Posted on 01/09/2017 2:18:15 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Arizona’s recently re-elected Republican senator John McCain, along with his faithful «drama queen» accomplice South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, recently met with a contingent of Ukrainian troops at a «forward combat zone» in Shyrokyne in eastern Ukraine and publicly questioned president-elect Donald Trump’s plans to defrost America’s chilly relations with Russia. For McCain, his return to his personal war front in Ukraine came three years after he stood with Ukrainian neo-Nazis and fascists on Kiev’s Maidan Square calling for the ouster of president Viktor Yanukovych.
Meanwhile, McCain, Graham, and their neo-conservative allies within the Republican and Democratic parties, as well as press outlets like The Washington Post, have questioned Trump’s ultimate loyalty to the United States. The neocons’ angst arises from their anger over the incoming president wisely doubting the efficacy of Central Intelligence Agency «intelligence» linking Russia to a spate of computer penetrations of U.S. computer systems and networks, including pre-election hacks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and private email of Hillary Clinton’s top campaign officials.
After President Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from Washington, DC and San Francisco and shut down two Russian diplomatic compounds in Maryland and New York in retaliation for unproven Russian government involvement in the hacking, McCain and his neocon war hawks doubled down by claiming that Russian hacking of U.S. computer systems amounted to an «act of war». Seizing on the neocons’ war frenzy, the CIA and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that Russian hackers had penetrated the electrical power grid operated by Vermont’s Burlington Electric. The Washington Post, owned by Amazon billionaire and CIA cloud computing contractor Jeff Bezos, echoed the grid hacking story as factual.
There was only one problem with the Russian electrical grid hacking headline: it was not true. Burlington Electric revealed that a laptop computer in the possession of a Burlington Electric employee, which allegedly was infected by a malware program linked by the U.S. government to Russian hackers, was never connected to the Vermont electrical grid. The laptop contained a hackers’ software package called Neutrino, which is not linked, in any way, to Russia. An attempt by the «Amazon Post» and the war hawks to pin the Vermont grid story on Russia and link it to the DNC hacking fell flat on its face.
Burlington Electric issued a statement on December 30, 2016, identifying DHS as the «boy who cried wolf» that issued the same «Russian malware» scare to electric utilities across the United States. The statement read, «Last night, U.S. utilities were alerted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of a malware code used in Grizzly Steppe, the name DHS has applied to a Russian campaign linked to recent hacks. We acted quickly to scan all computers in our system for the malware signature. We detected the malware in a single Burlington Electric Department laptop not connected to our organization’s grid systems».
It turned out that Ukraine, the country where McCain, Graham, and Minnesota’s rather myopic Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar were kibitzing with army troops and neo-Nazi armed militia members over the holidays, was the source of the malware hacking program used to hack into DNC computers. The Washington Post was also forced to shamefully retract its grid hacking story. The episode was yet another example of the haste at which the outgoing Obama administration and the neocon toadies in the Republican Party led by McCain were apt to blame any bad news on «the Russians». It was as if the Cold War witch hunter senator Joseph McCarthy had met the Keystone Kops. The situation would have been funny had it not been for the fact that the actions of Obama and the neocons propelled the world closer to cataclysmic warfare with the likes of McCain, Graham, and others beating the war drums.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and DHS amateurishly coined the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC computers with the cover term «Grizzly Steppe», a code phrase that would have been rejected by any legitimate Hollywood movie script writer as being too cartoonish and campy. Moreover, the malware used in the hacking of the Democrats’ computers was an antiquated version of PHP, a program originally designed for personal home pages, hence the abbreviation PHP, but which now stands for «PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor».
The PHP malware was found to be freely distributed by a Ukrainian hacker group as a hackers’ tool. Although the FBI, DHS, and CIA did not bother to investigate whether the Ukrainian hackers were linked to McCain’s and Graham’s friends in the Ukrainian intelligence service, the Ukrainians would have had every reason to initiate a further damaging fracture in relations between the United States and Russia. Furthermore, the Ukrainians could have availed themselves of «network weaving» tools to run their malware through servers in Russia.
In fact, the amateurish FBI/DHS «Grizzly Steppe» report found that the Ukrainian malware, later blamed on the Russians, had passed through the IP [Internet Protocol] addresses of 389 organizations in 61 different countries. None of the 389 malware pass-through IPs, including those of the University of Michigan; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York; Datasource AG in Ingmarso, Sweden; Hunenberg, Switzerland; Kustbandet AB in Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria; Voxility S.R.L. of Bucharest; and Amazon.com – the company owned by none other than Washington Post owner and CIA contractor Mr. Bezos! – were linked to the Russian government. These include the United States, Ukraine, Russia, China, France, Germany, Seychelles, Moldova, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Montenegro, Romania, and Israel. Such a rich global network, which included several TOR anonymous browsing gateways, would have provided more than ample network weaving opportunities to mask the original Ukrainian digital fingerprints on the actual hacking of DNC computers.
The malware program, called P.A.S. version 3.1.7., is contained in a web shell of PHP code. The malware program states that it is «Made in Ukraine» and the date of the program, 2011-2016 is followed by the letters «UA,» the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) two-letter code for Ukraine
In eastern Ukraine, standing alongside a camouflage-festooned chocolate mogul president Petro Poroshenko, McCain and Graham accused Russia of «attacking» the United States, with Graham accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of «hacking our election». Both called for increased sanctions against Russia. However, the sum-total of computer security knowledge of these two Republican fossils would not exceed that possessed by a kindergarten student in Arizona or South Carolina.
Rather than accuse other Americans, including Mr. Trump, of engaging in potentially treasonous activities, perhaps Mr. McCain should recall the charges made by several U.S. prisoners-of-war about his «singing» to his North Vietnamese captors after his plane was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967. McCain, according to some fellow POWs who later spoke out, gladly gave his captors about six months’ worth of U.S. Navy operational plans for the bombing of North Vietnam and Laos. McCain’s psychosis about Russia reportedly could stem from his time at the «Hanoi Hilton» POW prison. McCain was given the Russian KGB code name «Jack Mouse» and, per Chan Chong Duet, the commander of the prison, the downed Navy pilot and son of the U.S. Pacific Forces Commander, Admiral John McCain, Jr., was quite free with the information he passed to North Vietnamese, Cuban, and Soviet officers while being treated for his wounds by Soviet doctors. If McCain wants to question the loyalty of any American, he should look into a mirror. He should also seek out psychiatric assistance.
It is said that Russia has documentation that McCain spilled his guts to the Viet Cong in exchange for better living conditions while in captivity. This would explain his knee jerk anti-russo rhetoric.
I guess this is one where I’d need to see the actual proof. Just like where I’d want to see the proof the ICs have about Russian hacking.
This particular thing just doesn’t seem to fit (about his captivity). It has been reported that he actually turned down an offer to be released (because of his father’s rank) by the NVs. It was also reported about the mistreatment of both him and his prison mates.
Frankly, I don’t know what to think about that time, but what I do know now is that his last 20 years of dubious service to this country as an elected official is well documented, and it is far worse than anything he could have done as a prisoner of war. He is insane in my opinion and I think the state of Arizona is collectively insane also for having kept him in office all this time.
Something just ain’t right with John McCain :-/
The man is an extremely dangerous fool.
As bad as two terms of Obama has been I’m certain that two terms of McCain would have been worse. It would have meant WW3. And it would have destroyed the Republican party.
McCain apparently wants war with Russia through surrogates like Saudi Arabia fueling the Syrian Civil War and NATO fueling the “Ukrainian Front”.
Money apparently for the military industrial complex selling arms and enabling Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab neighbors to send energy to Europe via a Syrian pipeline cutting out Russia as a supplier.
There’s $$$$$$$$ on the table here, big $$$$$$$$$.
As Peter Hitchens pointed out in a column last month, the deeply in debt and economically anemic United Kingdom needs Saudi oil and money, hence its marching in lockstep with the anti-Russian agenda and the jihadists fighting the Syrian government.
The United States is not far behind in both departments, hence out approach supporting the Saudi agenda.
Hopefully DJT can turn the ship around and change the agenda in Washington away from subservience to the nation of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.
The man is an extremely dangerous fool.
I remember after he lost the primary to George Bush, he went into a sort of rage in which he tried to destroy George Bush's candidacy. I don't recall the details, but I remember thinking that he does not have the temperament to ever be president. I did support him against Obama, but I do not think he would have been a good president at all.
Read the last paragraph in the article, a few times.
If McCain has been guilty of all mentioned (serious allegations), then I’d seriously question why he hasn’t been pulled in or in a straight-jacket already?
Point is, if one writes an article accusing a person, according to ‘this or that source’, make it real, bring legal charges and put the accused in jail. McCain didn’t surface publicly yesterday- why is he still around or politically very active?
I wish they would release the documentation. Was McCain really given a North Vietnamese apartment with two prostitutes to keep him happy?
“And it would have destroyed the Republican party.”
You talk like that would be a bad thing.
It would have been a bad thing in that it wold be much like the Democrats are today. If it were not for the overreach of The Won.Kenyan, the Democrats would be in a position much like they were when he took office. They were even comfortable in the idea that Democrat majorities would reign for 40 years. But a funny thing happened when the utter arrogance of the party and their new leader got in the way of dynasty building.
It would have been even worse if McCain were to have won in my estimation. Just this incident is a prime example of how he would have let his eternal arrogance from beating the Keating 5 rap because he sold out to somebody who would have directed the world meltdown he has continually engaged in since.
The NVA, not VC. Yes, he ran his mouth. He was the son of our CINCPAC (his father). The NVA thought they had a prince. Regardless of his actions back then I have problems with US elected types meeting with foreign troops and not ours without presidential approval. McCain and Graham “DO NOT” make US foreign policy. The Pres. does.
Boy, I have really come to dislike and detest McCain, but I swear, every time an article comes up about the fire on the USS Forrestal, I find myself in the crappy position of having to defend him on that...people are always saying he caused the fire, etc, which is complete, and utter ignorance and BS.
I always say, we should attack him on the things he deserves to be attacked on (such as his idiotic support of the Russian Election Hacking Meme) not the BS he DIDN’T do, like cause the death of over a hundred men on the USS Forrestal.
The forms of the treachery, some subtle, others openly blatant, have been exhibited over the years, some against the overall interests of the US, some against his political party of choice, some against economic interests of the financial institutions for his own personal aggrandizement, and some against his own family, which was held in high esteem in the eyes of Americans for the service performed with the US Navy by his parents and grandparents. John McCain has coasted on reputation most of his adult life, asserting himself to be much more than he eventually turned out to be. The hype did not match the performance, and bad as the Current Occupant has been for America and the world, John McCain would have been no improvement, a Richard Nixon without the insight and political acumen.
The author never mentions the USS Forrestal.
He has a tendency to get photographed with guys who look just like known terrorists...
why does the CIA have a contract worth $600 million with Amazon / Bezos and the Washington Post???
One of the more disturbing clauses in this whole thing.
Bkmk
Sorry. I know. Didn’t mean to muddy your thread. It was an observation of a constant thing that occurs. Don’t be surprised if someone jumps in here and says it.
In Pensacola they teach you how to NOT do a wet start in primary. I guess in the old days it was “funny” to make a big flash boom on start up behind your can??? Anyone remember those days? It was before my time.
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