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US Slaps Sanctions On North Korea After Sony Cyberattack
wiredmikey writes: The United States imposed financial sanctions Friday on North Korea and several senior government officials in retaliation for a cyber attack on Sony Pictures. President Obama said he ordered the sanctions because of "the provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies (PDF) of the Government of North Korea, including its destructive, coercive cyber-related actions during November and December 2014." The activities "constitute a continuing threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States," he added, in a letter to inform congressional leaders of his executive order. The new measures allow the Treasury Department "to apply sanctions against officials of the Government of North Korea and the Workers' Party of Korea, and persons determined to be owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of" these bodies.
Since the place is locked up as tight as Tibet once was, it's hard to imagine subsidies doing much. But yay for empty gestures!
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
not north korea, is slashdot becoming just another source for government misinformation and propaganda???
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I seriously doubt they care. N. Korea gets all of their shit from China and China ain't going to quit supplying them just because the US government said so.
This is just another show of theatrics by the idiots in charge of the USA to make it look like they actually have some kind of authority.
The Slave Islands are the worst kept secret in South Korea. http://www.news.com.au/world/a...
It's not like we provide financial assistance and loans to NK, so what kind of sanctions? I assume the tagline "you-can-have-cuba's-old-digs" as this country's policies changed for Cuba.
mfwright@batnet.com
... the hackers implicate NK because, well, NK.
The NKs deny and threaten.
The FBI says NK is "implicated."
POTUS reads that as, "We have evidence."
Norse says it's an inside job.
POTUS hits NK with sanctions because, well, NK.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
So you kind of knew what you were in for with him, if you were paying attention.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Sony is like 0.00000001 of our economy. Most of us don't care if they fail and disappear entirely.
So what's the proof? All that FBI has been reported to say is that the tools used were similar to previous attacks originating from NK. But that hardly makes it undisputed evidence.
The US government must be rubbing their cocks with pleasure, now that they got a chance to set new sanctions against NK. Damn this makes me upset.
http://marcrogers.org/2014/12/...
"So in conclusion, there is NOTHING here that directly implicates the North Koreans. In fact, what we have is one single set of evidence that has been stretched out into 3 separate sections, each section being cited as evidence that the other section is clear proof of North Korean involvement. As soon as you discredit one of these pieces of evidence, the whole house of cards will come tumbling down."
You mean we don't already have sanctions against absolutely everything NK? From the article it looks like just about everything was sanctioned by the US & the UN anyways. And the ones that aren't only one is in a country that we have decent relations with (China). So, in effect, we keep the status quo? How many times can a person/group be sanctioned? Or is this just adding to the list so that we can throw out a bookload of sanctions as justification for war when it's convienent for us?
I really look forward to similar language being used by foreign countries that the US got caught spying and hacking on and the ensuing financial sanctions against the US as well.
The Sony cyber attack has not yet been definitively tied to North Korea. The sanctions are being imposed because Kim called Obama a monkey.
By what authority does the president impose sanctions?
We're bigger than they are. Alternately, you can invoke any particular deity, the gold standard, the Smoot-Hawley act or just being in a bad mood.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I _really_ don't get it.. Sony, a _Japanese_ company, and the US is going world police cop. I understand that Hollywood has a stake in this perhaps, but what political reason are they using to legitimize this?!
Inquiring minds want to know when the UN is going to place severe economic sanctions against the US for the destructive, coercive cyber-related attacks of the NSA which constitutes a continuing threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the World.
I posted last week the same thoughts, even providing links to other professionals who ask "Where any evidence demonstrating that North Korea is the culprit?". I was subsequently rated a "TROLL" for linking the Wired Article and asking the question. Specifically stating like you, that it's become propaganda and facts don't seem to matter. Since people seem to be too lazy to read the Wired article (or any others) here is a 30 minute video.
The quote "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself." surely comes to mind, and since people don't seem to be able to discern fact from opinion these days it's an easy game for propagandists to play.
Why is it relevant? Because sanctions against the DPRK will not hurt the people in charge of the DPRK. They will have their food, wine, and women (or what ever they prefer) no matter what. North Korea can get what ever they need through China, and already does in large part. The people who will be suffering are those already starving.
Not only is the punishment unjustly targeted, but it harms exactly the _wrong_ people.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I hear her phone got hacked or something.
We should be understanding when the rest of the world slaps America with sanctions for our ongoing "destructive, coercive cyber-related actions ".
So now we're looking for weapons of mass media. I assume we can trust our "intelligence" source to be as truthful, or if you're naive, right this time?
I mean, it was pretty convenient timing for a government looking to distract the American public, gave Sony a feasible scapegoat for their security failings, and the only people that could contradict the story aren't about to give evidence against themselves. I guess slapping these "sanctions" on NK means they're doubling down?
Can't tell if you're joking, or one of the delusional gold-nuts who probably lost tons of money by believing far-right-wing anti-civilization grifters like Glenn Beck, and investing in gold.
Well, wow. Obama knew within minutes of the shooting down of MH17 that PUTIN DID IT. And he immediately knew that the NORTH KOREANS HACKED SONY. The man has unbelievable [sic] superpowers!
But he's overplayed his hand. As a direct result of his "diplomacy" [sic] China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, India, North Korea, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Syria and other Asian nations are forming an increasingly tight trade, financial and military alliance. Ever since WW2 (and arguably WW1) US foreign policy has been aimed primarily at PREVENTING this. But they reckoned without the SLEEPER PRESIDENT! (Oh, did I forget to mention South America, Central America, and Africa?)
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I am glad that the governement is protecting what is important to them.
Seriously: they payed for the governement and the laws. All the people do is vote.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. used to be called Columbia Pictures. Headquartered in Burbank, California, it's run by an American CEO and produces American films for an American audience. It was renamed after Sony bought almost half of the stock.
Ah right, thanks for that.
Justice served. Just like when we invaded Iraq for their involvement in 9/11.
So... wtf?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
As a slightly-more-in-touch segment of the population, many of us already discounted the FBI's claim against NK, and (I hope) nearly all of us now understand that it was an inside job. Let President Obama know that his sanctions just make him look foolish.
Try investing in gold-plated roubles next, Glenn. Best of tears to you.
Gold isn't generally a good investment. There are exceptions however and one of the big ones is what Beck took advantage of. Realizing that the housing market was about to collapse, which in retrospect should have been obvious and evidently it was obvious to Beck at the time, Beck pulled his money out of the stock market and bought gold. Given the fallout that occurred when all those banks tanked and had to be bailed out stocks dropped out and gold spiraled up having a twofold payoff for those who saw it coming. Not only did they avoid losing their ass in stocks but they more than doubled their money on gold. What most people did wrong then was to buy gold after it has gone out of sight. Once you miss the boat you might as well go back home because it's not coming back to port for a looooong time. You always pick up gold when it's cheap. It's a long term safe investment. Right now it's too fucking high to buy. Beck's fat little ass got rich as hell though and then he made millions more hawking it as an investment.
There is very little public evidence proving or disproving who conducted the hack. That is as much as anyone knows as a fact.
Bruce Schneier posted an analysis on his blog that points out a few things.
The timestamps on the data suggest that it was downloaded at USB2.0 speeds, and happened on the day that Charles Sipkins, Sony Pictures' head of corporate communications, publicly resigned.
The USB2.0 speeds implies an inside job, and the timing of Sipkins' resignation is suspicious.
What was the evidence for NK again?
Supporting a bad movie that would have pissed off any leader in the world was a bad idea. Now further spanking an unbridled hacking team seems a lot like russian roulette, and at a time when the world news is so busy reporting how vulnerable the US electrical grid is, just seems irresposible to be playing with our nation's security. Either declare war, cough up the evidence for the world to see or get on with bigger and better things.
They looked for it after calling Obama a monkey.
The thing is, he sold "commemorative coins" with inflated bullshit values instead of the actual weight of gold, to senior citizens and pensioners who were told by his bullshit commercials that it was not only a safe investment, but that it was the ONLY place they could put their money given the "volatility!"
He's a charlatan, he knows it.
The most recent evidence is pointing away from NK.
I hope our government is acting rationally.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
At least now their propaganda about starving masses in north korea will actually be true (in a little while anyway).
It's been quite clear from the beginning that this was the whole reason for this false flag operation.
Gold isn't a bad investment all by itself. What is bad is a strategy that buys gold as if it can overcome the need for market research and diversification.
There are times that you increase your investment in gold, or bonds, or stock. Those depend on the characteristics of the investment and how the overall economic situation is panning out, but such a move nearly always takes the form of adjusting your exposure, not completely divesting other forms of investment.
Of course, the biggest problem is that most people are idiots when it comes to investing, but think they are geniuses. So just about every move they make is worse than just dropping their money in an index fund and forgetting about it for a few decades. Sort of like trying to wildly switch lanes in heavy traffic and realizing you'd have gone farther with less risk by simply being patient and sitting in the lane you started in.
And that is where the unscrupulous can make real money by hawking fear among people who think they are getting "the inside track".
It's always the right time to buy gold if the 'gold experts' aren't urging you to buy gold. It's always the wrong time when they are spending a lot of money on radio and television ads to tell you it's the 'right time.'
authorizing targeted sanctions that would deny designated persons access to the U.S. financial system and prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in transactions or dealings with it.
So we have a list of "bad guys" who aren't allowed to do business with US companies. That doesn't seem particularly useful, as they were likely prohibited from doing that before by virtue of the fact that we don't have relations with the DPRK anyways.
Although being as the allegations against DPRK are flimsy at best, making a public statement of existing sanctions and calling them "new" might not be a bad move.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The new measures allow the Treasury Department "to apply sanctions against officials of the Government of North Korea and the Workers' Party of Korea, and persons determined to be owned or controlled by, or acting for or on behalf of" these bodies.
Perhaps we should be lenient on their slaves..
Relax about the evidence thing. This is how superpowers do things. If you don't know stuff then just make it up, no-one's going to argue. The USS Maine blew up from a boiler and ammunition explosion and that was enough for the US to start the 1898 Spanish-American War. As for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the UN said to the best of their knowledge there were none, up to the bounds of scientific certainty. Which was interpreted by US decision-makers, for whatever reason, as not meaning 'no'. So carry on, this is business as usual, there's nothing extraordinary here.
They only have two, 175.45.176.0/22 and 210.52.109.0/24 as far as I can tell. It's not like we'd be blocking the general population of NK.
Source.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Relax about the evidence thing. This is how superpowers do things. If you don't know stuff then just make it up, no-one's going to argue. The USS Maine blew up from a boiler and ammunition explosion and that was enough for the US to start the 1898 Spanish-American War. As for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the UN said to the best of their knowledge there were none, up to the bounds of scientific certainty. Which was interpreted by US decision-makers, for whatever reason, as not meaning 'no'. So carry on, this is business as usual, there's nothing extraordinary here
One gets to do the 800lb gorilla thing when one remains as strong as that 800lb gorilla
As US's sphere of influence has waned, and it's shrinking faster and faster, how long Washington D.C. thinks they get away by doing the same thing?
Reality will one day catch up with USA, and that day is approaching, rapidly
As soon as the cash4gold people started hawking the smart money saw the top of the market.
Reality will one day catch up with USA, and that day is approaching, rapidly
That would be when the F-35 becomes the U.S's fighting forces main jet and shot down where ever it goes.
"Defects are not free. Somebody makes them, and gets paid for making them." --W. Edwards Deming
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
OK so NKorea subjugates an entire people, no sanctions, but mess with Sony, sanctions. What gives?
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
We wouldn't want the next .torrent dump or barely-coherent pastebin screed to be a mushroom cloud, would we?
Mushroom clouds in the background look like fuzzy, fuzzy fungus.
I remember when the housing market collapsed and I lost almost 50K out of my 401 account. Most of my co-workers freaked and started transferring all their money from the stock fund to government bond fund. I remember telling them it was too late. They had already lost their money and the only way to get any back was to stay with the stock fund until it came back around. I stayed with it and eventually I caught the wave when it rebounded. People that react to the market are already too late. If you don't see trends way ahead of time then the only thing to do is pick a good stock fund and leave it alone until two or three years before you retire.
I remember telling my wife how high gold had gone and she went into her jewelry box and got out a handful of old broken necklaces, a ring she didn't like and about 15 single ear rings missing their pair. I took it down to the local jewelry store and he was paying out about 25 percent more than the guys advertising on TV. I got almost 500 dollars off that junk gold. I was amazed. One thing about gold, when things go to shit it suddenly becomes valuable.
My Dad is a big Beck fan and even he called bullshit on that gold advertisement of his.
United States of Anarchy.
I remember and see those ads all the time. I remember disregarding them until my dad came to me asking about them. Took me about 5 minutes of Googling before I was told they were not as rare as the ad said. Everything else was true, but neglected to mention that they were common and easily obtainable from alternate sources. Of course, the real price of them was less than half what the ad was charging. Someone's gotta pay for the ad, I guess.
It was merely a store that resold US mint coins with huge markups - you could easily go to a regular store and get them far cheaper.
Censorship is never a good thing. Blocking anyone's access to the internet is never a good thing.
> An official statement from the FBI isn't exactly the same as some anonymous blog.
Very much this: while I'd put (lacking any other evidence) zero trust in a random blog (until I have more experience), FBI starts for me with a sizable amount of *negative* trust, given prior experience.
Please tell me my English is deficient (and improve it a little by your explanation). Did the US governement just say "persons determined to be owned" while at the same time complaining of copyright infringement ? Are they admiting a person can be owned in the US , NK or anywhere ? Are they acknowledging slavery ? I thought they erradicated it years ago, after some war and civil struggle. I thought the labour relations were pitiful, but slavery was not officially sanctioned.
Or does English have other meanings for "person" ?(like moral persons or legal persons or some kind of artifice that enjoys legal rights and can be owned but isn't human)
So a country whose internet access has been totally buggered by some script kiddies ddos-ing their gateway router(s) was in fact behind all those terrible Sony attacks? Wow.
No wait, I thought Sony was a japanese company? What's that got to do with USA? Moviegoing americans were deprived of another Boxing day movie premiere? Ah, OK then...right on! Sanctions it is.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-02/2015-will-be-all-about-iran-china-and-russia#comment-5617702
Imagine going back in time 15 years and warning everyone about all the crazy shit coming down the pipe. They would send you to the funny farm!
-The presidential election will be decided by one vote... on the supreme court.
-There will be a nuclear terrorist attack on New York, perpetrated by Israel, the Bush administration, and the Pentagon, with obvious evidence right out in the open, and nobody will question it.
-The attack will be used as bait and switch to wage a $3 trillion war against a country which didn't even have anything to do with the patsies, let alone the actual attack.
-There will be a resurgence of fascism and slavery, and people will call it freedom.
-Two Skull and Bonesmen will run against each other in 2004. They will refuse to talk about it and everyone else will be cool with that. Isn't democracy great?
-TV will be mostly fearmongering, propaganda, celebrity gossip, and reality shows about giant-assed sluts. There will be a time when the truthiest TV news will be on Comedy Central. "The Onion Reality" will acquire meaning.
-A black gay foreign muslim communist will become president. He will spend most of his time golfing, reading from a teleprompter, and watching drone bombings. By any objective measures he will be worse than Bush, but the left will love him, because thinking anything else would be racist.
-The Fed will print tens of trillions of dollars and give it to the banks, including many foreign banks, but hyperinflation will be delayed because the economy will suck so bad that people will hold held their dollars tight. People will be awed by the power of central planning.
-Billion dollar scams will become so common that most will be ignored. Only one person will go to jail, and only because he stole from Zionist charities.
-Housing will be sliced and diced so many ways that people will end up getting foreclosed on by multiple banks that they never even signed with. Nobody will have clear title to their house. And nobody will go to jail.
-They will change the rules so that bank accounts can be raided due to bank failure, in addition to all the other excuses for legalized plunder. Banks will stop paying interest. Despite all this, there will not be bank runs. One might think that's because everyone will be more afraid of cops stealing their cash, but no. It will be because everyone will be brick stupid.
-A passenger jet will be abducted to Diego Garcia. The media will blame terrorists, then aliens and black holes, then back to Kim's giant ass.
-There will be SWAT team raids over raw milk, unpaid student loans, feeding the homeless, etc, etc. Babies will get their faces blown off. The only people who will go to jail (or the morgue) will be the innocent victims.
-The Russians will become the good guys.
But we're just getting started! Think of all the crazy shit coming down the pipe for the NEXT fifteen years! If we don't get at least one hoaxed ailen attack by 2030, Krugman and I will be very disappointed.
This level of evidentiary "certainty" is what's used all the time by the U.S. to justify killing thousands with drones, or millions in war. It's merely easier in this case to recognize the claims as being laughably - or perhaps disturbingly - false.
What's even more frightening than the idea the U.S. would conduct an act of war just to save a large corporation from some bad PR is the realization the people doing this are either too clueless to know how obvious is their charade or they're too deranged or too honey badger to care.
I suppose one could go for the clueless deranged honey badger (with WMD) trifecta.
But as long as lies distract people from talking about CIA torture, Wall St. crimes and economic collapse, and anything else meaningful, and direct Americans' desire for accountability and punishment away from powerful people and onto shadowy phantoms...then the lies have worked.
falls for the FBI bullshit.
Pointing out that there are now mall kiosks set up to buy gold has been a compelling argument to even the most ardent gold bug.
Ummmm... The USA and South Korea are still at war with North Korea.
Yah, those bit would fall under the category of "trading with the enemy" which qualifies as Treason.
It's almost like the US President has lost track of the wars his country is involved in.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
More to the point, gold may be an excellent investment, but not at the current price. And not at any price that is ever available to the public.
If you're expecting a collapse of civilization, then whiskey is probably a better investment. It's not only entertainment, it's medicine. But keeping it in fragile containers is a problem. The advantage of gold is that it's mobile. But an education in primitive medicine (not first aid, which is just what to do til the doctor arrives, and not modern medicine which depends on medicines that won't be available) would be an even better investiment. Bonus if you can do primitive dentistry.
If you're not expecting a collapse of civilization, then gold is more reasonable. It's important in lots of nano-tech and a non-corrodable covering of this and that. Of course, they don't use much, but then the amount of gold is rather limited unless you want to make it in a reactor, in which case I believe it will be radioactive...which might be an advantage if you want to trace your nano-gizmo.
I can't think of any possibility in which gold is the best investment, but if you can get it at a good enough price it's not a bad investment. It *has* increased in value even during my lifetime and relative to the costs of other things, and it doesn't have much in the way of up-keep costs like real estate does. (And it's portable. Did I mention that? This is possibly its majore benefit. Portable and anonymous.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Too much money to be made in war and propaganda.
Beck is anti-civilization? Citation needed. He urges people to read The 5000 Year Leap, a book that celebrates the progress made by civilization.