conspiracy theory

As more and more historical conspiracies come to light, the government guard dogs are set on those who have methodically exposed them:

The more information we have about what governments and corporations are up to the less we seem to trust them. Will conspiracy theories eventually destroy democracy?

What if I told you I had conclusive proof that the moon landings were faked, but I had been told to keep it under wraps by my BBC bosses acting under orders from the CIA, NSA and MI6. Most of you would think I had finally lost my mind.

But, for some, that scenario – a journalist working for a mainstream media organisation being manipulated by shadowy forces to keep vital information from the public – would seem entirely plausible, or even likely.

We live in a golden age for conspiracy theories. There is a growing assumption that everything we are told by the authorities is wrong, or not quite as it seems. That the truth is being manipulated or obscured by powerful vested interests.

And, in some cases, it is.

“The reason we have conspiracy theories is that sometimes governments and organisations do conspire,” says Observer columnist and academic John Naughton.

It would be wrong to write off all conspiracy theorists as “swivel-eyed loons,” with “poor personal hygiene and halitosis,” he told a Cambridge University Festival of Ideas debate.

They are not all “crazy”. The difficult part, for those of us trying to make sense of a complex world, is working out which parts of the conspiracy theory to keep and which to throw away.

Mr Naughton is one of three lead investigators in a major new Cambridge University project to investigate the impact of conspiracy theories on democracy.

The lack of faith in democracy has nothing to do with the electorate being provided with more information about the behavior of its government regardless of how accurate that information is. The growing loss of belief in democracy as a system of government is a direct result of the electorate observing that no matter for whom and for what it votes, the ruling elite imposes whatever laws it wants.

And, as it happens, the Conspiracy Theory of History is the only one that can be supported by the historical facts.

My central belief with regards to all the various conspiracies is simple. The only thing you can be completely 100 percent certain of is that the one thing that absolutely did not happen is the government-approved, media-reported Official Story. The one and only thing that makes me suspect that the Moon landings were faked is the way various government employees and officials take the charges so seriously.

Well, that and the fact that Moon landings appear to be the one thing that 40+ years of technological advancement have rendered both more expensive and less possible.

NSA spying is useless

NSA head openly admits the Obama administration has been lying about the effectiveness of the NSA spying regime:

The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records.

Pressed by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing, Gen. Keith B. Alexander admitted that the number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA’s huge database of every phone call made in or to America was only one or perhaps two — far smaller than the 54 originally claimed by the administration.

Gen. Alexander and other intelligence chiefs have pleaded with lawmakers not to shut down the bulk collection of U.S. phone records despite growing unease about government overreach in the program, which was revealed in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

“There is no evidence that [bulk] phone records collection helped to thwart dozens or even several terrorist plots,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and committee chairman, told Gen. Alexander of the 54 cases that administration officials — including the general himself — have cited as the fruit of the NSA’s domestic snooping.

“These weren’t all plots and they weren’t all foiled,” he said.

It’s not enough to shut down the spying. These lying bastards to the U.S. Constitution need to be put on trial for treason. The spying wouldn’t be justified even if it had foiled 54 plots, but the fact that the actual number is much more likely ZERO simply underlines that the most dangerous plot against the American people is the plotting being done by federal agents and appointed government officials.