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From last year’s , but still cogent. With , and .

How hackers pulled off a $20 million bank heist

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/how-hackers-pulled-of-a-20-million-bank-heist/

By Lily Hay Newman
Wired.com
3/17/2019

In January 2018 a group of hackers, now thought to be working for the North Korean state-sponsored group Lazarus, attempted to steal $110 million from the Mexican commercial bank Bancomext. That effort failed. But just a few months later, a smaller yet still elaborate series of attacks allowed hackers to siphon off 300 to 400 million pesos, or roughly $15 to $20 million from Mexican banks. Here’s how they did it.

At the RSA security conference in San Francisco last Friday, penetration tester and security advisor Josu Loza, who was an incident responder in the wake of the April attacks, presented findings on how hackers executed the heists both digitally and on the ground around Mexico. The hackers’ affiliation remains publicly unknown. Loza emphasizes that while the attacks likely required extensive expertise and planning over months, or even years, they were enabled by sloppy and insecure network architecture within the Mexican financial system, and security oversights in SPEI, Mexico’s domestic money transfer platform run by central bank Banco de México, also known as Banxico.

War Profiteers: Who Makes Money getting rid of Russian Communism

SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS
Science  14 Feb 1919: Vol. 49, Issue 1259, pp. 165-169
DOI: 10.1126/science.49.1259.165
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/49/1259/165

1) The Swiss sell munitions to kill people that their Red Cross Army will go Save!

Switzerland

We kill them on one side… and care for them on the other’

does not officially provide weapons to belligerents, in accordance with a rule laid down in the 1907 Hague Conventions. But the First World War, with its extreme violence, increasingly powerful weapons and duration, resulted in a huge demand for ammunition that Swiss industry was able to meet in large quantities.
“Although Switzerland was no longer able to export ammunition from August 1914, due to international law, there was nothing to stop the export of ammunition parts (brass parts, cast iron, wrought iron and bolts, etc). Thanks to this clever trick, Switzerland was able to deliver millions of rounds to the warring parties,” Cotter explained.

Explosives and Ammunition Surveillance
This division embodies Switzerland’s unique expertise in military explosives, propellant powders and signal flares. Knowing the chemical, technical and physical characteristics of these substances allows our experts to describe their ageing behavior, produce service-life forecasts, and estimate their effects on people, animals and the environment. The division’s daily work makes an important contribution to ammunition safety in the Swiss Armed Forces. Thierachern Facility
The Romand Group for Defense and Security Equipment (GRPM) groups some sixty French-speaking companies. Its purpose is to facilitate the access of French companies to the control of the Confederation, to participate in the creation of framework conditions favorable to the good relations between these companies and the federal administration, the political authorities and the general enterprises in charge of make purchases for the Swiss Army.

Dame Margot Fonteyn the ballerina
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Fonteyn

DANCER MARGOT FONTEYN and her HUSBAND

Margot Fonteyn was involved in plot with Castro to overthrow Panama, documents reveal. Fonteyn confessed to Foreign Office minister John Profumo – who was later involved in a notorious sex scandal – that she met Castro and took part in a mission to assemble rebels and weapons at sea for an attempted invasion of Panama.
►Her Husband was Dr Roberto Arias, the son of a former Panamanian president. They set out to sea in their yacht Nola, ostensibly on a fishing trip but in reality to gather men and arms for the coup. Dr Arias had made his enemies, and in 1964 one of them shot him, leaving him quadriplegic.

Fonteyn first met Roberto “Tito” Arias, an 18-year-old law student from Panama who would later become her husband. April 1959, Fonteyn was arrested, detained for 24 hours in a Panamanian jail, and then deported to New York City.

“Fonteyn buys from arms manufacture Dr. W in geneva .ch “

Her husband had staged a coup d’état against President Ernesto de la Guardia, possibly with the support of Fidel Castro. According to Fonteyn, the plot was hatched when she and her husband were visiting Cuba in January 1959, with Castro promising to assist Arias with arms or men.
The couple went fishing on their boat The Nola and during the voyage ordered fishermen to raise a buoy loaded with arms. The fishermen reported the couple who hurriedly decided that Arias should try to escape detection. In the night Arias jumped ship, boarding the shrimp boat Elaine,  while Fonteyn used her own yacht as a decoy to divert the government forces. She returned to Panama City to turn herself in, hoping her surrender would help her husband. Meeting at the prison with the British ambassador to Panama Sir Ian Henderson, Fonteyn confessed her involvement and the British Foreign Office granted that her statement was confidential.

►The British embassy arranged for her release, and flew her to New York City on 22 April, without disclosing to the United States government that Cuba had been involved in the plot. Panamanian Ambassador Arias took refuge in the Brazilian embassy of Panama and arrived safely in Lima, Peru, the same day Fonteyn arrived in New York. The couple were reunited in June, in Rio de Janeiro and by November, she had returned to the stage, dancing with Michael Somes in an Ashton pas de deux for a London benefit performance. She continued to dance until 1979, when she was a remarkable 60 years old. 1919-1991
Margot Fonteyn dies from cancer in Panama

List of ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Panama

2) The Cambridge Spys

Panamanian Ambassador Arias was a Graduate of Cambridge who introduced her to a world of Onansis, Winston Churchill,  and fascist leaders whom Arias was drawn to and who would have become one if he had really come to control Panama.

► Maclean, Burgess, Philby and Blunt were British members of a KGB spy ring that penetrated the intelligence system of the UK and passed vital information to the Soviets during World War Two and the early stages of the Cold War.

Harold ”Kim” Philby was a product of the British ruling class but, like his own eccentric father, the explorer and Arabist St John Philby, contemptuous of it. Soviet spy Kim Philby was a double agent and the notorious Third Man in the Cambridge spy ring of the 1930s, in charge of all things Russia for MI6.
Philby was the senior officer of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in Washington in the early 1950s, working with the CIA and FBI.

►Philby had made another powerful friend: James Jesus Angleton, the crafty, paranoid head of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton’s and Elliott’s unwitting disclosures helped Philby sink almost every important Anglo-American spy operation for twenty years, leading countless operatives to their doom.

Philby and Maclean’s fellow spy, Burgess, were intimate friends; tipped off by Philby, who organised their defection, they fled to Moscow. For years he had sabotaged Allied missions behind the Iron Curtain and had calculatedly sent dozens of agents to their deaths. One historian said his work for the Soviets was ”beyond price”. <more>

The family with the golden touch Ian Fleming made a fortune from James Bond, but the serious money – in art, Russian goldmines and Middle East billionaires – is discreetly located in Mayfair, writes Ruth Sunderland.

2) WAR PROFITEERS

Private Manufacture of Arms, Munitions and Implements of War

2019 Exclusive: FBI’s War Crimes Unit on the Chopping Block
A special unit within the Federal Bureau of Investigation that handles war crimes may be shut down imminently, according to officials familiar with the administration’s decision-making process. Can’t have them looking at the President of the United States and his staff.
https://justsecurity.org/62548/exclusive-fbis-war-crimes-unit-chopping-block/

Caryle Group

War Privateer Carlyle Group

and the Bush family connections with the Carlyle Group

Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government abuse and corruption, called on former President George Herbert Walker Bush to resign immediately from the Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, while his son President George W. Bush is in office. Today’s New York Times reported that the elder Bush is an “ambassador” for the $12 billion private investment firm and last year traveled to the Middle East on its behalf. The former president also helped the firm in South Korea.

The New York Times reported that as compensation, the elder Bush is allowed to buy a stake in the Carlyle Group’s investments, which include ownership in at least 164 companies throughout the world (thereby by giving the current president an indirect benefit). James Baker, the former Secretary of State who served as President George W. Bush’s point man in Florida’s election dispute, is a partner in the firm. The firm also gave George W. Bush help in the early 1990’s when it placed him on one of its subsidiary’s board of directors.
Carlyle is also cashing in on the Homeland Security front and the enactment of the Patriot Act.  Two Carlyle companies, Federal Data Systems and US Investigations Services, hold multi-billion dollar contracts to provide background checks for airlines, the Pentagon, the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security.
USIS used to be a federal agency, until it was privatized in 1996 and snatched up by Carlyle.
http://theinternationalcoalition.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-war-made-bush-family-rich.html

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, it became known that Bush Sr. was financially linked to the bin Laden family. The Sept 28, 2001 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that, “George H.W. Bush, the father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, an international consulting firm.”
https://www.judicialwatch.org/archive/2001/printer_1045.shtml

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE – AUDIO BOOK
LISTENING ENTERTAINMENT

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley was served with a subpoena today as he left the CPAC stage

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley was served with a subpoena today as he left the CPAC stage, the Kansas City Star reports.

The first standing ovation at CPAC comes for…Ollie at the North American Conservative Union’s CPAC conference

How can we not forget Crazy Ollie the arms dealing traitor.

Individual 1 Trump Organization, Trump Tower Moscow Project

Individual 1 Trump Organization and his Family involved with the Trump Tower Moscow Project

Trump Knew and directed the negotiation during the presidential campaign.

The American population needs to know what happened.

Laurence Tribe: President Donald Trump Can Be Indicted For Federal Crimes

The get out of jail free card.

If no indictment then Trump can be pardoned by Pence and get to keep all the profits!!!

Harvard’s Laurence Tribe: Impeach Donald Trump Now
Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe explains why it is critically important to put the impeachment process in motion now, before it is too late.

President Donald Trump, Ivanka Deny Special Treatment For Jared Kushner

White House announces Kushner met with Saudi crown prince as Cohen testifies

FEBRUARY 27, 2019
Donald Trump’s senior adviser Jared Kushner met with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Tuesday in their first face-to-face encounter since the October 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who sources have told CNN the CIA assesses with high confidence ordered Khashoggi’s murder, met Kushner along with his father King Salman
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/world/middleeast/kushner-Mohammed-bin-Salman.html

House panel demands Kushner clearance details from White House
A Democratic-led congressional panel on Friday demanded that the White House comply with requests for documents and witnesses for a probe into alleged security clearance abuses involving President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and others.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-kushner/house-panel-demands-kushner-clearance-details-from-white-house-idUSKCN1QI5CU

I’ll take venal hypocrites for $1,000 please Alex.