Slashdot Mirror
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.
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."
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.
Sony is like 0.00000001 of our economy. Most of us don't care if they fail and disappear entirely.
Actually, most of us would like to see them sink into obscurity. Might suck for the half dozen Slashdotters who are still using Sony Walkman, but them's the breaks.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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.
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.
Actually, it is closer to about 0.003% ($58 billions revenue for Sony as a whole vs 17 trillions GDP for the US).
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.
You're delusional. Most of the free world profits from trade with the US. Sanctions would hurt us but hurt many others far worse.
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?
You left out Cuba.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Might suck for the half dozen Slashdotters who are still using Sony Walkman, but them's the breaks.
Or it might not. It's not like Walkmans' phones home, or are tied to a walled garden, or only sync with one piece of software.
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.
" Most of the free world profits from trade with the US".
In the sense that they receive lots of minty-fresh new dollars, hot off the printing press, in return for their valuable goods and services - maybe. But do you think that situation can go on for ever? Seriously??
And by the way, what is this "free world" of which you speak? Do you mean those nations that have democratic constitutions, defined as solemnly holding elections every few years in which the suckers, er people, can choose which of two gangs of corrupt millionaires they want to be ruled by for the next few years? Or do you refer to our "free markets", which are systematically rigged by banks, oil companies, and other wealthy corporations - as well as governments, of course?
Freedom is not an absolute: it's a matter of degree. In a nation with literally tens of thousands of restrictive laws and regulations (and more every year, at a steadily increasing rate) there is precious little freedom except the freedom of the rich to do what they want.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"There is no doubt about it because the rebels announced the news themselves to the whole world before they realized their mistake".
Thank you for your polite expression of dissent. It's fortunate that information like that could never be faked by any group of vicious, self-seeking propagandists who habitually lie about everything. (Which could equally well describe the current "Ukrainian government" or the current US government - it makes no difference as the first is operated by the second).
Unluckily for your conspiracy theory, we know for sure that there were jet fighters within firing range immediately before MH17 went down; that there was no smoke or noise indicating a BUK launch; that the BUK unit captured by rebels (if any) was incomplete and incapable of shooting down an airliner at 10 Km height; that photographs clearly show the cockpit section riddled with cannon holes; that the Ukrainian authorities deliberately diverted MH17 directly over the fighting, for no good reason; and that mysteriously the highly detailed US military satellite images of the attack have never been released. Apart from which the Russians and Novorussians had every reason not to shoot down a civilian airliner, while Kiev had everything to gain from staging a false-flag attack.
Your faked "social media" evidence loses hands down.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
The BUK was never claimed to be captured by rebels, it was claimed that a Russian surface to air missile launcher had been provided to the rebels by the Russians, and large jets had already been shot down.
The rebels did announce triumphantly that they'd shot down a large jet aircraft just minutes before we found out that MH17 had been shot down, and subsequently removed that brag.
The photographs are not clearly cannon holes.
So curiously no, the evidence doesn't match with your conspiracy theory. You come across as a Putin apologist.
"You come across as a Putin apologist".
Nice ad hominem! You always say the same thing, though; a little variety would be appreciated.
It would be superfluous to add that this is a clear case of pot and kettle.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
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.
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.
Except in this case the entire country is already censored, so blocking it won't be censoring anyone except those few who do have Internet access, like the despicable people in charge and the hackers. If it were just about any other country I'd agree with you.NK is second to last for the most censored country according to reporters without borders, second only to Eritrae.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.