Malicious actors can easily position their breach to be attributed to Russia.  It’s common knowledge among even script kiddies that all one needs to do is compromise a system geolocated in Russia (ideally in a government office) and use it as a beachhead for attack so that indicators of compromise lead back to Russia. For additional operational security, use publically available whitepapers and reports to determine the tool, techniques, and procedures of a well-known nation-state sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT), access Deep Web forums such as Alphabay to acquire a malware variant or exploit kit utilized in prolific attacks, and then employ the malware in new campaigns that will inevitably be attributed to foreign intelligence operations. Want to add another layer? Compromise a Chinese system, leap-frog onto a hacked Russian machine, and then run the attack from China to Russia to any country on the globe. Want to increase geopolitical tensions, distract the global news cycle, or cause a subtle, but exploitable shift in national positions? Hack a machine in North Korea and use it to hack the aforementioned machine in China, before compromising the Russian system and launching global attacks. This process is so common and simple that’s its virtually “Script Kiddie 101” among malicious cyber upstarts.

***

Incident Response techniques and processes are not comprehensive or holistic enough to definitively attribute an incident to a specific threat actor from the multitude of script kiddies, hacktivists, lone-wolf threat actors, cyber-criminals, cyber-jihadists, hail-mary threats, and nation-state sponsored advanced persistent threats (APTs), who all possess the means, motive, and opportunity, to attack minimally secured, high profile targets.

***

Attribution might be reliable if the target is well-protected, if the target operates in a niche field, or if the malware involved in the incident is unique because one or more of those characteristics can be deterministic of the sophistication and resources of the threat actor. Attribution is less exact in the case of the DNC breach because the mail servers compromised were not well-secured; the organization of a few hundred personnel did not practice proper cyber-hygiene; the DNC has a global reputation and is a valuable target to script kiddies, hacktivists, lone-wolf cyber-threat actors, cyber-criminals, cyber-jihadists, hail-mary threats, and nation-state sponsored advanced persistent threats (APTs); and because the malware discovered on DNC systems were well-known, publicly disclosed, and variants could be purchased on Deep Web markets and forums.

***

Both APT28 and APT29 are well-known sophisticated threat actors that have been extensively profiled by cybersecurity firms such as FireEye. As a result, their profiles, operational behavior, tools, and malware could all be easily emulated by even an unsophisticated adversary in a campaign against an insecure target such as the DNC, that did not prioritize cybersecurity, cyber-hygiene, or system cyber resiliency. For instance, the cyber-criminal group Patchwork Elephant, known for adopting malware from other campaigns, could easily have also conducted the DNC/ RNC attacks by emulating APT28 and APT29...

http://icitech.org/its-the-russians-or-is-it-cold-war-rhetoric-in-the-digital-age/

... The affair does seem to reveal startling ineptitude by Hodgson – who hired someone to run the content board because he was a journalist and then forced him out when she discovered he was, er, a journalist. Is she up to the task of invigilating the BBC, especially given her own past as a corporation executive? Or of standing up to the secretary of state? The DCMS select committee will now surely have to investigate further.

In a letter to MPs on the committee two weeks ago, Emmott also drew attention to the political balance of the main Ofcom board, soon to be responsible for the BBC. Since he has been evicted (by a Conservative minister), three of the six non-exec directors “have associations with the Conservative Party”.

One is Tory peer Baroness Noakes, who in the run-up to last year’s election was writing tweets such as “Be very afraid if @Ed_Miliband and #Labour get back into power” and “Must not let Labour back to destroy progress”. After protests, Ofcom conceded that some of the comments were “not appropriate” – but she remains an Ofcom director, and indeed its deputy chair.

“Board members are able to express their opinions publicly on a range of matters,” a spokesman explained at the time, adding that Ofcom “is independent of government… All its decisions are free from political influence”. Karen Bradley may agree, but does anyone else believe a word of it?

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/issue-1433/media-news

... “You can run multinational corporations from paradise now. So why wouldn’t you?”...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-02/the-rich-have-found-a-place-to-escape-the-horrors-of-the-world

... The EU has never been good at “control”, as the veto of the EU-Canada deal by the Walloon parliament in Belgium has demonstrated. Instead, it has a political culture characterised by compromise and consensus. The language of Europe is littered with “-ities”: mutuality, solidarity, subsidiarity … Power is diffused, for historical and cultural reasons we all understand.

But this EU culture has always been at odds with that elective dictatorship, the UK constitution. Fundamental principles, entrenched rights, legal scrutiny of political decisions, these had never been the English way (they may see things differently in Scotland); instead we rely on precedent and convention...

... The danger is that Brexit will further empower the strong state of which the prime minister is an admirer... A frightening demonstration of who, post-referendum, is “taking back control”.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/nov/01/universities-suffer-brexit-britain-refugee-children


... They (far-right parties across the EU) have made a very public break with the symbols of the old right’s past, distancing themselves from skinheads, neo-Nazis and homophobes. They have also deftly co-opted the causes, policies and rhetoric of their opponents. They have sought to outflank the left when it comes to defending a strong welfare state and protecting social benefits that they claim are threatened by an influx of freeloading migrants.

They have effectively claimed the progressive causes of the left – from gay rights to women’s equality and protecting Jews from antisemitism – as their own, by depicting Muslim immigrants as the primary threat to all three groups. As fear of Islam has spread, with their encouragement, they have presented themselves as the only true defenders of western identity and western liberties – the last bulwark protecting a besieged Judeo-Christian civilisation from the barbarians at the gates...

... They have shed some of the right’s most unsavoury baggage while responding to both economic anxiety and fear of terrorism by blending a nativist economic policy – more welfare, but only for us – and tough anti-immigration and border security measures. Their message is beginning to resonate widely with a fearful population that believes the liberal governing elite no longer listens to them.

Brexit was just the start. Europe’s new far right is poised to transform the continent’s political landscape – either by winning elections or simply by pulling a besieged political centre so far in its direction that its ideas become the new normal. And when that happens, groups that would never have contemplated voting for a far-right party 10 years ago – the young, gay people, Jews, feminists – may join the working-class voters who have already abandoned parties of the left to become the new backbone of the populist right...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/01/the-ruthlessly-effective-rebranding-of-europes-new-far-right

... Johnson’s task in the Commons debate, it should probably be conceded, was not as easy as he might have made it look. He had essentially to hold the government line against a barrage of highly emotive appeals for action – action that was rejected by MPs three years ago in a decision that arguably opened the way for the desperate situation in which eastern Aleppo finds itself today.

Essentially rejecting the proposal for a no-fly zone as too risky, given the Nato-Russia air clashes it could precipitate, he was left with the threat to take Russia to the international criminal court (ICC) for war crimes. That was a threat made earlier by US diplomats including the secretary of state, John Kerry, at the UN, and by the French President, François Hollande, in a move that led President Putin to cancel a planned visit to Paris.

Here again, though, the UK faces difficulties. The actual crime Johnson cited was the attack on the aid convoy that effectively ended the latest US/Russia-brokered ceasefire, and it is still not at all clear where the blame for this lies.

Talk of the ICC and war crimes also places the UK on somewhat insecure terrain. At a time when the prime minister has undertaken to exempt UK military personnel from the provisions of European convention on human rights as it applies to the battlefield, the foreign secretary’s threats suggested a government speaking with forked tongue, and a minister overcompensating with rhetoric for an inability, or unwillingness, to act.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/12/protest-russian-embassy-boris-johnson

... The imminent ratification of the Paris Agreement – a global deal to keep global temperature rise below 2°C – is a huge achievement and a real triumph for multilateralism. It also focuses the mind on the next step: how the Agreement will be implemented across the world?

Here, we get our first inkling as to why the finance ministers, central bankers and regulators meeting in Washington DC are so relevant to our story. Right now, progress is being made towards mobilizing $100 billion in annual financing flows from rich countries to developing economies by 2020. Practical implementation is also taking place on the ground. Funding from the Green Climate Fund (GCF) is helping to build resilience into coastal and urban infrastructure projects in Bangladesh, while in Tanzania over 100,000 homes now have electricity through Off-Grid Electric, a clean energy company backed by debt financing from the Million Solar Homes Fund.

Yet overall, the cost of making the transition to a low-carbon future is measured in trillions. This quickly takes us far beyond the realm of public funds since no government – no matter how rich – can finance climate action through taxation and borrowing alone. One estimate suggests that around US $90 trillion will need to be invested by 2030 in infrastructure, agriculture and energy systems, to accomplish the Paris Agreement.

This won’t happen without private capital and underlines why aligning the world’s financial system with the needs of climate action and sustainable development is every bit as important as emission reduction pathways and removing fossil fuel subsidies. Moreover, set against the US$300 trillion of assets – held by banks, the capital markets and institutional investors – we’re faced with a problem of allocation rather than outright scarcity...

http://newsroom.unfccc.int/unfccc-newsroom/the-paris-agreement-will-soon-enter-into-force-now-we-need-to-move-the-money/

... The basic view of neoclassical thought is that we must allow for the most markets possible in the world. To this extent, we see neoclassical politicians support privatizing infrastructure, busting unions, and monetizing all aspects of human relations possible. Perhaps it bears mentioning here that the basis of the neoclassical economic thought are John Nash’s game theory equations, a set of mathematical formulas that fail to take into account the basic elements of economics (value, profits, supply and demand, competition, regulatory oversight, et cetera) and therefore are premised on a utopian notion of post-capitalist society. This integration of the game theory equations into the underlying structure of political economy forever altered the nature of capitalism, making it different than the Gilded Age and Victorian systems that Marx and Lenin wrote about. Prior to this integration of game theory, the study of economics did include math but in a way that was typical of social sciences like sociology or anthropology. The inclusion of game theory in the economics discipline forever changed its orientation towards a paradigm that would be akin to any mathematical discipline, failing to account for the humanitarian elements that would be normally be required of such analysis. As a result, neoclassical economics is an imperial project where the search for markets becomes internationalized and is done on the behalf of the 1%.

However, due to the intentions of the 1%, this post-capitalist society would not be a socialist or pure communist one, it would be a neo-feudal rentier economy. As such, we find ourselves in a situation where class warfare is not a fight for traditional leftist goals of socialism as much as preventing a step backwards into feudalism, at which point we see as potential allies the Libertarian movement’s center and left wings. Hudson is very clear about this in his book, making it all the more vital to read.

However, because neoclassical politicians in the Democratic Party (neoliberals) and the Republican Party (neoconservatives) do not believe in truly free markets and instead create these markets only to benefits a select group of financiers on Wall Street, we are discussing an imperial project with a new form of aristocracy, made up of 1% of the human population. Neocons believe that the way to build the most markets possible is by attacking the Levant directly, beginning with Palestine and culminating with conquest of Iran. Neoliberals prefer a northern approach, attacking Russia through sanctions and military encirclement before going south into China and the Levant...

... Americans specifically must destroy this 1% by nationalizing the banking system and removing the income cap on Social Security that allows for such accumulations of wealth while instituting a progressive tax on all corporations like Apple and individuals like Mitt Romney that utilize foreign tax shelters and offshore bank accounts. This is the nature of genuine solidarity with any resistance movement in the postcolonial world today and not a delusional imitation of the paradigm created in the Spanish Civil War. We must, as Marx and Engels said, expropriate the expropriators, yet we must recognize that the expropriators are just the select 1% of the population and not anyone else. If we mean to create solidarity, we must do so through the generation of a source of capital that is autonomous from Wall Street...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/16/86748/

Berlin’s Social Democrats, who have ruled the capital city for 15 years, including the last five in coalition with Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, took the most votes on Sunday with 23 percent, according to separate exit polls by broadcasters ARD and ZDF. The CDU came in second with 18 percent, while Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won seats in the city-state’s parliament for the first time.

The CDU’s defeat is the second straight electoral setback for Merkel’s party after finishing third behind the AfD for the first time in another state election two weeks ago. The AfD has siphoned voters from established parties with its call to halt migration and deport rejected asylum seekers more quickly. In Berlin, both the CDU and SPD -- which govern together at the national level -- lost about 5 percentage points of support on Sunday.

The Greens and the anti-capitalist Left Party each took 16.5 percent, while the pro-business Free Democrats were poised to return to the Berlin city assembly with 6.5 percent, according to the exit polls.

The latest defeat means Merkel’s party may exit the government in Germany’s largest city. Berlin’s Social Democratic mayor, Michael Mueller, has said he’d prefer a coalition with the Greens, for which he’d also lack a majority if the results are confirmed. That raises the prospect of a three-way coalition between the SPD, Greens and Left Party...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-18/merkel-s-party-slumps-in-berlin-election-amid-populist-surge

... A new documentary, Stealing Paradise, provides an unprecedented insight into how international corruption is carried out. The story is told through data obtained from three of former Vice President Ahmed Adeeb's smartphones and dozens of confidential documents. It also features secretly recorded confessions of three men who embezzled millions and delivered the stolen cash on the orders of the president and his deputy.

The programme finds that the president's ministers and aides have plotted to launder up to $1.5bn through the South Asian nation's central bank, with the help of secretive businessmen from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. They planned to fly in cash at up to $100m at a time, pass it through the Maldives Monetary Authority (MMA) and transfer it back out...

... The former vice president's phone messages expose serious abuses of power. Ahmed Adeeb ordered the police commissioner to "blast" a TV station that had already been burned down in 2013. He also conspired with police to "light up" a government office housing 200 members of staff. The target of the attack was Niyaz Ibrahim, then auditor-general investigating the vice president's corruption...

... The testimony also suggests the length of former President Mohamed Nasheed's 13-year terrorism sentence was determined directly by the president... Sources and text message conversations reveal the Maldives judiciary is far from independent. Senior judges have received money and luxury flats and meet regularly with the president and his deputy, who meddle in high-profile cases and judicial appointments...

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/exclusive-maldives-president-corruption-revealed-160904110226846.html

The police have raided the Maldives Independent office in Malé with a court warrant over an alleged coup plot, hours after an explosive Al Jazeera corruption exposé was released on YouTube.

The highly-anticipated documentary Stealing Paradise features an interview with Zaheena Rasheed, the editor of this publication, along with leading figures from the opposition and former members of watchdog bodies...

... Shahinda Ismail, whose Maldives Democracy Network shares the floor with the offices of MI, called the incident an intimidation tactic by the government. “Compared to the seriousness of the allegations, the search was very superficial and was over within minutes. It seems to me that it was directed at the people, not the place they shared,” she said, referring to the editor of Maldives Independent, who is currently out of the country.

Over last week, this publication has been repeatedly targeted by certain sections of the local media “for its involvement” in the making of the documentary. Will Jordan, the Al Jazeera producer, was previously the editor of Minivan News in 2007 before it was rebranded to Maldives Independent in 2015...

http://maldivesindependent.com/politics/police-raid-maldives-independent-office-over-coup-plot-126418