MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

How the U.S. Came to Use NSO Spyware It Was Trying to Kill – The New York Times

Posted by M. C. on April 3, 2023

Under the arrangement, the Israeli firm, NSO Group, gave the U.S. government access to one of its most powerful weapons — a geolocation tool that can covertly track mobile phones around the world without the phone user’s knowledge or consent.

The secret November 2021 contract used the same American company — designated as “Cleopatra Holdings” but actually a small New Jersey-based government contractor called Riva Networks — that the F.B.I. used two years earlier to purchase Pegasus. Riva’s chief executive used a fake name in signing the 2021 contract and at least one contract Riva executed on behalf of the F.B.I.

https://archive.is/aF9iu

Mark Mazzetti
Ronen Bergman

By Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman

The Biden administration has been trying to choke off use of hacking tools made by the Israeli firm NSO. It turns out that not every part of the government has gotten the message.

WASHINGTON — The secret contract was finalized on Nov. 8, 2021, a deal between a company that has acted as a front for the United States government and the American affiliate of a notorious Israeli hacking firm.

Under the arrangement, the Israeli firm, NSO Group, gave the U.S. government access to one of its most powerful weapons — a geolocation tool that can covertly track mobile phones around the world without the phone user’s knowledge or consent.

If the veiled nature of the deal was unusual — it was signed for the front company by a businessman using a fake name — the timing was extraordinary.

Only five days earlier, the Biden administration had announced it was taking action against NSO, whose hacking tools for years had been abused by governments around the world to spy on political dissidents, human rights activists and journalists. The White House placed NSO on a Commerce Department blacklist, declaring the company a national security threat and sending the message that American companies should stop doing business with it.

The secret contract — which The New York Times is disclosing for the first time — violates the Biden administration’s public policy, and still appears to be active. The contract, reviewed by The Times, stated that the “United States government” would be the ultimate user of the tool, although it is unclear which government agency authorized the deal and might be using the spyware. It specifically allowed the government to test, evaluate, and even deploy the spyware against targets of its choice in Mexico.

Asked about the contract, White House officials said it was news to them.

“We are not aware of this contract, and any use of this product would be highly concerning,” said a senior administration official, responding on the basis of anonymity to address a national security issue.

Spokesmen for the White House and Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to make any further comment, leaving unresolved questions: What intelligence or law enforcement officials knew about the contract when it was signed? Did any government agency direct the deployment of the technology? Could the administration be dealing with a rogue government contractor evading Mr. Biden’s own policy? And why did the contract specify Mexico?

A close-up photo of President Biden speaking at a lectern.
President Biden signed an executive order further cracking down on the use of commercial spyware on Monday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
A close-up photo of President Biden speaking at a lectern.

The secret contract further illuminates the ongoing battle for control of powerful cyberweapons, both among and within governments, including the United States.

The weapons have given governments the power to conduct targeted, invasive surveillance in ways that were unavailable before the advent of the tools. This power has led to abuses, from the Mexican government spying on journalists who were investigating military crimes to Saudi Arabia using NSO technology to hack the devices of political dissidents. The use of spyware against journalists and opposition figures sparked a political scandal in Greece.

See the rest here

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Enslaving The World To Stop Chinese Tyranny: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

Posted by M. C. on April 3, 2023

In the year 2023 there’s really no excuse for ordinary Americans to believe any politician is on their side in either major party. The very best of them will only once in a while do the bare-minimum not-evil thing. Don’t make heroes of these scumbags. They’re not your friends.

https://open.substack.com/pub/caitlinjohnstone/p/enslaving-the-world-to-stop-chinese?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Caitlin Johnstone

Trump should have stuck to just doing legal things like assassinating foreign leaders, deliberately starving civilians, imprisoning journalists, and dropping military explosives on foreign nations.

If you’re just tuning in, US dollar hegemony and diplomatic dominance are rapidly eroding while the US and its allies accelerate aggressions and provocations against Russia and China simultaneously in a desperate bid to quash the emergence of a multipolar world. I’m a bit less excited about the mounting threats posed to US hegemony than other anti-imperialists, only because a desperate unipolarist empire is a dangerous unipolarist empire. The deadliest time for a battered wife is right when she leaves.

A cornered animal is dangerous, especially when it has sharp teeth. A cornered empire is dangerous, especially when it has nuclear weapons. “If I can’t have you no one can” is a line that can be said to a partner or to a planet.

Abuse victims need to escape, but we may also be heading into the most perilous moment in all of history.

Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz

How is this even debatable? The US Constitution explicitly says in the clearest terms possible that congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, and yet that’s literally exactly the thing that congress is trying to do.

Image

NBC News @NBCNews

“If you don’t like TikTok or Facebook or YouTube, don’t use them. But don’t think any interpretation of the Constitution gives you the right to ban them,” Sen. Paul said, breaking from his GOP colleagues on a measure that would prohibit use of the app. https://t.co/sMNM2wLIxp11:10 PM ∙ Mar 29, 20232,549Likes824Retweets

It’s so crazy that the immensely authoritarian RESTRICT Act is getting shoved through on a tidal wave of consent that’s based on literally nothing besides people’s fuzzbrained artificially-manufactured hysteria about China.

Consent for the PATRIOT Act was manufactured by planes crashing into American skyscrapers and killing thousands of people. Consent for the RESTRICT Act was manufactured by a few right wing pundits stoking a dopey moral panic about an app where kids post dancing videos.

It just says so much about the lies the west tells about itself and its values that the second any social media service becomes widely used you see the entire US security state converge upon it and demand control over it.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The So-Far Non-Existent Vulkan Leaks – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on April 3, 2023

Revealingly all three articles include the comprehensively debunked claim that Russia hacked the Clinton or DNC emails. They all include it despite the fact that none of the three articles makes the slightest attempt to connect this allegation to any of the leaked Vulkan documents, or to provide any evidence for it at all.

Note that it is not just the central Hultquist quote which is the same. In each case the teams of thirty journalists have very slightly altered a copy-and-pasted entire paragraph.

It took 30 MSM journalists to produce this gross propaganda. I could have done it alone for them in a night, working up three slightly different articles from what the security services have fed them, directly and indirectly.

https://original.antiwar.com/Craig_Murray/2023/04/02/the-so-far-non-existent-vulkan-leaks/

by Craig Murray

The GuardianWashington Post, and Der Spiegel have last week published “bombshell” revelations about Russian cyberwarfare based on leaked documents, but have produced only one single, rather innocuous leaked document between them (in the Washington Post), with zero links to any.

Where are these documents and what do they actually say? Der Spiegel tells us:

This is all chronicled in 1,000 secret documents that include 5,299 pages full of project plans, instructions and internal emails from Vulkan from the years 2016 to 2021. Despite being all in Russian and extremely technical in nature, they provide unique insight into the depths of Russian cyberwarfare plans.

OK. So where are they?

Ten different media houses have cooperated on the leaks, and the articles have been produced by large teams of journalists in each individual publication.

The Guardian article is by Luke Harding, Stilyana Simeonova, Manisha Ganguly, and Dan Sabbagh. The Washington Post Article is by Craig Timberg, Ellen Nakashima, Hannes Munzinga, and Hakan Tanriverdi. The Der Spiegel article is by 22 named journalists!

By Nikolai Antoniadis, Sophia Baumann, Christo Buschek, Maria Christoph, Jörg Diehl, Alexander Epp, Christo Grozev, Roman Höfner, Max Hoppenstedt, Carina Huppertz, Dajana Kollig, Anna-Lena Kornfeld, Roman Lehberger, Hannes Munzinger, Frederik Obermaier, Bastian Obermayer, Fedir Petrov, Alexandra Rojkov, Marcel Rosenbach, Thomas Schulz, Hakan Tanriverdi, und Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt

So that is 30 named journalists, with each publication deploying a large team to produce its own article.

And yet if you read through those three articles, you cannot help but note they are (ahem) remarkably similar.

From Der Spiegel:

“These documents suggest that Russia sees attacks on civilian critical infrastructure and social media manipulation as one-and-the-same mission, which is essentially an attack on the enemy’s will to fight,” says John Hultquist, a leading expert on Russian cyberwarfare and vice president of intelligence analysis at Mandiant, an IT security company.

From the Washington Post:

“These documents suggest that Russia sees attacks on civilian critical infrastructure and social media manipulation as one and the same mission, which is essentially an attack on the enemy’s will to fight,” said John Hultquist, the vice president for intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant

From the Guardian:

John Hultquist, the vice-president of intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, which reviewed selections of the material at the request of the consortium, said: “These documents suggest that Russia sees attacks on civilian critical infrastructure and social media manipulation as one and the same mission, which is essentially an attack on the enemy’s will to fight.”

Note that it is not just the central Hultquist quote which is the same. In each case the teams of thirty journalists have very slightly altered a copy-and-pasted entire paragraph.

In fact the remarkable sameness of all three articles, with the same quotes and sources and same ideas, makes plain to anybody reading that all these articles are taken from a single source document. The question is who produced that central document? I assume it is one of the “five security services”, which all of the articles say were consulted.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

No More Double Standards and Impunity. West Provokes Russia. Result: Nukes in Belarus on NATO’s Borders — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on April 3, 2023

The United States and Britain fired tonnes of depleted uranium shells during their decade-long illegal war in Iraq. NATO forces also used DU weapons in their war of aggression against former Yugoslavia. In both cases, the resultant radioactive contamination was correlated with high rates of cancer and birth defects in the civilian populations.

https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/03/31/no-more-double-standards-and-impunity-west-provokes-russia-result-nukes-in-belarus-on-natos-borders/

The Anglo-American-led NATO alliance has no longer the presumption of impunity. The decades of unchecked aggression from NATO expansionism and criminal Anglo-American subterfuges in foreign countries are over.

The historic – and unacceptable – deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in several European NATO states as well as the recent announcement by Britain of supplying depleted uranium weapons to Ukraine is the prologue to Russia’s decision to place tactical nukes in Belarus. The Western outcry following Russia’s decision is absurd and hypocritical.

The pattern is familiar and speaks of incorrigible arrogance. The United States and its NATO allies make reckless escalatory moves that are unprecedented in their aggression toward Russia; then Moscow makes a reciprocal move, and yet the Western governments and their dutiful news media become apoplectic with rage over Russia’s “threatening conduct” and nuclear blackmail.

Maybe one day, Western leaders will eventually choke on their own illogical apoplexy.

This week there was frothing and fuming in the West about Moscow’s decision to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, despite the move being fully in accord with the Minsk government, a longtime ally of Russia and fellow member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization. The CSTO is organically comparable with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), having a shared defense commitment between allied states that were formerly members of the Soviet Union.

In ratifying the deployment, Russian President Vladimir Putin was accused by Western powers of jeopardizing international security, threatening European neighbors and violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Belarus borders three NATO members: Poland, Lithuania and Latvia.

But the decision by Russia to install tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus (which Moscow would reportedly retain control over) was in response to the NATO move to supply its anti-Russian Kiev proxy with depleted uranium (DU) weapons. Britain announced last week that Challenger 2 battlefield tanks sent to Ukraine would be equipped with DU shells. It is understood that the United States is also ready to supply depleted uranium armor-piercing munitions to Ukraine with its Abrams tanks. Video footage from London’s Ministry of Defence shows Ukrainian troops being trained by British and American officers in handling DU shells.

Depleted uranium is a high-density metal – much denser than lead – which can penetrate modern armor. It ignites after penetration and turns into vapor at extreme temperature. While DU shells are not explosively fissile and do not cause nuclear blasts, they do release harmful radioactive contamination into the environment. Arguably, the munitions are therefore a form of nuclear weapon in the same manner as a low-yield “dirty bomb”.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Pelosi: ‘We Have To Convict Trump On The Charges To Find Out What Is In Them’

Posted by M. C. on April 2, 2023

At publishing time Manhattan’s DA had announced 3,000 additional pages of charges were brought in at 1 AM in the morning.

https://babylonbee.com/news/pelosi-we-have-to-convict-trump-on-the-charges-to-find-out-what-is-in-them

Article Image

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Democrat Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is calling for a quick conviction of Trump so that we can all see what he’s being charged with.

“Just like we do with our spending bills, we should convict Donald Trump of these charges right away so that we can see what’s in them,” said Pelosi. “Trump has many pages of charges that are probably horrible and we just don’t have time to read them all. Doing it this way is much more efficient!” Pelosi’s statement was then interrupted by her teeth getting stuck in an ice cream bar she was eating.

Sources speculate the list of charges against Trump includes paying hush money to a stripper, colluding with Russia to overthrow the United States government and usher in 1000 years of darkness, and being really yucky and Trump-like. “We don’t need a list of charges to know that Trump is guilty of being Trump,” said Pelosi. “Let’s get this over with already.”

At publishing time Manhattan’s DA had announced 3,000 additional pages of charges were brought in at 1 AM in the morning.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Doctors Report Startling Rise In Testicular Injuries Among Woman Athletes

Posted by M. C. on April 1, 2023

Article Image

NEW YORK, NY — A new study indicates a disturbing trend as testicular injuries in women’s sports are increasing at an astounding rate. Researchers are baffled as these statistics have skyrocketed from literally zero reported testicular injuries among female athletes just a few years ago.

“This new wave of testicular injuries to female athletes has really come out of nowhere,” said Dr. Ryan Kitchen of Boston College’s Institute of Sports Medicine. “Years ago, there were absolutely no reported testicular injuries that occurred during women’s sporting events. If only we could determine what led to this sudden rise. Such a puzzle!”

Institutions around the world have also noticed the disturbing trend and are pouring research dollars into discovering the cause, which is almost certainly a complicated issue with no easy or obvious answers whatsoever.

Critics have argued that it’s not actually possible for a female athlete to suffer a testicular injury. “Yeah, that can’t happen,” said Dr. Adam Kinunen of the Restore Sanity to Sports research group. “Considering the fact that having testicles in the first place means a person is not a female, it would stand to reason that such an injury is impossible. In layman’s terms, these are dudes.”

Trans activist groups have come out in full force against anyone who dares to suggest women cannot have their testicles injured because women can’t have testicles. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” said Sunshine Fluffsprinkle, spokesperson for Insanity Now, a trans rights group in response to the findings. “BLLRRRAAAWWRRRR FFFRRGGGTHTHTH!”

At publishing time, concerned researchers in the field of sports medicine were consulting with athletic equipment manufacturers to design protective athletic cups specifically designed to protect female testicles.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Doug Casey on How Governments Use Global Crises to Take More Control

Posted by M. C. on April 1, 2023

An internationally accepted vax certificate will amount to a world government passport. It will probably be tied in with a Social Credit rating such as the one used by China. Naturally, that will be linked to everyone’s digital currency account with the central bank.

https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-how-governments-use-global-crises-to-take-more-control/

by Doug Casey

International Man: Throughout history, governments have used crises—real or imagined—to eliminate freedoms, expand the power of the State, and justify all sorts of things the populace would never accept in normal times.

After World War II, Winston Churchill famously said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.

This was when he and other leaders came together to form the United Nations, which they probably could not have created without the crisis of WWII.

Ever since, it seems that each new supposed crisis causes a further centralization of global power.

The War on (Some) Drugs, the War on Terror, the COVID hysteria, and the so-called climate crisis have all ratcheted up the centralization of power on a global scale.

What do you make of this trend?

Doug Casey: It makes sense that Rahm Emanuel, a sleazy Obama apparatchik, would have stolen the phrase from Churchill. But the statement is quite correct, regardless of the source. Government lives on crisis. As Randolph Bourne said, “War is the health of the State,” and there’s no crisis like a war. But any kind of crisis can work.

Whenever you have a crisis—whether it’s a military, political, economic, financial, or social crisis—the mob calls for strong leaders to kiss it and make it better.

This plays perfectly into the hands of the kind of people who work for the State. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a psychological flaw in humans, stemming from the fact that we’re pack animals.

Pack animals want leaders.

I’m not sure how we solve this problem other than delegitimizing the idea of the State and defanging it as much as possible. And stop lauding, even apotheosizing, its employees. But as long as the State exists, its basic impetus is to seek out crises. Crises benefit the State as an institution but also the people who work for it.

International Man: The COVID hysteria took the cynical concept of “never let a crisis go to waste” to a whole different level. Never before had the edicts of an unaccountable global institution like the World Health Organization (WHO) affected so many people in such drastic ways.

It seems the average person not only has to worry about local and federal bureaucrats affecting their well-being but also global ones.

What’s your take on this?

Doug Casey: Over the last century, the reach of the State has moved from a local, to a national, to now an international level. This is what the concept of globalism is all about.

The good news is that the bigger and more complex anything gets—including the movement towards globalism—the more inefficient, corrupt, and unwieldy it becomes. So perhaps the idea of globalism is getting big enough to self-destruct.

In the meantime, some of globalism’s and the State’s most effective minions are NGOs (non-governmental organizations). They are generally supported by private giving, often in estate planning. When people die, they often want to do something for the benefit of humanity. That’s an understandable emotion, although charity generally causes at least as many problems as it cures. I explain that in a previous conversation. Rich people particularly want to virtue signal since today’s society infuses them with guilt for their money. That, plus they naturally want shelter from taxes. So they give money to all kinds of NGOs. There are many thousands of them.

NGOs are almost universally collectivist and Statist in philosophy and have strong political agendas, although they disguise overtly political objectives with “feel-good” rhetoric. Who could possibly be against agitating for world peace or fighting poverty? However, many amount to scams, few accomplish anything meaningful, and they almost all work closely with the government. Few of them produce anything but commercials, lobbying campaigns, and fat incomes for their insiders.

Critical thinkers can help pull the rug out from under NGOs by never giving them a penny and challenging their actions.

Speaking of globalism, NGOs, and a trend toward world government, I have to mention that vaccine passports are a definite step in that direction. There will undoubtedly be a UN organization formed to standardize vax passports because, right now, there is a myriad of vaccine passports issued by various governments on different criteria in different formats.

An internationally accepted vax certificate will amount to a world government passport. It will probably be tied in with a Social Credit rating such as the one used by China. Naturally, that will be linked to everyone’s digital currency account with the central bank. It will become an international ID document in much the same way that driver’s licenses are effectively internal passports within the US. You’ll be nobody, and do nothing, without it.

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Perpetual Debt, As A Way of Life, Is Coming To An End

Posted by M. C. on April 1, 2023

https://rumble.com/v2fnl62-perpetual-debt-as-a-way-of-life-is-coming-to-an-end.html

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Dailywire Article-UN: Risk Of Nuclear War At Record High. Please Engage In Peace Talks, Russia And Ukraine.

Posted by M. C. on April 1, 2023

https://www.dailywire.com/news/un-risk-of-nuclear-war-at-record-high-please-engage-in-peace-talks-russia-and-ukraine

By  Tim Meads

Ukraine-Russia Bomb
(OLGA Zhukovskaya via Getty Images)

Well, folks, don’t look now, but the “risk of a nuclear weapon being used is currently higher than at any time since the depths of the cold war,” according to the United Nations High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu.

The war in Ukraine — obviously — is what is driving that risk. Based on reports made during the UN’s security council on Friday, that war isn’t ending any time soon — as if there were any doubt of that. Americans should know it is not going to end any time soon, our commander-in-chief has said that our tax dollars and equipment will be supporting Ukraine in its battle against Russia for “as long as it takes” — whatever that means. The Swamp wants this war to continue — and so it will.

While Biden has been banging the war drums, Putin has been chatting with its neighbors and new BFF Belarus. Now, reports indicate that Russia will be stationing non-strategic nuclear weapons within Belarus territory. According to the UN, those will be in place for aerial use by July.

For its part, Russia denies such accusations.

“We are pursuing cooperation with Belarus without violating obligations,” Russian ambassador and Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia said on Friday. “We are not transferring nuclear weapons. We are talking about the retrofitting of airplanes and training teams in the construction of a storage facility on the territory of Belarus.”

Yet he did make sure to note that Russia would respond to any “provocative measures” as it saw fit, while adding, “A nuclear war cannot be won.”

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Racing to Multipolarity – The American Conservative

Posted by M. C. on April 1, 2023

The sanctions on Russia have had the unintended consequence of more firmly coupling Russia and China, a geopolitical shift away from unipolarity.

Unintended consequences seems to be a US specialty.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/racing-to-multipolarity/

Ted Snider

TOPSHOT-RUSSIA-CHINA-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY

(Photo by SERGEI KARPUKHIN/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

Ted Snider

Mar 27, 202312:00 PM

In a quest to maintain its hegemony in a unipolar world, American foreign policy strategy has sought to weaken a Russia that it sees as an “acute threat” and to confront and contain a China that it sees as “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security.”

The immediate challenge is Russia, the theory goes, but the long-term challenge is China. It is not strategically optimal to fight both superpowers at once. Russia has to be weakened so China can be confronted in its challenge to the U.S.-led unipolar world.

The attempt to weaken Russia in the war in Ukraine, though, may be having the ironic effect of strengthening China’s role in an emerging multipolar world.

An unprecedented sanctions regime was intended to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and to prevent it from executing that invasion. It has not only failed to accomplish that goal; it also has had the unintended consequence of pushing Russia closer to China. Sealing Russia off from western markets forced Russia to look east to China, India, the Eurasian community, and a global community of sanctioned nations. So the sanctions regime has in fact hastened the advent of multipolarity, as well as strengthened China’s position abroad.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin are “in constant communication.” And on March 20, Xi arrived in Russia for talks that are aimed, in part, to “reaffirm the special nature of the Russia-China partnership.”

On December 13, Xi promised that China “will work with Russia to extend strong mutual support on issues concerning each other’s core interests, and deepen practical cooperation in trade, agriculture, connectivity and other areas.” A week later, Xi said that China is “ready to build up strategic cooperation with Russia, providing each other with development opportunities and remaining global partners for the benefit of our countries…” The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that “Any attempt to stop China and Russia from marching forward is doomed to fail” and that “China and Russia will deepen exchanges at all levels, and promote China-Russia relations and cooperation in all areas to a higher level…”

Russian-Chinese trade has increased dramatically. In his recent address to the Federal Assembly, Putin said that “the Russian economy has embarked on a new growth cycle. Experts believe that it will rely on a fundamentally new model and structure. New, promising global markets, including the Asia-Pacific, are taking precedence…” He promised that Russia “will expand promising foreign economic ties and build new logistics corridors. … This will, in part, allow us to considerably expand our ties with Southeast Asian markets.”

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »