This picture circulating the internet is a clear indicator that President Joe Biden is NOT leading America. We already knew he was a puppet, but the simple commands on this notecard lead me to believe that he may be in the early stages of dementia.
In 2020, I was invited to Mar-a-Lago to watch former President Trump speak to a small audience. He walked on stage and said that although they would prefer he read from the script, he would speak candidly to the audience. He touched on hot-topic issues and was completely alert and open to answering questions that were not pre-screened. They would have physically removed Joe Biden from the stage if he attempted such a stunt.
I have never been asked to read from a script when meeting with clients, nor have I seen anyone come to the table or podium with such a detailed outline for basic human interaction. It is completely absurd. Throughout all my years, I have never seen such incompetence, and this latest example actually makes me pity the president.
The commands on this “Offshore Wind Drop-By Sequence of Events” are frightening. Joe Biden needs to be directed to complete simple tasks such as taking his seat, asking a question, and departing. YOU should not have raised this card in a room filled with reporters! This is why even the leftist media is questioning his mental health. The ship is sinking, and no one is behind the helm. If he cannot complete simple mundane tasks, he cannot rule the world’s leading economy. He probably shouldn’t even be left home alone. Anyone who still believes that Joe Biden is fit for the presidency is simply unwilling to admit they were wrong.
U.S.
intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia was behind Democratic
National Committee hacks that aimed to boost Donald Trump’s chances of
beating Hillary Clinton (file photo).
An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are
disputing a report that the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used
to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election.
The CrowdStrike report, released in December,
asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting
in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed
separatists.
But the International Institute for Strategic Studies
(IISS) told VOA that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of
the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and
hacking never happened.
A CrowdStrike spokesperson told VOA that it stands by its findings,
which, they say, “have been confirmed by others in the cybersecurity
community.”
The challenges to CrowdStrike’s credibility are significant because
the firm was the first to link last year’s hacks of Democratic Party
computers to Russian actors, and because CrowdStrike co-founder Dimiti
Alperovitch has trumpeted its Ukraine report as more evidence of Russian
election tampering.
Alperovitch has said that variants of the same software were used in both hacks.
FILE – CrowdStrike co-founder and CTO Dmitri
Alperovitch speaks during the Reuters Media and Technology Summit in New
York, June 11, 2012.
The Russian government has denied covert involvement in the election, but U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian hacks were meant to discredit Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump’s campaign. An FBI and Homeland Security report also blamed Russian intelligence services.
On Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed at a House Intelligence
Committee hearing that his agency has an ongoing investigation into the
hacks of Democratic campaign computers and into contacts between
Russian operatives and Trump campaign associates. The White House says
there was no collusion with Russia, and other U.S. officials have said
they’ve found no proof.
Signature malware
VOA News first reported in December that sources close to the Ukraine
military and the artillery app’s creator questioned CrowdStrike’s
finding that a Russian-linked group it named “Fancy Bear” had hacked the
app. CrowdStrike said it found a variant of the same “X-Agent” malware
used to attack the Democrats.
FBI Director James Comey, left, and National
Security Agency Director Mike Rogers during the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence hearing on Russian actions during the 2016
election campaign, March 20, 2017.
CrowdStrike said the hack allowed Ukraine’s enemies to locate its
artillery units. As proof of its effectiveness, the report referenced
publicly reported data in which IISS had sharply reduced its estimates
of Ukrainian artillery assets. IISS, based in London, publishes a highly
regarded, annual reference called “The Military Balance” that estimates
the strength of world armed forces.
“Between July and August 2014, Russian-backed forces launched some of
the most-decisive attacks against Ukrainian forces, resulting in
significant loss of life, weaponry and territory,” CrowdStrike wrote in
its report, explaining that the hack compromised an app used to aim
Soviet-era D-30 howitzers.
“Ukrainian artillery forces have lost over 50% of their weapons in
the two years of conflict and over 80% of D-30 howitzers, the highest
percentage of loss of any other artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal,”
the report said, crediting a Russian blogger who had cited figures from IISS.
The report prompted skepticism in Ukraine.
Yaroslav Sherstyuk, maker of the Ukrainian military app in question, called the company’s report “delusional” in a Facebook post. CrowdStrike never contacted him before or after its report was published, he told VOA.
Pavlo Narozhnyy, a technical adviser to Ukraine’s military, told VOA
that while it was theoretically possible the howitzer app could have
been compromised, any infection would have been spotted. “I personally
know hundreds of gunmen in the war zone,” Narozhnyy told VOA in
December. “None of them told me of D-30 losses caused by hacking or any
other reason.”
VOA first contacted IISS in February to verify the alleged artillery
losses. Officials there initially were unaware of the CrowdStrike
assertions. After investigating, they determined that CrowdStrike
misinterpreted their data and hadn’t reached out beforehand for comment
or clarification.
In a statement to VOA, the institute flatly rejected the assertion of artillery combat losses.
“The CrowdStrike report uses our data, but the inferences and
analysis drawn from that data belong solely to the report’s authors,”
the IISS said. “The inference they make that reductions in Ukrainian
D-30 artillery holdings between 2013 and 2016 were primarily the result
of combat losses is not a conclusion that we have ever suggested
ourselves, nor one we believe to be accurate.”
One of the IISS researchers who produced the data said that while the
think tank had dramatically lowered its estimates of Ukrainian
artillery assets and howitzers in 2013, it did so as part of a
“reassessment” and reallocation of units to airborne forces.
“No, we have never attributed this reduction to combat losses,” the
IISS researcher said, explaining that most of the reallocation occurred
prior to the two-year period that CrowdStrike cites in its report.
“The vast majority of the reduction actually occurs … before
Crimea/Donbass,” he added, referring to the 2014 Russian invasion of
Ukraine.
‘Evidence flimsy’
In early January, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense issued a
statement saying artillery losses from the ongoing fighting with
separatists are “several times smaller than the number reported by
[CrowdStrike] and are not associated with the specified cause” of
Russian hacking.
But Ukraine’s denial did not get the same attention as CrowdStrike’s
report. Its release was widely covered by news media reports as further
evidence of Russian hacking in the U.S. election.
In interviews, Alperovitch helped foster that impression by
connecting the Ukraine and Democratic campaign hacks, which CrowdStrike
said involved the same Russian-linked hacking group—Fancy Bear—and
versions of X-Agent malware the group was known to use.
“The fact that they would be tracking and helping the Russian
military kill Ukrainian army personnel in eastern Ukraine and also
intervening in the U.S. election is quite chilling,” Alperovitch said in
a December 22 story by The Washington Post.
The same day, Alperovitch told the PBS NewsHour:
“And when you think about, well, who would be interested in targeting
Ukraine artillerymen in eastern Ukraine? Who has interest in hacking the
Democratic Party? [The] Russia government comes to mind, but
specifically, [it’s the] Russian military that would have operational
[control] over forces in the Ukraine and would target these
artillerymen.”
Alperovitch, a Russian expatriate and senior fellow at the Atlantic
Council policy research center in Washington, co-founded CrowdStrike in
2011. The firm has employed two former FBI heavyweights: Shawn Henry,
who oversaw global cyber investigations at the agency, and Steven
Chabinsky, who was the agency’s top cyber lawyer and served on an Obama
White House cybersecurity commission in 2016. Chabinsky left CrowdStrike
last year.
CrowdStrike declined to answer VOA’s written questions about the
Ukraine report, and Alperovitch canceled a March 15 interview on the
topic. In a December statement to VOA’s Ukrainian Service, spokeswoman
Ilina Dimitrova defended the company’s conclusions.
“It is indisputable that the [Ukraine artillery] app has been hacked
by Fancy Bear malware,” Dimitrova wrote. “We have published the
indicators to it, and they have been confirmed by others in the
cybersecurity community.”
In its report last June attributing the Democratic hacks, CrowdStrike
said it was long familiar with the methods used by Fancy Bear and
another group with ties to Russian intelligence nicknamed Cozy Bear.
Soon after, U.S. cybersecurity firms Fidelis and Mandiant endorsed
CrowdStrike’s conclusions. The FBI and Homeland Security report reached
the same conclusion about the two groups.
Still, some cybersecurity experts are skeptical that the election and purported Ukraine hacks are connected. Among them is Jeffrey Carr,
a cyberwarfare consultant who has lectured at the U.S. Army War
College, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other government agencies.
In a January post on LinkedIn,
Carr called CrowdStrike’s evidence in the Ukraine “flimsy.” He told VOA
in an interview that CrowdStrike mistakenly assumed that the X-Agent
malware employed in the hacks was a reliable fingerprint for Russian
actors.
“We now know that’s false,” he said, “and that the source code has been obtained by others outside of Russia.”
Any student of recent history
knows that there has been a noticeable decline in the…quality…of the
American people over the past several decades. There are a number of
theories as to why this is that …
https://jonathanturley.org/2022/05/30/friends-with-benefits-sussmann-trial-is-an-indictment-of-the-fbi-and-the-washington-establishment/ Below is a slightly expanded version of mycolumn in the Hillon Sussmann trial and what it revealed about the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the combined Russian collusion investigations. It also looks down the road at whether Special Counsel John Durham will be allowed to write the same type of public report that concluded the Mueller investigation. Here is the column: With the jury out in the trial of former 2016 Clinton campaign counsel Michael Sussmann, the usual odds-takers appeared on cable news, rating the chances of a conviction. Despite the seemingly overwhelming evidence against Sussmann, the jury’s makeup seems strikingly favorable for the defense. One verdict, however, appears to need little deliberation. It concerns the Department of Justice, and particularly the FBI. The trial confirmed what many have long alleged about how top officials eagerly accepted any Russia collusion claim involving Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. Special counsel John Durham’s investigation, which led to Sussmann’s trial, is an indictment of a department and a bureau which, once again, appeared willfully blind as they were played by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Despite the trial judge’s rulings imposing strict limits on the scope of the trial evidence, Durham’s case still revealed new information on how the Russia collusion theory was pushed into the FBI and the media by the Clinton campaign. Perhaps the most ironic moment came when Sussmann’s defense team outed Clinton as personally approving the campaign’s effort to spread a baseless claim that the Trump organization maintained a secret channel to the Kremlin through Russia’s Alfa Bank. That claim was a real tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory without support. Durham previously disclosed how researchers tasked with supporting the claim were afraid it was so unsupported that they would be mocked. They argued, according to Sussmann’s indictment, that anyone familiar with analyzing internet traffic “would poke several holes” in the theory. One researcher warned: “Let’s assume again that they are not smart enough to refute our ‘best case scenario.’ You do realize that we will have to expose every trick we have in our bag to even make a very weak association.” Yet, the Clinton campaign did not seem remotely concerned about even minimal inquiries that might expose the lack of proof. The researchers were told to just worry about creating a “very useful narrative.” During the trial, Clinton campaign general counselMarc Elias and campaign manager Robby Mook both said the campaign trusted the media to push the story. They were right: Slate quickly ran it, and then Clinton and one of her aides, Jake Sullivan (now President Biden’s national security adviser), released statements expressing alarm about the claim as if it were news to them. The Clinton campaign similarly pushed the infamous Steele dossier into the news, too, after secretly helping to fund it. And both the Steele dossier and the Alfa Bank claim was pushed to friends in the FBI. Regardless of what the jury decides regarding Sussmann, the combined record of the Steele dossier and the Alfa Bank claim makes the FBI look like an unindicted co-conspirator.
On the witness stand in Sussmann’s trial, for example, FBI general counsel James Baker was asked why it took him so long to turn over the most damaging evidence — a text message to him in which Sussmann said he was not representing any client in pushing the Alfa Bank claim to FBI officials. Baker explained that Sussmann was his friend and told prosecutors that “this is not my investigation. This is your investigation.” In other words, there was no reason for the Justice Department to expect that Baker, a former top Justice lawyer, would help to make the case against Sussmann. It did not help the optics when Baker left the Justice Department and joined Brookings Institution, liberal think tank linked to key figures who framed the early Russian collusion claims. For some, it seemed like not just friends but “friends with benefits.” Later, the supervisory agent for the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, Joe Pientka, sent a note to FBI special agent Curtis Heide, stating: “People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.” Pientka then messaged Heide: “Did you guys open a case? Reach out and put tools on?” That description of the apparent eagerness of then-FBI Director James Comey and others only magnifies concern over the bureau’s alleged bias or predisposition on the Trump investigation. It was the same eagerness that led the FBI to pursue the Russian investigation for years despite being warned early by American intelligence that the Steele dossier contained not just unsupported allegations but possible Russian disinformation. When FBI investigators were given Sussmann’s allegation, they were told by supervisors that it came from the Justice Department, not Sussmann. Even with that framing, however, investigators found what the Clinton campaign researchers feared — in Baker’s words, that there was “nothing there.” The FBI, however, went on to pursue the other Russia collusion claims. That effort would result in a conviction of FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith for making false statements by altering key evidence to obtain secret surveillance orders against Trump associate Carter Page. Another trial witness, the FBI’s Heide, admitted he is under investigation for allegedly withholding exculpatory information contradicting the premise of the Russia investigation. Previously, of course, another special counsel, Robert Mueller, never found any basis for criminal charges related to Russia collusion. But what is now even more striking is how so much of this information about “fired up” FBI officials and the role of the Clinton campaign mysteriously escaped Mueller and his team. The question now is whether Durham will be given the same opportunity as Mueller to write a report on his findings. All of these disclosures were made despite limitations placed on Durham by the court. Clearly, Durham is sitting on more information about how the collusion claims were packaged and pushed to eager friends in the media and the FBI. Before Mueller declined to press criminal charges on any Russia collusion allegations, Democrats in Congress insisted that he should not just issue a report but that the report should be released unredacted, including ordinarily secret grand jury material. There is no such hue and cry for a similarly unredacted report by Durham. If Durham does not issue such a report, much of the true story behind the Russia collusion scandal could be buried. Indeed, even if control of Congress were to flip to Republicans in November, the Justice Department could refuse to turn over investigatory material and information. That is precisely what many in Washington undoubtedly would like to happen. Yet, after the glimpses offered in Sussmann prosecution of still undisclosed evidence, the public deserves to have a full Durham report on how these scandals were conceived and crafted among “friends.”Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. Follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
The Anti-Defamation League’s data claiming right-wing extremists are responsible for the vast majority of “extremist-related killings” is a total fraud.
These numbers are manipulable based on who you define as an extremist. ADL reaches these numbers by defining all homicides committed by members ofwhite gangs (mostly prison gangs) as right-wing extremists, while not defining black or Latino gangs as politically motivated.https://t.co/Aol9ayY1Kk
These numbers are manipulable based on who you define as an extremist. ADL reaches these numbers by defining all homicides committed by members ofwhite gangs (mostly prison gangs) as right-wing extremists, while not defining black or Latino gangs as politically motivated.https://t.co/Aol9ayY1Kk
According to the DOJ’s National Gang Center, about 45% of gang members in the United States are Latino, 35% are black and 11% are white. Latino and black gangs commit a lot of homicide, but only the white gangs are considered “extremist groups.”https://t.co/4dSjkPPmOA
There is not a single congress person who writes legislation or laws.
In 2017 not a single member of the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law, or puts pen to paper to write out a legislative construct. This simply doesn’t happen.
Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body. Here’s how it works.
Outside groups often called “special interest groups” are entities that represent their interests in legislative constructs. These groups are often corporations, banks, financial groups or businesses; or smaller groups of people with a similar business connection who come together and form a larger group under an umbrella of interest specific to their like-minded affiliation.
Sometimes the groups are social interest groups; activists like climate groups, environmental interests etc. The social interest groups are usually non-profit constructs who depend on the expenditures of government to sustain their cause or need.
The for-profit groups (mostly business) have a purpose in Washington DC to shape policy, legislation and laws favorable to their interests. They have fully staffed offices just like any business would – only their business is getting legislation for their unique interests.
These groups are filled with highly-paid lawyers who represent the interests of the entity and actually write laws and legislation briefs. In the modern era this is actually the origination of the laws that we eventually see passed by congress. Within the walls of these buildings within Washington DC is where the ‘sausage’ is actually made.
Again, no elected official is usually part of this law origination process.
The former head of the Louvre museum in Paris has been charged in connection with a wide-ranging inquiry into the trafficking of ancient objects from the Middle East, judicial sources say.
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Adrian22
March 24, 2017 10:11 PM
CrowdStrike is rewriting its original report. It’s this false report
from December 2016 that’s been amplified by The Washington Post, NPR,
PBS and other outlets to give support to CrowdStrike’s “high confidence”
that the GRU hacked the DNC. All these stories now need to be retracted
and/or revised as they are misleading to the public as they stand. eg.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cybersecurity-firm-finds-a-link-between-dnc-hack-and-ukrainian-artillery/2016/12/21/47bf1f5a-c7e3-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html
Anonymous
March 24, 2017 12:44 PM
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