The Wall Street Journal just published an incendiary article that says hackers working for the Russian government stole confidential material from an NSA contractor's home computer. The hackers did so, according to the WSJ, after identifying files though the contractor's use of antivirus software from Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab.
The report may well be true, but, for now, there's no way to independently confirm it. The report is based on unnamed people the publication says had knowledge of the matter, and it provides no evidence to support its claim. What's more, the lack of detail leaves open the possibility that, even if Kaspersky's AV did help Russia home in on the highly sensitive code and documents, the disclosure was the inadvertent result of a software bug and that no one from Kaspersky Lab cooperated with the attackers in any way. Also lost in the focus on Kaspersky Lab is the startling revelation that yet another NSA insider managed to sneak classified material outside of the NSA's network and put it on an unsecured computer. More of this analysis will follow.
First, here's a summary of what the WSJ reported.…Another hit job?
When a News Corp newspaper starts writing articles that reflect the insights provided by Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) you know that progress in the dissemination of those ideas is being made. Even if they don’t get things exactly right. The Dow Jones & Company (owned by News Corp) daily, the Wall Street Journal carried an article last week (October 31, 2016) – Message from the Gilt Market: U.K. Can Never Run Out of Pound – which leaves no room for doubt. The London-based journalist Jon Sindreu wrote that “Among facts that take a stubbornly long time to sink in, here’s one: Countries that borrow in their own currencies never have to default on their debt”. So never again allow a person in your company to suggest otherwise. There are many like facts that seem to evade the understanding of journalists, politicians and others who desire to push the neo-liberal line. I say ‘seem’ because it is certain that many of these neo-lib banner carriers know full well they lie when they make claims about currency-issuing governments running out of money and the like. They are ideological warriors after all and in war, anything seemingly goes.
The main thesis entertained in the Wall Street Articles is as follows:Bill Mitchell – billy blog
See, we all have it all wrong. We all need to read the WSJ and the NYT and celebrate the good news of massive tax fraud by business elites and join together to denounce government. Ignore the tens of thousands of wealthy men behind the screen of bank secrecy evading taxes. They are a “distraction.”The neoliberal spin machine.
On January 21st the Wall Street Journal’s editors allowed on its editorial pages an opinion piece with one of the most glaring distortions of post-Soviet Russian history and politics ever produced by contemporary American ‘rusology.’ David Satter issued forth yet another of his caricatures of analysis in an exegesis from which he hoped readers would take away: ‘eternally totalitarian, imperialistic, and murderous Russia.’ The only murder here, however, was Satter’s murder of truth and the historical record. In addition to an uniformed analysis of the complicated and unresolved Litvinenko case as well as Russian politics under President Vladimir Putin, he issued forth both a full-fledged perversion of politics under Russia’s first post-Soviet president Boris N. Yeltsin and a complete inversion of the history of October 1993.Russian and Eurasian Politics–Gordon M. Hahn
Over the past quarter century, the US and EU turned their focus from systemic adversaries (anti-capitalist and anti-imperial states and movements) to attacking capitalist regimes, which (1) had adopted nationalist, re-distributive and Keynesian policies; (2) had opposed military interventions, coups and bases; (3) had aligned with non-Western capitalist powers; (4) had opposed Zionist colonization of Palestine and Gulf State-financed Islamist terrorists; (5) and had refuse to follow the financial agendas dictated by Wall Street and the City of London investment houses, speculators and vulture funds.
The Western imperial regimes (by which we mean the US, Canada and the EU) have exercised their political, military, economic and propaganda powers to (1) eliminate or limit the variety of capitalist options; (2) control the kinds of market-state relations; and (3) secure compliance through punitive military invasions, occupations and economic sanctions against targeted adversaries.
The major financial newspapers of record in the United States have played a key role in disseminating the post-communist political line regarding what are acceptable capitalist policies: The Wall Street Journal, (WSJ), the New York Times (NYT), and the Financial Times (FT) – the ‘Troika’ – have systematically engaged in political warfare acting as virtual propaganda arms of the US and EU imperialist governments in their attempts to impose and/or maintain vassal state status on countries and economies, ‘regulated’ according to the needs of Western financial institutions.
The propaganda Troika not only reflects the interests and policies of the ruling elites, but their editors, journalists and commentators shape policies through their reportage, analyses and editorials.
The Troika’s methods of political operation and the substance of their policies preclude any kind of balanced reportage.…James Petras Website
The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the Daily Telegraph - they all piled on, trumpeting the news fed to them by the FBI and NSA that the Russians were behind it - suggesting it was a pseudo military attack in connection to war tensions over Ukraine.
Now the perpetrators have been caught. Turns out they have no connection to Russia.…
Flash forward a year, and you will find reports that emerged on July 21, 2015 that four people were arrested for the JPMorgan and other bank cyber attacks of August, 2014, with a fifth suspect remaining at large. Unsurprisingly, those arrested were not “Russian state sponsored hackers.” Also unsurprisingly, very few of the reports included any reporting that informed the reader that the JPMorgan hack was initially, and incorrectly, blamed on Russia.
The MSM reports detailed how the four suspects, two Israeli citizens as well as US citizens Joshua Aaron and Anthony Murgio, were charged with using the hacked data in a “complex securities fraud scheme”, as reported by Fortune, where the data was used for a “pump-and-dump” stock fraud, using bulk emails and pre-planned trading to pump up the targeted stocks for their own personal benefit. USA Today, among others, reported that the scheme also included an “illegal bitcoin operation.”
Perusing the reporting of the titans of western MSM, from Bloomberg to Fortune to Reuters to USA Today to CNBC, it is difficult to find any reporting on the arrest that point out that blame for the subject cyber attacks was initially placed upon a “resurgent” Russia.Not quite complete media fail, since some reported the correction.
Thanks everyone! Very excited to be joining the @wsjheard team! Some details here http://t.co/NLSmrU5fDv
— John Carney (@carney) January 31, 2014
Maybe Carney got fired from CNBC for posting up all that MMT stuff, who knows? ;)
My old buddy Stevie still up to making a nice living by spewing propaganda he knows is at best misleading and subversive.