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WikiLeaks Begins Releasing Stratfor Internal Emails
owenferguson writes "WikiLeaks has begun leaking a cache of over 5 million internal emails from the the Texas-headquartered 'global intelligence' company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal's Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. The associated news release can be found on pastebin."
The plots of the reverse vampires will be revealed.
How do you go from this...
A company that fronts as an intelligence publisher... but secretly acts as an intelligence agency.
Even if that introduction wasn't clear enough, the remainder of the press release would have cleared things up quite well.
You mean the ones that acted as the catalyst for the Arab Spring? Maybe you didn't find them that interesting, but some of us did.
Here's a fun leak. Complete with passwords like:
changeme
and
stratfor
Oh You POS
You've totally nailed the purpose of wikileaks: to entertain you. They should just give up.
after the Stratfor website went live, one could log in with the username/password combo of "username" and "password". If that's how much attention they paid to protecting their rather expensive subscription service, one wonders is if the security of their email servers was any better.
Seems like a familiar acronym...
From the article:
"Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money."
I hope it's effective. I don't have a problem with people buying info.
I do have a huge problem with people in positions of responsibility selling it for their own profit at our expense though...
For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. - Publius
You mean the ones that acted as the catalyst for oppressive Arab governments to be overthrown and replaced by even more oppressive Arab governments? Maybe you didn't find them that interesting, but some of us did.
FTFY
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I'm pretty sure that proof could be posted that the president eats babies, and a large segment of the population like yourself would say 'meh'. There was some rather nasty revelations in the Manning leaks, but I'm guessing you missed them or didn't cae.
That complacency is why our democracy is sliding away.
It's on America's tortured brow, That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
I think the point is that these intelligence services go beyond what any reasonable person would consider ethical or appropriate.
And their CEO is toast... the word of even this leaking out via intercepted e-mail: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/leaked-email-shows-stratfor-ceo-george-friedman-resigned-two-hours-ago-over-latest-breach
Zerohedge is all over this like white on rice. For those complaining about boring content in the leaks, see ZH's coverage on the e-mails relating to Obama's inability to maintain a liberal/progressive position and the Republicans' ability to field a decent candidate: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/stratfor-email-leak-reveals-insider-views-obama-emanuel-romney
Sure, we all knew that the players of the American political football game hadn't yet figured out which direction to run on the field, which team they're playing for, or why their ball is spherical and made of pentagons and hexagons, but it's fun to read about this half-assed private intelligence agency saying the same things that we've all been thinking AND about their supposed contacts with shadowy billionaire Powers That Be saying the same: that the Democrats have no spine and the Republicans no brains.
No, pastebin fronts as a code-sharing site. :)
Seriously, how have they not been nuked from orbit by the powers that be? Or at least vigorously co-opted by the NSA?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Her: "What looks like a bear, acts like and bear and IS a bear?"
Me: "Gee honey bubbles, I have no idea... I know I know - A BEAR!!!!"
Her: "Nuh uh!"
Me: "No? Then what looks like a bear and acts like a bear and IS a bear that ISN'T a Bear?"
Her: "A BERENSTAIN BEAR!!!!"
My daughter, the genius. If the CIA is a bear, Stratfor is a Berenstain Bear. Kind of like how a Southern Mansion is a Southern Mansion, but a Southern Mansion Style McMansion in the exurbs of San Diego is a caricature of a Mansion. Both comfy places to live, the McMansions just fake and cheezy and third rate as fuckall.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I am seriously baffled that there are people who didn't realize that Stratfor gathers up and analyzes the intelligence they publish.
Basically, what I think the GP poster is saying is that they're a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher... but secretly generates intelligence. To publish. And, as a private company they save some of it for paying customers.
I haven't finished reading every document in the leak (and probably won't if I don't find something interesting soon) but so far it's not really revealing anything that anyone who's heard of Stratfor didn't know. Except maybe a level of security incompetence (which is really what Anonymous is best at revealing).
Re: Seriously, how have they...
Disinformation, selective leaks, like to see who is interested, who can work out what. All the chatter lights up a lot of hidden blogs, press people who can still think.
95% can be true, a few real gems in the released works and then that small fake amount that makes the next war seem "ok" to the average person when the press 'finds' it.
If a real expert gets talking in court or via lawyers to the press, then it gets much more interesting.
Costas Tsalikidis, the Greek telco whistleblower who was found hanged.
Spyware eavesdropped on the Greek prime Minister and other top officials’ cell phone calls; it even monitored the car phone of Greece’s secret service chief.
Adamo Bove head of security at Telecom Italia who exposed the CIA renditions via cell phone logs ‘fell’ to his death.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the D.C. Madam was found hanged.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The french revolution had quite a lot of bad governments before something good was found as well.
I'm not a 'leftist', so I'll have to apologize for not fitting into your world of walking, talking strawmen.
Regardless, you seem to be under the (albeit sincerely naive) impression that all those things you list are still working in your favour, and that those in political and corporate power are beholden to your interests. They aren't. You're thinking is about 50 years too late - those were the 'good ole days' of benevolence and spirit, working against common enemies and using whatever means necessary to triumph.
In a world where governments are beholden to corporations with no loyalties, they are as likely to be working against you as they are for you. Get it yet?
It's on America's tortured brow, That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Ironically, considering the present circumstances, Stratfor was trying to get into what it called the leak-focused "gravy train" that sprung up after WikiLeaks' Afghanistan disclosures:
"[Is it] possible for us to get some of that 'leak-focused' gravy train? This is an obvious fear sale, so that's a good thing. And we have something to offer that the IT security companies don't, mainly our focus on counter-intelligence and surveillance that Fred and Stick know better than anyone on the planet... Could we develop some ideas and procedures on the idea of 'leak-focused' network security that focuses on preventing one's own employees from leaking sensitive information... In fact, I'm not so sure this is an IT problem that requires an IT solution."
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
Either way it's a newspaper clipping service with less than twenty employees and delusions of granduer.
Look at the comments on that last story about these people to see how well their self promotion worked. Restoring their computer systems was seen by many here as an epic task and not the reality of dealing with a server or two and twenty or less PCs and laptops.
I don't see how as a practical matter you could be one and not the other and be any good at your job. A newspaper publisher either has to do its own journalism, or it has to just aggregate other peoples. An intelligence company needs to either aggregate other peoples information (which is really analysis, rather than data sourcing), and it will need a source of that information. The difference between a publisher that contracts independent sources, and a company with regular employees doing these things is not that big a deal.
The actual article isn't 'intelligence agency vs intelligence publisher' it's an intelligence company that as one of the things it's doing is trying to bribe people for insider information, and to resell that insider information in violation of corrupt practices and insider trading rules.
If you want information (call it journalism, intelligence, verification or whatever) on the health of say Hugo Chavez, your options are limited on how to get that which isn't illegal (assuming he isn't telling the truth). If you're being contracted to train intelligence analysts or agents from a government agency you need to have people who have past experience with intelligence gathering and analysis. To accomplish either of those things it's pretty obvious what they're up to. How do journalists get sources or info? Right, either you pay them, or they volunteer for the promise of future payoffs. That's the nature of the business and insofar as journalism is legal, it is legal.
The only thing particularly more sleazy than the nature of the business itself is the insider trading and related work (either paying off private or government persons for information about information that is not yet public). That's the sort of thing that journalists, parliament/congress etc. have particular legal walls around, because you really really really cannot use information that will be public before it becomes public. It shouldn't even be surprising that these things happen, it's only a matter of if or when they get caught by people who aren't in on the deal.
Just in general doing business in most of the world requires paying off the right people, in cash, in the right currency, at the right time. Everyone knows it, no one admits to it, no one really does anything about it because that's just how the world works. It used to be tax deductible for businesses in germany to pay bribes overseas for example, it's just the cost of doing business.
The Bhopal disaster was caused by Union Carbide. It had nothing to do with Dow. I don't like Dow either, but blaming them for that is ridiculous.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
There are a lot - wikileaks won an award about their ones from Kenya for example. It's just that US media is of course interested in the US stuff.
Q:What's a Stratfor?
A:Playing the blues.
DOW didn't buy on a whim, many people spent a lot of time in the process of buying the corp. Simply selling a corporation does not allow it to escape justice; despite them usually escaping justice anyway. DOW bought Union Carbide knowing the issues and expecting to never have to factor that cost other than maybe a few PR statements and lawyers considered minor baggage in the acquisition.
It has everything to do with DOW; because Union Carbide still exists within a bigger corporation - simply because the name changed and some people shuffled around does not make them disappear, it means the new name becomes the one we rail against.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
No one likes you here.
. . . because the US will never tolerate democracy in the middle east?
Ignoring Iraq and Israel?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I didn't realize that they had found a good one.
The thing I don't get, and haven't gotten since the beginning is... how the hell do we (or does anyone for that matter,) know ANYTHING coming out of Wikileaks is accurate, true, or even real? They could just be making it all up. For example... I am leaking the following confidential White House Memo: (How can anyone know for sure this isn't real? You can't. Just as there's no way to know the ones leaked by Wikileaks are real.)
From: President of the US
To: Secretary of Defense
Subject: UFO Cover-Up
I have been informed by the Secretary of the Air Force that ANOTHER UFO has landed at Area 52. Pursuant to Executive Order 1972-0812-3b, para. 4, all extraterrestrial aircraft are to land at Area 51. This information must be disseminated to all incoming ETA's, UFO's, etc., to ensure no further incidents of the kind that happened April 5th occur again.
If this kind of thing recurs, the cost to taxpayers incurred by covering up out-of-zone landings will exacerbate the budget deficit. With reelection right around the corner, that cannot be allowed to happen.
Please see that this is taken care of.
~The President.
See? Looks real enough, doesn't it?
Yeah, if they can't form a perfect representative democracy within a single year, then they deserve to live under dictatorial rule forever. It's high time we take up the white man's burden and show them how to live, because clearly they have no right to try to rule themselves.
Just out of curiosity, roughly how many fifths of a person would you say Arabs are?
At least you're honest about it. Probably won't help you when they come after you though.
and your insane conspiracy theories.
Go back to stormfront and stop posting your trash on slashdot.
No, Dow bought Union Carbide's assets. That's like saying that if you bought a car from someone that they used to run over an old lady, somehow you're now responsible for her murder. It just doesn't work that way.
Further than that, the government had already released Union Carbide from liability, so it's really perplexing that anybody thinks Dow should have any responsibility in this situation.
nothing will change, nothing has changed, its a 30 second flash in headlines, and a 10 second clip on one Simpsons episode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDEu0-1TW-c) once the suits in the tv room get a clue.
Its a simple fact, no one cares, or no one cares to understand ... so big fucking what? nothing has changed a single bit.
I am about to show my age, but once upon a time, news organizations were amongst the premier intelligence gathering organizations on Earth. No shit. Reporters could discover sources that foreign agents could never approach, keep secrets, and even upend a Presidency. Think of that. Now, they are just parts of conglomerates' entertainment divisions. So, what happened to the really good investigative journalists, who could dig diamonds from piles of crap? Well, some of them are at Stratfor.
You mean the ones that acted as the catalyst for the Arab Spring?
We keep hearing that from fans and boosters of Wikileaks, but it simply isn't true. Do you really think that the Arabs living under bad governments needed someone to tell them that they had badly run corrupt governments when it was a fact that assulted them nearly every day of their lives? Do you not know that many of those countries had been simmering under revolution or revolt for years? I guess the "White Man's Burden" is still with us in the form of "Wikileaks".
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
And we don't want to be around the kind of people who like him.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And principles are for chumps, and limits on government power,pah! those Founding Fathers was a bunch of commie queers! If you're not taking it up the rear every hour of every day as a card carrying member of the Cult of Authoritarianism, then your a Leftist fag!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think the most unnerving parts of this could be:
- They are sometimes used by the US government (and others), presumably to provide a hint of plausible deniability.
- They're trading on markets using information gained via espionage, sometimes with information gained at the urging of government agencies.
- They're all-around scary dudes with close ties to our government and our financial organizations.
We'll get more details, but those crazies with delusional rantings about shady para-governmental organizations with nearly boundless resources and a shortage of moral or ethical restriction? Yeah, they're going to be busy for a while.
"[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase"
At the very least, they're looking to coerce or bribe an Israeli intelligence informant. It's certainly well into the grey area. Their great efforts to set up a pseudo-independent StratCap StratFund for StratInsider StratTrading stinks of SEC violations if they leveraged information gained in one space (by its nature, illicit) for gains in another.
Just out of curiosity, roughly how many fifths of a person would you say Arabs are?
Five.
But yahoos on Slashdot who ascribe any criticism of Middle Eastern fascism to some kind of racism...perhaps one.
Advice: on VPS providers
Ironically the wikileaks press release was embargoed...
and if his purpose was to enter into intelligent discussion he probably would have tried to.
i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
I agree. The scandals, if there are any real ones, are going to amount to fancy new kinds of insider trading and tax evasion, with some outing of dirty politicians on the side.
I think you need to go back and re-read some of this information, as you've obviously missed a lot.
There are documents describing plans for insider trading. There are tons of references to how they collect and pay for their info, which are shady at best and criminal at worst.
Stratfor claims to be "just a newsletter site that does some intel analysis", but these emails make it very clear that they also do intel COLLECTION, which is a completely different ball-game and far more likely to reveal illegal dealings. There's even more than that.
Basically, they're a vertical integration of the private intel world. They solicit clients for analyis reports, data collection and action plans. They themselves are directly involved with the data collection and marketing it to potential buyers.
So they're actually covert intelligence operatives that will sell to anyone with enough money but have access to a lot of classified US material that claim to be "just intelligence analysts."
FTFY.
...considering this company, at first glance at TFS, seems to be primarily concerned with passing information of a secure and sensitive nature between not only State agencies of different countries but also defence contractors which themselves are concerned also with collecting and dispersing such information for whatever purposes; I'm concerned that it is dealing with the company which had the dubious honour of processing in and storing the UK census data from 2011. This is considered live information and as far as I'm concerned, what with the nature of the questions* contained in that census (I was a refuser for the following reason), that information in the wrong hands (ie ANY agency or individual working under the flag of a different nation - ANY DIFFERENT NATION!) is a persistent threat to national security, and whoever authorised such an arrangement should hang by their bollocks. If Lockheed Martin are involved with such a company, how much of the UK census data have they passed through this company to other companies or agencies, or how much of that data that this company has been entrusted with has found its way to eg DHS? I for one am very concerned.
*ie, what's the occupation of every adult of working age in the household, what's their earning power, how many hours do they work, how often individuals travel abroad, where they travel to...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Problem isn't that we missed them or don't care. Problem is, if we pay attention we're left with two choices: do nothing and have all the crap hanging over our conscience, or abandon our comfortable lives to do something about it. It's much easier to shove our fingers in our ears and sing lalalala, ignorance is bliss.
That complacency is why our democracy is sliding away.
When our you people going to stop using "democracy" as some fucking magic incantation? Democracy was a good form of government for the 20th century, but it's been completely subverted now. Get over it, it don't work no more, the politicians have figured out all the loopholes that circumvent all the advantages that "democracy" gave to regular people. Time to move on and come up with a better form of government.
it's fer killer chords.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
If we learned anything form 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq it's that government internal intelligence seems hampered by ideological slant and internal politics. Stratfor, on the other hand, tries to be as accurate as possible and even publishes how accurate it's predictions were on a quarterly and yearly basis. Quite frankly, I would be more worried if governments weren't using services like Stratfor.
This was one of the main things i believe Manning is alleged to have leaked. It shows a reuters journalist and some children (and the usual bunch of Iraqi civilians) being gunned down by an attack helicopter for no reason.
Five. Maybe a bit more if they've got an extra arm or two. Depends on how well they can use the added appendages, I suppose.
"You're thinking is about 50 years too late - those were the 'good ole days' of benevolence and spirit, working against common enemies and using whatever means necessary to triumph."
This wasn't true 50 years ago either. The last time this was true was before recorded history.
The last time we had something like this, they were called Pinkertons. Between this company and companies like Blackwater, it's... it's just not good.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Regardless, you seem to be under the (albeit sincerely naive) impression that all those things you list are still working in your favour, and that those in political and corporate power are beholden to your interests. They aren't. You're thinking is about 50 years too late - those were the 'good ole days' of benevolence and spirit, working against common enemies and using whatever means necessary to triumph.
The thing that has changed is the enemy. This is really old wisdom, literally 2000 years at the least. If a country lacks outside enemies, it starts to find inside enemies. And since we don't do that christian/jew/black/whatever persecution thing anymore, it turned out that simply considering everyone else an enemy and taking the whole capitalist everyone-for-himself mantra seriously was the easiest solution.
Like all dogmas, once you take things too seriously, they start to go downhill.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
No, you didn't, because it wasn't reported on Fox News.
never driven by the stratfor building have you?
The other guy basically summed it up, but I was referring to the linked article and what it implies, whether or not the article paints an accurate picture of the situation I have no idea.
Yours is a simplistic world view as well. After you buy the story, sure, what you say makes sense.
From http://pastebin.com/D7sR4zhT :
Is insider trading exciting enough for you?
Stephen King cultivated a loyal readership among people who suspect that it doesn't actually not work that way.
If DOW continues to operate dangerous assets in the same way they were run under the previous administration, the purchase is nothing more than a name change.
Democracy != puppet government that doesn't even have sovereignty over the land(in the case or Iraq).
As for Israel, I think the GP's point would better be phrased as: "The US will never tolerate Arabic/Muslim democracies in the Middle East". Polls of most Arab countries have shown that people overwhelmingly dislike/hate both the US and Israel and see Iran as less of a threat or no threat at all. A true democratic government in any of these countries would definitely not be in the best interest of the US. It is therefore not a big leap to assume that the US would try to stop the formation of such governments since it has been shown in the past to be proactive about defending its own(and Israel's) best interests.
One counter-example you could have given that might have been more correct of a democracy in the ME that the US does tolerate, would've been Lebanon. Although that still sort-of fails under the "sovereignty over the land" criteria of a proper government as the country is in a very precarious state and the government is not free to act as it wants to(for fear of civil war). Especially since there exists a militia in the country that has greater military might than the actual military(cf. Hezbollah).
Either way it's a newspaper clipping service with less than twenty employees and delusions of granduer.
Wait, wait wait. Were you talking about Strafor or Slashdot?
Which exactly did you find "interesting"? Can you name at least 10 that you dug up personally due to your interests in the matter? I didn't think so.
You've smuggled self-fulfilling prophecy into the equation in ten words or less. Nicely done. I see the eye in the pyramid behind your vision of corporate unity.
In the modern world, the "beholden to" social graph is a complex beast. Where the selectorate is large, the sensible strategy is to produce public goods. Where the selectorate is small, the sensible strategy is to line the pockets of your favorite cronies. Almost every player in an industrial society is tugged upon at both ends. Even where the selectorate is small, often the beholdee faces incompatible demands. Corporaphobes suspect that all corporations are perfectly aligned in their pursuit of evil. This beats thinking. Look at it from the other side. Revolutionaries all want exactly the same thing: to break away and be crowned the next king. When you translate from relative pronouns to absolute pronouns, these turn out not to be blissfully compatible visions. As Tolkien explained: Stalin does not share. Yet in your world, Krupp and IG Farben hatch no petty rivalries.
Thus almost everyone adopts a mixed strategy and acts with restraint, even if they wish it otherwise, though they might seize on a main chance if one presents itself. Conversely, from time to time an alignment of interests occurs where the public good gains the upper hand. Almost universally, the wealthiest countries produce the most public good. This is no accident, but a natural political process.
Only in the hagiography is the restraint of circumstance translated into purity of the heart. A little more difficult to pull off in a world where secrets roam free.
In the year after the downing of flight 007 I attended a evangelic Baptist church with a religious friend one Sunday morning. In addition to demanding an eye for a eye, there was an interesting sideline, a statistic about the vast increase in the number of known diseases as proof that the apocalypse was upon us. In truth, the number of known diseases was expanding at a tremendous pace due to improvements in diagnostic acumen.
Without a microscope at hand, many conditions reduce to "bad air". I hardly think the world is more corrupt than it ever was, we're just a hell of a lot better now at perceiving the tangled tapestry.
Just out of curiosity, roughly how many fifths of a person would you say Arabs are?
That would depend on how many slaves he is voting for. Perhaps you are unaware that it was the slave owners who wanted slaves counted as whole people so that they could use the number of slaves they owned to increase their own political power.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Do you really think that the Arabs living under bad governments needed someone to tell them that they had badly run corrupt governments
Strawman argument. The claimed effect of Wikileaks wasn't to "tell them how bad their government was", it was to "confirm" it. There is a difference between suspecting that your leaders are corrupt, and actually seeing classified intelligence reports from another country's diplomats detailing the exact corruption that is going on, and basically stating that your government operates more like the Mafia.
Would the revolution have happend without Facebook? Possibly - Berlin Wall fell long before people commonly had access to email. But does that mean that Facebook wasn't a factor? Obviously not: the fact that something was possible without X (where X is Facebook, Wikileaks etc.) does not mean that X was not a factor in this particular case.
Nobody is claiming that the Arab Spring happened because of Wikileaks, or because of Facebook or the internet. What people are claiming is that these things were contributing factors. Amnesty International named Wikileaks, the Internet, technology and journalism as being catalysts of the Arab Spring It's also worth pointing out that Qaddafi accused Wikileaks of being behind the Arab Spring in Tunisia, so it's not as if it's only Wikileaks supporters who saw Wikileaks as being a factor. Julian Assange has said Wikileaks played a role, but was not the major factor in the Arab Spring:
He said WikiLeaks had ''played a significant role'' in the uprisings sweeping the Arab world by publishing secret documents about those countries' authoritarian regimes, but the site was not the major factor in the movements.
''It does look like we played a significant role in it. That said, the tinder of the Middle East was drying,'' he said, crediting the internet and satellite TV stations like al-Jazeera with major roles in the uprisings.
Even those who reject the Wikileaks factor do admit it "may have played a minor atmospheric rule":
There’s been a lot of speculation, notably in the U.S., over the role social media played in the Tunisian revolution (it sure feels nice to say those two words.)
Wikileaks may have played a minor atmospheric rule in baring to the whole world what was whispered about the Ben Ali regime’s corruption, showing that US diplomats were aghast at the mafia nature of his regime.
Social media, from Twitter and Facebook to video upload sites, were crucial in spreading the word about what happened in a country where the press was tightly muzzled. It generated tremendous amounts of solidarity in the Arab world in beyond. But it’s just a means of communication, not a driver in itself.
At the end of the day, Tunisians took the streets because they had enough. They risked getting shot and beaten with no guarantee of success. And it’s likely that if they hadn’t heard about events around their country through Twitter and Facebook, they would have heard it by telephone.
This is wrong. A corporation is not a car, it is a person. If you buy a corporation you buy its assets and you buy its liabilities. If Dow didn't buy the liabilities, who owns them now?
Korma: Good
If they are as exciting as the Manning leaks, I'll pass.
So, you can't read, or you just didn't want to read it?
Which one is it?
i didn't know that Goldman Sachs bought a board membership and that it basically saved stratfor from going out of business.
i didn't know that GS was trading on information from stratfor. it creates all kinds of possibilities for GS to manipulate markets even more than it already does. it would be like if GS had someone sitting on the New York Times board or the Bloomberg board. it doesn't look very good to have people who make billions of dollars off of news reports actively having an influencing over the editorial decisions of that publishing body. but thats exactly what GS has here with stratfor and 'stratcap'.
now, add on top that Stratfor is allegedly bribing people for information, or using threats and intimidation, or 'pscyhological, sexual control' of sources to get information. you basically have Goldman Sachs directly involved in this stuff, its just all kinds of weird stuff.
Goldman has a history of inserting itself into relationships with other companies, and then doing weird things that are hugely conflicted. A perfect example being the Paulson hedge fund and the ABACUS junk mortgage CDOs they did in the mid 2000s. Then there is what they did on Nymex - being on the board, and being a huge trader at the same time, manipulating the oil market (see The Asylum by Leah McGrath Goodman).
"How do journalists get sources or info? Right, either you pay them, or they volunteer for the promise of future payoffs."
actually a lot of journalists get info by asking questions of people who, for various reasons, want the truth to be out there. or, at least, their side of the story to be out there in the public. sometimes sources find the journalists, not the other way around. paying sources is generally frowned upon by the professional journalism industry.
im not saying you are wrong, but not every journalist is like drew pearson.
because, the Espionage Act specifically uses the phrase "National Defense Information", which means that the information has to be pretty damned seriously related to the military, not a bunch of 'rumor collections from various countries'.
i mean, if what he gave out was pointless information, then he can't be guilty under that law.
its a good question and one that we have been struggling with since the dawn of human civilization. how do we know we are all not imaginary, or in a dream, or someone elses dream, or a computer like the Matrix?
but we do have a tool, 'science', which is based on evidence, and coming up with theories to fit the evidence. To badly paraphrase Carl Sagn in Cosmos --- science is not a perfect tool, but its the best one we have.
"...government internal intelligence seems hampered by ideological slant and internal politics"
Not to mention national and international law, some level of oversight and what passes for morals and ethics. The same justification was used re the hiring of mercenary companies as they could do things outside the laws that restricted the normal armed forces.
A private intelligence/security company working at this level and unhindered by governmental limitations makes me very nervous.
It also makes me nervous that national security information is being passed to a private non-governmental entity in the hope of a job after leaving 'public service'. Such people should be prosecuted as traitors.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Insider trading might be enough, but this isn't insider trading. If you are trading on information you're getting from an external source, it is, by definition, outsider trading. Unless they were trading Stratfor shares.
lol. I'd vote that up if I could.
Speak for yourself.
You really should think thing through before hitting submit...you aren't making sense here. You said..."A private intelligence/security company working at this level and unhindered by governmental limitations makes me very nervous." Where does that come from? Absolutely everything that goes on in the US has government limitations, why should Stratfor be any different?
You also said..."same justification was used re the hiring of mercenary companies as they could do things outside the laws that restricted the normal armed forces."
You seem to think the military is the answer to everything. So for internal matters, should we eliminate police forces and rely solely on the military? And for external matter we should eliminate the state department?
No, each job has it's own requirements so use whatever tool works best for the job.
No reason? Well, no reason other than the group the helicopter attacked was shooting AK-47s and RPGs.
Is it possible thought that many of these places don't like the US is because we support their oppressive dictator? What is the causality for their 'hate' of the US? Not that I know the answer is here, but we should at least know what caused their dislike of the US first. Perhaps getting out of their business would be a good first step to winning their support.
Q: What's a dickfer?
A: To pee with.
-Spies Like Us
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB8sG4smWbo
I8-D
John is on the board of director's of company A.
John tells his friend Dave, that company B is in secret talks about buying out company A.
Dave tells his friend Charlie, that he should buy lots of stocks in company A.
Dave gets his information from an outside source, but I'm fairly confident it still counts as insider trading.
Alas, I ran outta mod points.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
Any clue how anyone would deal with 5 million documents? How could anyone read them to draw some conclusion about evildoing? The infamous Wikileaks pile from the US govt. was "only" 300000 or so.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I would call helping to end the phase of the Iraq war with the US Military being officially there, a bit more than a yawn:
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/wikileaks_cables_and_the_iraq_war/singleton/
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I'm confused, what does this have to do with the U.S. assistance to the Muslim Brotherhood and other fascistic Islamic groups in overthrowing governments in the Middle East this past year?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The company died off and Dow picked at its corpse.
Citation needed.
For a company to 'die off' and be released of its accumulated liabilities, it would have to declare bankruptcy and be relieved of those obligations in court. When did UCC declare bankruptcy?
Have gnu, will travel.
Dave and Charlie didn't get their information from an outside source. As I understand it, any knowledge that is not public knowledge or which could be obtained from public sources (PIs following board members around in public or possibly even going through the trash), is considered inside information, no matter that it's gone through people before it gets to you.
That was my point.
I set up the example, because motard claimed that it wouldn't be insider trading.
Same thing happened in Europe in 1848. The results may not have been all that was hoped at the time, but it sure qualified as interesting. And that long ago event picked up familiar-sounding snappy names as well (according to Wikipedia, "Spring of Nations", "Springtime of the Peoples", and "Year of Revolution").
Pastebin is the best thing for intelligence agencies since Facebook. All they have to do is subscribe to the RSS feed for new posts and they have their fingers on the pulse of some of the seedier parts of the Internet. Not saying you shouldn't use it, just...be aware.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If DOW continues to operate dangerous assets in the same way they were run under the previous administration, the purchase is nothing more than a name change.
You haven't established that DOW was doing so or that there was a problem with the way those assets were being run then or now. Union Carbide ran its developed world assets much differently than the plant in India. And DOW would have wanted to make sure it wasn't walking into another Bhopal accident.
Wow, the rant at the end of Shooter is like a Disney cartoon compared to this. Ho. Lee. Shit.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Except that in those cases the failure to live up to hopes was because those who led the revolutions failed to create a governing coalition, whereas the "failure" of the Arab Spring is a result of those who led the revolutions being successful in forming a governing coalition.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I haven't read the leaks, but if they do prove that Stratfor had done or is doing something illegal, would the U.S. government take legal action? Given the fact that the government has been so anti-wikileaks, would it be wise for them to use wikileaks as a source to prosecute people in Stratfor?
On a related note, what if the information wikileaks had released was obtained completely illegally? I'm not saying that's the case here, but hypothetically speaking, if information was obtained by illegal hacking or trespassing, would the government be able to take any legal action against the company?
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
OH. My bad then.
In other words, pretty much the same sort of failures for the same sort of reasons. We no longer see the failings of the 1848 leaders because they didn't achieve or stay in power, while we don't yet see the failure of creation of governing coalitions in the "Arab Sping" revolutions because the current attempts haven't fallen apart yet.
In general there are no laws against using inside information to trade in "government bonds, currencies and the like". Even if there were how are you going to prosecute some Iranian general that buys crude futures in Dubai the day before doing some grandstanding in the Straight of Hormuz?
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Substitute in "country A's soverign debt" for "company" and it's perfectly legal
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I am quite confident that the "Arab Spring" governments will last for a while and will successfully impose their interpretation of Islamic law on the countries in which they have taken power (Egypt and Libya at least, I am less sure of the outcome in Tunisia).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
A similar confidence surrounded many of the 1848 revolutions.
Including the children in the car, which a different American soldier had to practically beg to be allowed to save?
The "RPG" has been found to be a zoom lens on the camera of the killed Reuters photographer. And people were AFAIK practically required to walk around armed there.
Stop defending the indefensible, or get a job working for NAMBLA for a little challenge.
The difference being that if that had turned out, it would have been a good thing. The reason that I believe that those who seized power in the Arab Spring will keep power is because they are the same sorts as those they displaced, only more brutal.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Which was the first part of my argument. Most of the European revolutions didn't get a chance to show their brutality.
This is wrong. A corporation is not a car, it is a person. If you buy a corporation...
Isn't buying persons called "slavery"?
Free Martian Whores!
Or better.
Tag them evil or not evil.
Deleted
All that changes is their methods of delivering their propaganda.
Deleted
Maybe a bit more if they've got an extra leg or two.
FTFY
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Of course, and that's why the 'good ole days' are in quotes. There was a greater belief in those things post-war and a lot less of the cynicism of the current era.
Not that blind faith and naivete is necessarily a good thing, but they do make for a stronger nation, for better or for worse.
'Stronger' should be in quotes too. There was more faith in government and other institutions in the 1950s, yes - but the institutions in which that faith was placed were not in fact worthy of that faith. Building a nation on a lie did not actually make it stronger; the foundations were shaky even as the shiny chrome cladding on the outside of the building looked great.
This is the period in which the Korean war raged and the seeds of Vietnam began, ICBMs were built and deployed with the full intention of being used, and soldiers and mental patients were exposed to radiation without informed consent. These were not actions which created a strong nation. The Baby Boomers and GenXers learning about these betrayals of trust and growing cynical didn't cause the problem - the "greatest generation" dug their own grave.
In capitalist terms, that means that there was a massive mis-allocation of resources starting in the 1940-50s due to the market being given false information (generally toward war materiel and the secrecy that went along with the atomic establishment), and now that the accounting records are starting to be opened we're learning the full extent of our debts and our credit rating is crashing. But our high credit was a mispricing all along, and this is the necessary correction.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Like all dogmas, once you take things too seriously, they start to go downhill.
Especially if it's too heavy and you're on the skids when the wheels come off near a slippery slope, and there's no ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Heh, so you could not. Complete lack of surprise here.
What they do is there in the name FFS. If you've got something to leak you send it to them. Of course they didn't do the original information gathering in Kenya, I know it, Amnesty International know it, and I'm sure you know it but just want to stir up trouble with an emotive distraction.
holy shit, you have a Firesign Theater quote in your sig.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Am I the first one to notice they chose the goatse man as their mascot for this release? WTF is with that? Are they trying to hurt their credibility even more, or get "street cred" with the skript kiddie crowd? Please...
Blackwater changed its name to Xe Services and then to Academi. It's important not to let them get away with something as stupid as a name change.
I grew up on Lebanon and I lived for a year in Syria(left in June because the situation there was getting quite unstable). I've talked to a lot of people from almost all sides of these debates, and I can definitely say that nobody that I've ever met and talked to hates/dislikes the US because of anything like the crap usually spouted on western media(they hate our freedoms, etc, etc).
Most people in these parts have a general distrust of the West because for a very long time they were colonies of either Britain or France(until they gained their independence, most of them around WW2). Right before leaving, however, the British decided to impart one final gift to the region, however, and that is the state of Israel(in honor of the Balfour declaration of 1917).
Right now, there is one world power that continues to sustain Israel in the region and in general act like a colonial/imperial power and that is the US, that's the primary reason most people who hate it do so.
Thanks for the info, but I did have two particular countries in mind when I wrote my initial comment and that would be Iran and Egypt. In Iran, the US had its hand in over throwing the government (Operation Ajax) to support an autocratic dictator. In Egypt, we continually supported Hosni Mubarak, who was also a well known oppressor of his people.
Now you are probably right to some extent about the western media distorting some of my knowledge, but I do at least try to get an informed opinion from other sources. And I have not forgotten about the unilateral support we give Israel and how that irks most other Arabic countries, as you pointed out, but I think that goes in hand with us keeping our noses out their business.
You really should think thing through before hitting submit...you aren't making sense here. You said..."A private intelligence/security company working at this level and unhindered by governmental limitations makes me very nervous." Where does that come from? Absolutely everything that goes on in the US has government limitations, why should Stratfor be any different?
You also said..."same justification was used re the hiring of mercenary companies as they could do things outside the laws that restricted the normal armed forces."
You might want to re-read what I wrote before pressing submit ;-)
Stratfor is not 'in the US' as you write, but is a private multinational company that would not be regulated like Federal intelligence agencies are. There would be fewer restrictions overall and probably none that couldn't be got round by going offshore. When a US federal agency operates outside of the US it still has to follow US laws restricting its behavior and there are checks and balances in place to minimize abuse (granted the US govt hasn't done a great job of keeping the checks and balances in place but that's another discussion).
You seem to think the military is the answer to everything.
I can't even begin to guess how you got that out of what I wrote. I was making a reference to private 'security contractors' such as Blackwater, a mercenary company hired by the US government that was responsible for killing civilians in Iraq but who was never correctly prosecuted.
You seem to think the military is the answer to everything. So for internal matters, should we eliminate police forces and rely solely on the military? And for external matter we should eliminate the state department?
No, each job has it's own requirements so use whatever tool works best for the job.
Frankly my belief is that we already have national intelligence agencies and I'd prefer they do their job rather than farming it out to private companies of dubious loyalty to the best interests of the citizens of the US (or any other country for that matter). We also have a (more than) fully funded and functional military and should have no need to resort to mercenaries, either military or intelligence, to avoid the laws and treaties that our government(s) signed up to.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Indeed, I was only expanding on your comments, which I agree with.