Archive for the 'Covert Operations' Category
Rebels Hijack Gadhafi’s Phone Network
April 13th, 2011Read, U.S. Has Secret Tools to Force Internet on Dictators for context and then you tell me who you think pulled this off. While the story below describes a much different technical solution than what’s described in the latter story, there’s a lot happening that’s spooky. If Ousama Abushagur is just a, “31-year-old Libyan telecom […]
The Sock Puppet Industrial Complex: U.S. Trains ‘Activists’ to Evade Security Forces
April 11th, 2011If any component of this is noteworthy, it’s the scale. The core of this is as old as the hills. Many of the TwitFace kids today haven’t even heard of the The Mighty Wurlitzer, but every crop of kids that fascists harvest are generally ignorant of who they’re actually serving, and there’s a fresh crop […]
How a Big U.S. Bank Laundered Billions from Mexico’s Murderous Drug Gangs
April 4th, 2011Bloomberg ran a great piece about this back in June 2010. What has happened since then? Of course, there was some wrist-slapping, but, “Now that the year’s ‘deferred prosecution’ has expired, the bank is in effect in the clear.” Via: Guardian: On 10 April 2006, a DC-9 jet landed in the port city of Ciudad […]
Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Lifeline Most as Bernanke Kept Borrowers Secret
April 1st, 2011Via: Bloomberg: U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s two-year fight to shield crisis-squeezed banks from the stigma of revealing their public loans protected a lender to local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya. Dexia SA (DEXB), based in Brussels and Paris, borrowed as […]
More Flash Crashes
March 31st, 2011Via: Reuters: Ten new exchange-traded funds suffered their own mini “flash crashes” shortly after the U.S. stock market opened on Thursday, suggesting recent measures put in place to protect against extreme market moves may not be enough. Nasdaq OMX Group Inc said it canceled trades in 10 new ETFs sponsored by Scottrade affiliate FocusShares, some […]
Libyan Rebel Leader Spent Much of Past 20 Years in Suburban Virginia
March 31st, 2011Easily the best line in a couple of weeks. *chortle*: Since coming to the United States in the early 1990s, Hifter lived in suburban Virginia outside Washington, D.C. Badr said he was unsure exactly what Hifter did to support himself… Via: McClatchy: The new leader of Libya’s opposition military spent the past two decades in […]
‘CIA Operating in Libya’
March 31st, 2011This story is a month old: “We’ve been reaching out to many different Libyans who are attempting to organize in the east and, as the revolution moves westward, there as well,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said en route to Geneva for talks on Libya. The U.S. will provide “any kind of assistance” to those […]
NSA Investigating Cyber Attack on NASDAQ
March 30th, 2011Via: Bloomberg: The National Security Agency, the top U.S. electronic intelligence service, has joined a probe of the October cyber attack on Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ) amid evidence the intrusion by hackers was more severe than first disclosed, according to people familiar with the investigation. The involvement of the NSA, which uses some of […]
Secret X-37B Space Plane Spotted Again by Amateur Skywatchers
March 29th, 2011Via: Space: After an intense search, a crew of amateur satellite sleuths has spotted the U.S. Air Force’s second X-37B space plane – a robotic spacecraft that launched into orbit March 5. The mission of the unmanned X-37B space plane, which is known officially as the Orbital Test Vehicle 2 (OTV-2), is shrouded in secrecy. […]
U.S. Says Libyan Rebels May Sell Oil
March 29th, 2011Via: Reuters: The United States on Monday gave a green light to sales of Libyan crude oil from rebel-held territory, giving a potential boost to forces battling Muammar Gaddafi. A U.S. Treasury Department official said Libyan rebels would not be subject to U.S. sanctions if they avoid entities linked to Gaddafi’s regime, which would allow […]
