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Lazy Caturday Reads: Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, and More News
Good Afternoon!!
Elizabeth Taylor with her Siamese cat, 1956, photo by Sanford Roth
Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. He’s everywhere in the news. We still haven’t seen the DOJ Epstein files, but we’re already learning more about Epstein’s relationship to Trump from the recently released text messages. We don’t know yet how bad it will get when the files are released, but the extent to which Trump is publicly panicking suggests it will be very bad for him.
In Trump’s latest effort to control the Epstein story, he ordered Attorney General Bondi to investigate Democrats who had connections to the child sex trafficker.
Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.
Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.
Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.
Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.
Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”
There’s no evidence that any of the people Trump is targeting were involved in sexual abuse or sex trafficking.
A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”
“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.
Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.
Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.” [….]
Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.
Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.
At Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson writes:
In a transparent attempt to distract from the many times his own name appears in the documents from the Epstein estate members of the House Oversight Committee released Wednesday, President Donald J. Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats whose names appeared in the documents. He singled out former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn and who is a Democratic donor.
Marlon Brando and cat
Although the attorney general is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and is supposed to be nonpartisan in protecting the rule of law, Bondi responded that the Department of Justice “will pursue this with urgency and integrity.” Maegan Vazquez and Shayna Jacobs of the Washington Post note that reporters have already covered the relationship of Epstein with Clinton, Summers, and Hoffman for years, and that in July, Justice Department officials said an examination of the FBI files relating to Epstein—a different cache than Wednesday’s—“did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
Meidas Touch noted: “In normal times, it would be a major scandal for the President to direct his AG to criminally investigate his political opponents to deflect from his own involvement in a major scandal—and for the AG to immediately announce she is doing it. The Epstein scandal and cover up just got even bigger.”
This scandal truly has Trump flailing. I hope this will be the one that really brings him down, but he somehow seems to wriggle out of every scandal. But he certainly is terrified of the Epstein files being released.
Politico: House plans to vote Tuesday on releasing Epstein files.
House Republican leaders are planning to hold a vote Tuesday on legislation to force the release of federal files related to Jeffrey Epstein, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss internal plans ahead of a public announcement.
The tentative scheduling decision follows a successful effort by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to sidestep Speaker Mike Johnson and force a floor vote on their bipartisan bill to compel the Justice Department to release all of its records related to the late convicted sex offender.
President Donald Trump has made repeated attempts to kill the effort, which continued in a series of Truth Social posts Friday. But Johnson said Wednesday he intends to move quickly to hold the vote and put the matter to bed.
Under the current GOP plan, the House Rules Committee would approve a procedural measure Monday night to advance eight bills for floor consideration, including language to tee up the Epstein legislation. If that measure is approved on the floor, likely early Tuesday afternoon, debate and a final vote on the Epstein bill could immediately follow. GOP leaders are considering whether to postpone the Epstein vote until Tuesday evening….
The four Republicans who signed on to the discharge petition forcing the vote — Massie, plus Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — are likely to examine Johnson’s moves very closely. They could together block any procedural measure that would undercut the Epstein legislation, postpone it or otherwise alter it.
One more story on the Epstein texts from Jason Wilson at The Guardian: Steve Bannon advised Jeffrey Epstein for years on how to rehab his reputation, texts show.
Hundreds of texts over almost a year show Maga influencer Steve Bannon and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein workshopping legal and media strategies to protect Epstein from the legal and publicity quagmire that enveloped him in the last year of his life.
The texts, released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday, show that as early as June 2018, the pair were devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein’s criminal history, his favorable treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful figures in business, politics and academia.
Bannon conspiratorially described the renewed scrutiny of Epstein as a “sophisticated op”, and over time he counseled Epstein in his adversarial responses to media outlets, the justice system and his victims.
All the while, both men were also strategizing how best to promote Bannon’s rightwing populist agenda, and the political fortunes of its standard bearer, Donald Trump.
In all of Epstein’s messages, the identity of his correspondent is redacted. But Bannon’s identity in the threads cited in this reporting is clear from contextual clues including his documented activities at the time, details of his business and media pursuits, and other disclosures. In one document, the sender’s phone number is not redacted – and it is the same number linked to Bannon in a legal case against Trump adviser Roger Stone.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Trump is also beginning to panic about the economy and the negative effects of his insane tariffs.
David J. Lynch at The Washington Post: Trump goes on defense over tariffs as prices on everyday items keep rising.
President Donald Trump’s bid Friday to sootheconsumers by dropping tariffs on a wide array of groceries, including coffee, beef, bananas and tomatoes — contradicting his repeated claims that the levies were not affecting retail prices — shows he is on the defensive over his signature policy initiative.
Public opposition, eroding support on Capitol Hill and a potentially lethal challenge before the Supreme Court have Trump scrambling to defend his economic strategy even as the administration notches diplomatic agreements that are cementing its high-tariff approach to rebalancing global trade.
Sophia Loren with her cat, 1959
Public opinion is the immediate worry, following recent Democratic electoral victories in Virginia and New Jersey that were fueled by Americans’ ire over the cost of living. By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, registered voters disapproved of the president’s tariffs in a recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, a finding that has been consistent all year and could imperil Republican candidates in next year’s congressional elections.
The president on Friday issued an executive order rolling back import taxes on many foods, his most significant retreat on the emergency tariffs he imposed in April, which were billed at the time as loophole-free. In September, the White House had signaled that some products that are not generally produced in the United States could be spared tariffs once nations where they originate reached trade deals with the United States. But Friday’s exemptions apply to products from any nation, even those that have not agreed on trade terms.
“They know that they shouldn’t have imposed a lot of these tariffs and that they’re hurting affordability for consumers. Now they’re looking for a way to justify lowering them. And that’s fine. But did we really need to go through all this in the first place?” said Christopher Padilla, senior adviser to the Brunswick Group and a former trade official in the George W. Bush administration….
This week’s tariff cuts appear aimed at responding to public concern over high prices. Inflation overall is running at an annual rate of 3 percent, above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target for price stability but well down from the mid-2022 peak of 9.1 percent.
Prices on many everyday items, however, continue to soar. Through September, the most recent data available, coffee prices were up 19 percent over the previous 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bananas were up 7 percent.
Elizabeth Buchwald at CNN: Trump’s latest tariff TACO probably won’t make your life more affordable.
Americans could soon see some goods get cheaper after President Donald Trump exempted certain agricultural imports from a set of tariffs on Friday. But any price drops likely won’t be enough to make life feel more affordable any time soon.
The executive order exempted products like coffee, beef and some fruit from Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, which began rolling out in April.
The new exemptions are part of what traders have dubbed TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out, to describe times when the president backs off a policy after unintended consequences pop up. In the case of tariffs, Trump has already reversed a number of his measures, a sign that the administration is reshaping his signature economic tool.
The latest TACO comes after voters, worried about affordability, gave Republicans a drubbing in recent off-year elections.
Why this likely won’t help consumers much:
Nevertheless, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the new exemptions generally won’t help improve affordability.
“It depends on what the importers do with the tariff,” he said in a CNBC interview on Friday. “So when you look at the overall price trend, it hasn’t been because of tariffs. It’s been because of these other events going on and just supply and demand.”
Steve Martin and cat
But in cases where tariffs have been passed along to consumers, prices could drop, Greer said.
One potential example: bananas. American consumers are paying about 8% more for bananas than before Trump’s second term began.
The US largely imports bananas from South American countries. With bananas exempt from “reciprocal” tariffs that started at 10%, prices could go back to where they were earlier this year, said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo. But it’s unlikely to be something most consumers notice unless they’re buying bananas often, she added.
But not everyone is convinced it will even do that much.
“It is not clear that lowering tariffs will lower prices — it depends on what retailers think they can get away with. The import price of bananas has fallen since tariffs were imposed, but the US consumer price has risen,” Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS global wealth management, said in a note last week. (The United States tracks import prices before accounting for tariffs. In some cases, import prices have fallen as exporters lower what they charge as a way to share in the tariff expense importers pay.)
More analysis at the CNN link.
Another flop: Trump’s soybean deal with China may have just been a mirage. AP: USDA data casts doubt on China’s soybean purchase promises touted by Trump.
New data the Agriculture Department released Friday created serious doubts about whether China will really buy millions of bushels of American soybeans like the Trump administration touted last month after a high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The USDA report released after the government reopened showed only two Chinese purchases of American soybeans since the summit in South Korea that totaled 332,000 metric tons. That’s well short of the 12 million metric tons that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said China agreed to purchase by January and nowhere near the 25 million metric tons she said they would buy in each of the next three years.
American farmers were hopeful that their biggest customer would resume buying their crops. But CoBank’s Tanner Ehmke, who is its lead economist for grains and oilseed, said there isn’t much incentive for China to buy from America right now because they have plenty of soybeans on hand that they have bought from Brazil and other South American countries this year, and the remaining tariffs ensure that U.S. soybeans remain more expensive than Brazilian beans.
“We are still not even close to what has been advertised from the U.S. in terms of what the agreement would have been,” Ehmke said.
Beijing has yet to confirm any detailed soybean purchase agreement but only that the two sides have reached “consensus” on expanding trade in farm products. Ehmke said that even if China did promise to buy American soybeans it may have only agreed to buy them if the price was attractive.
Will Trump try to distract from the Epstein files and his failures on the economy by taking us to war with Venezuela?
David E. Sanger, Eric Schmit, Tyler Pager, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs at The New York Times (gift link): Trump Escalates Pressure on Venezuela, but Endgame Is Unclear.
The Trump administration is rapidly escalating its pressure campaign against Venezuela, with America’s largest aircraft carrier, the Ford, about to take up a position within striking distance of the country, even as President Trump’s aides provide conflicting accounts of what, exactly, they are seeking to achieve.
Mr. Trump held back-to-back days of meetings at the White House over the past two days, reviewing military options, including the use of Special Operations forces and direct action inside Venezuela.
Marlyn Monroe with her cat
It is still not clear whether Mr. Trump has made a decision about what kind of action to authorize, if any. On Friday, he told reporters on Air Force One that “I sort of made up my mind.” “I can’t tell you what it is,” he said, “but we made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in.”
It is possible Mr. Trump is relying on the arrival of so much firepower to intimidate the government of Nicolás Maduro, who the United States and many of its allies say is not Venezuela’s legitimate president. Mr. Maduro has put his forces on high alert, leaving the two countries with their weapons cocked and ready for war.
There were signs that the administration was moving into a new and more aggressive posture. Shortly after a meeting on Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media that the mission in the Caribbean now had a name — “Southern Spear.” He described its goal in expansive terms, saying the operation “removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere.”
“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood,” he wrote, “and we will protect it.” With the arrival of the Ford and three accompanying missile-firing Navy destroyers, there are now 15,000 troops in the region, more than there have been at any time in decades.
The only thing missing is a strategic explanation from the Trump administration that would clarify why the United States is amassing such a large force. Mr. Hegseth’s posting on X was only the latest in a series of statements from administration officials that, at best, are in tension with one another. Some are outright contradictory.
Mr. Trump has been the most consistent, saying it is all about drugs. But that would not explain why the Ford was rushed from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Caribbean region, adding to an American force that has now reached 15,000 soldiers and sailors, to attack small boats that until early September had been intercepted by the Coast Guard. Nor would it explain why Colombia or Mexico — Mexico being the main conduit for fentanyl — are not in the Navy’s sights.
Dan Lamothe, Tara Copp, Michael Birnbaum, and Noah Robertson: Trump weighs Venezuela strikes as U.S. forces prepare for attack order.
President Donald Trump said Friday night that he has “sort of made up my mind” about how he will proceed with the possibility of military action in Venezuela, following a second consecutive day of deliberations at the White House that included top national security advisers.
Trump’s vague remarks aboard Air Force One were delivered as he traveled for the weekend to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and included no additional new details. The comments came as U.S. forces in the region awaited possible attack orders and after days of high-level discussions about whether — and how — to strike in Venezuela, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is highly sensitive. Joining Trump in deliberations Friday were Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, these people said.
Robert Redford with his cat
Earlier in the day, an administration official said “a host of options” had been presented to the president. Trump is “very good at maintaining strategic ambiguity, and something he does very well is he does not dictate or broadcast to our adversaries what he wants to do next,” the official said.
Any strike on Venezuelan territory would upend the president’s frequent promises of avoiding new conflicts and betray promises made to Congress in recent weeks that no active preparations were underway for such an attack. It also would further complicate U.S. cooperation with other Latin American countries, and deepen suspicions — there and in Washington — over whether Trump’s endgame is the forced removal of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump has accused of sending drugs and violent criminals to the United States.
Maduro, a socialist strongman, came to power in Caracas in 2013 and increasingly has become a fixation for Trump.
In August, U.S. officials increased the reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction from $25 million to $50 million, citing alleged ties to drug cartels and U.S. beliefs dating back to the Biden administration that he lost Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election and refused to step down.
“The United States is very plugged into what’s going on in Venezuela, the chatter among Maduro’s people and the highest levels of his regime,” the administration official said. “Maduro is very scared, and he should be scared. The president has options on the table that are very bad for Maduro and his illegitimate regime. … We view this regime as illegitimate, and it’s not serving the Western Hemisphere well.”
President Donald Trump has said he believes Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s days are numbered, and that land strikes inside Venezuela are possible.
Experts say that the US doesn’t currently have the military assets in place to launch a largescale operation to remove Maduro from power, though Trump has approved covert action within Venezuela, CNN has reported.
Bette Davis with cat
But if Trump did order strikes inside Venezuela aimed at ousting Maduro, he could face serious challenges with fractured opposition elements and a military poised for insurgency, according to experts, as well as political backlash at home for a president who promised to avoid costly entanglements overseas.
CNN reported that Trump received a briefing earlier this week to review updated options for military action inside Venezuela, a concept the White House has been weighing. The administration had not made a decision on whether to launch strikes, CNN reported, though the US military has moved more than a dozen warships and 15,000 troops into the region as part of what the Pentagon branded Operation Southern Spear in an announcement Thursday.
The concentration of military assets and threats of further attacks beyond the ongoing drug boat campaign have served to increase pressure on Maduro, with administration officials saying he needs to leave office while arguing that he’s closely tied to the Tren de Aragua gang and leading drug trafficking efforts.
But if Maduro does flee Venezuela or is killed out in a targeted strike, experts worry about a military takeover of the country or the boosting of another dictator similar to Maduro.
Read the rest at CNN.
Those are my recommended reads. I’ll add a few more links in the comment thread. What stories are you interested in today?
#BillClinton #catArt #caturday #ChinaSoybeanPurchases #DonaldTrump #EpsteinFiles #JeffreyEpstein #LarrySummers #NicolasMaduro #PamBondi #ReidHoffman #SteveBannon #TACOTrump #TrumpTariffs #Venezuela
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Lazy Caturday Reads: Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, and More News
Good Afternoon!!
Elizabeth Taylor with her Siamese cat, 1956, photo by Sanford Roth
Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. He’s everywhere in the news. We still haven’t seen the DOJ Epstein files, but we’re already learning more about Epstein’s relationship to Trump from the recently released text messages. We don’t know yet how bad it will get when the files are released, but the extent to which Trump is publicly panicking suggests it will be very bad for him.
In Trump’s latest effort to control the Epstein story, he ordered Attorney General Bondi to investigate Democrats who had connections to the child sex trafficker.
Acceding to President Donald Trump’s demands, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that she has ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Trump political foes, including former President Bill Clinton.
Bondi posted on X that she was assigning Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton to lead the probe, capping an eventful week in which congressional Republicans released nearly 23,000 pages of documents from Epstein’s estate and House Democrats seized on emails mentioning Trump.
Trump, who was friends with Epstein for years, didn’t explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men he mentioned in a social media post demanding the probe has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein’s victims.
Hours before Bondi’s announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he would ask her, the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate Epstein’s “involvement and relationship” with Clinton and others, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and LinkedIn founder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.
Trump, calling the matter “the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans,” said the investigation should also include financial giant JPMorgan Chase, which provided banking services to Epstein, and “many other people and institutions.”
There’s no evidence that any of the people Trump is targeting were involved in sexual abuse or sex trafficking.
A JPMorgan Chase spokesperson, Patricia Wexler, said the company regretted associating with Epstein “but did not help him commit his heinous acts.”
“The government had damning information about his crimes and failed to share it with us or other banks,” she said. The company agreed previously to pay millions of dollars to Epstein’s victims, who had sued arguing that the bank ignored red flags about criminal activity.
Clinton has acknowledged traveling on Epstein’s private jet but has said through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier’s crimes. He also has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein’s known victims.
Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Angel Ureña posted on X Friday: “These emails prove Bill Clinton did nothing and knew nothing. The rest is noise meant to distract from election losses, backfiring shutdowns, and who knows what else.” [….]
Summers and Hoffman had nothing to do with either case, but both were friendly with Epstein and exchanged emails with him. Those messages were among the documents released this week, along with other correspondence Epstein had with friends and business associates in the years before his death.
Nothing in the messages suggested any wrongdoing on the men’s part, other than associating with someone who had been accused of sex crimes against children.
At Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson writes:
In a transparent attempt to distract from the many times his own name appears in the documents from the Epstein estate members of the House Oversight Committee released Wednesday, President Donald J. Trump asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Democrats whose names appeared in the documents. He singled out former president Bill Clinton, former treasury secretary Lawrence H. Summers, and Reid Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn and who is a Democratic donor.
Marlon Brando and cat
Although the attorney general is the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and is supposed to be nonpartisan in protecting the rule of law, Bondi responded that the Department of Justice “will pursue this with urgency and integrity.” Maegan Vazquez and Shayna Jacobs of the Washington Post note that reporters have already covered the relationship of Epstein with Clinton, Summers, and Hoffman for years, and that in July, Justice Department officials said an examination of the FBI files relating to Epstein—a different cache than Wednesday’s—“did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.”
Meidas Touch noted: “In normal times, it would be a major scandal for the President to direct his AG to criminally investigate his political opponents to deflect from his own involvement in a major scandal—and for the AG to immediately announce she is doing it. The Epstein scandal and cover up just got even bigger.”
This scandal truly has Trump flailing. I hope this will be the one that really brings him down, but he somehow seems to wriggle out of every scandal. But he certainly is terrified of the Epstein files being released.
Politico: House plans to vote Tuesday on releasing Epstein files.
House Republican leaders are planning to hold a vote Tuesday on legislation to force the release of federal files related to Jeffrey Epstein, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss internal plans ahead of a public announcement.
The tentative scheduling decision follows a successful effort by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to sidestep Speaker Mike Johnson and force a floor vote on their bipartisan bill to compel the Justice Department to release all of its records related to the late convicted sex offender.
President Donald Trump has made repeated attempts to kill the effort, which continued in a series of Truth Social posts Friday. But Johnson said Wednesday he intends to move quickly to hold the vote and put the matter to bed.
Under the current GOP plan, the House Rules Committee would approve a procedural measure Monday night to advance eight bills for floor consideration, including language to tee up the Epstein legislation. If that measure is approved on the floor, likely early Tuesday afternoon, debate and a final vote on the Epstein bill could immediately follow. GOP leaders are considering whether to postpone the Epstein vote until Tuesday evening….
The four Republicans who signed on to the discharge petition forcing the vote — Massie, plus Reps. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina — are likely to examine Johnson’s moves very closely. They could together block any procedural measure that would undercut the Epstein legislation, postpone it or otherwise alter it.
One more story on the Epstein texts from Jason Wilson at The Guardian: Steve Bannon advised Jeffrey Epstein for years on how to rehab his reputation, texts show.
Hundreds of texts over almost a year show Maga influencer Steve Bannon and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein workshopping legal and media strategies to protect Epstein from the legal and publicity quagmire that enveloped him in the last year of his life.
The texts, released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday, show that as early as June 2018, the pair were devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein’s criminal history, his favorable treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful figures in business, politics and academia.
Bannon conspiratorially described the renewed scrutiny of Epstein as a “sophisticated op”, and over time he counseled Epstein in his adversarial responses to media outlets, the justice system and his victims.
All the while, both men were also strategizing how best to promote Bannon’s rightwing populist agenda, and the political fortunes of its standard bearer, Donald Trump.
In all of Epstein’s messages, the identity of his correspondent is redacted. But Bannon’s identity in the threads cited in this reporting is clear from contextual clues including his documented activities at the time, details of his business and media pursuits, and other disclosures. In one document, the sender’s phone number is not redacted – and it is the same number linked to Bannon in a legal case against Trump adviser Roger Stone.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
Trump is also beginning to panic about the economy and the negative effects of his insane tariffs.
David J. Lynch at The Washington Post: Trump goes on defense over tariffs as prices on everyday items keep rising.
President Donald Trump’s bid Friday to sootheconsumers by dropping tariffs on a wide array of groceries, including coffee, beef, bananas and tomatoes — contradicting his repeated claims that the levies were not affecting retail prices — shows he is on the defensive over his signature policy initiative.
Public opposition, eroding support on Capitol Hill and a potentially lethal challenge before the Supreme Court have Trump scrambling to defend his economic strategy even as the administration notches diplomatic agreements that are cementing its high-tariff approach to rebalancing global trade.
Sophia Loren with her cat, 1959
Public opinion is the immediate worry, following recent Democratic electoral victories in Virginia and New Jersey that were fueled by Americans’ ire over the cost of living. By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, registered voters disapproved of the president’s tariffs in a recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, a finding that has been consistent all year and could imperil Republican candidates in next year’s congressional elections.
The president on Friday issued an executive order rolling back import taxes on many foods, his most significant retreat on the emergency tariffs he imposed in April, which were billed at the time as loophole-free. In September, the White House had signaled that some products that are not generally produced in the United States could be spared tariffs once nations where they originate reached trade deals with the United States. But Friday’s exemptions apply to products from any nation, even those that have not agreed on trade terms.
“They know that they shouldn’t have imposed a lot of these tariffs and that they’re hurting affordability for consumers. Now they’re looking for a way to justify lowering them. And that’s fine. But did we really need to go through all this in the first place?” said Christopher Padilla, senior adviser to the Brunswick Group and a former trade official in the George W. Bush administration….
This week’s tariff cuts appear aimed at responding to public concern over high prices. Inflation overall is running at an annual rate of 3 percent, above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target for price stability but well down from the mid-2022 peak of 9.1 percent.
Prices on many everyday items, however, continue to soar. Through September, the most recent data available, coffee prices were up 19 percent over the previous 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bananas were up 7 percent.
Elizabeth Buchwald at CNN: Trump’s latest tariff TACO probably won’t make your life more affordable.
Americans could soon see some goods get cheaper after President Donald Trump exempted certain agricultural imports from a set of tariffs on Friday. But any price drops likely won’t be enough to make life feel more affordable any time soon.
The executive order exempted products like coffee, beef and some fruit from Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, which began rolling out in April.
The new exemptions are part of what traders have dubbed TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out, to describe times when the president backs off a policy after unintended consequences pop up. In the case of tariffs, Trump has already reversed a number of his measures, a sign that the administration is reshaping his signature economic tool.
The latest TACO comes after voters, worried about affordability, gave Republicans a drubbing in recent off-year elections.
Why this likely won’t help consumers much:
Nevertheless, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the new exemptions generally won’t help improve affordability.
“It depends on what the importers do with the tariff,” he said in a CNBC interview on Friday. “So when you look at the overall price trend, it hasn’t been because of tariffs. It’s been because of these other events going on and just supply and demand.”
Steve Martin and cat
But in cases where tariffs have been passed along to consumers, prices could drop, Greer said.
One potential example: bananas. American consumers are paying about 8% more for bananas than before Trump’s second term began.
The US largely imports bananas from South American countries. With bananas exempt from “reciprocal” tariffs that started at 10%, prices could go back to where they were earlier this year, said Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo. But it’s unlikely to be something most consumers notice unless they’re buying bananas often, she added.
But not everyone is convinced it will even do that much.
“It is not clear that lowering tariffs will lower prices — it depends on what retailers think they can get away with. The import price of bananas has fallen since tariffs were imposed, but the US consumer price has risen,” Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS global wealth management, said in a note last week. (The United States tracks import prices before accounting for tariffs. In some cases, import prices have fallen as exporters lower what they charge as a way to share in the tariff expense importers pay.)
More analysis at the CNN link.
Another flop: Trump’s soybean deal with China may have just been a mirage. AP: USDA data casts doubt on China’s soybean purchase promises touted by Trump.
New data the Agriculture Department released Friday created serious doubts about whether China will really buy millions of bushels of American soybeans like the Trump administration touted last month after a high-stakes meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The USDA report released after the government reopened showed only two Chinese purchases of American soybeans since the summit in South Korea that totaled 332,000 metric tons. That’s well short of the 12 million metric tons that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said China agreed to purchase by January and nowhere near the 25 million metric tons she said they would buy in each of the next three years.
American farmers were hopeful that their biggest customer would resume buying their crops. But CoBank’s Tanner Ehmke, who is its lead economist for grains and oilseed, said there isn’t much incentive for China to buy from America right now because they have plenty of soybeans on hand that they have bought from Brazil and other South American countries this year, and the remaining tariffs ensure that U.S. soybeans remain more expensive than Brazilian beans.
“We are still not even close to what has been advertised from the U.S. in terms of what the agreement would have been,” Ehmke said.
Beijing has yet to confirm any detailed soybean purchase agreement but only that the two sides have reached “consensus” on expanding trade in farm products. Ehmke said that even if China did promise to buy American soybeans it may have only agreed to buy them if the price was attractive.
Will Trump try to distract from the Epstein files and his failures on the economy by taking use to war with Venezuela?
David E. Sanger, Eric Schmit, tTyler Pager, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs at The New York Times (gift link): Trump Escalates Pressure on Venezuela, but Endgame Is Unclear.
The Trump administration is rapidly escalating its pressure campaign against Venezuela, with America’s largest aircraft carrier, the Ford, about to take up a position within striking distance of the country, even as President Trump’s aides provide conflicting accounts of what, exactly, they are seeking to achieve.
Mr. Trump held back-to-back days of meetings at the White House over the past two days, reviewing military options, including the use of Special Operations forces and direct action inside Venezuela.
Marlyn Monroe with her cat
It is still not clear whether Mr. Trump has made a decision about what kind of action to authorize, if any. On Friday, he told reporters on Air Force One that “I sort of made up my mind.” “I can’t tell you what it is,” he said, “but we made a lot of progress with Venezuela in terms of stopping drugs from pouring in.”
It is possible Mr. Trump is relying on the arrival of so much firepower to intimidate the government of Nicolás Maduro, who the United States and many of its allies say is not Venezuela’s legitimate president. Mr. Maduro has put his forces on high alert, leaving the two countries with their weapons cocked and ready for war.
There were signs that the administration was moving into a new and more aggressive posture. Shortly after a meeting on Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media that the mission in the Caribbean now had a name — “Southern Spear.” He described its goal in expansive terms, saying the operation “removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere.”
“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood,” he wrote, “and we will protect it.” With the arrival of the Ford and three accompanying missile-firing Navy destroyers, there are now 15,000 troops in the region, more than there have been at any time in decades.
The only thing missing is a strategic explanation from the Trump administration that would clarify why the United States is amassing such a large force. Mr. Hegseth’s posting on X was only the latest in a series of statements from administration officials that, at best, are in tension with one another. Some are outright contradictory.
Mr. Trump has been the most consistent, saying it is all about drugs. But that would not explain why the Ford was rushed from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Caribbean region, adding to an American force that has now reached 15,000 soldiers and sailors, to attack small boats that until early September had been intercepted by the Coast Guard. Nor would it explain why Colombia or Mexico — Mexico being the main conduit for fentanyl — are not in the Navy’s sights.
Dan Lamothe, Tara Copp, Michael Birnbaum, and Noah Robertson: Trump weighs Venezuela strikes as U.S. forces prepare for attack order.
President Donald Trump said Friday night that he has “sort of made up my mind” about how he will proceed with the possibility of military action in Venezuela, following a second consecutive day of deliberations at the White House that included top national security advisers.
Trump’s vague remarks aboard Air Force One were delivered as he traveled for the weekend to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, and included no additional new details. The comments came as U.S. forces in the region awaited possible attack orders and after days of high-level discussions about whether — and how — to strike in Venezuela, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter is highly sensitive. Joining Trump in deliberations Friday were Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, these people said.
Robert Redford with his cat
Earlier in the day, an administration official said “a host of options” had been presented to the president. Trump is “very good at maintaining strategic ambiguity, and something he does very well is he does not dictate or broadcast to our adversaries what he wants to do next,” the official said.
Any strike on Venezuelan territory would upend the president’s frequent promises of avoiding new conflicts and betray promises made to Congress in recent weeks that no active preparations were underway for such an attack. It also would further complicate U.S. cooperation with other Latin American countries, and deepen suspicions — there and in Washington — over whether Trump’s endgame is the forced removal of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump has accused of sending drugs and violent criminals to the United States.
Maduro, a socialist strongman, came to power in Caracas in 2013 and increasingly has become a fixation for Trump.
In August, U.S. officials increased the reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction from $25 million to $50 million, citing alleged ties to drug cartels and U.S. beliefs dating back to the Biden administration that he lost Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election and refused to step down.
“The United States is very plugged into what’s going on in Venezuela, the chatter among Maduro’s people and the highest levels of his regime,” the administration official said. “Maduro is very scared, and he should be scared. The president has options on the table that are very bad for Maduro and his illegitimate regime. … We view this regime as illegitimate, and it’s not serving the Western Hemisphere well.”
President Donald Trump has said he believes Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s days are numbered, and that land strikes inside Venezuela are possible.
Experts say that the US doesn’t currently have the military assets in place to launch a largescale operation to remove Maduro from power, though Trump has approved covert action within Venezuela, CNN has reported.
Bette Davis with cat
But if Trump did order strikes inside Venezuela aimed at ousting Maduro, he could face serious challenges with fractured opposition elements and a military poised for insurgency, according to experts, as well as political backlash at home for a president who promised to avoid costly entanglements overseas.
CNN reported that Trump received a briefing earlier this week to review updated options for military action inside Venezuela, a concept the White House has been weighing. The administration had not made a decision on whether to launch strikes, CNN reported, though the US military has moved more than a dozen warships and 15,000 troops into the region as part of what the Pentagon branded Operation Southern Spear in an announcement Thursday.
The concentration of military assets and threats of further attacks beyond the ongoing drug boat campaign have served to increase pressure on Maduro, with administration officials saying he needs to leave office while arguing that he’s closely tied to the Tren de Aragua gang and leading drug trafficking efforts.
But if Maduro does flee Venezuela or is killed out in a targeted strike, experts worry about a military takeover of the country or the boosting of another dictator similar to Maduro.
Read the rest at CNN.
Those are my recommended reads. I’ll add a few more links in the comment thread. What stories are you interested in today?
#BillClinton #catArt #caturday #ChinaSoybeanPurchases #DonaldTrump #EpsteinFiles #JeffreyEpstein #LarrySummers #NicolasMaduro #PamBondi #ReidHoffman #SteveBannon #TACOTrump #TrumpTariffs #Venezuela
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The next spotlight in our “II Much II Listen II” series is number 987 in The List, submitted by Elegansen.
Normally in this series we take a look at how an album named “II” compares to the “I” that came before it. That’s not technically possible here as Palmbomen II is a self-titled album, with the “II” referring not to a second album but rather to it being the second version of Kai Hugo’s Palmbomen project (i.e., I = live, II = studio-only).
But! Each of the fourteen tracks on this “II” album is named after a character from The X-Files! So maybe, MAYBE, what we should be doing here is comparing the track on Palmbomen II with the relevant X-Files character/episode, i.e., the “I”. You with me?
Okay, here we go: Wah wee wah wee woo wahhhhh.* (Warning: X-Files spoilers ahead. Also, all the songs sound like old VHS tapes – delicious delicious old VHS tapes.)
- Peter Tanaka
- I (S2.E09 “Firewalker”): Tanaka is a systems analyst for a research team working inside a volcano in Oregon, where something is killing people. Tanaka meets an untimely end, chest-burster style.
- II: No Tanakas were harmed in the making of this song, but perhaps don’t listen to it while inside a volcano. Metaphorical chest-bursting may still occur.
- Cindy Savalas
- I (S4.E13 “Never Again”): Savalas is the ex-wife of Ed Jerse who, immediately after their divorce settlement, gets a tattoo of a pin-up girl. The tattoo talks to Jerse in Jodie Foster’s voice, obviously, convincing Jerse to do some horrible things.
- II: If you and this song don’t end amicably, perhaps don’t get a tattoo afterwards, even if you’re a huge Jodie Foster fan.
- Lorraine Kelleher
- I (S3.E21 “Avatar”): Kelleher is the madame of Carina Sayles, a sex worker who Assistant Director Walter Skinner spends a night with.
- II: If you purchase Palmbomen II so that you can spend a night with this song, it’s unlikely that any of the proceeds will go to Kelleher. However, perhaps buy it on a Bandcamp Friday (e.g., September 6) to ensure all the money goes directly to Palmbomen – we simply don’t know what sort of business arrangements Bandcamp has these days.
- Teena Mulder
- I (in many episodes, learn first name in S5.E08 “Kitsunegari”): Elizabeth “Teena” Mulder is Fox Mulder’s mother. She lied about a LOT of things.
- II: If you listen to this song, you will not necessarily become the parent of someone who believes in aliens, but there are no guarantees. At any rate, this song will not lie to you, because the truth is out there.
- Carina Sayles
- I (S3.E21 “Avatar”): Sayles is a sex worker who spends what ultimately turns out to be her last night on Earth with Assistant Director Skinner.
- II: There’s a video that goes with this song that has nothing to do with the Sayles in X-Files, so perhaps the song provides Sayles with an alternate timeline that has nothing to do with Skinner. At the very least, if you spend a night with this song, no one will accuse Skinner of murder.
- Samuel Aboah
- I (S4.E03 “Teliko”): Aboah did not have his own pituitary gland, and had to be, uh, creative to deal with that.
- II: If you listen to this song, your pituitary gland should stay intact, depending on the volume you listen to the song at.
- Mary Louise Lefante
- I (S4.E04 “Unruhe”): Lefante goes to get a passport photo taken, but ends up getting a lobotomy.
- II: Listening to this song while getting a passport photo taken may result in the photo being rejected. However, it thankfully should not lead to anyone being lobotomized.
- Vic Trevino
- I (S3.E18 “Teso Dos Bichos”): Trevino is actually the real name of the actor who played Dr. Alonso Bilac, an archeologist working at a site in Ecuador.
- II: If you listen to this song and happen to be a renowned archeologist having a show or film made about your work, Trevino may be hired to play you.
- Gerd Thomas
- I (S2.E10 “Red Museum”): Thomas takes videos of people through peep holes, kidnaps them, and writes shit like “HE IS ONE” on their backs before releasing them into the woods, as a supposed protest against human-testing hormones for cows. Yeah.
- II: This song may be trying to tell us that we’re unwilling participants in an experiment on what music cows like. But, like, I’m fine with that, at least that’s not creepy AF.
- Caitlin Ross
- I (S4.S10 “Paper Hearts”): Ross was kidnapped by serial killer John Lee Roche, after Fox Mulder makes the mistake of releasing Roche from jail. Mulder then finds Roche and saves Ross.
- II: In the alternate timeline of this song, Mulder isn’t so stupid and doesn’t have to save Ross, because she’s perfectly safe and far far away from both Ross and Mulder.
- John Lee Roche
- I (S4.S10 “Paper Hearts”): Roche is a super creepy serial killer of young girls. He toys with Fox Mulder, planting the idea that maybe he abducted and murdered Mulder’s sister, Samantha, whose disappearance in their childhood is essentially Mulder’s driving force throughout the show. Mulder ends up killing Roche.
- II: This song doesn’t make Roche any more real or any less dead, thankfully. I really wish this was a song about Samantha instead – who gives AF about Roche. I suppose Kai Hugo does, and it’s one of the songs on the album that get a video, but at least the video doesn’t actually have anything to do with Roche (again, thankfully).
- Jesse O’Neill
- I (S2.E09 “Firewalker”): O’Neill was a grad student on the same research team as Peter Tanaka (see track 1), working inside a volcano where something is killing people. Like Tanaka, she also meets an untimely end, but she first handcuffs herself to Dana Scully to try and kill Scully too, so…
- II: If you listen to this song, you will not end up handcuffed to Scully, but you will also not die from volcano spores.
- Rebecca Waite
- I (S4:E06 “Sanguinarium”): Waite is a nurse and practicing witch who seems to be responsible for plastic surgeons at her hospital going into some sort of trance and doing horrible things during surgeries. She however dies after being hexed herself, and so it turns out her spells were attempts to protect patients.
- II: Listen to this song if you’re about to go for plastic surgery or near any evil surgeons, for safety.
- Leo Danzinger
- I (S4:E16 “Unrequited”): Danzinger is a Vietnam War veteran who becomes involved in a former POW’s attempt to uncover what really happened to some still-missing American POWs. Danzinger isn’t in the episode’s credits.
- II: This song serves as credits for Danzinger, I guess? There’s also a video for this song, but, as with the other videos, it has nothing to do with Danzinger. So, is he really given credit in the end? Is he actually still missing? Did he ever exist at all? (Wah wee wah wee woo wahhhhh.)
I want to believe.
*How to type out The X-Files theme song, as suggested by @jsit (thanks, Jay!).
#1001OtherAlbums #electronicMusic #IIMuchIIListenII #KaiHugo #Palmbomen #PalmbomenII #XFiles
- Peter Tanaka
-
The next spotlight in our “II Much II Listen II” series is number 987 in The List, submitted by Elegansen.
Normally in this series we take a look at how an album named “II” compares to the “I” that came before it. That’s not technically possible here as Palmbomen II is a self-titled album, with the “II” referring not to a second album but rather to it being the second version of Kai Hugo’s Palmbomen project (i.e., I = live, II = studio-only).
But! Each of the fourteen tracks on this “II” album is named after a character from The X-Files! So maybe, MAYBE, what we should be doing here is comparing the track on Palmbomen II with the relevant X-Files character/episode, i.e., the “I”. You with me?
Okay, here we go: Wah wee wah wee woo wahhhhh.* (Warning: X-Files spoilers ahead. Also, all the songs sound like old VHS tapes – delicious delicious old VHS tapes.)
- Peter Tanaka
- I (S2.E09 “Firewalker”): Tanaka is a systems analyst for a research team working inside a volcano in Oregon, where something is killing people. Tanaka meets an untimely end, chest-burster style.
- II: No Tanakas were harmed in the making of this song, but perhaps don’t listen to it while inside a volcano. Metaphorical chest-bursting may still occur.
- Cindy Savalas
- I (S4.E13 “Never Again”): Savalas is the ex-wife of Ed Jerse who, immediately after their divorce settlement, gets a tattoo of a pin-up girl. The tattoo talks to Jerse in Jodie Foster’s voice, obviously, convincing Jerse to do some horrible things.
- II: If you and this song don’t end amicably, perhaps don’t get a tattoo afterwards, even if you’re a huge Jodie Foster fan.
- Lorraine Kelleher
- I (S3.E21 “Avatar”): Kelleher is the madame of Carina Sayles, a sex worker who Assistant Director Walter Skinner spends a night with.
- II: If you purchase Palmbomen II so that you can spend a night with this song, it’s unlikely that any of the proceeds will go to Kelleher. However, perhaps buy it on a Bandcamp Friday (e.g., September 6) to ensure all the money goes directly to Palmbomen – we simply don’t know what sort of business arrangements Bandcamp has these days.
- Teena Mulder
- I (in many episodes, learn first name in S5.E08 “Kitsunegari”): Elizabeth “Teena” Mulder is Fox Mulder’s mother. She lied about a LOT of things.
- II: If you listen to this song, you will not necessarily become the parent of someone who believes in aliens, but there are no guarantees. At any rate, this song will not lie to you, because the truth is out there.
- Carina Sayles
- I (S3.E21 “Avatar”): Sayles is a sex worker who spends what ultimately turns out to be her last night on Earth with Assistant Director Skinner.
- II: There’s a video that goes with this song that has nothing to do with the Sayles in X-Files, so perhaps the song provides Sayles with an alternate timeline that has nothing to do with Skinner. At the very least, if you spend a night with this song, no one will accuse Skinner of murder.
- Samuel Aboah
- I (S4.E03 “Teliko”): Aboah did not have his own pituitary gland, and had to be, uh, creative to deal with that.
- II: If you listen to this song, your pituitary gland should stay intact, depending on the volume you listen to the song at.
- Mary Louise Lefante
- I (S4.E04 “Unruhe”): Lefante goes to get a passport photo taken, but ends up getting a lobotomy.
- II: Listening to this song while getting a passport photo taken may result in the photo being rejected. However, it thankfully should not lead to anyone being lobotomized.
- Vic Trevino
- I (S3.E18 “Teso Dos Bichos”): Trevino is actually the real name of the actor who played Dr. Alonso Bilac, an archeologist working at a site in Ecuador.
- II: If you listen to this song and happen to be a renowned archeologist having a show or film made about your work, Trevino may be hired to play you.
- Gerd Thomas
- I (S2.E10 “Red Museum”): Thomas takes videos of people through peep holes, kidnaps them, and writes shit like “HE IS ONE” on their backs before releasing them into the woods, as a supposed protest against human-testing hormones for cows. Yeah.
- II: This song may be trying to tell us that we’re unwilling participants in an experiment on what music cows like. But, like, I’m fine with that, at least that’s not creepy AF.
- Caitlin Ross
- I (S4.S10 “Paper Hearts”): Ross was kidnapped by serial killer John Lee Roche, after Fox Mulder makes the mistake of releasing Roche from jail. Mulder then finds Roche and saves Ross.
- II: In the alternate timeline of this song, Mulder isn’t so stupid and doesn’t have to save Ross, because she’s perfectly safe and far far away from both Ross and Mulder.
- John Lee Roche
- I (S4.S10 “Paper Hearts”): Roche is a super creepy serial killer of young girls. He toys with Fox Mulder, planting the idea that maybe he abducted and murdered Mulder’s sister, Samantha, whose disappearance in their childhood is essentially Mulder’s driving force throughout the show. Mulder ends up killing Roche.
- II: This song doesn’t make Roche any more real or any less dead, thankfully. I really wish this was a song about Samantha instead – who gives AF about Roche. I suppose Kai Hugo does, and it’s one of the songs on the album that get a video, but at least the video doesn’t actually have anything to do with Roche (again, thankfully).
- Jesse O’Neill
- I (S2.E09 “Firewalker”): O’Neill was a grad student on the same research team as Peter Tanaka (see track 1), working inside a volcano where something is killing people. Like Tanaka, she also meets an untimely end, but she first handcuffs herself to Dana Scully to try and kill Scully too, so…
- II: If you listen to this song, you will not end up handcuffed to Scully, but you will also not die from volcano spores.
- Rebecca Waite
- I (S4:E06 “Sanguinarium”): Waite is a nurse and practicing witch who seems to be responsible for plastic surgeons at her hospital going into some sort of trance and doing horrible things during surgeries. She however dies after being hexed herself, and so it turns out her spells were attempts to protect patients.
- II: Listen to this song if you’re about to go for plastic surgery or near any evil surgeons, for safety.
- Leo Danzinger
- I (S4:E16 “Unrequited”): Danzinger is a Vietnam War veteran who becomes involved in a former POW’s attempt to uncover what really happened to some still-missing American POWs. Danzinger isn’t in the episode’s credits.
- II: This song serves as credits for Danzinger, I guess? There’s also a video for this song, but, as with the other videos, it has nothing to do with Danzinger. So, is he really given credit in the end? Is he actually still missing? Did he ever exist at all? (Wah wee wah wee woo wahhhhh.)
I want to believe.
*How to type out The X-Files theme song, as suggested by @jsit (thanks, Jay!).
#1001OtherAlbums #electronicMusic #IIMuchIIListenII #KaiHugo #Palmbomen #PalmbomenII #XFiles
- Peter Tanaka
-
The next spotlight in our “II Much II Listen II” series is number 987 in The List, submitted by Elegansen.
Normally in this series we take a look at how an album named “II” compares to the “I” that came before it. That’s not technically possible here as Palmbomen II is a self-titled album, with the “II” referring not to a second album but rather to it being the second version of Kai Hugo’s Palmbomen project (i.e., I = live, II = studio-only).
But! Each of the fourteen tracks on this “II” album is named after a character from The X-Files! So maybe, MAYBE, what we should be doing here is comparing the track on Palmbomen II with the relevant X-Files character/episode, i.e., the “I”. You with me?
Okay, here we go: Wah wee wah wee woo wahhhhh.* (Warning: X-Files spoilers ahead. Also, all the songs sound like old VHS tapes – delicious delicious old VHS tapes.)
- Peter Tanaka
- I (S2.E09 “Firewalker”): Tanaka is a systems analyst for a research team working inside a volcano in Oregon, where something is killing people. Tanaka meets an untimely end, chest-burster style.
- II: No Tanakas were harmed in the making of this song, but perhaps don’t listen to it while inside a volcano. Metaphorical chest-bursting may still occur.
- Cindy Savalas
- I (S4.E13 “Never Again”): Savalas is the ex-wife of Ed Jerse who, immediately after their divorce settlement, gets a tattoo of a pin-up girl. The tattoo talks to Jerse in Jodie Foster’s voice, obviously, convincing Jerse to do some horrible things.
- II: If you and this song don’t end amicably, perhaps don’t get a tattoo afterwards, even if you’re a huge Jodie Foster fan.
- Lorraine Kelleher
- I (S3.E21 “Avatar”): Kelleher is the madame of Carina Sayles, a sex worker who Assistant Director Walter Skinner spends a night with.
- II: If you purchase Palmbomen II so that you can spend a night with this song, it’s unlikely that any of the proceeds will go to Kelleher. However, perhaps buy it on a Bandcamp Friday (e.g., September 6) to ensure all the money goes directly to Palmbomen – we simply don’t know what sort of business arrangements Bandcamp has these days.
- Teena Mulder
- I (in many episodes, learn first name in S5.E08 “Kitsunegari”): Elizabeth “Teena” Mulder is Fox Mulder’s mother. She lied about a LOT of things.
- II: If you listen to this song, you will not necessarily become the parent of someone who believes in aliens, but there are no guarantees. At any rate, this song will not lie to you, because the truth is out there.
- Carina Sayles
- I (S3.E21 “Avatar”): Sayles is a sex worker who spends what ultimately turns out to be her last night on Earth with Assistant Director Skinner.
- II: There’s a video that goes with this song that has nothing to do with the Sayles in X-Files, so perhaps the song provides Sayles with an alternate timeline that has nothing to do with Skinner. At the very least, if you spend a night with this song, no one will accuse Skinner of murder.
- Samuel Aboah
- I (S4.E03 “Teliko”): Aboah did not have his own pituitary gland, and had to be, uh, creative to deal with that.
- II: If you listen to this song, your pituitary gland should stay intact, depending on the volume you listen to the song at.
- Mary Louise Lefante
- I (S4.E04 “Unruhe”): Lefante goes to get a passport photo taken, but ends up getting a lobotomy.
- II: Listening to this song while getting a passport photo taken may result in the photo being rejected. However, it thankfully should not lead to anyone being lobotomized.
- Vic Trevino
- I (S3.E18 “Teso Dos Bichos”): Trevino is actually the real name of the actor who played Dr. Alonso Bilac, an archeologist working at a site in Ecuador.
- II: If you listen to this song and happen to be a renowned archeologist having a show or film made about your work, Trevino may be hired to play you.
- Gerd Thomas
- I (S2.E10 “Red Museum”): Thomas takes videos of people through peep holes, kidnaps them, and writes shit like “HE IS ONE” on their backs before releasing them into the woods, as a supposed protest against human-testing hormones for cows. Yeah.
- II: This song may be trying to tell us that we’re unwilling participants in an experiment on what music cows like. But, like, I’m fine with that, at least that’s not creepy AF.
- Caitlin Ross
- I (S4.S10 “Paper Hearts”): Ross was kidnapped by serial killer John Lee Roche, after Fox Mulder makes the mistake of releasing Roche from jail. Mulder then finds Roche and saves Ross.
- II: In the alternate timeline of this song, Mulder isn’t so stupid and doesn’t have to save Ross, because she’s perfectly safe and far far away from both Ross and Mulder.
- John Lee Roche
- I (S4.S10 “Paper Hearts”): Roche is a super creepy serial killer of young girls. He toys with Fox Mulder, planting the idea that maybe he abducted and murdered Mulder’s sister, Samantha, whose disappearance in their childhood is essentially Mulder’s driving force throughout the show. Mulder ends up killing Roche.
- II: This song doesn’t make Roche any more real or any less dead, thankfully. I really wish this was a song about Samantha instead – who gives AF about Roche. I suppose Kai Hugo does, and it’s one of the songs on the album that get a video, but at least the video doesn’t actually have anything to do with Roche (again, thankfully).
- Jesse O’Neill
- I (S2.E09 “Firewalker”): O’Neill was a grad student on the same research team as Peter Tanaka (see track 1), working inside a volcano where something is killing people. Like Tanaka, she also meets an untimely end, but she first handcuffs herself to Dana Scully to try and kill Scully too, so…
- II: If you listen to this song, you will not end up handcuffed to Scully, but you will also not die from volcano spores.
- Rebecca Waite
- I (S4:E06 “Sanguinarium”): Waite is a nurse and practicing witch who seems to be responsible for plastic surgeons at her hospital going into some sort of trance and doing horrible things during surgeries. She however dies after being hexed herself, and so it turns out her spells were attempts to protect patients.
- II: Listen to this song if you’re about to go for plastic surgery or near any evil surgeons, for safety.
- Leo Danzinger
- I (S4:E16 “Unrequited”): Danzinger is a Vietnam War veteran who becomes involved in a former POW’s attempt to uncover what really happened to some still-missing American POWs. Danzinger isn’t in the episode’s credits.
- II: This song serves as credits for Danzinger, I guess? There’s also a video for this song, but, as with the other videos, it has nothing to do with Danzinger. So, is he really given credit in the end? Is he actually still missing? Did he ever exist at all? (Wah wee wah wee woo wahhhhh.)
I want to believe.
*How to type out The X-Files theme song, as suggested by @jsit (thanks, Jay!).
#1001OtherAlbums #electronicMusic #IIMuchIIListenII #KaiHugo #Palmbomen #PalmbomenII #XFiles
- Peter Tanaka
-
The next spotlight in our “II Much II Listen II” series is number 987 in The List, submitted by Elegansen.
Normally in this series we take a look at how an album named “II” compares to the “I” that came before it. That’s not technically possible here as Palmbomen II is a self-titled album, with the “II” referring not to a second album but rather to it being the second version of Kai Hugo’s Palmbomen project (i.e., I = live, II = studio-only).
But! Each of the fourteen tracks on this “II” album is named after a character from The X-Files! So maybe, MAYBE, what we should be doing here is comparing the track on Palmbomen II with the relevant X-Files character/episode, i.e., the “I”. You with me?
Okay, here we go: Wah wee wah wee woo wahhhhh.* (Warning: X-Files spoilers ahead. Also, all the songs sound like old VHS tapes – delicious delicious old VHS tapes.)
- Peter Tanaka
- I (S2.E09 “Firewalker”): Tanaka is a systems analyst for a research team working inside a volcano in Oregon, where something is killing people. Tanaka meets an untimely end, chest-burster style.
- II: No Tanakas were harmed in the making of this song, but perhaps don’t listen to it while inside a volcano. Metaphorical chest-bursting may still occur.
- Cindy Savalas
- I (S4.E13 “Never Again”): Savalas is the ex-wife of Ed Jerse who, immediately after their divorce settlement, gets a tattoo of a pin-up girl. The tattoo talks to Jerse in Jodie Foster’s voice, obviously, convincing Jerse to do some horrible things.
- II: If you and this song don’t end amicably, perhaps don’t get a tattoo afterwards, even if you’re a huge Jodie Foster fan.
- Lorraine Kelleher
- I (S3.E21 “Avatar”): Kelleher is the madame of Carina Sayles, a sex worker who Assistant Director Walter Skinner spends a night with.
- II: If you purchase Palmbomen II so that you can spend a night with this song, it’s unlikely that any of the proceeds will go to Kelleher. However, perhaps buy it on a Bandcamp Friday (e.g., September 6) to ensure all the money goes directly to Palmbomen – we simply don’t know what sort of business arrangements Bandcamp has these days.
- Teena Mulder
- I (in many episodes, learn first name in S5.E08 “Kitsunegari”): Elizabeth “Teena” Mulder is Fox Mulder’s mother. She lied about a LOT of things.
- II: If you listen to this song, you will not necessarily become the parent of someone who believes in aliens, but there are no guarantees. At any rate, this song will not lie to you, because the truth is out there.
- Carina Sayles
- I (S3.E21 “Avatar”): Sayles is a sex worker who spends what ultimately turns out to be her last night on Earth with Assistant Director Skinner.
- II: There’s a video that goes with this song that has nothing to do with the Sayles in X-Files, so perhaps the song provides Sayles with an alternate timeline that has nothing to do with Skinner. At the very least, if you spend a night with this song, no one will accuse Skinner of murder.
- Samuel Aboah
- I (S4.E03 “Teliko”): Aboah did not have his own pituitary gland, and had to be, uh, creative to deal with that.
- II: If you listen to this song, your pituitary gland should stay intact, depending on the volume you listen to the song at.
- Mary Louise Lefante
- I (S4.E04 “Unruhe”): Lefante goes to get a passport photo taken, but ends up getting a lobotomy.
- II: Listening to this song while getting a passport photo taken may result in the photo being rejected. However, it thankfully should not lead to anyone being lobotomized.
- Vic Trevino
- I (S3.E18 “Teso Dos Bichos”): Trevino is actually the real name of the actor who played Dr. Alonso Bilac, an archeologist working at a site in Ecuador.
- II: If you listen to this song and happen to be a renowned archeologist having a show or film made about your work, Trevino may be hired to play you.
- Gerd Thomas
- I (S2.E10 “Red Museum”): Thomas takes videos of people through peep holes, kidnaps them, and writes shit like “HE IS ONE” on their backs before releasing them into the woods, as a supposed protest against human-testing hormones for cows. Yeah.
- II: This song may be trying to tell us that we’re unwilling participants in an experiment on what music cows like. But, like, I’m fine with that, at least that’s not creepy AF.
- Caitlin Ross
- I (S4.S10 “Paper Hearts”): Ross was kidnapped by serial killer John Lee Roche, after Fox Mulder makes the mistake of releasing Roche from jail. Mulder then finds Roche and saves Ross.
- II: In the alternate timeline of this song, Mulder isn’t so stupid and doesn’t have to save Ross, because she’s perfectly safe and far far away from both Ross and Mulder.
- John Lee Roche
- I (S4.S10 “Paper Hearts”): Roche is a super creepy serial killer of young girls. He toys with Fox Mulder, planting the idea that maybe he abducted and murdered Mulder’s sister, Samantha, whose disappearance in their childhood is essentially Mulder’s driving force throughout the show. Mulder ends up killing Roche.
- II: This song doesn’t make Roche any more real or any less dead, thankfully. I really wish this was a song about Samantha instead – who gives AF about Roche. I suppose Kai Hugo does, and it’s one of the songs on the album that get a video, but at least the video doesn’t actually have anything to do with Roche (again, thankfully).
- Jesse O’Neill
- I (S2.E09 “Firewalker”): O’Neill was a grad student on the same research team as Peter Tanaka (see track 1), working inside a volcano where something is killing people. Like Tanaka, she also meets an untimely end, but she first handcuffs herself to Dana Scully to try and kill Scully too, so…
- II: If you listen to this song, you will not end up handcuffed to Scully, but you will also not die from volcano spores.
- Rebecca Waite
- I (S4:E06 “Sanguinarium”): Waite is a nurse and practicing witch who seems to be responsible for plastic surgeons at her hospital going into some sort of trance and doing horrible things during surgeries. She however dies after being hexed herself, and so it turns out her spells were attempts to protect patients.
- II: Listen to this song if you’re about to go for plastic surgery or near any evil surgeons, for safety.
- Leo Danzinger
- I (S4:E16 “Unrequited”): Danzinger is a Vietnam War veteran who becomes involved in a former POW’s attempt to uncover what really happened to some still-missing American POWs. Danzinger isn’t in the episode’s credits.
- II: This song serves as credits for Danzinger, I guess? There’s also a video for this song, but, as with the other videos, it has nothing to do with Danzinger. So, is he really given credit in the end? Is he actually still missing? Did he ever exist at all? (Wah wee wah wee woo wahhhhh.)
I want to believe.
*How to type out The X-Files theme song, as suggested by @jsit (thanks, Jay!).
#1001OtherAlbums #electronicMusic #IIMuchIIListenII #KaiHugo #Palmbomen #PalmbomenII #XFiles
- Peter Tanaka
-
The next spotlight in our “II Much II Listen II” series is number 987 in The List, submitted by Elegansen.
Normally in this series we take a look at how an album named “II” compares to the “I” that came before it. That’s not technically possible here as Palmbomen II is a self-titled album, with the “II” referring not to a second album but rather to it being the second version of Kai Hugo’s Palmbomen project (i.e., I = live, II = studio-only).
But! Each of the fourteen tracks on this “II” album is named after a character from The X-Files! So maybe, MAYBE, what we should be doing here is comparing the track on Palmbomen II with the relevant X-Files character/episode, i.e., the “I”. You with me?
Okay, here we go: Wah wee wah wee woo wahhhhh.* (Warning: X-Files spoilers ahead. Also, all the songs sound like old VHS tapes – delicious delicious old VHS tapes.)
- Peter Tanaka
- I (S2.E09 “Firewalker”): Tanaka is a systems analyst for a research team working inside a volcano in Oregon, where something is killing people. Tanaka meets an untimely end, chest-burster style.
- II: No Tanakas were harmed in the making of this song, but perhaps don’t listen to it while inside a volcano. Metaphorical chest-bursting may still occur.
- Cindy Savalas
- I (S4.E13 “Never Again”): Savalas is the ex-wife of Ed Jerse who, immediately after their divorce settlement, gets a tattoo of a pin-up girl. The tattoo talks to Jerse in Jodie Foster’s voice, obviously, convincing Jerse to do some horrible things.
- II: If you and this song don’t end amicably, perhaps don’t get a tattoo afterwards, even if you’re a huge Jodie Foster fan.
- Lorraine Kelleher
- I (S3.E21 “Avatar”): Kelleher is the madame of Carina Sayles, a sex worker who Assistant Director Walter Skinner spends a night with.
- II: If you purchase Palmbomen II so that you can spend a night with this song, it’s unlikely that any of the proceeds will go to Kelleher. However, perhaps buy it on a Bandcamp Friday (e.g., September 6) to ensure all the money goes directly to Palmbomen – we simply don’t know what sort of business arrangements Bandcamp has these days.
- Teena Mulder
- I (in many episodes, learn first name in S5.E08 “Kitsunegari”): Elizabeth “Teena” Mulder is Fox Mulder’s mother. She lied about a LOT of things.
- II: If you listen to this song, you will not necessarily become the parent of someone who believes in aliens, but there are no guarantees. At any rate, this song will not lie to you, because the truth is out there.
- Carina Sayles
- I (S3.E21 “Avatar”): Sayles is a sex worker who spends what ultimately turns out to be her last night on Earth with Assistant Director Skinner.
- II: There’s a video that goes with this song that has nothing to do with the Sayles in X-Files, so perhaps the song provides Sayles with an alternate timeline that has nothing to do with Skinner. At the very least, if you spend a night with this song, no one will accuse Skinner of murder.
- Samuel Aboah
- I (S4.E03 “Teliko”): Aboah did not have his own pituitary gland, and had to be, uh, creative to deal with that.
- II: If you listen to this song, your pituitary gland should stay intact, depending on the volume you listen to the song at.
- Mary Louise Lefante
- I (S4.E04 “Unruhe”): Lefante goes to get a passport photo taken, but ends up getting a lobotomy.
- II: Listening to this song while getting a passport photo taken may result in the photo being rejected. However, it thankfully should not lead to anyone being lobotomized.
- Vic Trevino
- I (S3.E18 “Teso Dos Bichos”): Trevino is actually the real name of the actor who played Dr. Alonso Bilac, an archeologist working at a site in Ecuador.
- II: If you listen to this song and happen to be a renowned archeologist having a show or film made about your work, Trevino may be hired to play you.
- Gerd Thomas
- I (S2.E10 “Red Museum”): Thomas takes videos of people through peep holes, kidnaps them, and writes shit like “HE IS ONE” on their backs before releasing them into the woods, as a supposed protest against human-testing hormones for cows. Yeah.
- II: This song may be trying to tell us that we’re unwilling participants in an experiment on what music cows like. But, like, I’m fine with that, at least that’s not creepy AF.
- Caitlin Ross
- I (S4.S10 “Paper Hearts”): Ross was kidnapped by serial killer John Lee Roche, after Fox Mulder makes the mistake of releasing Roche from jail. Mulder then finds Roche and saves Ross.
- II: In the alternate timeline of this song, Mulder isn’t so stupid and doesn’t have to save Ross, because she’s perfectly safe and far far away from both Ross and Mulder.
- John Lee Roche
- I (S4.S10 “Paper Hearts”): Roche is a super creepy serial killer of young girls. He toys with Fox Mulder, planting the idea that maybe he abducted and murdered Mulder’s sister, Samantha, whose disappearance in their childhood is essentially Mulder’s driving force throughout the show. Mulder ends up killing Roche.
- II: This song doesn’t make Roche any more real or any less dead, thankfully. I really wish this was a song about Samantha instead – who gives AF about Roche. I suppose Kai Hugo does, and it’s one of the songs on the album that get a video, but at least the video doesn’t actually have anything to do with Roche (again, thankfully).
- Jesse O’Neill
- I (S2.E09 “Firewalker”): O’Neill was a grad student on the same research team as Peter Tanaka (see track 1), working inside a volcano where something is killing people. Like Tanaka, she also meets an untimely end, but she first handcuffs herself to Dana Scully to try and kill Scully too, so…
- II: If you listen to this song, you will not end up handcuffed to Scully, but you will also not die from volcano spores.
- Rebecca Waite
- I (S4:E06 “Sanguinarium”): Waite is a nurse and practicing witch who seems to be responsible for plastic surgeons at her hospital going into some sort of trance and doing horrible things during surgeries. She however dies after being hexed herself, and so it turns out her spells were attempts to protect patients.
- II: Listen to this song if you’re about to go for plastic surgery or near any evil surgeons, for safety.
- Leo Danzinger
- I (S4:E16 “Unrequited”): Danzinger is a Vietnam War veteran who becomes involved in a former POW’s attempt to uncover what really happened to some still-missing American POWs. Danzinger isn’t in the episode’s credits.
- II: This song serves as credits for Danzinger, I guess? There’s also a video for this song, but, as with the other videos, it has nothing to do with Danzinger. So, is he really given credit in the end? Is he actually still missing? Did he ever exist at all? (Wah wee wah wee woo wahhhhh.)
I want to believe.
*How to type out The X-Files theme song, as suggested by @jsit (thanks, Jay!).
#1001OtherAlbums #electronicMusic #IIMuchIIListenII #KaiHugo #Palmbomen #PalmbomenII #XFiles
- Peter Tanaka
-
Good Day!!
Studio Scene, by Kayoon Anderson
Today, the press and cable TV are mostly focused on tomorrow’s debate and how Biden can deal with Trump’s insanity and incoherence. I don’t find the discussions about this very interesting. I think Biden knows how to bait Trump, and no one really knows what crazy nonsense Trump will unleash. I hope Biden will mock Trump’s fear of sharks and electric boats; his claims that there’s not enough water in shower heads and dishwashers; and his claim that he got his vast knowledge about “nuclear” by osmosis from his uncle the MIT professor. Trump has absolutely no interest or knowledge about policy and Biden can demonstrate that too.
It is concerning that Trump is claiming Biden will be “jacked up” on drugs, because low information voters appear to be incredibly stupid and will likely believe it. Of course, Trump is the one who could be using drugs as a crutch.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: No, Biden won’t be on performance-enhancing drugs for the debate.
Allies of Donald Trump have painted themselves into a cognitive corner. President Biden is unfit for office, they argue, because he is so old, and his mental abilities have deteriorated markedly. But then Biden will, say, deliver a State of the Union address in which he is energetic and pointed for more than an hour.
So they modify their claim: Biden is addled and wandering, except when he is given some sort of medication, perhaps a stimulant, that reverses that effect. And here we are, with Trump and those seeking his reelection to the White House demanding that Biden submit to some sort of drug test before this week’s first presidential debate, purportedly in effort to sniff out this theoretical drug.
Experts who spoke with The Washington Post, though, confirm that no such medicine exists.
At the outset, we should recognize that this claim is generally not offered seriously. It is, instead, an effort to escape the aforementioned contradiction, a way to hold both that Biden is incapable of serving as president and yet, unquestionably at times, not demonstrating any such impairment. What’s more, the demand that Biden undergo a drug test is itself not serious. It is, instead, meant to create a condition that allows Trump and his allies to continue to claim that any strong performance from Biden is a function of medication. The result is win-win for Trump, who can blame any loss on this wonder drug.
The wackos at Fox “News” are busy speculating about what drugs Biden could be using.
Host Maria Bartiromo — no stranger to conspiratorial argumentation — hosted Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) where she offered an observation made by Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.).
“Jackson says Biden will have been at Camp David for a full week before the debate,” Bartiromo said, “and that they’re probably experimenting with getting doses right. Giving him medicine ahead of the debate.”
Burlison agreed that this was possible, though he offered that it might be more innocuous than medication. Perhaps, he said, Biden’s team is “jack[ing] him up on Mountain Dew.”
“Nothing like that exists,” Thomas Wisniewski, director of the NYU Langone Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, told The Washington Post by phone. “There are no medications or stimulants that can reverse a dementing process transiently.”
but quite often that can just exacerbate their confusion, as well,” he added. “They can be more stimulated, but they are not going to be behaving in a more cogent or normal fashion as a result of being stimulated by anything. Very often it’s the reverse.”
Adam Brickman, associate professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, concurred with that assessment.
“I’m not aware of any medications that would reverse or mask cognitive decline,” Brickman said. What’s more, he noted that “the association between energy and cognition is a very weak one. In other words, someone could have low energy but totally intact cognition and vice versa.”
Of course the goal of these drug claims is to prepare the idiots who support Trump for the likelihood that Biden will wipe the floor with Trump during tomorrow’s debate.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon: Trump’s claim that Biden is “jacked up” on drugs is more than projection — it’s cult conditioning.
Donald Trump has been thinking a lot about cocaine lately, even though drug-running is one of the few felony charges he’s not been indicted or convicted for. He has been routinely accusing President Joe Biden of using drugs, with the usual vivid details Trump injects into all his weird fantasies. “So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the a—,” Trump told rallygoers in Philadelphia Saturday. “I say he’ll come out all jacked up,” he added, before going off on a diatribe accusing Biden of being the owner of a bag of cocaine found in a White House visitors’ closet last year.
La Lecture, 1877, by Henri Fanton-Latour
Since there’s no flight of Trump’s fancy too bizarre for right-wing media, this obsession of Trump’s is getting echoed by Republican politicians and MAGA talking heads. Fox News hosts, Republican politicians, MAGA media influencers, and every right-wing troll on Twitter have been playing their part as well-trained parrots, repeating the lie. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is even putting the lie in paid advertising.
Everyone knows that Trump’s favorite rhetorical tactic is psychological projection. You’d think Republicans would be a little more worried this would raise questions about what Trump has been ingesting. But no: The campaign tapped disgraced former White House doctor Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Tex. to be a major Trump surrogate pushing this lie. Jackson’s been hitting both TV and podcasts to toss around drug names like “Adderall” and “Provigil.” This only reinforces suspicions that this accusation is a confession, however. When Jackson was Trump’s White House doctor, he earned the nickname “Dr. Feelgood” for relentlessly pushing these drugs on people who do not need them. Jackson’s behavior was so egregious that the Navy stripped him of his rank.
What’s telling about this lie is, as with many MAGA falsehoods, it seems few, if any, of the people repeating it actually believe it. Trump and his allies have accused Biden not just of being a little tired at times, but of having dementia. As Mona Charen pointed out on the “Daily Blast” podcast, if Adderall could restore a demented person’s brain, they’d be mass distributing it to the millions of people who are suffering from this disease. As for the cocaine accusation, even the most naive person in the country knows cocaine makes people less coherent, not sharper. It causes people to ramble on about nonsense, which is closer to describing your average Trump speech, not anything Biden has been up to.
Trump is using his second favorite trick, besides projection: Tricking his followers into believing they’re in on his con.
Trump isn’t trying to convince anyone of this lie. He’s convincing them that, by repeating the obvious lie, they can share in what they believe is his mastery over reality itself. The lie is not a thing the MAGA person sincerely believes. It’s a weapon Trump has provided them. When he loses the debate, which they clearly expect he will, the lie gives them a way to participate in the post-debate spin. But it’s also the stupidity of the lie that makes it so fun. Saying something deliberately dumb is a reliable way to drive the liberals mad. Angering liberals is the emotional core of the MAGA base….
As I’ve written about before, this strategy is the oldest technique in the con artist’s book. The best way for a grifter to gain a mark’s trust is to make him feel like he’s in on the con. Cult leaders operate the same way, by creating this sense of intimacy with their victims. Once the mark feels he’s part of the conspiracy, it’s that much easier to victimize him. The mark feels like the predator and not the prey, and so he lets his guard down around the actual villain picking his pocket. Trump does this to his followers over and over again, and they always fall for it. Even the Capitol insurrection is a good example. Trump convinced the rioters that they were his partners in the attempted coup. In reality, they were his patsies, set up to take the fall while he hid away in the White House.
Read the whole piece at Salon. It’s good.
NPR has an interesting article on the Biden and Trump “debates” in 2020: COVID tests and crosstalk: What happened the last time Trump and Biden debated.
With Trump and Biden now near even in the latest polls, and many Americans unenthused — and still undecided — about voting for either of them, Thursday’s debate offers both candidates an opportunity. But it’s not without risks.
It’s likely to be a memorable night if 2020 is any indication. Here’s a look at what happened last time Trump and Biden took the stage together….
Albert Edelfelt, Portrait of the artist’s sister Bertha Edelfelt, 1881
The first round, in September 2020, was by many accounts a disaster. NPR’s Domenico Montanaro called it “maybe the worst presidential debate in American history.”
Trump arrived on the debate stage trailing in the polls and, apparently, jonesing for drama. He interrupted Biden constantly, peppering him with questions and personal slights despite moderator Chris Wallace’s pleas for order.
At one point, while Biden was talking about his late son Beau’s military service, Trump jumped in to attack his other son, Hunter, for his drug use (which Biden managed to seize as a sympathetic moment).
Biden tried in vain to ignore Trump talking over him throughout — but called the then-president a “clown” more than once. At one point he had clearly had enough.
“Will you shut up, man?” he said exasperatedly, as Trump continued accusing him of wanting to pack the Supreme Court. “This is so unpresidential.”
Trump even bulldozed over Wallace, prompting the then-Fox News anchor to declare, “Mr. President, I am the moderator of this debate and I would like you to let me ask my question and then you can answer.”
A bit more on the first “debate”:
Still, a few substantive moments stood out amidst the chaos and crosstalk.
One was when Wallace asked if Trump was willing to condemn white supremacists and tell them to “stand down.”
Trump blamed the “left-wing” instead, but said he was prepared to do so. At that point, both Wallace and Biden urged him to go ahead. Trump asked for a name, and Biden suggested the Proud Boys.
“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said, in what sounded more like a call to action, and quickly became part of the far-right extremist group’s new social media logo.
Trump also repeatedly made baseless claims about the upcoming election being rigged, saying “This is going to be fraud like you’ve never heard.”
When Wallace asked if he would urge his supporters to stay calm during a potentially prolonged period of counting ballots, Trump demurred. He said instead that he was “urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully.”
“If it’s a fair election, I am 100% on board,” he said. “But if I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with that.”
Read the rest at NPR.
The Supreme Court is still releasing decisions. Once again, they have held back the one on Trump’s claim of “presidential immunity.” They announced two decisions today.
The Guardian: US supreme court allows government to request removal of misinformation on social media.
The US supreme court has struck down a lower court ruling in the case of Murthy v Missouri, finding that the government’s communications with social media platforms about Covid-19 misinformation did not violate the first amendment. The court’s decision permits the government to call on tech companies to remove falsehoods and establishes boundaries around free speech online.
The court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs had no standing to bring the case against the Biden administration, with conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.
The ruling is a blow to a longstanding Republican-backed effort to equate content moderation with censorship. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which included the founder of a far-right conspiracy website, argued that the government and federal agencies were coercing tech companies into silencing conservatives through demands to take down misinformation about the pandemic.
Bloomberg Law: Supreme Court Further Weakens Public Corruption Prosecutions.
The US Supreme Court again pared back a public corruption law, this time saying that state and local officials who accept “gratuities” aren’t covered by a federal bribery statute.
The 6-3 ruling by Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday was the latest in a string of cases cutting the reach of federal corruption laws and prosecutorial discretion to bring charges against government officials.
Woman reading in garden. Ignacio Díaz Olano
In the latest case, Snyder v. United States, the justices said a law which makes it a crime for certain state or local officials to “corruptly” accept anything of value over $5,000 doesn’t reach gratuities paid in recognition of past actions.
The ruling undoes the conviction of former Portage, Indiana, Mayor James Snyder for receiving $13,000 from a trucking company after it was awarded city contracts.
A contrary ruling had the potential to criminalize “commonplace gratuities” like a Dunkin’ Donuts gift card, Chipotle dinner, or tickets to a Hoosiers game, the court said.
The ruling split the justices along ideological lines. Writing for the liberal justices in dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said “Snyder’s absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love.”
The justices’ concern over prosecutorial overreach could have implications for a number of criminal cases over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The justices in Fischer v. United States are considering whether federal prosecutors went too far in charging some defendants with an Enron-era statute prohibiting obstruction of an official proceeding.
Judge Aileen Cannon held another hearing yesterday in her efforts to waste as much time as possible and prevent the stolen documents case from going to trial. Here’s some of what happened:
Adam Klasfeld at Just Security: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Search Challenge Flounders: Judge Signals Warrant Passed Muster.
Nearly two years after the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s effort to suppress the evidence that agents found inside his personal residence and social club appeared to fall flat on Tuesday.
Trump’s attorney, Emil Bove, argued that the search warrant was not detailed enough to survive Fourth Amendment scrutiny.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon pointedly disagreed: “It seems like it is, based on the caselaw that’s been submitted,” she said, minutes before court adjourned.
Though Cannon did not immediately issue a ruling, Trump’s challenge hinges on the “particularity” of the warrant, and her remarks throughout the proceedings left little doubt as to her leanings.
“It’s clearly delineated there to search for documents with classification markings,” she remarked toward the start of the hearing.
Click the link to read more about the hearing.
At Public Notice, Liz Dye wrote about Trump’s claims that he should be able to attack anyone involved in the legal cases against him: Trump asserts constitutional right to harass FBI agents.
In the stolen documents case in Florida, Trump called the special counsel’s motion to stop him from spreading vicious lies about the FBI agents who searched Mar-a-Lago a “naked effort to impose totalitarian censorship of core political speech, under threat of incarceration, in a clear attempt to silence President Trump’s arguments to the American people about the outrageous nature of this investigation and prosecution.” [….]
In Florida, Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to bar Trump from accusing the FBI agents who executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago of trying to assassinate him.
The backstory is that on May 21, Trump claimed to have been “shown Reports” that President Biden “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” back in August 2022 when it raided the private club where he was storing stolen government documents.
Sleeping Woman with a Book, by Ferdinand Max Bredt
In fact, the “Report” was boilerplate language from the FBI’s operations order for the warrant, attached as an exhibit to his own motion to suppress the evidence kicked up on that raid. The FBI took great care to execute the warrant at a time when the club was shuttered for the season and there was no prospect that the former president and his family would be there. Nevertheless, Trump and his MAGA henchmen spent several news cycles claiming that President Biden had sent in agents “locked and loaded” ready to shoot him.
Those agents will necessarily be witnesses at the trial (should it ever happen), and yet Trump is falsely accusing them of attempted murder. Two of them were already publicly outed back in 2022 when someone gave the unredacted warrant to Breitbart and a former Trump aide, both of whom published it with the agents’ signatures visible.
After the agents were doxxed, they and their families were threatened and harassed, which influenced Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart’s decision to keep under seal parts of the affidavit in support of the warrant.
“Given the public notoriety and controversy about this search, it is likely that even witnesses who are not expressly named in the Affidavit would be quickly and broadly identified over social media and other communication channels, which could lead to them being harassed and intimidated,” he wrote.
Judge Cannon doesn’t seem to think this is a big deal.
Trump insists that his lies about the FBI are “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment. He also deliberately distorts the “heckler’s veto,” as he has done many times before, claiming that he cannot be silenced to prevent foreseeable, violent acts by his supporters. But as the DC Circuit wrote in its order upholding the gag order in the election interference case, “That doctrine prohibits restraining speech on the grounds that it ‘might offend a hostile mob’ hearing the message.” [….]
The DC Circuit judges noted that the trial judge need not find that the defendant’s statements had led to violent attacks in this case, they could infer the danger from attacks on everyone from Atlanta poll workers, to grand jurors in Fulton County, to the jury foreperson doxxed in the Roger Stone case. Applying the standard set out by the Supreme Court in Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, the judges blessed the gag order based on a finding that Trump’s attacks on witnesses, jurors, and court staff posed a “substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing” the proceedings.
But that may not matter to Judge Aileen Cannon, who showed marked hostility to this (and every other) prosecutorial motion at a hearing Monday in Fort Pierce, where she waved away the ample record of Trump endangering witnesses and law enforcement, as well as an exhibit showing threats to FBI agents by a man who was killed in an attempted attack on an FBI building in Cincinnati just days after the warrant on Mar-a-Lago was executed.
“There still needs to be a factual connection between A and B,” the judge said, rebuffing Assistant US Attorney David Harbach’s efforts to make the government’s case.
“Mr. Harbach, I don’t appreciate your tone,” she fumed in response to the complaint that she wasn’t letting the government articulate its position, according to Just Security’s Adam Klasfeld, who was in the courtroom. “I expect decorum in this courtroom at all times. If you cannot do that, I’m sure one of your colleagues can take up this motion.” [….]
It seems highly unlikely that Cannon will do anything to curb Trump’s speech, until someone else gets hurt — and, if and when that happens, she will blame the government for failing to properly argue in favor of the gag order.
One more on the stolen documents case from Justin Rohrlich at The Daily Beast: New Pics Show Nuclear Secrets Stashed Beside the Diet Cokes at Mar-a-Lago.
On Monday night, following Trump’s latest disingenuous contention—that the FBI agents who seized and reviewed the contents of boxes upon boxes of sensitive materials stored at Mar-a-Lago “failed to maintain” the exact order of the documents within, which Trump now claims could somehow exonerate him—government lawyers filed a scathing response letting the air out of Trump’s contentions.
Nikolai Bekker Portrait of Countess Maria Hilarionovna Worontsov-Dachkova (1919).
Far from a neatly ordered system under which Trump, a notorious pack rat, maintained a precise inventory of important documents, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, along with prosecutors Jay Bratt and David Harbach, noted the “cluttered collection of keepsakes,” which “traveled from one readily accessible location to another” around the Palm Beach, Florida club.
“[T]his is not a case where reams of identically-sized documents were stacked neatly in file folders or redwelds, arrayed perfectly within a box,” the filing states. “To anyone other than Trump, the boxes had no apparent organization whatsoever.”
Trump kept highly guarded secrets in boxes with “personally chosen keepsakes of various sizes and shapes from his presidency—newspapers, thank you notes, Christmas ornaments, magazines, clothing, and photographs of himself and others,” the government’s filing goes on.
“After they landed in stacks in the storage room, several boxes fell and splayed their contents on the floor; and boxes were moved to Trump’s residence on more than one occasion so he could review and pick through them,” the filing continues. “Against this backdrop of the haphazard manner in which Trump chose to maintain his boxes, he now claims that the precise order of the items within the boxes when they left the White House was critical to his defense, and, what’s more, that FBI agents executing the search warrant in August 2022 should have known that.”
Smith, Bratt, and Harbach included a slew of exhibits to back up their position, with numerous previously unseen pictures of Trump’s decidedly chaotic storage methods. One shows assorted wadded-up golf shirts side-by-side with a folder marked “CONFIDENTIAL.” Another shows extremely sensitive defense-related documents carelessly stacked up on the floor beside cases of Diet Coke, a Hermes tie box, and a “Save America” cap, several toppled boxes with papers, binders, and folders spilling out, and a box containing a Christmas pillow and a random length of bubble wrap, beneath which, as national security analyst and writer Marcy Wheeler pointed out, at least one document prosecutors say was related to America’s nuclear weapons program.
In one exhibit, Smith & Co. provide a new photo of a storage closet at Mar-a-Lago where the contents of at least five upturned bankers boxes can be seen spilling out onto the floor. Several suit jackets in plastic dry cleaning bags hang from a rack above them, a Gibson guitar case leans against the wall, and what appears to be a piece of rococo plaster molding teeters atop a cardboard box nearby. According to the indictment, one of the boxes seen here contained a 2019 document marked “SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,” which denotes the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.
Read more and see photos at the Daily Beast link.
This post is getting really long, so I’m going going to end there. I’ll add a few more links in the comment thread. Have a great day, everyone!!
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/06/26/wednesday-reads-62/
#BidenTrumpDebate2024 #BidenTrumpDebates2020 #FBISearchOfMarALago #JudgeAileenCannon #MurthyVMissouri #NoBidenWonTBeOnDrugs #SnyderVUnitedStates #stolenDocumentsCase #SupremeCourt #TrumpAttacksOnFBIAgents #TrumpStorageMethods
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Good Day!!
Studio Scene, by Kayoon Anderson
Today, the press and cable TV are mostly focused on tomorrow’s debate and how Biden can deal with Trump’s insanity and incoherence. I don’t find the discussions about this very interesting. I think Biden knows how to bait Trump, and no one really knows what crazy nonsense Trump will unleash. I hope Biden will mock Trump’s fear of sharks and electric boats; his claims that there’s not enough water in shower heads and dishwashers; and his claim that he got his vast knowledge about “nuclear” by osmosis from his uncle the MIT professor. Trump has absolutely no interest or knowledge about policy and Biden can demonstrate that too.
It is concerning that Trump is claiming Biden will be “jacked up” on drugs, because low information voters appear to be incredibly stupid and will likely believe it. Of course, Trump is the one who could be using drugs as a crutch.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: No, Biden won’t be on performance-enhancing drugs for the debate.
Allies of Donald Trump have painted themselves into a cognitive corner. President Biden is unfit for office, they argue, because he is so old, and his mental abilities have deteriorated markedly. But then Biden will, say, deliver a State of the Union address in which he is energetic and pointed for more than an hour.
So they modify their claim: Biden is addled and wandering, except when he is given some sort of medication, perhaps a stimulant, that reverses that effect. And here we are, with Trump and those seeking his reelection to the White House demanding that Biden submit to some sort of drug test before this week’s first presidential debate, purportedly in effort to sniff out this theoretical drug.
Experts who spoke with The Washington Post, though, confirm that no such medicine exists.
At the outset, we should recognize that this claim is generally not offered seriously. It is, instead, an effort to escape the aforementioned contradiction, a way to hold both that Biden is incapable of serving as president and yet, unquestionably at times, not demonstrating any such impairment. What’s more, the demand that Biden undergo a drug test is itself not serious. It is, instead, meant to create a condition that allows Trump and his allies to continue to claim that any strong performance from Biden is a function of medication. The result is win-win for Trump, who can blame any loss on this wonder drug.
The wackos at Fox “News” are busy speculating about what drugs Biden could be using.
Host Maria Bartiromo — no stranger to conspiratorial argumentation — hosted Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) where she offered an observation made by Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.).
“Jackson says Biden will have been at Camp David for a full week before the debate,” Bartiromo said, “and that they’re probably experimenting with getting doses right. Giving him medicine ahead of the debate.”
Burlison agreed that this was possible, though he offered that it might be more innocuous than medication. Perhaps, he said, Biden’s team is “jack[ing] him up on Mountain Dew.”
“Nothing like that exists,” Thomas Wisniewski, director of the NYU Langone Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, told The Washington Post by phone. “There are no medications or stimulants that can reverse a dementing process transiently.”
but quite often that can just exacerbate their confusion, as well,” he added. “They can be more stimulated, but they are not going to be behaving in a more cogent or normal fashion as a result of being stimulated by anything. Very often it’s the reverse.”
Adam Brickman, associate professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, concurred with that assessment.
“I’m not aware of any medications that would reverse or mask cognitive decline,” Brickman said. What’s more, he noted that “the association between energy and cognition is a very weak one. In other words, someone could have low energy but totally intact cognition and vice versa.”
Of course the goal of these drug claims is to prepare the idiots who support Trump for the likelihood that Biden will wipe the floor with Trump during tomorrow’s debate.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon: Trump’s claim that Biden is “jacked up” on drugs is more than projection — it’s cult conditioning.
Donald Trump has been thinking a lot about cocaine lately, even though drug-running is one of the few felony charges he’s not been indicted or convicted for. He has been routinely accusing President Joe Biden of using drugs, with the usual vivid details Trump injects into all his weird fantasies. “So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the a—,” Trump told rallygoers in Philadelphia Saturday. “I say he’ll come out all jacked up,” he added, before going off on a diatribe accusing Biden of being the owner of a bag of cocaine found in a White House visitors’ closet last year.
La Lecture, 1877, by Henri Fanton-Latour
Since there’s no flight of Trump’s fancy too bizarre for right-wing media, this obsession of Trump’s is getting echoed by Republican politicians and MAGA talking heads. Fox News hosts, Republican politicians, MAGA media influencers, and every right-wing troll on Twitter have been playing their part as well-trained parrots, repeating the lie. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is even putting the lie in paid advertising.
Everyone knows that Trump’s favorite rhetorical tactic is psychological projection. You’d think Republicans would be a little more worried this would raise questions about what Trump has been ingesting. But no: The campaign tapped disgraced former White House doctor Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Tex. to be a major Trump surrogate pushing this lie. Jackson’s been hitting both TV and podcasts to toss around drug names like “Adderall” and “Provigil.” This only reinforces suspicions that this accusation is a confession, however. When Jackson was Trump’s White House doctor, he earned the nickname “Dr. Feelgood” for relentlessly pushing these drugs on people who do not need them. Jackson’s behavior was so egregious that the Navy stripped him of his rank.
What’s telling about this lie is, as with many MAGA falsehoods, it seems few, if any, of the people repeating it actually believe it. Trump and his allies have accused Biden not just of being a little tired at times, but of having dementia. As Mona Charen pointed out on the “Daily Blast” podcast, if Adderall could restore a demented person’s brain, they’d be mass distributing it to the millions of people who are suffering from this disease. As for the cocaine accusation, even the most naive person in the country knows cocaine makes people less coherent, not sharper. It causes people to ramble on about nonsense, which is closer to describing your average Trump speech, not anything Biden has been up to.
Trump is using his second favorite trick, besides projection: Tricking his followers into believing they’re in on his con.
Trump isn’t trying to convince anyone of this lie. He’s convincing them that, by repeating the obvious lie, they can share in what they believe is his mastery over reality itself. The lie is not a thing the MAGA person sincerely believes. It’s a weapon Trump has provided them. When he loses the debate, which they clearly expect he will, the lie gives them a way to participate in the post-debate spin. But it’s also the stupidity of the lie that makes it so fun. Saying something deliberately dumb is a reliable way to drive the liberals mad. Angering liberals is the emotional core of the MAGA base….
As I’ve written about before, this strategy is the oldest technique in the con artist’s book. The best way for a grifter to gain a mark’s trust is to make him feel like he’s in on the con. Cult leaders operate the same way, by creating this sense of intimacy with their victims. Once the mark feels he’s part of the conspiracy, it’s that much easier to victimize him. The mark feels like the predator and not the prey, and so he lets his guard down around the actual villain picking his pocket. Trump does this to his followers over and over again, and they always fall for it. Even the Capitol insurrection is a good example. Trump convinced the rioters that they were his partners in the attempted coup. In reality, they were his patsies, set up to take the fall while he hid away in the White House.
Read the whole piece at Salon. It’s good.
NPR has an interesting article on the Biden and Trump “debates” in 2020: COVID tests and crosstalk: What happened the last time Trump and Biden debated.
With Trump and Biden now near even in the latest polls, and many Americans unenthused — and still undecided — about voting for either of them, Thursday’s debate offers both candidates an opportunity. But it’s not without risks.
It’s likely to be a memorable night if 2020 is any indication. Here’s a look at what happened last time Trump and Biden took the stage together….
Albert Edelfelt, Portrait of the artist’s sister Bertha Edelfelt, 1881
The first round, in September 2020, was by many accounts a disaster. NPR’s Domenico Montanaro called it “maybe the worst presidential debate in American history.”
Trump arrived on the debate stage trailing in the polls and, apparently, jonesing for drama. He interrupted Biden constantly, peppering him with questions and personal slights despite moderator Chris Wallace’s pleas for order.
At one point, while Biden was talking about his late son Beau’s military service, Trump jumped in to attack his other son, Hunter, for his drug use (which Biden managed to seize as a sympathetic moment).
Biden tried in vain to ignore Trump talking over him throughout — but called the then-president a “clown” more than once. At one point he had clearly had enough.
“Will you shut up, man?” he said exasperatedly, as Trump continued accusing him of wanting to pack the Supreme Court. “This is so unpresidential.”
Trump even bulldozed over Wallace, prompting the then-Fox News anchor to declare, “Mr. President, I am the moderator of this debate and I would like you to let me ask my question and then you can answer.”
A bit more on the first “debate”:
Still, a few substantive moments stood out amidst the chaos and crosstalk.
One was when Wallace asked if Trump was willing to condemn white supremacists and tell them to “stand down.”
Trump blamed the “left-wing” instead, but said he was prepared to do so. At that point, both Wallace and Biden urged him to go ahead. Trump asked for a name, and Biden suggested the Proud Boys.
“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said, in what sounded more like a call to action, and quickly became part of the far-right extremist group’s new social media logo.
Trump also repeatedly made baseless claims about the upcoming election being rigged, saying “This is going to be fraud like you’ve never heard.”
When Wallace asked if he would urge his supporters to stay calm during a potentially prolonged period of counting ballots, Trump demurred. He said instead that he was “urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully.”
“If it’s a fair election, I am 100% on board,” he said. “But if I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with that.”
Read the rest at NPR.
The Supreme Court is still releasing decisions. Once again, they have held back the one on Trump’s claim of “presidential immunity.” They announced two decisions today.
The Guardian: US supreme court allows government to request removal of misinformation on social media.
The US supreme court has struck down a lower court ruling in the case of Murthy v Missouri, finding that the government’s communications with social media platforms about Covid-19 misinformation did not violate the first amendment. The court’s decision permits the government to call on tech companies to remove falsehoods and establishes boundaries around free speech online.
The court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs had no standing to bring the case against the Biden administration, with conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.
The ruling is a blow to a longstanding Republican-backed effort to equate content moderation with censorship. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which included the founder of a far-right conspiracy website, argued that the government and federal agencies were coercing tech companies into silencing conservatives through demands to take down misinformation about the pandemic.
Bloomberg Law: Supreme Court Further Weakens Public Corruption Prosecutions.
The US Supreme Court again pared back a public corruption law, this time saying that state and local officials who accept “gratuities” aren’t covered by a federal bribery statute.
The 6-3 ruling by Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday was the latest in a string of cases cutting the reach of federal corruption laws and prosecutorial discretion to bring charges against government officials.
Woman reading in garden. Ignacio Díaz Olano
In the latest case, Snyder v. United States, the justices said a law which makes it a crime for certain state or local officials to “corruptly” accept anything of value over $5,000 doesn’t reach gratuities paid in recognition of past actions.
The ruling undoes the conviction of former Portage, Indiana, Mayor James Snyder for receiving $13,000 from a trucking company after it was awarded city contracts.
A contrary ruling had the potential to criminalize “commonplace gratuities” like a Dunkin’ Donuts gift card, Chipotle dinner, or tickets to a Hoosiers game, the court said.
The ruling split the justices along ideological lines. Writing for the liberal justices in dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said “Snyder’s absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love.”
The justices’ concern over prosecutorial overreach could have implications for a number of criminal cases over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The justices in Fischer v. United States are considering whether federal prosecutors went too far in charging some defendants with an Enron-era statute prohibiting obstruction of an official proceeding.
Judge Aileen Cannon held another hearing yesterday in her efforts to waste as much time as possible and prevent the stolen documents case from going to trial. Here’s some of what happened:
Adam Klasfeld at Just Security: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Search Challenge Flounders: Judge Signals Warrant Passed Muster.
Nearly two years after the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s effort to suppress the evidence that agents found inside his personal residence and social club appeared to fall flat on Tuesday.
Trump’s attorney, Emil Bove, argued that the search warrant was not detailed enough to survive Fourth Amendment scrutiny.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon pointedly disagreed: “It seems like it is, based on the caselaw that’s been submitted,” she said, minutes before court adjourned.
Though Cannon did not immediately issue a ruling, Trump’s challenge hinges on the “particularity” of the warrant, and her remarks throughout the proceedings left little doubt as to her leanings.
“It’s clearly delineated there to search for documents with classification markings,” she remarked toward the start of the hearing.
Click the link to read more about the hearing.
At Public Notice, Liz Dye wrote about Trump’s claims that he should be able to attack anyone involved in the legal cases against him: Trump asserts constitutional right to harass FBI agents.
In the stolen documents case in Florida, Trump called the special counsel’s motion to stop him from spreading vicious lies about the FBI agents who searched Mar-a-Lago a “naked effort to impose totalitarian censorship of core political speech, under threat of incarceration, in a clear attempt to silence President Trump’s arguments to the American people about the outrageous nature of this investigation and prosecution.” [….]
In Florida, Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to bar Trump from accusing the FBI agents who executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago of trying to assassinate him.
The backstory is that on May 21, Trump claimed to have been “shown Reports” that President Biden “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” back in August 2022 when it raided the private club where he was storing stolen government documents.
Sleeping Woman with a Book, by Ferdinand Max Bredt
In fact, the “Report” was boilerplate language from the FBI’s operations order for the warrant, attached as an exhibit to his own motion to suppress the evidence kicked up on that raid. The FBI took great care to execute the warrant at a time when the club was shuttered for the season and there was no prospect that the former president and his family would be there. Nevertheless, Trump and his MAGA henchmen spent several news cycles claiming that President Biden had sent in agents “locked and loaded” ready to shoot him.
Those agents will necessarily be witnesses at the trial (should it ever happen), and yet Trump is falsely accusing them of attempted murder. Two of them were already publicly outed back in 2022 when someone gave the unredacted warrant to Breitbart and a former Trump aide, both of whom published it with the agents’ signatures visible.
After the agents were doxxed, they and their families were threatened and harassed, which influenced Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart’s decision to keep under seal parts of the affidavit in support of the warrant.
“Given the public notoriety and controversy about this search, it is likely that even witnesses who are not expressly named in the Affidavit would be quickly and broadly identified over social media and other communication channels, which could lead to them being harassed and intimidated,” he wrote.
Judge Cannon doesn’t seem to think this is a big deal.
Trump insists that his lies about the FBI are “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment. He also deliberately distorts the “heckler’s veto,” as he has done many times before, claiming that he cannot be silenced to prevent foreseeable, violent acts by his supporters. But as the DC Circuit wrote in its order upholding the gag order in the election interference case, “That doctrine prohibits restraining speech on the grounds that it ‘might offend a hostile mob’ hearing the message.” [….]
The DC Circuit judges noted that the trial judge need not find that the defendant’s statements had led to violent attacks in this case, they could infer the danger from attacks on everyone from Atlanta poll workers, to grand jurors in Fulton County, to the jury foreperson doxxed in the Roger Stone case. Applying the standard set out by the Supreme Court in Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, the judges blessed the gag order based on a finding that Trump’s attacks on witnesses, jurors, and court staff posed a “substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing” the proceedings.
But that may not matter to Judge Aileen Cannon, who showed marked hostility to this (and every other) prosecutorial motion at a hearing Monday in Fort Pierce, where she waved away the ample record of Trump endangering witnesses and law enforcement, as well as an exhibit showing threats to FBI agents by a man who was killed in an attempted attack on an FBI building in Cincinnati just days after the warrant on Mar-a-Lago was executed.
“There still needs to be a factual connection between A and B,” the judge said, rebuffing Assistant US Attorney David Harbach’s efforts to make the government’s case.
“Mr. Harbach, I don’t appreciate your tone,” she fumed in response to the complaint that she wasn’t letting the government articulate its position, according to Just Security’s Adam Klasfeld, who was in the courtroom. “I expect decorum in this courtroom at all times. If you cannot do that, I’m sure one of your colleagues can take up this motion.” [….]
It seems highly unlikely that Cannon will do anything to curb Trump’s speech, until someone else gets hurt — and, if and when that happens, she will blame the government for failing to properly argue in favor of the gag order.
One more on the stolen documents case from Justin Rohrlich at The Daily Beast: New Pics Show Nuclear Secrets Stashed Beside the Diet Cokes at Mar-a-Lago.
On Monday night, following Trump’s latest disingenuous contention—that the FBI agents who seized and reviewed the contents of boxes upon boxes of sensitive materials stored at Mar-a-Lago “failed to maintain” the exact order of the documents within, which Trump now claims could somehow exonerate him—government lawyers filed a scathing response letting the air out of Trump’s contentions.
Nikolai Bekker Portrait of Countess Maria Hilarionovna Worontsov-Dachkova (1919).
Far from a neatly ordered system under which Trump, a notorious pack rat, maintained a precise inventory of important documents, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, along with prosecutors Jay Bratt and David Harbach, noted the “cluttered collection of keepsakes,” which “traveled from one readily accessible location to another” around the Palm Beach, Florida club.
“[T]his is not a case where reams of identically-sized documents were stacked neatly in file folders or redwelds, arrayed perfectly within a box,” the filing states. “To anyone other than Trump, the boxes had no apparent organization whatsoever.”
Trump kept highly guarded secrets in boxes with “personally chosen keepsakes of various sizes and shapes from his presidency—newspapers, thank you notes, Christmas ornaments, magazines, clothing, and photographs of himself and others,” the government’s filing goes on.
“After they landed in stacks in the storage room, several boxes fell and splayed their contents on the floor; and boxes were moved to Trump’s residence on more than one occasion so he could review and pick through them,” the filing continues. “Against this backdrop of the haphazard manner in which Trump chose to maintain his boxes, he now claims that the precise order of the items within the boxes when they left the White House was critical to his defense, and, what’s more, that FBI agents executing the search warrant in August 2022 should have known that.”
Smith, Bratt, and Harbach included a slew of exhibits to back up their position, with numerous previously unseen pictures of Trump’s decidedly chaotic storage methods. One shows assorted wadded-up golf shirts side-by-side with a folder marked “CONFIDENTIAL.” Another shows extremely sensitive defense-related documents carelessly stacked up on the floor beside cases of Diet Coke, a Hermes tie box, and a “Save America” cap, several toppled boxes with papers, binders, and folders spilling out, and a box containing a Christmas pillow and a random length of bubble wrap, beneath which, as national security analyst and writer Marcy Wheeler pointed out, at least one document prosecutors say was related to America’s nuclear weapons program.
In one exhibit, Smith & Co. provide a new photo of a storage closet at Mar-a-Lago where the contents of at least five upturned bankers boxes can be seen spilling out onto the floor. Several suit jackets in plastic dry cleaning bags hang from a rack above them, a Gibson guitar case leans against the wall, and what appears to be a piece of rococo plaster molding teeters atop a cardboard box nearby. According to the indictment, one of the boxes seen here contained a 2019 document marked “SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,” which denotes the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.
Read more and see photos at the Daily Beast link.
This post is getting really long, so I’m going going to end there. I’ll add a few more links in the comment thread. Have a great day, everyone!!
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/06/26/wednesday-reads-62/
#BidenTrumpDebate2024 #BidenTrumpDebates2020 #FBISearchOfMarALago #JudgeAileenCannon #MurthyVMissouri #NoBidenWonTBeOnDrugs #SnyderVUnitedStates #stolenDocumentsCase #SupremeCourt #TrumpAttacksOnFBIAgents #TrumpStorageMethods
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Good Day!!
Studio Scene, by Kayoon Anderson
Today, the press and cable TV are mostly focused on tomorrow’s debate and how Biden can deal with Trump’s insanity and incoherence. I don’t find the discussions about this very interesting. I think Biden knows how to bait Trump, and no one really knows what crazy nonsense Trump will unleash. I hope Biden will mock Trump’s fear of sharks and electric boats; his claims that there’s not enough water in shower heads and dishwashers; and his claim that he got his vast knowledge about “nuclear” by osmosis from his uncle the MIT professor. Trump has absolutely no interest or knowledge about policy and Biden can demonstrate that too.
It is concerning that Trump is claiming Biden will be “jacked up” on drugs, because low information voters appear to be incredibly stupid and will likely believe it. Of course, Trump is the one who could be using drugs as a crutch.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: No, Biden won’t be on performance-enhancing drugs for the debate.
Allies of Donald Trump have painted themselves into a cognitive corner. President Biden is unfit for office, they argue, because he is so old, and his mental abilities have deteriorated markedly. But then Biden will, say, deliver a State of the Union address in which he is energetic and pointed for more than an hour.
So they modify their claim: Biden is addled and wandering, except when he is given some sort of medication, perhaps a stimulant, that reverses that effect. And here we are, with Trump and those seeking his reelection to the White House demanding that Biden submit to some sort of drug test before this week’s first presidential debate, purportedly in effort to sniff out this theoretical drug.
Experts who spoke with The Washington Post, though, confirm that no such medicine exists.
At the outset, we should recognize that this claim is generally not offered seriously. It is, instead, an effort to escape the aforementioned contradiction, a way to hold both that Biden is incapable of serving as president and yet, unquestionably at times, not demonstrating any such impairment. What’s more, the demand that Biden undergo a drug test is itself not serious. It is, instead, meant to create a condition that allows Trump and his allies to continue to claim that any strong performance from Biden is a function of medication. The result is win-win for Trump, who can blame any loss on this wonder drug.
The wackos at Fox “News” are busy speculating about what drugs Biden could be using.
Host Maria Bartiromo — no stranger to conspiratorial argumentation — hosted Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) where she offered an observation made by Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.).
“Jackson says Biden will have been at Camp David for a full week before the debate,” Bartiromo said, “and that they’re probably experimenting with getting doses right. Giving him medicine ahead of the debate.”
Burlison agreed that this was possible, though he offered that it might be more innocuous than medication. Perhaps, he said, Biden’s team is “jack[ing] him up on Mountain Dew.”
“Nothing like that exists,” Thomas Wisniewski, director of the NYU Langone Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, told The Washington Post by phone. “There are no medications or stimulants that can reverse a dementing process transiently.”
but quite often that can just exacerbate their confusion, as well,” he added. “They can be more stimulated, but they are not going to be behaving in a more cogent or normal fashion as a result of being stimulated by anything. Very often it’s the reverse.”
Adam Brickman, associate professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, concurred with that assessment.
“I’m not aware of any medications that would reverse or mask cognitive decline,” Brickman said. What’s more, he noted that “the association between energy and cognition is a very weak one. In other words, someone could have low energy but totally intact cognition and vice versa.”
Of course the goal of these drug claims is to prepare the idiots who support Trump for the likelihood that Biden will wipe the floor with Trump during tomorrow’s debate.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon: Trump’s claim that Biden is “jacked up” on drugs is more than projection — it’s cult conditioning.
Donald Trump has been thinking a lot about cocaine lately, even though drug-running is one of the few felony charges he’s not been indicted or convicted for. He has been routinely accusing President Joe Biden of using drugs, with the usual vivid details Trump injects into all his weird fantasies. “So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the a—,” Trump told rallygoers in Philadelphia Saturday. “I say he’ll come out all jacked up,” he added, before going off on a diatribe accusing Biden of being the owner of a bag of cocaine found in a White House visitors’ closet last year.
La Lecture, 1877, by Henri Fanton-Latour
Since there’s no flight of Trump’s fancy too bizarre for right-wing media, this obsession of Trump’s is getting echoed by Republican politicians and MAGA talking heads. Fox News hosts, Republican politicians, MAGA media influencers, and every right-wing troll on Twitter have been playing their part as well-trained parrots, repeating the lie. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is even putting the lie in paid advertising.
Everyone knows that Trump’s favorite rhetorical tactic is psychological projection. You’d think Republicans would be a little more worried this would raise questions about what Trump has been ingesting. But no: The campaign tapped disgraced former White House doctor Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Tex. to be a major Trump surrogate pushing this lie. Jackson’s been hitting both TV and podcasts to toss around drug names like “Adderall” and “Provigil.” This only reinforces suspicions that this accusation is a confession, however. When Jackson was Trump’s White House doctor, he earned the nickname “Dr. Feelgood” for relentlessly pushing these drugs on people who do not need them. Jackson’s behavior was so egregious that the Navy stripped him of his rank.
What’s telling about this lie is, as with many MAGA falsehoods, it seems few, if any, of the people repeating it actually believe it. Trump and his allies have accused Biden not just of being a little tired at times, but of having dementia. As Mona Charen pointed out on the “Daily Blast” podcast, if Adderall could restore a demented person’s brain, they’d be mass distributing it to the millions of people who are suffering from this disease. As for the cocaine accusation, even the most naive person in the country knows cocaine makes people less coherent, not sharper. It causes people to ramble on about nonsense, which is closer to describing your average Trump speech, not anything Biden has been up to.
Trump is using his second favorite trick, besides projection: Tricking his followers into believing they’re in on his con.
Trump isn’t trying to convince anyone of this lie. He’s convincing them that, by repeating the obvious lie, they can share in what they believe is his mastery over reality itself. The lie is not a thing the MAGA person sincerely believes. It’s a weapon Trump has provided them. When he loses the debate, which they clearly expect he will, the lie gives them a way to participate in the post-debate spin. But it’s also the stupidity of the lie that makes it so fun. Saying something deliberately dumb is a reliable way to drive the liberals mad. Angering liberals is the emotional core of the MAGA base….
As I’ve written about before, this strategy is the oldest technique in the con artist’s book. The best way for a grifter to gain a mark’s trust is to make him feel like he’s in on the con. Cult leaders operate the same way, by creating this sense of intimacy with their victims. Once the mark feels he’s part of the conspiracy, it’s that much easier to victimize him. The mark feels like the predator and not the prey, and so he lets his guard down around the actual villain picking his pocket. Trump does this to his followers over and over again, and they always fall for it. Even the Capitol insurrection is a good example. Trump convinced the rioters that they were his partners in the attempted coup. In reality, they were his patsies, set up to take the fall while he hid away in the White House.
Read the whole piece at Salon. It’s good.
NPR has an interesting article on the Biden and Trump “debates” in 2020: COVID tests and crosstalk: What happened the last time Trump and Biden debated.
With Trump and Biden now near even in the latest polls, and many Americans unenthused — and still undecided — about voting for either of them, Thursday’s debate offers both candidates an opportunity. But it’s not without risks.
It’s likely to be a memorable night if 2020 is any indication. Here’s a look at what happened last time Trump and Biden took the stage together….
Albert Edelfelt, Portrait of the artist’s sister Bertha Edelfelt, 1881
The first round, in September 2020, was by many accounts a disaster. NPR’s Domenico Montanaro called it “maybe the worst presidential debate in American history.”
Trump arrived on the debate stage trailing in the polls and, apparently, jonesing for drama. He interrupted Biden constantly, peppering him with questions and personal slights despite moderator Chris Wallace’s pleas for order.
At one point, while Biden was talking about his late son Beau’s military service, Trump jumped in to attack his other son, Hunter, for his drug use (which Biden managed to seize as a sympathetic moment).
Biden tried in vain to ignore Trump talking over him throughout — but called the then-president a “clown” more than once. At one point he had clearly had enough.
“Will you shut up, man?” he said exasperatedly, as Trump continued accusing him of wanting to pack the Supreme Court. “This is so unpresidential.”
Trump even bulldozed over Wallace, prompting the then-Fox News anchor to declare, “Mr. President, I am the moderator of this debate and I would like you to let me ask my question and then you can answer.”
A bit more on the first “debate”:
Still, a few substantive moments stood out amidst the chaos and crosstalk.
One was when Wallace asked if Trump was willing to condemn white supremacists and tell them to “stand down.”
Trump blamed the “left-wing” instead, but said he was prepared to do so. At that point, both Wallace and Biden urged him to go ahead. Trump asked for a name, and Biden suggested the Proud Boys.
“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said, in what sounded more like a call to action, and quickly became part of the far-right extremist group’s new social media logo.
Trump also repeatedly made baseless claims about the upcoming election being rigged, saying “This is going to be fraud like you’ve never heard.”
When Wallace asked if he would urge his supporters to stay calm during a potentially prolonged period of counting ballots, Trump demurred. He said instead that he was “urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully.”
“If it’s a fair election, I am 100% on board,” he said. “But if I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with that.”
Read the rest at NPR.
The Supreme Court is still releasing decisions. Once again, they have held back the one on Trump’s claim of “presidential immunity.” They announced two decisions today.
The Guardian: US supreme court allows government to request removal of misinformation on social media.
The US supreme court has struck down a lower court ruling in the case of Murthy v Missouri, finding that the government’s communications with social media platforms about Covid-19 misinformation did not violate the first amendment. The court’s decision permits the government to call on tech companies to remove falsehoods and establishes boundaries around free speech online.
The court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs had no standing to bring the case against the Biden administration, with conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.
The ruling is a blow to a longstanding Republican-backed effort to equate content moderation with censorship. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which included the founder of a far-right conspiracy website, argued that the government and federal agencies were coercing tech companies into silencing conservatives through demands to take down misinformation about the pandemic.
Bloomberg Law: Supreme Court Further Weakens Public Corruption Prosecutions.
The US Supreme Court again pared back a public corruption law, this time saying that state and local officials who accept “gratuities” aren’t covered by a federal bribery statute.
The 6-3 ruling by Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday was the latest in a string of cases cutting the reach of federal corruption laws and prosecutorial discretion to bring charges against government officials.
Woman reading in garden. Ignacio Díaz Olano
In the latest case, Snyder v. United States, the justices said a law which makes it a crime for certain state or local officials to “corruptly” accept anything of value over $5,000 doesn’t reach gratuities paid in recognition of past actions.
The ruling undoes the conviction of former Portage, Indiana, Mayor James Snyder for receiving $13,000 from a trucking company after it was awarded city contracts.
A contrary ruling had the potential to criminalize “commonplace gratuities” like a Dunkin’ Donuts gift card, Chipotle dinner, or tickets to a Hoosiers game, the court said.
The ruling split the justices along ideological lines. Writing for the liberal justices in dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said “Snyder’s absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love.”
The justices’ concern over prosecutorial overreach could have implications for a number of criminal cases over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The justices in Fischer v. United States are considering whether federal prosecutors went too far in charging some defendants with an Enron-era statute prohibiting obstruction of an official proceeding.
Judge Aileen Cannon held another hearing yesterday in her efforts to waste as much time as possible and prevent the stolen documents case from going to trial. Here’s some of what happened:
Adam Klasfeld at Just Security: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Search Challenge Flounders: Judge Signals Warrant Passed Muster.
Nearly two years after the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s effort to suppress the evidence that agents found inside his personal residence and social club appeared to fall flat on Tuesday.
Trump’s attorney, Emil Bove, argued that the search warrant was not detailed enough to survive Fourth Amendment scrutiny.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon pointedly disagreed: “It seems like it is, based on the caselaw that’s been submitted,” she said, minutes before court adjourned.
Though Cannon did not immediately issue a ruling, Trump’s challenge hinges on the “particularity” of the warrant, and her remarks throughout the proceedings left little doubt as to her leanings.
“It’s clearly delineated there to search for documents with classification markings,” she remarked toward the start of the hearing.
Click the link to read more about the hearing.
At Public Notice, Liz Dye wrote about Trump’s claims that he should be able to attack anyone involved in the legal cases against him: Trump asserts constitutional right to harass FBI agents.
In the stolen documents case in Florida, Trump called the special counsel’s motion to stop him from spreading vicious lies about the FBI agents who searched Mar-a-Lago a “naked effort to impose totalitarian censorship of core political speech, under threat of incarceration, in a clear attempt to silence President Trump’s arguments to the American people about the outrageous nature of this investigation and prosecution.” [….]
In Florida, Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to bar Trump from accusing the FBI agents who executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago of trying to assassinate him.
The backstory is that on May 21, Trump claimed to have been “shown Reports” that President Biden “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” back in August 2022 when it raided the private club where he was storing stolen government documents.
Sleeping Woman with a Book, by Ferdinand Max Bredt
In fact, the “Report” was boilerplate language from the FBI’s operations order for the warrant, attached as an exhibit to his own motion to suppress the evidence kicked up on that raid. The FBI took great care to execute the warrant at a time when the club was shuttered for the season and there was no prospect that the former president and his family would be there. Nevertheless, Trump and his MAGA henchmen spent several news cycles claiming that President Biden had sent in agents “locked and loaded” ready to shoot him.
Those agents will necessarily be witnesses at the trial (should it ever happen), and yet Trump is falsely accusing them of attempted murder. Two of them were already publicly outed back in 2022 when someone gave the unredacted warrant to Breitbart and a former Trump aide, both of whom published it with the agents’ signatures visible.
After the agents were doxxed, they and their families were threatened and harassed, which influenced Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart’s decision to keep under seal parts of the affidavit in support of the warrant.
“Given the public notoriety and controversy about this search, it is likely that even witnesses who are not expressly named in the Affidavit would be quickly and broadly identified over social media and other communication channels, which could lead to them being harassed and intimidated,” he wrote.
Judge Cannon doesn’t seem to think this is a big deal.
Trump insists that his lies about the FBI are “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment. He also deliberately distorts the “heckler’s veto,” as he has done many times before, claiming that he cannot be silenced to prevent foreseeable, violent acts by his supporters. But as the DC Circuit wrote in its order upholding the gag order in the election interference case, “That doctrine prohibits restraining speech on the grounds that it ‘might offend a hostile mob’ hearing the message.” [….]
The DC Circuit judges noted that the trial judge need not find that the defendant’s statements had led to violent attacks in this case, they could infer the danger from attacks on everyone from Atlanta poll workers, to grand jurors in Fulton County, to the jury foreperson doxxed in the Roger Stone case. Applying the standard set out by the Supreme Court in Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, the judges blessed the gag order based on a finding that Trump’s attacks on witnesses, jurors, and court staff posed a “substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing” the proceedings.
But that may not matter to Judge Aileen Cannon, who showed marked hostility to this (and every other) prosecutorial motion at a hearing Monday in Fort Pierce, where she waved away the ample record of Trump endangering witnesses and law enforcement, as well as an exhibit showing threats to FBI agents by a man who was killed in an attempted attack on an FBI building in Cincinnati just days after the warrant on Mar-a-Lago was executed.
“There still needs to be a factual connection between A and B,” the judge said, rebuffing Assistant US Attorney David Harbach’s efforts to make the government’s case.
“Mr. Harbach, I don’t appreciate your tone,” she fumed in response to the complaint that she wasn’t letting the government articulate its position, according to Just Security’s Adam Klasfeld, who was in the courtroom. “I expect decorum in this courtroom at all times. If you cannot do that, I’m sure one of your colleagues can take up this motion.” [….]
It seems highly unlikely that Cannon will do anything to curb Trump’s speech, until someone else gets hurt — and, if and when that happens, she will blame the government for failing to properly argue in favor of the gag order.
One more on the stolen documents case from Justin Rohrlich at The Daily Beast: New Pics Show Nuclear Secrets Stashed Beside the Diet Cokes at Mar-a-Lago.
On Monday night, following Trump’s latest disingenuous contention—that the FBI agents who seized and reviewed the contents of boxes upon boxes of sensitive materials stored at Mar-a-Lago “failed to maintain” the exact order of the documents within, which Trump now claims could somehow exonerate him—government lawyers filed a scathing response letting the air out of Trump’s contentions.
Nikolai Bekker Portrait of Countess Maria Hilarionovna Worontsov-Dachkova (1919).
Far from a neatly ordered system under which Trump, a notorious pack rat, maintained a precise inventory of important documents, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, along with prosecutors Jay Bratt and David Harbach, noted the “cluttered collection of keepsakes,” which “traveled from one readily accessible location to another” around the Palm Beach, Florida club.
“[T]his is not a case where reams of identically-sized documents were stacked neatly in file folders or redwelds, arrayed perfectly within a box,” the filing states. “To anyone other than Trump, the boxes had no apparent organization whatsoever.”
Trump kept highly guarded secrets in boxes with “personally chosen keepsakes of various sizes and shapes from his presidency—newspapers, thank you notes, Christmas ornaments, magazines, clothing, and photographs of himself and others,” the government’s filing goes on.
“After they landed in stacks in the storage room, several boxes fell and splayed their contents on the floor; and boxes were moved to Trump’s residence on more than one occasion so he could review and pick through them,” the filing continues. “Against this backdrop of the haphazard manner in which Trump chose to maintain his boxes, he now claims that the precise order of the items within the boxes when they left the White House was critical to his defense, and, what’s more, that FBI agents executing the search warrant in August 2022 should have known that.”
Smith, Bratt, and Harbach included a slew of exhibits to back up their position, with numerous previously unseen pictures of Trump’s decidedly chaotic storage methods. One shows assorted wadded-up golf shirts side-by-side with a folder marked “CONFIDENTIAL.” Another shows extremely sensitive defense-related documents carelessly stacked up on the floor beside cases of Diet Coke, a Hermes tie box, and a “Save America” cap, several toppled boxes with papers, binders, and folders spilling out, and a box containing a Christmas pillow and a random length of bubble wrap, beneath which, as national security analyst and writer Marcy Wheeler pointed out, at least one document prosecutors say was related to America’s nuclear weapons program.
In one exhibit, Smith & Co. provide a new photo of a storage closet at Mar-a-Lago where the contents of at least five upturned bankers boxes can be seen spilling out onto the floor. Several suit jackets in plastic dry cleaning bags hang from a rack above them, a Gibson guitar case leans against the wall, and what appears to be a piece of rococo plaster molding teeters atop a cardboard box nearby. According to the indictment, one of the boxes seen here contained a 2019 document marked “SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,” which denotes the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.
Read more and see photos at the Daily Beast link.
This post is getting really long, so I’m going going to end there. I’ll add a few more links in the comment thread. Have a great day, everyone!!
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/06/26/wednesday-reads-62/
#BidenTrumpDebate2024 #BidenTrumpDebates2020 #FBISearchOfMarALago #JudgeAileenCannon #MurthyVMissouri #NoBidenWonTBeOnDrugs #SnyderVUnitedStates #stolenDocumentsCase #SupremeCourt #TrumpAttacksOnFBIAgents #TrumpStorageMethods
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Good Day!!
Studio Scene, by Kayoon Anderson
Today, the press and cable TV are mostly focused on tomorrow’s debate and how Biden can deal with Trump’s insanity and incoherence. I don’t find the discussions about this very interesting. I think Biden knows how to bait Trump, and no one really knows what crazy nonsense Trump will unleash. I hope Biden will mock Trump’s fear of sharks and electric boats; his claims that there’s not enough water in shower heads and dishwashers; and his claim that he got his vast knowledge about “nuclear” by osmosis from his uncle the MIT professor. Trump has absolutely no interest or knowledge about policy and Biden can demonstrate that too.
It is concerning that Trump is claiming Biden will be “jacked up” on drugs, because low information voters appear to be incredibly stupid and will likely believe it. Of course, Trump is the one who could be using drugs as a crutch.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: No, Biden won’t be on performance-enhancing drugs for the debate.
Allies of Donald Trump have painted themselves into a cognitive corner. President Biden is unfit for office, they argue, because he is so old, and his mental abilities have deteriorated markedly. But then Biden will, say, deliver a State of the Union address in which he is energetic and pointed for more than an hour.
So they modify their claim: Biden is addled and wandering, except when he is given some sort of medication, perhaps a stimulant, that reverses that effect. And here we are, with Trump and those seeking his reelection to the White House demanding that Biden submit to some sort of drug test before this week’s first presidential debate, purportedly in effort to sniff out this theoretical drug.
Experts who spoke with The Washington Post, though, confirm that no such medicine exists.
At the outset, we should recognize that this claim is generally not offered seriously. It is, instead, an effort to escape the aforementioned contradiction, a way to hold both that Biden is incapable of serving as president and yet, unquestionably at times, not demonstrating any such impairment. What’s more, the demand that Biden undergo a drug test is itself not serious. It is, instead, meant to create a condition that allows Trump and his allies to continue to claim that any strong performance from Biden is a function of medication. The result is win-win for Trump, who can blame any loss on this wonder drug.
The wackos at Fox “News” are busy speculating about what drugs Biden could be using.
Host Maria Bartiromo — no stranger to conspiratorial argumentation — hosted Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) where she offered an observation made by Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.).
“Jackson says Biden will have been at Camp David for a full week before the debate,” Bartiromo said, “and that they’re probably experimenting with getting doses right. Giving him medicine ahead of the debate.”
Burlison agreed that this was possible, though he offered that it might be more innocuous than medication. Perhaps, he said, Biden’s team is “jack[ing] him up on Mountain Dew.”
“Nothing like that exists,” Thomas Wisniewski, director of the NYU Langone Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, told The Washington Post by phone. “There are no medications or stimulants that can reverse a dementing process transiently.”
but quite often that can just exacerbate their confusion, as well,” he added. “They can be more stimulated, but they are not going to be behaving in a more cogent or normal fashion as a result of being stimulated by anything. Very often it’s the reverse.”
Adam Brickman, associate professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, concurred with that assessment.
“I’m not aware of any medications that would reverse or mask cognitive decline,” Brickman said. What’s more, he noted that “the association between energy and cognition is a very weak one. In other words, someone could have low energy but totally intact cognition and vice versa.”
Of course the goal of these drug claims is to prepare the idiots who support Trump for the likelihood that Biden will wipe the floor with Trump during tomorrow’s debate.
Amanda Marcotte at Salon: Trump’s claim that Biden is “jacked up” on drugs is more than projection — it’s cult conditioning.
Donald Trump has been thinking a lot about cocaine lately, even though drug-running is one of the few felony charges he’s not been indicted or convicted for. He has been routinely accusing President Joe Biden of using drugs, with the usual vivid details Trump injects into all his weird fantasies. “So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the a—,” Trump told rallygoers in Philadelphia Saturday. “I say he’ll come out all jacked up,” he added, before going off on a diatribe accusing Biden of being the owner of a bag of cocaine found in a White House visitors’ closet last year.
La Lecture, 1877, by Henri Fanton-Latour
Since there’s no flight of Trump’s fancy too bizarre for right-wing media, this obsession of Trump’s is getting echoed by Republican politicians and MAGA talking heads. Fox News hosts, Republican politicians, MAGA media influencers, and every right-wing troll on Twitter have been playing their part as well-trained parrots, repeating the lie. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is even putting the lie in paid advertising.
Everyone knows that Trump’s favorite rhetorical tactic is psychological projection. You’d think Republicans would be a little more worried this would raise questions about what Trump has been ingesting. But no: The campaign tapped disgraced former White House doctor Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Tex. to be a major Trump surrogate pushing this lie. Jackson’s been hitting both TV and podcasts to toss around drug names like “Adderall” and “Provigil.” This only reinforces suspicions that this accusation is a confession, however. When Jackson was Trump’s White House doctor, he earned the nickname “Dr. Feelgood” for relentlessly pushing these drugs on people who do not need them. Jackson’s behavior was so egregious that the Navy stripped him of his rank.
What’s telling about this lie is, as with many MAGA falsehoods, it seems few, if any, of the people repeating it actually believe it. Trump and his allies have accused Biden not just of being a little tired at times, but of having dementia. As Mona Charen pointed out on the “Daily Blast” podcast, if Adderall could restore a demented person’s brain, they’d be mass distributing it to the millions of people who are suffering from this disease. As for the cocaine accusation, even the most naive person in the country knows cocaine makes people less coherent, not sharper. It causes people to ramble on about nonsense, which is closer to describing your average Trump speech, not anything Biden has been up to.
Trump is using his second favorite trick, besides projection: Tricking his followers into believing they’re in on his con.
Trump isn’t trying to convince anyone of this lie. He’s convincing them that, by repeating the obvious lie, they can share in what they believe is his mastery over reality itself. The lie is not a thing the MAGA person sincerely believes. It’s a weapon Trump has provided them. When he loses the debate, which they clearly expect he will, the lie gives them a way to participate in the post-debate spin. But it’s also the stupidity of the lie that makes it so fun. Saying something deliberately dumb is a reliable way to drive the liberals mad. Angering liberals is the emotional core of the MAGA base….
As I’ve written about before, this strategy is the oldest technique in the con artist’s book. The best way for a grifter to gain a mark’s trust is to make him feel like he’s in on the con. Cult leaders operate the same way, by creating this sense of intimacy with their victims. Once the mark feels he’s part of the conspiracy, it’s that much easier to victimize him. The mark feels like the predator and not the prey, and so he lets his guard down around the actual villain picking his pocket. Trump does this to his followers over and over again, and they always fall for it. Even the Capitol insurrection is a good example. Trump convinced the rioters that they were his partners in the attempted coup. In reality, they were his patsies, set up to take the fall while he hid away in the White House.
Read the whole piece at Salon. It’s good.
NPR has an interesting article on the Biden and Trump “debates” in 2020: COVID tests and crosstalk: What happened the last time Trump and Biden debated.
With Trump and Biden now near even in the latest polls, and many Americans unenthused — and still undecided — about voting for either of them, Thursday’s debate offers both candidates an opportunity. But it’s not without risks.
It’s likely to be a memorable night if 2020 is any indication. Here’s a look at what happened last time Trump and Biden took the stage together….
Albert Edelfelt, Portrait of the artist’s sister Bertha Edelfelt, 1881
The first round, in September 2020, was by many accounts a disaster. NPR’s Domenico Montanaro called it “maybe the worst presidential debate in American history.”
Trump arrived on the debate stage trailing in the polls and, apparently, jonesing for drama. He interrupted Biden constantly, peppering him with questions and personal slights despite moderator Chris Wallace’s pleas for order.
At one point, while Biden was talking about his late son Beau’s military service, Trump jumped in to attack his other son, Hunter, for his drug use (which Biden managed to seize as a sympathetic moment).
Biden tried in vain to ignore Trump talking over him throughout — but called the then-president a “clown” more than once. At one point he had clearly had enough.
“Will you shut up, man?” he said exasperatedly, as Trump continued accusing him of wanting to pack the Supreme Court. “This is so unpresidential.”
Trump even bulldozed over Wallace, prompting the then-Fox News anchor to declare, “Mr. President, I am the moderator of this debate and I would like you to let me ask my question and then you can answer.”
A bit more on the first “debate”:
Still, a few substantive moments stood out amidst the chaos and crosstalk.
One was when Wallace asked if Trump was willing to condemn white supremacists and tell them to “stand down.”
Trump blamed the “left-wing” instead, but said he was prepared to do so. At that point, both Wallace and Biden urged him to go ahead. Trump asked for a name, and Biden suggested the Proud Boys.
“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said, in what sounded more like a call to action, and quickly became part of the far-right extremist group’s new social media logo.
Trump also repeatedly made baseless claims about the upcoming election being rigged, saying “This is going to be fraud like you’ve never heard.”
When Wallace asked if he would urge his supporters to stay calm during a potentially prolonged period of counting ballots, Trump demurred. He said instead that he was “urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully.”
“If it’s a fair election, I am 100% on board,” he said. “But if I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with that.”
Read the rest at NPR.
The Supreme Court is still releasing decisions. Once again, they have held back the one on Trump’s claim of “presidential immunity.” They announced two decisions today.
The Guardian: US supreme court allows government to request removal of misinformation on social media.
The US supreme court has struck down a lower court ruling in the case of Murthy v Missouri, finding that the government’s communications with social media platforms about Covid-19 misinformation did not violate the first amendment. The court’s decision permits the government to call on tech companies to remove falsehoods and establishes boundaries around free speech online.
The court ruled 6-3 that the plaintiffs had no standing to bring the case against the Biden administration, with conservative justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissenting.
The ruling is a blow to a longstanding Republican-backed effort to equate content moderation with censorship. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which included the founder of a far-right conspiracy website, argued that the government and federal agencies were coercing tech companies into silencing conservatives through demands to take down misinformation about the pandemic.
Bloomberg Law: Supreme Court Further Weakens Public Corruption Prosecutions.
The US Supreme Court again pared back a public corruption law, this time saying that state and local officials who accept “gratuities” aren’t covered by a federal bribery statute.
The 6-3 ruling by Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday was the latest in a string of cases cutting the reach of federal corruption laws and prosecutorial discretion to bring charges against government officials.
Woman reading in garden. Ignacio Díaz Olano
In the latest case, Snyder v. United States, the justices said a law which makes it a crime for certain state or local officials to “corruptly” accept anything of value over $5,000 doesn’t reach gratuities paid in recognition of past actions.
The ruling undoes the conviction of former Portage, Indiana, Mayor James Snyder for receiving $13,000 from a trucking company after it was awarded city contracts.
A contrary ruling had the potential to criminalize “commonplace gratuities” like a Dunkin’ Donuts gift card, Chipotle dinner, or tickets to a Hoosiers game, the court said.
The ruling split the justices along ideological lines. Writing for the liberal justices in dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said “Snyder’s absurd and atextual reading of the statute is one only today’s Court could love.”
The justices’ concern over prosecutorial overreach could have implications for a number of criminal cases over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The justices in Fischer v. United States are considering whether federal prosecutors went too far in charging some defendants with an Enron-era statute prohibiting obstruction of an official proceeding.
Judge Aileen Cannon held another hearing yesterday in her efforts to waste as much time as possible and prevent the stolen documents case from going to trial. Here’s some of what happened:
Adam Klasfeld at Just Security: Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Search Challenge Flounders: Judge Signals Warrant Passed Muster.
Nearly two years after the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s effort to suppress the evidence that agents found inside his personal residence and social club appeared to fall flat on Tuesday.
Trump’s attorney, Emil Bove, argued that the search warrant was not detailed enough to survive Fourth Amendment scrutiny.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon pointedly disagreed: “It seems like it is, based on the caselaw that’s been submitted,” she said, minutes before court adjourned.
Though Cannon did not immediately issue a ruling, Trump’s challenge hinges on the “particularity” of the warrant, and her remarks throughout the proceedings left little doubt as to her leanings.
“It’s clearly delineated there to search for documents with classification markings,” she remarked toward the start of the hearing.
Click the link to read more about the hearing.
At Public Notice, Liz Dye wrote about Trump’s claims that he should be able to attack anyone involved in the legal cases against him: Trump asserts constitutional right to harass FBI agents.
In the stolen documents case in Florida, Trump called the special counsel’s motion to stop him from spreading vicious lies about the FBI agents who searched Mar-a-Lago a “naked effort to impose totalitarian censorship of core political speech, under threat of incarceration, in a clear attempt to silence President Trump’s arguments to the American people about the outrageous nature of this investigation and prosecution.” [….]
In Florida, Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to bar Trump from accusing the FBI agents who executed the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago of trying to assassinate him.
The backstory is that on May 21, Trump claimed to have been “shown Reports” that President Biden “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE” back in August 2022 when it raided the private club where he was storing stolen government documents.
Sleeping Woman with a Book, by Ferdinand Max Bredt
In fact, the “Report” was boilerplate language from the FBI’s operations order for the warrant, attached as an exhibit to his own motion to suppress the evidence kicked up on that raid. The FBI took great care to execute the warrant at a time when the club was shuttered for the season and there was no prospect that the former president and his family would be there. Nevertheless, Trump and his MAGA henchmen spent several news cycles claiming that President Biden had sent in agents “locked and loaded” ready to shoot him.
Those agents will necessarily be witnesses at the trial (should it ever happen), and yet Trump is falsely accusing them of attempted murder. Two of them were already publicly outed back in 2022 when someone gave the unredacted warrant to Breitbart and a former Trump aide, both of whom published it with the agents’ signatures visible.
After the agents were doxxed, they and their families were threatened and harassed, which influenced Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart’s decision to keep under seal parts of the affidavit in support of the warrant.
“Given the public notoriety and controversy about this search, it is likely that even witnesses who are not expressly named in the Affidavit would be quickly and broadly identified over social media and other communication channels, which could lead to them being harassed and intimidated,” he wrote.
Judge Cannon doesn’t seem to think this is a big deal.
Trump insists that his lies about the FBI are “core political speech” protected by the First Amendment. He also deliberately distorts the “heckler’s veto,” as he has done many times before, claiming that he cannot be silenced to prevent foreseeable, violent acts by his supporters. But as the DC Circuit wrote in its order upholding the gag order in the election interference case, “That doctrine prohibits restraining speech on the grounds that it ‘might offend a hostile mob’ hearing the message.” [….]
The DC Circuit judges noted that the trial judge need not find that the defendant’s statements had led to violent attacks in this case, they could infer the danger from attacks on everyone from Atlanta poll workers, to grand jurors in Fulton County, to the jury foreperson doxxed in the Roger Stone case. Applying the standard set out by the Supreme Court in Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, the judges blessed the gag order based on a finding that Trump’s attacks on witnesses, jurors, and court staff posed a “substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing” the proceedings.
But that may not matter to Judge Aileen Cannon, who showed marked hostility to this (and every other) prosecutorial motion at a hearing Monday in Fort Pierce, where she waved away the ample record of Trump endangering witnesses and law enforcement, as well as an exhibit showing threats to FBI agents by a man who was killed in an attempted attack on an FBI building in Cincinnati just days after the warrant on Mar-a-Lago was executed.
“There still needs to be a factual connection between A and B,” the judge said, rebuffing Assistant US Attorney David Harbach’s efforts to make the government’s case.
“Mr. Harbach, I don’t appreciate your tone,” she fumed in response to the complaint that she wasn’t letting the government articulate its position, according to Just Security’s Adam Klasfeld, who was in the courtroom. “I expect decorum in this courtroom at all times. If you cannot do that, I’m sure one of your colleagues can take up this motion.” [….]
It seems highly unlikely that Cannon will do anything to curb Trump’s speech, until someone else gets hurt — and, if and when that happens, she will blame the government for failing to properly argue in favor of the gag order.
One more on the stolen documents case from Justin Rohrlich at The Daily Beast: New Pics Show Nuclear Secrets Stashed Beside the Diet Cokes at Mar-a-Lago.
On Monday night, following Trump’s latest disingenuous contention—that the FBI agents who seized and reviewed the contents of boxes upon boxes of sensitive materials stored at Mar-a-Lago “failed to maintain” the exact order of the documents within, which Trump now claims could somehow exonerate him—government lawyers filed a scathing response letting the air out of Trump’s contentions.
Nikolai Bekker Portrait of Countess Maria Hilarionovna Worontsov-Dachkova (1919).
Far from a neatly ordered system under which Trump, a notorious pack rat, maintained a precise inventory of important documents, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, along with prosecutors Jay Bratt and David Harbach, noted the “cluttered collection of keepsakes,” which “traveled from one readily accessible location to another” around the Palm Beach, Florida club.
“[T]his is not a case where reams of identically-sized documents were stacked neatly in file folders or redwelds, arrayed perfectly within a box,” the filing states. “To anyone other than Trump, the boxes had no apparent organization whatsoever.”
Trump kept highly guarded secrets in boxes with “personally chosen keepsakes of various sizes and shapes from his presidency—newspapers, thank you notes, Christmas ornaments, magazines, clothing, and photographs of himself and others,” the government’s filing goes on.
“After they landed in stacks in the storage room, several boxes fell and splayed their contents on the floor; and boxes were moved to Trump’s residence on more than one occasion so he could review and pick through them,” the filing continues. “Against this backdrop of the haphazard manner in which Trump chose to maintain his boxes, he now claims that the precise order of the items within the boxes when they left the White House was critical to his defense, and, what’s more, that FBI agents executing the search warrant in August 2022 should have known that.”
Smith, Bratt, and Harbach included a slew of exhibits to back up their position, with numerous previously unseen pictures of Trump’s decidedly chaotic storage methods. One shows assorted wadded-up golf shirts side-by-side with a folder marked “CONFIDENTIAL.” Another shows extremely sensitive defense-related documents carelessly stacked up on the floor beside cases of Diet Coke, a Hermes tie box, and a “Save America” cap, several toppled boxes with papers, binders, and folders spilling out, and a box containing a Christmas pillow and a random length of bubble wrap, beneath which, as national security analyst and writer Marcy Wheeler pointed out, at least one document prosecutors say was related to America’s nuclear weapons program.
In one exhibit, Smith & Co. provide a new photo of a storage closet at Mar-a-Lago where the contents of at least five upturned bankers boxes can be seen spilling out onto the floor. Several suit jackets in plastic dry cleaning bags hang from a rack above them, a Gibson guitar case leans against the wall, and what appears to be a piece of rococo plaster molding teeters atop a cardboard box nearby. According to the indictment, one of the boxes seen here contained a 2019 document marked “SECRET//REL TO USA, FVEY,” which denotes the Five Eyes intelligence alliance that includes Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.
Read more and see photos at the Daily Beast link.
This post is getting really long, so I’m going going to end there. I’ll add a few more links in the comment thread. Have a great day, everyone!!
https://skydancingblog.com/2024/06/26/wednesday-reads-62/
#BidenTrumpDebate2024 #BidenTrumpDebates2020 #FBISearchOfMarALago #JudgeAileenCannon #MurthyVMissouri #NoBidenWonTBeOnDrugs #SnyderVUnitedStates #stolenDocumentsCase #SupremeCourt #TrumpAttacksOnFBIAgents #TrumpStorageMethods
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Kirjoittamista pääasiallisena kommunikaatiomuotona suosivana nettinörttinä hurahdin someen välittömästi kun palveluita alkoi pullahtamaan pinnalle roppakaupalla 2000-luvulla. Newyorkilainen Jack Dorsey sai idean Twitteristä opiskeluaikanaan vuonna 2006, jolloin hän päätti perustaa tekstiviestipohjaisen lyhytviestipalvelun, jossa ihmiset voisivat lähettää maksimissaan 140 merkin ajatuksen julkisesti nettiin. Kyseessä ei olisi pikaviestin, mutta ei myöskään blogi. Twitter oli syntynyt. Tästä lyhyiden tekstien kirjoittamisesta alettiin käyttää ilmaisua ”mikrobloggaaminen”. Twitter iski heti yksinkertaisuudellaan ja avoimuudellaan.
Twitter kasvoi mikroblogialustana nopeasti ison yleisön suosioon etenkin Amerikassa viimeistään kun presidentti Barack Obama liittyi Twitteriin vuonna 2007. Suomalaiset kiinnostuivat hitaammin vasta 2010-luvun puolella, tätä ennen somemarkkinoita dominoivat Facebook ja IRC-galleria, eikä kukaan oikein ymmärtänyt Twitterin tai Twitterin kaltaisten somejen päälle. Itsehän ahmin erilaisia vastaavia alustoja, joita syntyi kuin sieniä sateella. Näitä olivat mm. Jaiku, Qaiku, Google+, Identica, Orkut, Tumblr, Path, jne. Suurin osa lopetti tai menetti käyttäjänsä vuosien varrella, eikä onnistunut saamaan jalansijaa markkinoilla tai positiivista kassavirtaa.
Twitter sai hyvän jalansijan ja sen käyttö yleistyi täällä Suomessakin niin tukevaksi osaksi populaarikulttuuria, että tweettejä alettiin käyttämään televisio-ohjelmien ja uutisartikkeleiden rikastamisessa. Siitäkään huolimatta yrityksenä Twitter ei menestynyt. 17 toimintavuodestaan vain kaksi on ollut kannattavia, loput tehneet isoa satojen miljoonien edestä turskaa. Elon Muskin sekoilu tuhosi Twitterin lopullisesti ja kirjaimellisesti, kun lokakuussa 2022 kaupat sinetöitiin ja Twitter Inc lakkasi kokonaan olemasta. Tilalle syntyi X Corp. Kirjoitin Twitterin tuhosta ja Mastodonista laajemmin viime vuonna ja ennustin palvelun muuttumista hiljalleen huonommaksi ja maksulliseksi. Toistaiseksi kaikki ennusmerkit ovat käyneet toteen.
X:n myötä eletään oikeastaan pitkästä aikaa taas 2010-luvun alkua, jolloin somepalveluita syntyi lisää tai tuli ihmisten tietoisuuteen useammin. Viimeiset 10 vuotta ollaan menty aikalailla samoilla somepalveluilla. Ihmisten käytössä on kokemukseni mukaan lähinnä Tik Tok (aiemmin musical.ly), Instagram, Facebook, Twitter ja LinkedIn. Muita someja ei juuri käytetä. Monella on käytössä vain yksi näistä, jos mitään. Itse someihmisenä käytän tietenkin kaikkia, mutta palvelujen määrä on supistunut 160 somepalvelusta (jep, laskin vuonna 2010) ihan vain muutamaan. Käyntikorttisivustollani rolle.social listaan somepalveluita, joita käytän aktiivisesti.
On mielenkiintoista, että meillä on jälleen useampi vaihtoehto lyhyiden viestien lähettämiseen. Mikroblogialustoja on X:n, Mastodonin, Blueskyn, Threadsin ja Nostrin lisäksi ainakin mm. Counter Social, Truth Social, Gab, Spoutible, Hive ja Post, mutta ne ovat sen verran marginaalisia tai arvelluttavia, että keskityn tässä kirjoituksessa vain kärkiviisikkoon. Tumblr jää kirjoituksesta pois siitä syystä, että se ei koskaan oikein saanut suomalaisten keskuudessa tarpeeksi suurta jalansijaa. Vaikka minulla on ollut käyttäjätunnus alusta asti, en Tumblria ole koskaan oikein todella käyttänyt.
X (aiemmin Twitter)
Luin Elon Muskin elämänkerran hiljattain. Jo ennen lukemista olen jonkin verran seurannut tämän häiriintyneen miljardöörin edesottamuksia ja ollut kärryillä hänen tweeteistään. Tiedän ihmistyypin. Musk on ailahtelevainen, turhanlänkyttäjä ja nettitrolli, mutta myös usein tekee mitä sanoo tekevänsä. Ainakin X Corpin osalta asiat ovat menneet aikalailla niin, mitä hän on itse sanonut. Palvelu on hyvin erinäköinen kuin mitä se oli muutama vuosi sitten, eikä Twitteristä ole pian jäljellä enää häivähdystäkään.
X eli Twitter on silti monelle ainoa käytössä oleva mikroblogisome, koska vuosien tai jopa vuosikymmenen ajallinen investointi yhteen palveluun nostaa kynnystä aloittaa alusta. Itse olen ollut Twitterissä lähes alusta asti, mutta en sure menetetyn datan tai seuraajamäärien perään. Nettisivuja tulee ja menee. Vaikka X:ssä on ehkä ripaus Twitterin sielua ainakin sen käyttäjissä, se on ominaisuuksiltaan ja toimivuudeltan sen verran rappeutunut, että en jaksa käyttää sitä enää täysillä. Tänä vuonna palasin Twitteriin kokeeksi ja totesin, että listoiltani ja seurattavistani on hävinnyt kaikki fiksut tai algoritmi ei enää nosta mitään järkevää esille, kun olen ilmaiskäyttäjä.
Twitter 21. lokakuuta 2023.Pääseinälläni näkyy jatkuvasti jotain turhaa mainstream-kuraa käyttäjiltä, joita en seuraa, kuten non aesthetics things, internet hall of fame, NO CONTEXT HUMANS, jne. 1000 ways to die -tilin jouduin blokkaamaan, koska se postailee oikeita kuolemia videolla, eikä X varoita näistä enää mitenkään. Myöskään käyttäjien ilmiannot disinformaatiosta tai väkivaltaisesta sisällöstä eivät ole menneet läpi enää vuoteen. Kehitystä ei tapahdu, kun puikoissa on äärioikeistolainen oligarkki.
Uusimmat järjettömät muutokset ja ”ominaisuudet” vähensivät intoani käyttämiseen entisestään. Esimerkkeinä linkkien otsikoiden poistaminen, turhat katselukertatilastot, algoritmimuutokset joiden myötä ilmaiskäyttäjän päivitykset eivät näy missään ja se että uloskirjautuneet näkevät tuoreimpien päivitysten sijaan vain suosituimmat profiilissa.
Twitter on kuin varjo entisestään. Täynnä roskaa, bugeja, toksisuutta, rajattuja ominaisuuksia ja ärsyttäviä mainoksia. Suosittelen vain pienin annoksin, jos sitäkään. En povaa X:lle mitään kovin hehkeää tulevaisuutta, sillä se kukoistaa disinformaation ja pahuuden pesänä. Sillä on tällä hetkellä lähes yhtä huono maine kuin viha-alustoilla 4chan, Ylilauta, Truth Social ja Gab.
Käytän palvelua enää oikeastaan maailmanmenon ajoittaiseen vilkuiluun ja yritykseni somepäivityksiin, mutta alan pikkuhijlaa menettää uskoni, sillä alamaailman meininki ja Gotham Cityssä yrittäminen ei välttämättä ole vaivan väärti.
Twitterillä on noin 550 miljoonaa käyttäjää, mutta huhujen mukaan aktiivisia on enää alle 330 miljoonaa.
Ominaisuudet: 42% (16/38)
Henkilökohtainen käyttökokemus: 5%
Tulenko viettämään palvelussa aikaa: Minimimäärän, saatan jopa taas lopettaa.Bluesky
Bluesky, ”Sinitaivas”, kuten suomalaiset sanovat, on Twitterin alkuperäisen perustajan Jack Dorseyn ideasta syntynyt somealusta, joka perustettiin vuonna 2019. Palvelua rahoitti alunperin Twitter vielä silloin kun Dorsey oli Twitterin toimarina, eli käytännössä Dorsey pisti 13 miljoonaa Twitterin rahoja Blueskyn kehittelyyn. Hän ehkä ennakoi jo silloin Twitterin alamäkeä ja halusi aloittaa alusta. Viimeistään Muskin ostaessa Twitterin pois, paukkuja laitettiin Blueskyhin enemmän. Jay Graber on Blueskyn CEO ja Dorsey istuu hallituksessa. Bluesky on yrityksenä todella pieni ja palvelu on suljetussa beta-vaiheessa.
Kiinnostuin Blueskysta alunperin vasta Mastodonin jälkeen, sillä Bluesky mainostaa itseään hajautettuna ja avoimia rajapintoja suosivana palveluna. Hajautettu tarkoittaa lyhyesti sitä että palvelu ei ole yhden tahon omistuksessa tai yhdellä palvelinkeskittymällä, kuten X, vaan se muodostuu useammasta eri palvelinkokonaisuudesta. Vähän kuin Internet ja sen nettisivut, ne ovat eri paikoissa isännöityinä. Bluesky tähtää hajautettuun somepalveluun aivan kuten Mastodoninkin. Kun Mastodonilla tämä on jo käytännösä, Blueskylla vasta alkutekijöissään.
Sain itse Blueskyhin kutsun kesällä, mutta lähdin tutkailemaan palvelua tarkemmin nyt kun suomalaiset rynnivät ”sinitaivaaseen” kuolaa suupielistä valuen.
Beta on julkaisua edeltävä testiversio, jota jaetaan suljetulle käyttäjäryhmälle koekäyttöön. Blueskyta on ihan hauska lähteä testaamaan. Mieleen tulee 2010-luvun taite, jolloin Facebook jakeli kutsukoodeja palvelun käyttöön. Kutsukoodit lisäävät suosiota, koska niistä tulee tietynlainen ekslusiivisuuden tunne, ”tämä on jotain erikoista”. Kyseessä on kuitenkin vielä todella keskeneräinen palvelu, etenkin nykymittapuulla.
Bluesky 21. lokakuuta 2023.Bluesky on hyvin Twitterin kaltainen. Käyttöliittymä näyttää vähän samalta, mutta yksinkertaistetummalta. Jotkin asiat kuten välistykset vaativat vielä hiomista näin käyttöliittymäsuunnittelijan näkökulmasta, mutta tavan tallaaja ei äkkiseltään erota palvelua juurikaan Twitteristä. Se on hyvä asia heille, jotka haluavat ”kuin Twitterin, mutta ei kuitenkaan”, Twitterin korvaajan ilman öyhöjä tai Muskia puikoissa.
Palvelu kysyy heti alkuun serveriä kuten Mastodoninkin, mutta tämä on monen helppo sivuuttaa, koska tällä hetkellä vaihtoehtoja on vain yksi. Blueskyn tavoite on, että jokainen voi perustaa omia ”edustapalvelimiaan”, jotka keskustelevat äitipalvelimen kanssa. Teknisiltä ominaisuuksiltaan Bluesky päätti, ettei halua käyttää samaa ActivityPub-protokollaa Mastodonin ja muiden alustojen kanssa, vaan keksiä pyörän uudelleen kehittämällä oman ATProto-nimisen protokollan. Mutta koska Bluesky on Mastodonin tapaan avointa rajapintaa, saatamme pystyä silti tulevaisuudessa yhdistämään protokollat toisiinsa ja seuraamaan Mastodonista Bluesky-käyttäjiä ja toisin päin, jos koodareita on uskominen.
Blueskysta puuttuu tällä hetkellä vielä paljon keskeisiä ominaisuuksia, kuten hashtagit, yksityisviestit, kyselyt, giffien ja videoiden lähettäminen, sanojen mutetus ja niin edelleen. Palvelu heittää vähän väliä Internal server erroria ja muuta mystistä virhettä.
Isoimpana ärsytyksenä tällä hetkellä Blueskyssa on se, että notifikaatiot eivät toimi luotettavasti selaimessa tai mobiilissa. Joudun aina päivittämään näkymää, jotta saan uudet reaktiot ja vastaukset näkyviin. Olen kuullut huhuja, että Bluesky on ollut vähän helisemässä kun kaikki saavat kutsuja palveluun ja ihmisiä lappaa sisään, eikä serverit pysy mukana. Mutta palvelun ollessa testivaiheessa eli betassa, on tämä odotettua.
Blueskyyn rekisteröityy nyt paljon kiinnostuneita suomalaisia, jotka hakevat vaihtoehtoa X:lle. Kaikki mikä ajaa ihmisiä pois Twitteristä avoimempiin someihin on positiivista liikehdintää, mutta Blueskyta ei voi vielä pitää todellisena vaihtoehtona, sillä se on keskeneräinen. Lisäksi jos avointa dataa, laadukkaita ilmaisia ominaisuuksia ja yksityisyydensuojaa kaipaa, Bluesky on X:n tapaan kaupallisen, voittoa tavoittelevan yrityksen palvelu. Kannattavana yrityksenä sen on pakko rahoittaa toimintaansa jatkossa joko lainarahoituksella, mainoksilla tai maksullisilla ominaisuuksilla. Jack Dorsey on jo ilmaissut, että ei lähde mainosbisnekseen, joten palveluun tulee maksullisia ominaisuuksia. Toisaalta, jos miljonääri haluaa jatkaa tätä harrastuksekseen näin ilman minkäänlaisia haaveita tuotosta, mikäs siinä sitten.
Blueskylla on terveempi suhtautuminen avoimuuteen kuin Muskin X:llä, sillä Blueskyn rajapinta ja protokolla ovat avoimia ja kuka tahansa voi kehittää palvelulle omia viritelmiään. Tulee mieleen Twitter ajalta jolloin oli saatavilla satoja sovelluksia ja työkaluja, joilla käyttää Twitteriä ja hallita seuraajiaan. Blueskylla on mahdollisuus tähän samaan.
Mikään ei takaa sitä, etteikö Blueskykin kellahda X:n tapaan tai Musk osta Blueskyn pois käyttäjineen, koska se on silti loppupeleissä kaupallinen palvelu joka on ostettavissa. En olisi uskonut vielä joitakin vuosia sitten, että joku voi tuosta noin vain ostaa Twitterin ja lakkauttaa kaikki Twitterille koodaamani työkalut sormia napsauttamalla, mutta näin vain kävi. Vaikka Blueskylle voi virittää omia juttujaan, se ei silti takaa pysyvyyttä ja vapautta, etenkään oman datasi kohdalla.
Palvelussa tuli syyskuussa miljoona käyttäjää täyteen.
Ominaisuudet: 38% (15/39)
Henkilökohtainen käyttökokemus: ja fiilis mutulla: 40%
Tulenko viettämään palvelussa aikaa: Rajatusti ja kokeillen.Threads
Meta (aiemmin Facebook) näki markkinaraon Elon Muskin sekoilun keskellä ja päätti perustaa oman mikroblogialustan, jonka nimesi Threadsiksi. Palvelua ei alkuun lanseerattu lainkaan Euroopassa, koska Meta oli huolissaan vuonna 2024 voimaan astuvista tietosuojalaista, jotka estäistäisivät tai haittaisivat heidän massiviista datankeräystään. Meta on maailman suurin vakoiluyritys ja kerää tunnetusti käyttäjistään ihan kaiken tiedon ja myy sen eteenpäin profilointiin, jolla käyttäjiä manipuloimaan ostamaan ja vaikuttamaan. Tietoa kerätään, vaikka sinulla ei olisi Facebook- tai Threads-tunnusta, mutta tunnareiden avulla edesautat profiloimista entisestään.
Threads ei ollut ennen 14.12.2023 auki Euroopan maissa.Ominaisuuksiltaan Threads on yllättävän kattava ja siinä on potentiaalia korvata ainakin X.
Siisteintä on, että Threads on ilmoittanut tukevansa ActivityPubia, eli siitä tulee osa Fediverseä, jota myös Mastodon on. Tämä tarkoittaisi sitä, että Threads-käyttäjiä voi seurata Mastodonista ja toisin päin. Tämä on herättänyt Fedi-väessä huolta siitä, että muuttuuko dynamiikka tai alkaako Mastodonin puolelle puskemaan mainostilejä ja niin edelleen. Mutta ajatuksena on kutkuttava, että ei tarvitse käyttää Threadsia, vaan voi seurata sieltä tuttuja suoraan Mastodonia käyttämällä.
Our plan is to make Threads part of the fediverse, a social network of different servers operated by third parties that are connected and can communicate with each other. Each server on the fediverse operates on its own but can talk to other servers on the fediverse that run on the same protocol. We plan for Threads to use a protocol called ActivityPub to talk to other servers that support this protocol.
Threads avattiin vasta heinäkuun viides päivä ja 14. joulukuuta portit aukesivat myös suomalaisille. Blueskyhin verrattuna Threads plänää fiksusti, kun haluaa satsata ActivityPubiin. Oli Metasta mitä mieltä tahansa, se on osallistunut avoimen Internetin kehitykseen myös isoilla panostuksilla (React.js, PHP, jne.). Tässä on potentiaalia myös Mastodonin ja muiden ActivityPubia käyttävien alustojen kehittyä paremmaksi, kun maailman isoin someyhtiö on mukana touhussa. Foliohatut näkevät uhkakuvia, mutta itse haluan uskoa hyvään ja olla enemmän realistisen optimisti.
Threadsissa on tällä hetkellä noin 140 miljoonaa käyttäjää, joista suurin osa Metan muilta alustoilta kuten Instagramista.
Tätä kohtaa artikkelista on editoitu 16.12.2023, joten kohta jää tyngäksi. Ehkä kirjoitan Threadsista oman tekstin myöhemmin.
Ominaisuudet: 33% (13/39)
Henkilökohtainen käyttökokemus: ja fiilis mutulla: 55%
Tulenko viettämään palvelussa aikaa: Rajatusti ja kokeillen, mikäli Threads federoi, voin käyttää palvelua Mastodonin kautta.Nostr
2021 perustettu Nostr on avoimen lähdekoodin somealusta. Nimi Nostr tulee sanoista Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relay. Nostriin lähetetyt päivitykset validoidaan hyödyntämällä kryptotekniikkaa. Palvelu ei ole keskitetty mihinkään yhteen paikkaan. Tällä estetään tehokkaasti viestien estäminen. Näitä ”palvelimia” sanotaan Relayksi, suomeksi vapaasti käännettynä releiksi. Tässäpä tekniikan lyhyt oppimäärä.
It doesn’t rely on any trusted central server, hence it is resilient; it is based on cryptographic keys and signatures, so it is tamperproof; it does not rely on P2P techniques, and therefore it works.
Nostrin taustalla on pyrkimys täydelliseen sananvapauteen. Viestejä ei voi muokata jälkikäteen, eikä niitä moderoida mitenkään. Tässä on tietysti riskejä myös. Näen palvelun ikäänkuin eräänlaisena ”somen Torina”. Teknisesti Nostr on ehkä vähiten kansantajuinen palvelu, vaikka sen käyttöliittymät ovat hyvin tutun näköisiä.
Nostr näyttää kuin Blueskylta ja Twitteriltä ilman sivupalkkeja.Blueskyn ja Twitterin alullepanija, kryptointoilija Jack Dorsey on lahjoittanut alustan kehitykseen neljännesmiljoonan.
Nostr on käyttöliittymältään habitukseltaan kuin Bluesky tai Twitter. Mobiilisovellus erityisesti on lähes identtinen. Palvelusta löytyy Blueskyn tapaan rajattu määrä ominaisuuksia. Androidilla Nostria voi käyttää sovelluksella kuten Plebstr ja iPhonella sovelluksella nimeltään Iris. Selainkäyttö onnistuu esimerkiksi menemällä Iris.to.
Nostr-sovellukset ovat hyvin suunniteltuja ja tyylikkäitä.Kivointa Nostrissa on, että se tukee ActivityPub-protokollaa, eli samaa mitä Mastodon käyttää ja Threads lupaa käyttävänsä. Voin siis tälläkin hetkellä seurata Nostr-käyttäjiä Mastodonista. Minun ei siis tarvitse käyttää Nostria.
Valtavirran osalta Nostr menee todennäköisesti yli hilseen. Mutta ei se mitään. Nostrilla on tällä hetkellä noin puoli miljoonaa käyttäjää.
Ominaisuudet: 46% (18/39)
Henkilökohtainen käyttökokemus: ja fiilis mutulla: 10%
Tulenko viettämään palvelussa aikaa: Liian pelkistetty ja tukee Mastodonia, joten en.Mastodon
Saksalaisen ohjelmoijan Eugen Rochkon aluillepanema avoimen lähdekoodin Mastodon saavutti suuren suosion lokakuussa 2022 Elon Muskin ostettua Twitterin. Mastodon on leimattu yleisesti ja erityisesti suomalaisessa narratiivissa ”epäonnistuneeksi” ja ”hankalaksi”, vaikka se on ominaisuuksiltaan ja mentaliteetiltaan kaikista onnistunein mikroblogialusta näistä vaihtoehdoista vuonna 2023 monellakin mittarilla.
Nostrin ja Blueskyn tapaan Mastodon ei pohjaa teknisesti yhteen sijaintiin, vaan on hajautettu pitkin Internetiä, kuten verkkosivutkin. Nämä kaikki ”instanssit” keskustelevat toistensa kanssa keskenään niin, että tuntuu siltä kuin on yksi palvelu.
Moni suomalainen yhdistää Mastodonin yleisesti yhteen, monen suosimaan suomalaiseen Mastodontti.fi-instanssiin, mutta Mastodon ole ”yksi sivusto”, johon pääsee yhdestä osoitteesta, vaan rypäs eri palveluita jotka toimivat yhdessä.
Mastodon.social on suosituin yli miljoonalla käyttäjällään, mutta Mastodonia voi ajaa yli 30 000 eri palvelimen välityksellä, kuten omani Mementomori.socialin. Tämä hämmentää monia, mutta on itse asiassa mahtavin ominaisuus, koska koko somea ei omista ja ohjaile yksi taho, vaan vaikkapa juuri sinä!
Blueskyyn on tulossa lisää palvelimia, mutta tällä hetkellä siellä on vain yksi, jota ajetaan osoitteesta bsky.social. Eli jos Bluesky tuntuu helpolta ja Mastodon vaikealta, kannattaa muistaa että molemmat toimivat täysin samalla hajautetulla periaatteilla sillä erotuksella, että Blueskyn omistaa yritys ja Mastodonin käyttäjät.
Olen kirjoittanut Mastodonista paljon ja koitan tiivistää tähän pääpointit. Mastodon ei ole voittoa tavoittelevan yrityksen kaupallinen palvelu, eikä se ole lähtöisin kaupallisista tavoitteista. Siksi se ei voi ”epäonnistua” tai ”onnistua” samoin kuin esimerkiksi Twitter tai Bluesky, koska jos voittoa tavoittelematon Mastodon gGmbH menee nurin, sadat kehittäjät (876 tätä kirjoittaessa, minä mukaanlukien) jatkavat kehitystä. Jos palvelu kehittyy epätoivottuun suuntaan, ylläpitäjät voivat jatkaa kehitystä eri suuntaan.
Mastodoniin ei ole tulossa maksuja, mainoksia tai maksumuurin takaa toimivia toimintoja, eikä ominaisuuksia lähetä muuttamaan tai pilaamaan. Vaikka näin tapahtuisi jollain palvelimella, voit aina vaihtaa palvelinta sellaiseen, jossa on toivomasi ominaisuudet. Mastodonia ei voi myöskään ostaa, koska se ei ole myynnissä, ja vaikka olisikin, kuka tahansa voi ottaa sen käyttöön ja kehittää omansa. Joko räjähti pää? 🤯 Ei? Ei se mitään. Mastodon on vapaa some, mutta vapaus ei toimi kaikille.
On siis hieman epäreilua ylipäätään verrata Mastodonia kaupallisiin someihin, koska Mastodonilla ei yritetä tai edes haluta tehdä rahaa. Mastodon on freesi tuulahdus ylikaupallistuneeseen Internetiin, eettisen ja avoimen somen edelläkävijä. Mastodon, Fediversumi ja sen moottorina toimiva ActivityPub-protokolla on kuin Linux, jota kaikki parjaavat samalla unohtaen että suurin osa maailmasta käyttää Linuxia nettisivujensa taustamoottorina ja Android-puhelimiensa käyttöjärjestelmien taustalla.
Linuxin ei tarvitse ”menestyä”, sillä se on jo menestynyt. Samoin kuin Mastodonin ei tarvitse ”menestyä,” sillä se on jo menestynyt. 14 miljoonaa käyttäjää käytännössä puolessa vuodessa ei ole mikään itsestäänselvyys aiemmin lähes tuntemattomalle palvelulle. Se on iso onnistuminen.
Mastodon on reaaliaikaisuudellaan, nopeudellaan ja toistaiseksi algoritmien puutteellaan diginatiiville tällä hetkellä kaikista terveellisin, koukuttavin ja reaktioita synnyttävin somealusta, koska postaukset nousevat natiiviisti ihmisten seinälle ilman että ketään ohjaillaan. Keskustelu tuntuu olevan myös Mastodonissa luontaisempaa. Ihmiset eivät vain ”tykkäile”, vaan pistävät oman kommenttinsa perään.
Mastodon-instanssillani on kehittämäni Twitterin kaltainen käyttöliittymä.Mastodonin oletuskäyttöliittymä (nähtävissä esim. mastodon.socialissa) on Twittermäinen, mutta myös hieman omaperäinen ja sanalla sanoen ehkä hieman vanhahtanut. Palvelun ulkoasu on kehittynyt vuodesta 2016 tasaiseen tahtiin, mutta ei ole mitenkään radikaalisti muuttunut, Mastodonin blogista voit katsella esim. viiden vuoden takaista käyttöliittymää, monet samat elementit ovat tämän päivän Mastodonissa läsnä.
Onneksi Mastodon on avointa lähdekoodia ja sille voi vapaasti kehittää omia appejaan ja käyttöliittymiään, jos oletus ei miellytä. Mastodonin paras ominaisuus onkin vapaus ja tuunattavuus ja se, että softa kehittyy koko ajan. Yllä näkemäsi kuvankaappaus on omasta Mastodon-instanssistani Mementomori.socialista, jolle olen rakentanut oman teeman nimeltään Mastodon Bird UI, joka on kaikkien vapaasti käytettävissä ja paranneltavissa. Lisäksi omaan instanssiinsa voi modata muutoksia, minun instanssini lisäominaisuudet näet täältä. Mozilla on kehittänyt instanssiinsa Mozilla.socialiin kokonaan oman käyttöliittymänsä, joka on erittäin miellyttävän näköinen.
Vaikka itse puhun koodia ja tekniikkaa, Mastodon ei ole koodareiden palvelu! Olen saanut paljon palautetta Mastodonin helppokäyttöisyydestä ja hyvästä toimivuudesta. Epäkohtia ja puutteitakin löytyy, mutta niitä on hauska kehittää paremmaksi ja on hienoa että voin itse koodarina kantaa korteni kekoon. Samaa en voi tehdä muissa palveluissa.
Mammoth-sovellus iPhonelle on yksi lemppareistani.Mastodonille on tällä hetkellä saatavilla noin 50 eri sovellusta eri alustoille. Listaus löytyy täältä. Omia suosikkejani ovat iPhonelle Mona, Ice Cubes ja Mammoth. Androidille paras app lienee Megalodon. iPhonen Mammothin betan avulla Mastodoniin saa mukaan myös algoritmifeedit, kuten ”Sinulle” (engl. ”For you”), jos niihin on tottunut sekä seuraajasuositukset.
Jos Muskin tappama Tweetbot-sovellus oli tuttu, nykyään Tweetbotin kehittäjät kehittävät Mastodon-sovellusta nimeltään Ivory. Se on hyvin Tweetbotin kaltainen. Saatavilla iPhonelle, iPadille ja Macille.
Mastodonile on saatavilla hyvännäköisiä sovelluksia. Lue iPhone-sovellusvertailu 9to5mac-sivustolla.Ominaisuuksiltaan Mastodon on kaikista monipuolisin mikrobloggusalusta ja se sisältää ominaisuuksia, joita muualla ei ole. Mastodon sallii mm. pitkät postaukset (instanssista riippuen käytännössä rajaton, aina vähintään 500 merkkiä, itselläni on 10000 käytössä), postausten muokkailun, kyselyt 4-15 kysymyksellä, mukautetut hymiöt, hashtagien seuraamisen, sisältövaroitukset. Uusimmassa päivityksessä mukaan tuli avoin tekstihaku ja hashtagit listaan postauksen alle. Julkisen roadmapin mukaan kehitteillä ja tulossa on mm. Quote postit ja ryhmät. Ja aina voi kehittää itse omia ominaisuuksia, jos on koodari.
Mastodonissa parasta on alustan jatkuva kehitys, avoimuus niin lähdekoodin kuin tulevaisuudenkin suhteen, terve keskustelukulttuuri, toksisten trollien ja natsien loistaminen poissaolollaan ja äärettömän hyvät filtteröintitoiminnot. Pystyn ensimmäistä kertaa koskaan käyttämään somea niin, ettei feedilleni pukkaa sotaa, tuhoa ja ahdistusta jatkuvalla syötöllä, eikä edes ilmoitusta siitä että ne on piilotettu – on kuin niitä ei koskaan olisi ollutkaan.
Mastodonissa on tällä hetkellä 14 miljoonaa käyttäjää. Kuukausittaisia aktiivisia käyttäjiä on noin 1,5 miljoonaa. Suomalaisia palvelussa on jokusen tuhatta kappaletta, olen listannut tänne puolisentuhatta.
Ominaisuudet: 86% (34/39)
Henkilökohtainen käyttökokemus: ja fiilis mutulla: 90%
Tulenko viettämään palvelussa aikaa: Ehdottomasti, oma palvelin nyt noin vuoden pystyssä.Vertailutaulukko
Keskityn tässä taulukossa ominaisuuksiin ja yritän välttää subjektiiviseen kokemukseen pohjaavia asioita, kuten ”turvallinen tila” tai ”helppo rekisteröityminen”.
OminaisuusX (aiemmin Twitter)BlueskyNostrThreadsMastodonKaikille avoin rekisteröityminenEiEiKylläKylläKylläPäivitykset ja hashtagit näkee ilman kirjautumistaEiEiEiKylläKylläMobiilisovellusKylläKylläKylläKylläKylläToimii selaimellaKylläKylläKylläKylläKylläEnemmän kuin 280 merkkiä käytössäVain maksullaEiEiKylläKylläPäivitysten muokkaaminenVain maksullaEiKylläKylläKylläSanojen mutetus, viestien suodattaminen täysin näkyvistäEi (*rikki) EiEiKylläKylläSisältövaroitukset, jotka voi päättää itseEiEiEiEiKylläAikajärjestyksessä toimiva kotiseinäKylläKylläKylläKylläKylläReaaliajassa päivittyvä kotiseinäEiEiEiEiKylläAvointa lähdekoodiaEiKylläEiEiKylläOmistat oman datasiEiEiKylläEiKylläMainosvapaa palvelu (jos päivityksiä ei lasketa)EiKylläKylläKylläKylläOmat emojit (kuten Slackissa ja Discordissa)EiEiEiEiKylläKyselyjen luominenKylläEiEiKylläKylläYksittäisen postauksen näkyvyyden asettaminenEiEiEiEiKylläYhteensopiva muiden vastaavien somealustojen kanssaEiKylläKylläTulossaKylläKäyttäjän verifiointiVain maksullaKylläKylläKylläKylläKolmannen osapuolen sovellukset ja työkalutEiKylläKylläEiKylläPalstanäkymä (kuten Tweetdeck)Vain maksullaKylläEiEiKylläHashtagien seuraaminenEiEiEiEiKylläAlgoritminen ”Sinulle” -seinäKylläKylläEiKylläVain sovelluksellaRäätälöidyt syötteet ja älykkäät listatEiKylläEiEiVain sovelluksellaListojen luominenKylläKylläEiEiKylläRyhmätKylläEiEiKylläKylläQuote posts, eli vanha RT lainauksellaKylläKylläEiEiVain sovelluksellaVideopostauksetKylläEiKylläKylläKylläGIFfitKylläEiKylläKylläKylläHashtagitKylläEiKylläKylläKylläAlt-tekstitKylläEi (*rikki) KylläKylläKylläSeuraa useampaa aihetunnistetta kerrallaan palstassaEiEiEiEiKylläKyselytKylläEiEiKylläKylläYli 4 vaihtoehdon kyselytEiEiEiEiOsalla instansseistaYksityisviestitKylläEiKylläEiKylläMahdollista asentaa itse oma palvelinEiEiEiEiKylläYksi yhdenmukainen käyttöliittymäKylläKylläEiKylläEiAvoin roadmap tulevista päivityksistäEiEiEiEiKylläKaksivaiheinen tunnistusKylläEiKylläKylläKylläSaavutettavuus huomioituKylläEiKylläKylläKylläAvoin rajapinta (API)Vain maksullaKylläKylläEiKylläÄäniviestitEiEiEiKylläTiedostonaHenkilön päivitysten tilaaminen (subscribe, kellokuvake)KylläEiEiKylläKylläPisteiden yhteenveto:
- X: 42% (18/42)
- Bluesky: 35% (15/42)
- Nostr: 42% (18/42)
- Threads: 52% (22/42)
- Mastodon: 97% (41/42)
Tulevaisuuden some
Olen palloillut näiden somepalveluiden välillä ja väitellyt vähän liikaakin eri somejen ominaisuuksista, mutta toivottavasti tämä kirjoitus antoi vähän näkemystä siitä millaisia mikroblogivaihtoehtoja on olemassa. Todennäköisesti hiljentelen tätä ”taistoani” ja jatkan somepalveluiden kokeilua, kuten tähänkin asti. Mitä tulee someen yleisesti, omalla Mastodon-palvelimellani on tällä hetkellä ykköspaikka sydämessäni.
Tulevaisuuden haaveeni ja visioni on, että sosiaalinen media olisi alustariippumaton, avoin ja eettinen. Olisi mahtavaa, jos yksilö pystyisi olemaan oma itsensä vapaasti netissä, omistamaan datansa ja päättämään alustansa sisällön itse, mutta silti seurata käyttäjiä ja keskustella käyttäjien kanssa myös muilta alustoilta. Kye Fox julkaisi hiljattain upean (joskin hieman teknisen) kirjoituksen tästä aiheesta otsikolla Beyond Mastodon and Bluesky: Toward a Protocol-Agnostic Federation, suosittelen lukemaan.
Seuraa blogiani Mastodonissa: @[email protected]
Seuraa minua Mastodonissa: @[email protected]
Seuraa Blueskyssa: rolle.wtf
Seuraa Nostrissa: npub1kagmhw3mwt29t3yduz94dkf83h6pcdeesktphjgex7j9w9e9cmesqvuaw3
(Älä) Seuraa X:ssä: x.com/rollePS. Jos kiinnostaa kokeilla Mastodonia, rekisteröidy minun instanssilleni, siellä on tilaa. Joudut kertomaan miksi luot tilin, mutta muuten vapaa pääsy!
https://www.rollemaa.fi/mikroblogisomet-mastodon-bluesky-x-threads-nostr/
#bluesky #ElonMusk #facebook #jackDorsey #meta #mikrobloggaaminen #nostr #sosiaalinenMedia #tulevaisuus
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Kirjoittamista pääasiallisena kommunikaatiomuotona suosivana nettinörttinä hurahdin someen välittömästi kun palveluita alkoi pullahtamaan pinnalle roppakaupalla 2000-luvulla. Newyorkilainen Jack Dorsey sai idean Twitteristä opiskeluaikanaan vuonna 2006, jolloin hän päätti perustaa tekstiviestipohjaisen lyhytviestipalvelun, jossa ihmiset voisivat lähettää maksimissaan 140 merkin ajatuksen julkisesti nettiin. Kyseessä ei olisi pikaviestin, mutta ei myöskään blogi. Twitter oli syntynyt. Tästä lyhyiden tekstien kirjoittamisesta alettiin käyttää ilmaisua ”mikrobloggaaminen”. Twitter iski heti yksinkertaisuudellaan ja avoimuudellaan.
Twitter kasvoi mikroblogialustana nopeasti ison yleisön suosioon etenkin Amerikassa viimeistään kun presidentti Barack Obama liittyi Twitteriin vuonna 2007. Suomalaiset kiinnostuivat hitaammin vasta 2010-luvun puolella, tätä ennen somemarkkinoita dominoivat Facebook ja IRC-galleria, eikä kukaan oikein ymmärtänyt Twitterin tai Twitterin kaltaisten somejen päälle. Itsehän ahmin erilaisia vastaavia alustoja, joita syntyi kuin sieniä sateella. Näitä olivat mm. Jaiku, Qaiku, Google+, Identica, Orkut, Tumblr, Path, jne. Suurin osa lopetti tai menetti käyttäjänsä vuosien varrella, eikä onnistunut saamaan jalansijaa markkinoilla tai positiivista kassavirtaa.
Twitter sai hyvän jalansijan ja sen käyttö yleistyi täällä Suomessakin niin tukevaksi osaksi populaarikulttuuria, että tweettejä alettiin käyttämään televisio-ohjelmien ja uutisartikkeleiden rikastamisessa. Siitäkään huolimatta yrityksenä Twitter ei menestynyt. 17 toimintavuodestaan vain kaksi on ollut kannattavia, loput tehneet isoa satojen miljoonien edestä turskaa. Elon Muskin sekoilu tuhosi Twitterin lopullisesti ja kirjaimellisesti, kun lokakuussa 2022 kaupat sinetöitiin ja Twitter Inc lakkasi kokonaan olemasta. Tilalle syntyi X Corp. Kirjoitin Twitterin tuhosta ja Mastodonista laajemmin viime vuonna ja ennustin palvelun muuttumista hiljalleen huonommaksi ja maksulliseksi. Toistaiseksi kaikki ennusmerkit ovat käyneet toteen.
X:n myötä eletään oikeastaan pitkästä aikaa taas 2010-luvun alkua, jolloin somepalveluita syntyi lisää tai tuli ihmisten tietoisuuteen useammin. Viimeiset 10 vuotta ollaan menty aikalailla samoilla somepalveluilla. Ihmisten käytössä on kokemukseni mukaan lähinnä Tik Tok (aiemmin musical.ly), Instagram, Facebook, Twitter ja LinkedIn. Muita someja ei juuri käytetä. Monella on käytössä vain yksi näistä, jos mitään. Itse someihmisenä käytän tietenkin kaikkia, mutta palvelujen määrä on supistunut 160 somepalvelusta (jep, laskin vuonna 2010) ihan vain muutamaan. Käyntikorttisivustollani rolle.social listaan somepalveluita, joita käytän aktiivisesti.
On mielenkiintoista, että meillä on jälleen useampi vaihtoehto lyhyiden viestien lähettämiseen. Mikroblogialustoja on X:n, Mastodonin, Blueskyn, Threadsin ja Nostrin lisäksi ainakin mm. Counter Social, Truth Social, Gab, Spoutible, Hive ja Post, mutta ne ovat sen verran marginaalisia tai arvelluttavia, että keskityn tässä kirjoituksessa vain kärkiviisikkoon. Tumblr jää kirjoituksesta pois siitä syystä, että se ei koskaan oikein saanut suomalaisten keskuudessa tarpeeksi suurta jalansijaa. Vaikka minulla on ollut käyttäjätunnus alusta asti, en Tumblria ole koskaan oikein todella käyttänyt.
X (aiemmin Twitter)
Luin Elon Muskin elämänkerran hiljattain. Jo ennen lukemista olen jonkin verran seurannut tämän häiriintyneen miljardöörin edesottamuksia ja ollut kärryillä hänen tweeteistään. Tiedän ihmistyypin. Musk on ailahtelevainen, turhanlänkyttäjä ja nettitrolli, mutta myös usein tekee mitä sanoo tekevänsä. Ainakin X Corpin osalta asiat ovat menneet aikalailla niin, mitä hän on itse sanonut. Palvelu on hyvin erinäköinen kuin mitä se oli muutama vuosi sitten, eikä Twitteristä ole pian jäljellä enää häivähdystäkään.
X eli Twitter on silti monelle ainoa käytössä oleva mikroblogisome, koska vuosien tai jopa vuosikymmenen ajallinen investointi yhteen palveluun nostaa kynnystä aloittaa alusta. Itse olen ollut Twitterissä lähes alusta asti, mutta en sure menetetyn datan tai seuraajamäärien perään. Nettisivuja tulee ja menee. Vaikka X:ssä on ehkä ripaus Twitterin sielua ainakin sen käyttäjissä, se on ominaisuuksiltaan ja toimivuudeltan sen verran rappeutunut, että en jaksa käyttää sitä enää täysillä. Tänä vuonna palasin Twitteriin kokeeksi ja totesin, että listoiltani ja seurattavistani on hävinnyt kaikki fiksut tai algoritmi ei enää nosta mitään järkevää esille, kun olen ilmaiskäyttäjä.
Twitter 21. lokakuuta 2023.Pääseinälläni näkyy jatkuvasti jotain turhaa mainstream-kuraa käyttäjiltä, joita en seuraa, kuten non aesthetics things, internet hall of fame, NO CONTEXT HUMANS, jne. 1000 ways to die -tilin jouduin blokkaamaan, koska se postailee oikeita kuolemia videolla, eikä X varoita näistä enää mitenkään. Myöskään käyttäjien ilmiannot disinformaatiosta tai väkivaltaisesta sisällöstä eivät ole menneet läpi enää vuoteen. Kehitystä ei tapahdu, kun puikoissa on äärioikeistolainen oligarkki.
Uusimmat järjettömät muutokset ja ”ominaisuudet” vähensivät intoani käyttämiseen entisestään. Esimerkkeinä linkkien otsikoiden poistaminen, turhat katselukertatilastot, algoritmimuutokset joiden myötä ilmaiskäyttäjän päivitykset eivät näy missään ja se että uloskirjautuneet näkevät tuoreimpien päivitysten sijaan vain suosituimmat profiilissa.
Twitter on kuin varjo entisestään. Täynnä roskaa, bugeja, toksisuutta, rajattuja ominaisuuksia ja ärsyttäviä mainoksia. Suosittelen vain pienin annoksin, jos sitäkään. En povaa X:lle mitään kovin hehkeää tulevaisuutta, sillä se kukoistaa disinformaation ja pahuuden pesänä. Sillä on tällä hetkellä lähes yhtä huono maine kuin viha-alustoilla 4chan, Ylilauta, Truth Social ja Gab.
Käytän palvelua enää oikeastaan maailmanmenon ajoittaiseen vilkuiluun ja yritykseni somepäivityksiin, mutta alan pikkuhijlaa menettää uskoni, sillä alamaailman meininki ja Gotham Cityssä yrittäminen ei välttämättä ole vaivan väärti.
Twitterillä on noin 550 miljoonaa käyttäjää, mutta huhujen mukaan aktiivisia on enää alle 330 miljoonaa.
Ominaisuudet: 42% (16/38)
Henkilökohtainen käyttökokemus: 5%
Tulenko viettämään palvelussa aikaa: Minimimäärän, saatan jopa taas lopettaa.Bluesky
Bluesky, ”Sinitaivas”, kuten suomalaiset sanovat, on Twitterin alkuperäisen perustajan Jack Dorseyn ideasta syntynyt somealusta, joka perustettiin vuonna 2019. Palvelua rahoitti alunperin Twitter vielä silloin kun Dorsey oli Twitterin toimarina, eli käytännössä Dorsey pisti 13 miljoonaa Twitterin rahoja Blueskyn kehittelyyn. Hän ehkä ennakoi jo silloin Twitterin alamäkeä ja halusi aloittaa alusta. Viimeistään Muskin ostaessa Twitterin pois, paukkuja laitettiin Blueskyhin enemmän. Jay Graber on Blueskyn CEO ja Dorsey istuu hallituksessa. Bluesky on yrityksenä todella pieni ja palvelu on suljetussa beta-vaiheessa.
Kiinnostuin Blueskysta alunperin vasta Mastodonin jälkeen, sillä Bluesky mainostaa itseään hajautettuna ja avoimia rajapintoja suosivana palveluna. Hajautettu tarkoittaa lyhyesti sitä että palvelu ei ole yhden tahon omistuksessa tai yhdellä palvelinkeskittymällä, kuten X, vaan se muodostuu useammasta eri palvelinkokonaisuudesta. Vähän kuin Internet ja sen nettisivut, ne ovat eri paikoissa isännöityinä. Bluesky tähtää hajautettuun somepalveluun aivan kuten Mastodoninkin. Kun Mastodonilla tämä on jo käytännösä, Blueskylla vasta alkutekijöissään.
Sain itse Blueskyhin kutsun kesällä, mutta lähdin tutkailemaan palvelua tarkemmin nyt kun suomalaiset rynnivät ”sinitaivaaseen” kuolaa suupielistä valuen.
Beta on julkaisua edeltävä testiversio, jota jaetaan suljetulle käyttäjäryhmälle koekäyttöön. Blueskyta on ihan hauska lähteä testaamaan. Mieleen tulee 2010-luvun taite, jolloin Facebook jakeli kutsukoodeja palvelun käyttöön. Kutsukoodit lisäävät suosiota, koska niistä tulee tietynlainen ekslusiivisuuden tunne, ”tämä on jotain erikoista”. Kyseessä on kuitenkin vielä todella keskeneräinen palvelu, etenkin nykymittapuulla.
Bluesky 21. lokakuuta 2023.Bluesky on hyvin Twitterin kaltainen. Käyttöliittymä näyttää vähän samalta, mutta yksinkertaistetummalta. Jotkin asiat kuten välistykset vaativat vielä hiomista näin käyttöliittymäsuunnittelijan näkökulmasta, mutta tavan tallaaja ei äkkiseltään erota palvelua juurikaan Twitteristä. Se on hyvä asia heille, jotka haluavat ”kuin Twitterin, mutta ei kuitenkaan”, Twitterin korvaajan ilman öyhöjä tai Muskia puikoissa.
Palvelu kysyy heti alkuun serveriä kuten Mastodoninkin, mutta tämä on monen helppo sivuuttaa, koska tällä hetkellä vaihtoehtoja on vain yksi. Blueskyn tavoite on, että jokainen voi perustaa omia ”edustapalvelimiaan”, jotka keskustelevat äitipalvelimen kanssa. Teknisiltä ominaisuuksiltaan Bluesky päätti, ettei halua käyttää samaa ActivityPub-protokollaa Mastodonin ja muiden alustojen kanssa, vaan keksiä pyörän uudelleen kehittämällä oman ATProto-nimisen protokollan. Mutta koska Bluesky on Mastodonin tapaan avointa rajapintaa, saatamme pystyä silti tulevaisuudessa yhdistämään protokollat toisiinsa ja seuraamaan Mastodonista Bluesky-käyttäjiä ja toisin päin, jos koodareita on uskominen.
Blueskysta puuttuu tällä hetkellä vielä paljon keskeisiä ominaisuuksia, kuten hashtagit, yksityisviestit, kyselyt, giffien ja videoiden lähettäminen, sanojen mutetus ja niin edelleen. Palvelu heittää vähän väliä Internal server erroria ja muuta mystistä virhettä.
Isoimpana ärsytyksenä tällä hetkellä Blueskyssa on se, että notifikaatiot eivät toimi luotettavasti selaimessa tai mobiilissa. Joudun aina päivittämään näkymää, jotta saan uudet reaktiot ja vastaukset näkyviin. Olen kuullut huhuja, että Bluesky on ollut vähän helisemässä kun kaikki saavat kutsuja palveluun ja ihmisiä lappaa sisään, eikä serverit pysy mukana. Mutta palvelun ollessa testivaiheessa eli betassa, on tämä odotettua.
Blueskyyn rekisteröityy nyt paljon kiinnostuneita suomalaisia, jotka hakevat vaihtoehtoa X:lle. Kaikki mikä ajaa ihmisiä pois Twitteristä avoimempiin someihin on positiivista liikehdintää, mutta Blueskyta ei voi vielä pitää todellisena vaihtoehtona, sillä se on keskeneräinen. Lisäksi jos avointa dataa, laadukkaita ilmaisia ominaisuuksia ja yksityisyydensuojaa kaipaa, Bluesky on X:n tapaan kaupallisen, voittoa tavoittelevan yrityksen palvelu. Kannattavana yrityksenä sen on pakko rahoittaa toimintaansa jatkossa joko lainarahoituksella, mainoksilla tai maksullisilla ominaisuuksilla. Jack Dorsey on jo ilmaissut, että ei lähde mainosbisnekseen, joten palveluun tulee maksullisia ominaisuuksia. Toisaalta, jos miljonääri haluaa jatkaa tätä harrastuksekseen näin ilman minkäänlaisia haaveita tuotosta, mikäs siinä sitten.
Blueskylla on terveempi suhtautuminen avoimuuteen kuin Muskin X:llä, sillä Blueskyn rajapinta ja protokolla ovat avoimia ja kuka tahansa voi kehittää palvelulle omia viritelmiään. Tulee mieleen Twitter ajalta jolloin oli saatavilla satoja sovelluksia ja työkaluja, joilla käyttää Twitteriä ja hallita seuraajiaan. Blueskylla on mahdollisuus tähän samaan.
Mikään ei takaa sitä, etteikö Blueskykin kellahda X:n tapaan tai Musk osta Blueskyn pois käyttäjineen, koska se on silti loppupeleissä kaupallinen palvelu joka on ostettavissa. En olisi uskonut vielä joitakin vuosia sitten, että joku voi tuosta noin vain ostaa Twitterin ja lakkauttaa kaikki Twitterille koodaamani työkalut sormia napsauttamalla, mutta näin vain kävi. Vaikka Blueskylle voi virittää omia juttujaan, se ei silti takaa pysyvyyttä ja vapautta, etenkään oman datasi kohdalla.
Palvelussa tuli syyskuussa miljoona käyttäjää täyteen.
Ominaisuudet: 38% (15/39)
Henkilökohtainen käyttökokemus: ja fiilis mutulla: 40%
Tulenko viettämään palvelussa aikaa: Rajatusti ja kokeillen.Threads
Meta (aiemmin Facebook) näki markkinaraon Elon Muskin sekoilun keskellä ja päätti perustaa oman mikroblogialustan, jonka nimesi Threadsiksi. Palvelua ei alkuun lanseerattu lainkaan Euroopassa, koska Meta oli huolissaan vuonna 2024 voimaan astuvista tietosuojalaista, jotka estäistäisivät tai haittaisivat heidän massiviista datankeräystään. Meta on maailman suurin vakoiluyritys ja kerää tunnetusti käyttäjistään ihan kaiken tiedon ja myy sen eteenpäin profilointiin, jolla käyttäjiä manipuloimaan ostamaan ja vaikuttamaan. Tietoa kerätään, vaikka sinulla ei olisi Facebook- tai Threads-tunnusta, mutta tunnareiden avulla edesautat profiloimista entisestään.
Threads ei ollut ennen 14.12.2023 auki Euroopan maissa.Ominaisuuksiltaan Threads on yllättävän kattava ja siinä on potentiaalia korvata ainakin X.
Siisteintä on, että Threads on ilmoittanut tukevansa ActivityPubia, eli siitä tulee osa Fediverseä, jota myös Mastodon on. Tämä tarkoittaisi sitä, että Threads-käyttäjiä voi seurata Mastodonista ja toisin päin. Tämä on herättänyt Fedi-väessä huolta siitä, että muuttuuko dynamiikka tai alkaako Mastodonin puolelle puskemaan mainostilejä ja niin edelleen. Mutta ajatuksena on kutkuttava, että ei tarvitse käyttää Threadsia, vaan voi seurata sieltä tuttuja suoraan Mastodonia käyttämällä.
Our plan is to make Threads part of the fediverse, a social network of different servers operated by third parties that are connected and can communicate with each other. Each server on the fediverse operates on its own but can talk to other servers on the fediverse that run on the same protocol. We plan for Threads to use a protocol called ActivityPub to talk to other servers that support this protocol.
Threads avattiin vasta heinäkuun viides päivä ja 14. joulukuuta portit aukesivat myös suomalaisille. Blueskyhin verrattuna Threads plänää fiksusti, kun haluaa satsata ActivityPubiin. Oli Metasta mitä mieltä tahansa, se on osallistunut avoimen Internetin kehitykseen myös isoilla panostuksilla (React.js, PHP, jne.). Tässä on potentiaalia myös Mastodonin ja muiden ActivityPubia käyttävien alustojen kehittyä paremmaksi, kun maailman isoin someyhtiö on mukana touhussa. Foliohatut näkevät uhkakuvia, mutta itse haluan uskoa hyvään ja olla enemmän realistisen optimisti.
Threadsissa on tällä hetkellä noin 140 miljoonaa käyttäjää, joista suurin osa Metan muilta alustoilta kuten Instagramista.
Tätä kohtaa artikkelista on editoitu 16.12.2023, joten kohta jää tyngäksi. Ehkä kirjoitan Threadsista oman tekstin myöhemmin.
Ominaisuudet: 33% (13/39)
Henkilökohtainen käyttökokemus: ja fiilis mutulla: 55%
Tulenko viettämään palvelussa aikaa: Rajatusti ja kokeillen, mikäli Threads federoi, voin käyttää palvelua Mastodonin kautta.Nostr
2021 perustettu Nostr on avoimen lähdekoodin somealusta. Nimi Nostr tulee sanoista Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relay. Nostriin lähetetyt päivitykset validoidaan hyödyntämällä kryptotekniikkaa. Palvelu ei ole keskitetty mihinkään yhteen paikkaan. Tällä estetään tehokkaasti viestien estäminen. Näitä ”palvelimia” sanotaan Relayksi, suomeksi vapaasti käännettynä releiksi. Tässäpä tekniikan lyhyt oppimäärä.
It doesn’t rely on any trusted central server, hence it is resilient; it is based on cryptographic keys and signatures, so it is tamperproof; it does not rely on P2P techniques, and therefore it works.
Nostrin taustalla on pyrkimys täydelliseen sananvapauteen. Viestejä ei voi muokata jälkikäteen, eikä niitä moderoida mitenkään. Tässä on tietysti riskejä myös. Näen palvelun ikäänkuin eräänlaisena ”somen Torina”. Teknisesti Nostr on ehkä vähiten kansantajuinen palvelu, vaikka sen käyttöliittymät ovat hyvin tutun näköisiä.
Nostr näyttää kuin Blueskylta ja Twitteriltä ilman sivupalkkeja.Blueskyn ja Twitterin alullepanija, kryptointoilija Jack Dorsey on lahjoittanut alustan kehitykseen neljännesmiljoonan.
Nostr on käyttöliittymältään habitukseltaan kuin Bluesky tai Twitter. Mobiilisovellus erityisesti on lähes identtinen. Palvelusta löytyy Blueskyn tapaan rajattu määrä ominaisuuksia. Androidilla Nostria voi käyttää sovelluksella kuten Plebstr ja iPhonella sovelluksella nimeltään Iris. Selainkäyttö onnistuu esimerkiksi menemällä Iris.to.
Nostr-sovellukset ovat hyvin suunniteltuja ja tyylikkäitä.Kivointa Nostrissa on, että se tukee ActivityPub-protokollaa, eli samaa mitä Mastodon käyttää ja Threads lupaa käyttävänsä. Voin siis tälläkin hetkellä seurata Nostr-käyttäjiä Mastodonista. Minun ei siis tarvitse käyttää Nostria.
Valtavirran osalta Nostr menee todennäköisesti yli hilseen. Mutta ei se mitään. Nostrilla on tällä hetkellä noin puoli miljoonaa käyttäjää.
Ominaisuudet: 46% (18/39)
Henkilökohtainen käyttökokemus: ja fiilis mutulla: 10%
Tulenko viettämään palvelussa aikaa: Liian pelkistetty ja tukee Mastodonia, joten en.Mastodon
Saksalaisen ohjelmoijan Eugen Rochkon aluillepanema avoimen lähdekoodin Mastodon saavutti suuren suosion lokakuussa 2022 Elon Muskin ostettua Twitterin. Mastodon on leimattu yleisesti ja erityisesti suomalaisessa narratiivissa ”epäonnistuneeksi” ja ”hankalaksi”, vaikka se on ominaisuuksiltaan ja mentaliteetiltaan kaikista onnistunein mikroblogialusta näistä vaihtoehdoista vuonna 2023 monellakin mittarilla.
Nostrin ja Blueskyn tapaan Mastodon ei pohjaa teknisesti yhteen sijaintiin, vaan on hajautettu pitkin Internetiä, kuten verkkosivutkin. Nämä kaikki ”instanssit” keskustelevat toistensa kanssa keskenään niin, että tuntuu siltä kuin on yksi palvelu.
Moni suomalainen yhdistää Mastodonin yleisesti yhteen, monen suosimaan suomalaiseen Mastodontti.fi-instanssiin, mutta Mastodon ole ”yksi sivusto”, johon pääsee yhdestä osoitteesta, vaan rypäs eri palveluita jotka toimivat yhdessä.
Mastodon.social on suosituin yli miljoonalla käyttäjällään, mutta Mastodonia voi ajaa yli 30 000 eri palvelimen välityksellä, kuten omani Mementomori.socialin. Tämä hämmentää monia, mutta on itse asiassa mahtavin ominaisuus, koska koko somea ei omista ja ohjaile yksi taho, vaan vaikkapa juuri sinä!
Blueskyyn on tulossa lisää palvelimia, mutta tällä hetkellä siellä on vain yksi, jota ajetaan osoitteesta bsky.social. Eli jos Bluesky tuntuu helpolta ja Mastodon vaikealta, kannattaa muistaa että molemmat toimivat täysin samalla hajautetulla periaatteilla sillä erotuksella, että Blueskyn omistaa yritys ja Mastodonin käyttäjät.
Olen kirjoittanut Mastodonista paljon ja koitan tiivistää tähän pääpointit. Mastodon ei ole voittoa tavoittelevan yrityksen kaupallinen palvelu, eikä se ole lähtöisin kaupallisista tavoitteista. Siksi se ei voi ”epäonnistua” tai ”onnistua” samoin kuin esimerkiksi Twitter tai Bluesky, koska jos voittoa tavoittelematon Mastodon gGmbH menee nurin, sadat kehittäjät (876 tätä kirjoittaessa, minä mukaanlukien) jatkavat kehitystä. Jos palvelu kehittyy epätoivottuun suuntaan, ylläpitäjät voivat jatkaa kehitystä eri suuntaan.
Mastodoniin ei ole tulossa maksuja, mainoksia tai maksumuurin takaa toimivia toimintoja, eikä ominaisuuksia lähetä muuttamaan tai pilaamaan. Vaikka näin tapahtuisi jollain palvelimella, voit aina vaihtaa palvelinta sellaiseen, jossa on toivomasi ominaisuudet. Mastodonia ei voi myöskään ostaa, koska se ei ole myynnissä, ja vaikka olisikin, kuka tahansa voi ottaa sen käyttöön ja kehittää omansa. Joko räjähti pää? 🤯 Ei? Ei se mitään. Mastodon on vapaa some, mutta vapaus ei toimi kaikille.
On siis hieman epäreilua ylipäätään verrata Mastodonia kaupallisiin someihin, koska Mastodonilla ei yritetä tai edes haluta tehdä rahaa. Mastodon on freesi tuulahdus ylikaupallistuneeseen Internetiin, eettisen ja avoimen somen edelläkävijä. Mastodon, Fediversumi ja sen moottorina toimiva ActivityPub-protokolla on kuin Linux, jota kaikki parjaavat samalla unohtaen että suurin osa maailmasta käyttää Linuxia nettisivujensa taustamoottorina ja Android-puhelimiensa käyttöjärjestelmien taustalla.
Linuxin ei tarvitse ”menestyä”, sillä se on jo menestynyt. Samoin kuin Mastodonin ei tarvitse ”menestyä,” sillä se on jo menestynyt. 14 miljoonaa käyttäjää käytännössä puolessa vuodessa ei ole mikään itsestäänselvyys aiemmin lähes tuntemattomalle palvelulle. Se on iso onnistuminen.
Mastodon on reaaliaikaisuudellaan, nopeudellaan ja toistaiseksi algoritmien puutteellaan diginatiiville tällä hetkellä kaikista terveellisin, koukuttavin ja reaktioita synnyttävin somealusta, koska postaukset nousevat natiiviisti ihmisten seinälle ilman että ketään ohjaillaan. Keskustelu tuntuu olevan myös Mastodonissa luontaisempaa. Ihmiset eivät vain ”tykkäile”, vaan pistävät oman kommenttinsa perään.
Mastodon-instanssillani on kehittämäni Twitterin kaltainen käyttöliittymä.Mastodonin oletuskäyttöliittymä (nähtävissä esim. mastodon.socialissa) on Twittermäinen, mutta myös hieman omaperäinen ja sanalla sanoen ehkä hieman vanhahtanut. Palvelun ulkoasu on kehittynyt vuodesta 2016 tasaiseen tahtiin, mutta ei ole mitenkään radikaalisti muuttunut, Mastodonin blogista voit katsella esim. viiden vuoden takaista käyttöliittymää, monet samat elementit ovat tämän päivän Mastodonissa läsnä.
Onneksi Mastodon on avointa lähdekoodia ja sille voi vapaasti kehittää omia appejaan ja käyttöliittymiään, jos oletus ei miellytä. Mastodonin paras ominaisuus onkin vapaus ja tuunattavuus ja se, että softa kehittyy koko ajan. Yllä näkemäsi kuvankaappaus on omasta Mastodon-instanssistani Mementomori.socialista, jolle olen rakentanut oman teeman nimeltään Mastodon Bird UI, joka on kaikkien vapaasti käytettävissä ja paranneltavissa. Lisäksi omaan instanssiinsa voi modata muutoksia, minun instanssini lisäominaisuudet näet täältä. Mozilla on kehittänyt instanssiinsa Mozilla.socialiin kokonaan oman käyttöliittymänsä, joka on erittäin miellyttävän näköinen.
Vaikka itse puhun koodia ja tekniikkaa, Mastodon ei ole koodareiden palvelu! Olen saanut paljon palautetta Mastodonin helppokäyttöisyydestä ja hyvästä toimivuudesta. Epäkohtia ja puutteitakin löytyy, mutta niitä on hauska kehittää paremmaksi ja on hienoa että voin itse koodarina kantaa korteni kekoon. Samaa en voi tehdä muissa palveluissa.
Mammoth-sovellus iPhonelle on yksi lemppareistani.Mastodonille on tällä hetkellä saatavilla noin 50 eri sovellusta eri alustoille. Listaus löytyy täältä. Omia suosikkejani ovat iPhonelle Mona, Ice Cubes ja Mammoth. Androidille paras app lienee Megalodon. iPhonen Mammothin betan avulla Mastodoniin saa mukaan myös algoritmifeedit, kuten ”Sinulle” (engl. ”For you”), jos niihin on tottunut sekä seuraajasuositukset.
Jos Muskin tappama Tweetbot-sovellus oli tuttu, nykyään Tweetbotin kehittäjät kehittävät Mastodon-sovellusta nimeltään Ivory. Se on hyvin Tweetbotin kaltainen. Saatavilla iPhonelle, iPadille ja Macille.
Mastodonile on saatavilla hyvännäköisiä sovelluksia. Lue iPhone-sovellusvertailu 9to5mac-sivustolla.Ominaisuuksiltaan Mastodon on kaikista monipuolisin mikrobloggusalusta ja se sisältää ominaisuuksia, joita muualla ei ole. Mastodon sallii mm. pitkät postaukset (instanssista riippuen käytännössä rajaton, aina vähintään 500 merkkiä, itselläni on 10000 käytössä), postausten muokkailun, kyselyt 4-15 kysymyksellä, mukautetut hymiöt, hashtagien seuraamisen, sisältövaroitukset. Uusimmassa päivityksessä mukaan tuli avoin tekstihaku ja hashtagit listaan postauksen alle. Julkisen roadmapin mukaan kehitteillä ja tulossa on mm. Quote postit ja ryhmät. Ja aina voi kehittää itse omia ominaisuuksia, jos on koodari.
Mastodonissa parasta on alustan jatkuva kehitys, avoimuus niin lähdekoodin kuin tulevaisuudenkin suhteen, terve keskustelukulttuuri, toksisten trollien ja natsien loistaminen poissaolollaan ja äärettömän hyvät filtteröintitoiminnot. Pystyn ensimmäistä kertaa koskaan käyttämään somea niin, ettei feedilleni pukkaa sotaa, tuhoa ja ahdistusta jatkuvalla syötöllä, eikä edes ilmoitusta siitä että ne on piilotettu – on kuin niitä ei koskaan olisi ollutkaan.
Mastodonissa on tällä hetkellä 14 miljoonaa käyttäjää. Kuukausittaisia aktiivisia käyttäjiä on noin 1,5 miljoonaa. Suomalaisia palvelussa on jokusen tuhatta kappaletta, olen listannut tänne puolisentuhatta.
Ominaisuudet: 86% (34/39)
Henkilökohtainen käyttökokemus: ja fiilis mutulla: 90%
Tulenko viettämään palvelussa aikaa: Ehdottomasti, oma palvelin nyt noin vuoden pystyssä.Vertailutaulukko
Keskityn tässä taulukossa ominaisuuksiin ja yritän välttää subjektiiviseen kokemukseen pohjaavia asioita, kuten ”turvallinen tila” tai ”helppo rekisteröityminen”.
OminaisuusX (aiemmin Twitter)BlueskyNostrThreadsMastodonKaikille avoin rekisteröityminenEiEiKylläKylläKylläPäivitykset ja hashtagit näkee ilman kirjautumistaEiEiEiKylläKylläMobiilisovellusKylläKylläKylläKylläKylläToimii selaimellaKylläKylläKylläKylläKylläEnemmän kuin 280 merkkiä käytössäVain maksullaEiEiKylläKylläPäivitysten muokkaaminenVain maksullaEiKylläKylläKylläSanojen mutetus, viestien suodattaminen täysin näkyvistäEi (*rikki) EiEiKylläKylläSisältövaroitukset, jotka voi päättää itseEiEiEiEiKylläAikajärjestyksessä toimiva kotiseinäKylläKylläKylläKylläKylläReaaliajassa päivittyvä kotiseinäEiEiEiEiKylläAvointa lähdekoodiaEiKylläEiEiKylläOmistat oman datasiEiEiKylläEiKylläMainosvapaa palvelu (jos päivityksiä ei lasketa)EiKylläKylläKylläKylläOmat emojit (kuten Slackissa ja Discordissa)EiEiEiEiKylläKyselyjen luominenKylläEiEiKylläKylläYksittäisen postauksen näkyvyyden asettaminenEiEiEiEiKylläYhteensopiva muiden vastaavien somealustojen kanssaEiKylläKylläTulossaKylläKäyttäjän verifiointiVain maksullaKylläKylläKylläKylläKolmannen osapuolen sovellukset ja työkalutEiKylläKylläEiKylläPalstanäkymä (kuten Tweetdeck)Vain maksullaKylläEiEiKylläHashtagien seuraaminenEiEiEiEiKylläAlgoritminen ”Sinulle” -seinäKylläKylläEiKylläVain sovelluksellaRäätälöidyt syötteet ja älykkäät listatEiKylläEiEiVain sovelluksellaListojen luominenKylläKylläEiEiKylläRyhmätKylläEiEiKylläKylläQuote posts, eli vanha RT lainauksellaKylläKylläEiEiVain sovelluksellaVideopostauksetKylläEiKylläKylläKylläGIFfitKylläEiKylläKylläKylläHashtagitKylläEiKylläKylläKylläAlt-tekstitKylläEi (*rikki) KylläKylläKylläSeuraa useampaa aihetunnistetta kerrallaan palstassaEiEiEiEiKylläKyselytKylläEiEiKylläKylläYli 4 vaihtoehdon kyselytEiEiEiEiOsalla instansseistaYksityisviestitKylläEiKylläEiKylläMahdollista asentaa itse oma palvelinEiEiEiEiKylläYksi yhdenmukainen käyttöliittymäKylläKylläEiKylläEiAvoin roadmap tulevista päivityksistäEiEiEiEiKylläKaksivaiheinen tunnistusKylläEiKylläKylläKylläSaavutettavuus huomioituKylläEiKylläKylläKylläAvoin rajapinta (API)Vain maksullaKylläKylläEiKylläÄäniviestitEiEiEiKylläTiedostonaHenkilön päivitysten tilaaminen (subscribe, kellokuvake)KylläEiEiKylläKylläPisteiden yhteenveto:
- X: 42% (18/42)
- Bluesky: 35% (15/42)
- Nostr: 42% (18/42)
- Threads: 52% (22/42)
- Mastodon: 97% (41/42)
Tulevaisuuden some
Olen palloillut näiden somepalveluiden välillä ja väitellyt vähän liikaakin eri somejen ominaisuuksista, mutta toivottavasti tämä kirjoitus antoi vähän näkemystä siitä millaisia mikroblogivaihtoehtoja on olemassa. Todennäköisesti hiljentelen tätä ”taistoani” ja jatkan somepalveluiden kokeilua, kuten tähänkin asti. Mitä tulee someen yleisesti, omalla Mastodon-palvelimellani on tällä hetkellä ykköspaikka sydämessäni.
Tulevaisuuden haaveeni ja visioni on, että sosiaalinen media olisi alustariippumaton, avoin ja eettinen. Olisi mahtavaa, jos yksilö pystyisi olemaan oma itsensä vapaasti netissä, omistamaan datansa ja päättämään alustansa sisällön itse, mutta silti seurata käyttäjiä ja keskustella käyttäjien kanssa myös muilta alustoilta. Kye Fox julkaisi hiljattain upean (joskin hieman teknisen) kirjoituksen tästä aiheesta otsikolla Beyond Mastodon and Bluesky: Toward a Protocol-Agnostic Federation, suosittelen lukemaan.
Seuraa blogiani Mastodonissa: @[email protected]
Seuraa minua Mastodonissa: @[email protected]
Seuraa Blueskyssa: rolle.wtf
Seuraa Nostrissa: npub1kagmhw3mwt29t3yduz94dkf83h6pcdeesktphjgex7j9w9e9cmesqvuaw3
(Älä) Seuraa X:ssä: x.com/rollePS. Jos kiinnostaa kokeilla Mastodonia, rekisteröidy minun instanssilleni, siellä on tilaa. Joudut kertomaan miksi luot tilin, mutta muuten vapaa pääsy!
https://www.rollemaa.fi/mikroblogisomet-mastodon-bluesky-x-threads-nostr/
#bluesky #ElonMusk #facebook #jackDorsey #meta #mikrobloggaaminen #nostr #sosiaalinenMedia #tulevaisuus
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“Yugoslav hackers hit NATO Web site” – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Thursday April 1st, 1999On April 3rd 1999 Ashley Dunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, described how the Kosovo War was “turning cyberspace into an ethereal war zone where the battle for the hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings, and hacking attacks.”
The Kosovo War lasted from February 1998 through to June 1999. The war was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (at this time, Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who were fighting for regional autonomy. The conflict ended in June of 1999, after NATO intervention through air strikes in March 1999 against Yugoslav infrastructure which resulted in Yugoslav forces eventually withdrawing from Kosovo.
In parallel with the brutal physical conflict was an online battle between hackers from Russia, the US, China, Brazil, Netherlands and of course parts of the former Yugoslavia, among others, forming a truly international ‘cyberwar’. The aftermath of this ‘cyberwar’ went on to shape aspects of international hacker relations and the development of hacktivism and the organisation of hacktivist groups both regionally and internationally, as well as their tactics, for years after.
an ethereal war zone where the battle for the hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings, and hacking attacks
Ashley Dunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, April 3rd 1999
Before I get into the history of this online conflict I want to make sure to clarify that the actual warfare, in particular the brutal war crimes committed by Serbian forces against the Kosovar people, is the most important part of the story of the Kosovo War. The online elements are what I am covering here specifically, because this is the history of hacking.
In researching for this blog I have drawn on contemporaneous newspaper reports from 1998 and 1999, archives of website defacements from that time, Internet Archive website archives of various news sites, government and government agency reports and finally academic papers that touch on cyber elements of the Balkan conflicts.
When I found articles in a newspaper archive about hackers and the Kosovo War I started trying to search for more information and came up with shockingly few detailed accounts of something that was front page news back in 1999. That’s why I decided to write this blog.
I have purposefully avoided discussing nation state actors (military or intel orgs) or NATO hackers in this blog, as I feel that would be an entirely separate topic deserving of it’s own blog. Rest assured though that there was coverage from the time of confirmed or suspected cyber-attacks carried out by US government agencies and the military as well as NATO itself.
US Naval Medical Information Management Center, defacement by CHC – 27th March, 1999Let’s break down this history as a quick list of dates and notable events and then dig into the details.
28th February 1998Kosovo War begins24th March 1999NATO strikes against Serbian military28th March 1999Serbian hackers attack US military systems30th March 1999hydra defaces University of Belgrade1st April 1999Reports NATO servers are attacked29th April 1999Team Spl0it defaces US FAA website8th May 1999NATO bombs Chinese Embassy in Belgrade12th May 1999Chinese hacktivists take down White House site12th May 1999Chinese hacktivists deface US gov sites11th June 1999Kosovo War endsKosovo War & cyber elements timelineThat timeline is of course by no means exhaustive, we are going to dig into the various hacking groups involved, tactics used by those hacktivists and the hacking techniques used in the furtherance of the hacker’s goals.
Hacktivists Involved
Mirjana Drakulic and Ratimir Drakulic presented a paper entitled “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace” at the British and Irish Law Education Technology Association (BILETA) conference at the College of Ripon & York St. John, York, England, in March of 1999.
This paper discusses the history and nature of the primary Serbian and Kosovar hacking groups that were involved in the Kosovo War online.
WWW.HR – Croatian Homepage, defacement by Black Hand – June 20th, 1999First we have the Black Hand, representing the Serbian nationalist side, working to advance Serbian interests in maintaining control of Kosovo. Academics Mirjana and Ratimar Drakulic describe the Black Hand as a “group of hackers [that] wanted to inherit such a reputation regarding themselves as patriots and liberators”. They clarify that the hackers who called themselves the Black Hand were “alluding to the namesake organization which overthrew the Dynasty in Serbia in the first years of the 20th century”, explicitly linking their struggle in the late 1990s to the secret military society that engaged in violent conspiracies to further the cause of a united Serbia in the early 1900s.
An illustration of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by the original Black Hand in June of 1914“By the end of the October 1998 it raided the site of the Croatian news agency “Vjesnik” and left there a message: “The Black Hand wants to change the false image which orbits the planet that the Serbs are villains.” Further they stated that they do not mean war and that they mean no evil. “Vjesnik” immediately reported that the members of the “Black Hand” were discovered and where and how they approached the site.”
Mirjana Drakulic, Ph.D., Ratimir Drakulic, M.S., “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace“, March 30th, 1999
Mijana and Ratimar discuss various theories about the Black Hand in their paper “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace“, the suspected origin and makeup or the group and state that some people “are close to the view that this group exists but is followed by numerous satellites of less skilled imitators determined to get attention by the public or acquire the
“pass” to join the group”.The Croatian news agency Vjesnik that was hacked by the Black Hand claimed, based on investigation by their journalists, that the hack and defacement of their site was done “from the computers of two faculties they pointed to Serbian academic network claiming that hackers still travel and act from within it”, although those computers themselves could have been simply a jump box used by the Black Hand.
As well as the Black Hand we also have other players on the Serbian side, the Beograd Hackers group that carried out some defacements and the Serbian Angels. Serbian Angels, based on what little I have managed to find out about them, functioned as an offensive hacking group but also maintained a website (long since lost) that carried news about events relating to the war in Serbia, maintained various news e-mail lists and created for distribution physical CD archives of news, photos and videos from the Serbian side of the conflict after the NATO campaign ended.
“Stop Nato2”, defacement by Kosova Hackers Group – August 4th, 1999On the Kosovo side there was, as reported by Patrick Riley in his FOX article from April 15th 1999 “E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight“, “a coalition of European and Albanian hackers calling themselves the Kosovo Hackers Group has replaced at least five sites with black and red “Free Kosovo” banners”.
As well as hackers that purported to be from the former Yugoslavia there were other groups involved in this “cyberwar” that were motivated by ideological or nationalist impulses to throw their lot in with either the Serbian or Kosovar people, or to push for peace treaties or oppose NATO actions generally. It is important to note that most, if not all, of these hacking groups from outside the former Yugoslavia became especially active in the online conflict after the start of the NATO military campaign in March of 1999.
US Federal Aviation Authority, defacement by Team Spl0it – April 29th, 1999In the United States there was Team Spl0it (or Team Sploit) who opposed the bombing of Serbian infrastructure by NATO and expressed the opinion that “without the support of the people in Serbia NATO is not gonna get very far”. As CNN described it at the time, “American hackers are on a political binge, breaking into Web sites to leave what amounts to anti-war graffiti”.
Watching the news today, I found out that Serbia has been bombed for the 4th week in row. And I wondered what has been accomplished after these 4 weeks of air strikes. Who has gained from it, and who has lost ? Many targets inside Serbia have been hit, many civilians were killed. But Milosevich, the Serbian President doesn’t give a damn about his people. He couldn’t care less if they are dead or alive. What is the good of actions when the president doesn’t care about the targets that have been hit ?
f0bic, nostalgic, cellbl0ck, jay, text from defacement of US FAA website, April 29th, 1999
Also on the US side, although primarily memorialised only in throwaway comments in newspaper articles from the time, were “Hackers of the West Coast”. As described by Patti Hartigan, writing in the Boston Globe on April 4th, 1999, “Hackers on the West Coast are trying to crack the Serbian government site, although the server is said to be extremely secure and based in London”. I can find no evidence that Hackers on the West Coast succeeded in their goal. You can see the whole article below.
The pro-Serbia Russian Hackers Union was a loose affiliation of Russian hacking groups that, for the most part, already seem to have been present and active in the defacement scene before NATO started bombing Serbian infrastructure, prompting a change in the themes of website defacements carried out.
KpZ in particular wracked up some notable defacements but seemed to be very difficult to track down further information on until I dug into Russian hacker magazine XAKEP. Websites defaced by KpZ ran the gamut from a juicy .mil hosted U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station all the way through to the somewhat more random, and rather lacklustre, “airbed.com”. A hacker known as Mishgan seems to be one of their primary defacers around this time, KpZ appears to have been made up of primarily Russian hackers but also at least one member who identifies themselves as Romanian.
Russian XAKEP (“Hacker”) magazine issue four had an article about KpZ that offers some insight into the group. I’ve written about XAKEP before, I covered issue one in some detail.
The group in question was formed at the end of August 1998. Just when thousands of teenagers, having watched the movie “Hackers” and read articles about hackers, rushed to the Internet, thinking they were professional hackers. And the initial idea of the group was to show children that they are wrong, and the World Wide Web is not a place for such entertainment and for people with delusions of grandeur.
XAKEP Issue 4, “KPZ hacker group – from the inside“, 1999 (translation by DeepL)
XAKEP lists the members of KpZ as Tarantino, Delta, MAL, v00d00, 5pider and Mishgan. The hacker nick “v00d00” has been used by at least 3 different hackers over the years, sometimes very active at the same time, which can cause confusion.
“Emergency Issue” CD-ROM produced by KpZ, 1999Above you can see a photo of a CD-ROM that KpZ provided to XAKEP that the XAKEP writers describe “when this CD was brought to our office today, we were shocked. What’s it like, huh?” They go on to give details of this CD entitled “Hackers are bombing NATO” and how it “has tons of information on what to do and how to do it, including explanations of security holes in security systems and a bunch of other documentation”. The CD-ROM essentially contained instructional content for budding Russian hacktivists, “a special training course for a separate unit of a special brigade for information provocation”.
XAKEP interview MAL and Mishgan as part of issue four, MAL describes the group as having started after he received an ICQ message that said that there was a desire to organize “a group to combat underdeveloped admins and shameful sites.” In the same interview Mishgan claims that he is 15 years old, this fits with interviews I have read with other Russian hacker groups from this time.
Illustration from XAKEP Issue 4, “KPZ hacker group – from the inside“, 1999KpZ also seem to have forged some sort of alliance with Romanian hacking and defacement crew Pentaguard, although I can find no evidence of defacements by Pentaguard in opposition to NATO during the Kosovo War.
US Joint Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Project, defacement by Pentaguard – January 25th, 1999Also tagged in some of the KpZ defacements are legion2000, a Russian group that seems to have been more concerned with security advisories, releasing code and working on projects than defacements in 1999, from what I can turn up. There is an interview with Webster, one of the legion2000 members, from 2001 over at xakep that seems to imply some falling out between legion2000 and KpZ.
http://www.legion2000.cc/ – via Internet ArchiveThe few defacements I can find by legion2000 occur in 1998 and are of Russian websites.
kopitan.ru, defacement by legion2000 – December 6th, 1998 pentagon.yu, defacement by xoloth1 of DutchThreat – May 2nd, 1999DutchThreat, a Holland based hacker group, came in on the side of NATO and in support of the Kosovar people.
NATO does not prosecute innocent people
NATO does not raid
NATO does not create the mass-graves in your country
NATO is not out for blood, but out for peace
xoloth1, meestervervalser, defacement of pentagon.yu – May 2nd, 1999
CNN described how DutchThreat became involved in the hacker conflict that accompanied the Kosovo War, “Xoloth1 said he got mad when a “Serbian guy” in a chat room started calling NATO and the U.S. a bunch of criminals and Nazis” He also resented that one of the main Yugoslavian ISPs had set up an anti-NATO Web page with the domain name pentagon.co.yu”. CNN’s Ellen Messmer went on to explain “Dutchthreat’s leader, named Acos, says he thinks most of the Kosovo-inspired hacking going on is not motivated by genuine political concerns, but is simply a way of getting attention. But Acos adds he, too, doesn’t care to hear NATO called fascist.”
I was able to find an old archive of the DutchThreat website, but there was very little about the Kosovo War mentioned on it, other than a reference to an article that included information about the group that they approvingly posted.
Newsmax.com, defaced by Chaos Hackers Crew (CHC) – 28th February, 1999Russian hackers Chaos Hackers Crew were a fairly standard defacement for internet clout group prior to the start of the NATO bombings against the Serbian military, as seen above.
After the NATO military campaign began in March of 1999, CHC switched to strident anti-NATO messaging on compromised websites.
An example of a defacement post March is below.
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, defaced by Chaos Hackers Crew – 6th April, 1999I have seen speculation online that CHC were a Kremlin backed group based in Moscow. I’m not sure I see any evidence of this direct government association though, their choices of targets before the Kosovo War and the profile that they seemed to want to maintain online doesn’t really fit in my opinion.
A group of teenage hackers called Chaos Hackers Crew (CHC) is active in anti-NATO attacks: an interview with a representative of this group has been published in an electronic paper Gazeta.ru (Leibov 1999). The young man turned out to have been apolitical before the crisis in Kosovo. He had very limited knowledge about the reasons NATO was bombing Yugoslavian targets, and the sites the CHC chose for its attacks had nothing to do with the military ones (for example, a Chinese site was mistakenly attacked).
Brian D. Loader, Douglas Thomas, “Cybercrime : law enforcement, security and surveillance in the information age“, 2000
After some search engine chicanery I managed to track down the Gazeta interview with the self-professed members of CHC, the reference to Kulibin below is to the “Russian Archimedes” Ivan Kulibin, a self-taught inventor who lived in Russia in the 1800s.
“Chaos Hackers Crew,” the hackers say, “there are four of us in total. And there are different ages. There’s a third year of university, too.” “The older one is kind of a guru? Did you even have a teacher in the networking life?” “Nope,” Yuri answers, “we’re kind of all equals. Only taught everything myself.” “Kulibin! – I admire, by manuals?” “What?” – The interlocutor is perplexed. “Kulibin,” I explain, “self-taught like that. “Yeah, like that.” “By the way, do you know any foreign hackers by correspondence?” – I change the subject again.
Indeed, hackers are like Freemasons or workers, they must have international solidarity.
“Nope,” they replied, “only from Romania. Well, Romania is also a foreign country. Though, of course, not very far.
Roman Leibov, “Our Hacker Brothers II. The beginning is here”, gazeta.ru, April 15th, 1999 (translated by DeepL)
I think it is safe to say we can put the Kremlin backed hackers theory to rest here, although if you google CHC you will see that it is an opinion that was widely held despite a lack of evidence.
US Department of the Interior, defaced by unknown Chinese hacktivists – 10th of May 1999After the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on the 8th of May in 1999, China Redhack, Hong Kong Danger Duo, China Eagle, Chinese Emergency Hackers’ Group Center and other hacking groups representing Chinese nationalist interests took to the internet to protest what they saw as a deliberate act of violence against the Chinese state by NATO and in particular the US.
Combined News Services, “Hackers Hit U.S. Government Web Sites“, 12th May 1999“We are Chinese hackers who take no care about politics,” said the message signed by “Rocky.” But with three Chinese nationals left dead after the embassy bombing, the hackers were wrathful: “You have owed Chinese people a bloody debt which you must pay for! We will not stop attacking until the war stops!”
Ellen Messner, “Kosovo cyber-war intensifies: Chinese hackers targeting U.S. sites, government says“, CNN, May 12th, 1999
By this time US hacking group Legion of the Underground had already declared a brief “cyber war” on China and Iraq, calling for “the complete destruction of all computer systems” in both countries, so the genie was well out of the bottle to some extent in terms of hacker conflict between the US and China.
Solid Design Inc, defacement by RedHack – April 30th 2001Two years after the Embassy bombing Chinese hackers were still defacing US websites in protest, as the BBC reported on the 5th of May 2001, “hackers promised a cyber-offensive against US sites in observance of Chinese of Labour Day on 1 May and Youth Day on 4 May, and also in remembrance of the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago on 7 May”.
This round of attacks in 2001 resulted in the defacement of, according to the BBC at the time, “more than 660 sites” in the space of a week and the “White House confirmed that for two hours and 15 minutes their website was down”. It is important to note that this particular hacktivist action from Chinese hackers was also motivated by the US spy plane incident in April of 2001 and Bush administration arms sales to Taiwan.
Tactics & Techniques
“NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said hackers in the Yugoslavian capital, Belgrade, attacked the Web site by launching what is known as a “Ping bombardment strategy.” Ping, short for Packet Internet Groper, refers to the practice of sending out a packet of information to a server and waiting for a response, which is a way for users to determine whether a system is up and running on the Internet.”
Dan Verton, “Serbs launch cyberattack on NATO“, FCW, April 4th, 1999
After reading over all of the available documents and analysis of the Kosovo War’s online components I was able to find four primary techniques used by hackers involved.
The first is denial of service, or DoS, this seems to have been primarily used by Eastern European hackers opposed to NATO intervention in Serbia and hackers supportive of China after the Belgrade Embassy bombing.
The BBC explains denial of service (DoS) basics (described here as a “ping storm”) in an article entitled “Kosovo info warfare spreads“, by Chris Nuttall from April 1st 1999.
The article details DoS attacks against NATO that had been ongoing since the 28th of March and had slowed parts of their web infrastructure and caused “erratic service”.
CNN reported in April of 1999 that to counter incoming DoS attacks “the NATO network crew swapped out a Sun SPARC 20 for the more powerful UltraSPARC for faster processing of the Serbian pings.” And that “NATO switched from a 256K bit/sec access line to the European equivalent of a T-1 to keep the pings from eating up bandwidth”.
Next up we have website defacements, screenshots of defacements are peppered throughout this blog so I won’t dwell too long on this aspect beyond noting that it is interesting that these hacks were not accompanied by leaks of data from the servers involved.
Faculty of Physical Chemistry University of Belgrade, defacement by hydra – March 30th 1999I can only ascribe this to either data exfiltration and leaking simply not being a common hacktivist activity at the time, the issue of slow internet connections for transferring data back in 1999 and a lack of file sharing servers to upload to or that the servers hacked did not include data that was worth leaking. I’m personally inclined towards the first and second explanations.
Richard Clark is not in the military, but when he heard news reports
earlier this month that NATO’s Web site had been attacked by Belgrade hackers, he wanted to do his part to help the allies. So he turned to his keyboard.Using software available on the Internet, the California resident sent
an “e-mail bomb” to http://www.gov.yu, the Yugoslav government’s main Web
site. On April 3, a few days and 500,000 e-mails into the siege, the
site went down, Clark said.Clark does not claim full responsibility for the cyber-sabotage; he
assumes others may have had similar ideas. But he is confident he
“played a part.”He is just one of untold numbers of civilians on both sides of the
conflict who have gone to battle from their desktops, raising new
questions about the role of civilians during times of war.Patrick Riley, “E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight”, FOX News, April 15th, 1999
The third technique we can see in use is e-mail bombing or spamming, sending thousands upon thousands of emails which are intended to annoy or overwhelm recipients and, in 1999 at least, potentially prevent the mail server itself from functioning.
From the Washington Post on April 1st, 1999, article entitled “Hackers irritate NATO”. The article describes how e-mail bombing campaigns by Serbia aligned hackers have impacted NATO’s online infrastructure. One such attack “effectively blocked mail service in and out of the NATO computer system”.
“That means that rogue computer users are sending a lot of messages and computer commands into NATO’s computers, said Carlo Tomad, a NATO network specialist in Brussels. One computer, he said “has sent about 2,500 messages in one hour,” a method of harassment known as “spamming.” That attack effectively blocked mail service in and out of the NATO computer system, Tomad said.”
“It’s the infowar equivalent of ringing someone’s doorbell and running away, but many thousands of times”, concludes the article.
Happy99 Virus in actionHackers enraged by the Chinese Embassy bombing latched on to this technique soon after online protests over the incident began. In May of 1999 CNN reported that “Sandy Spark, a manager at DOE’s Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC), warned that a Chinese tidal wave of e-mail with unresolvable IP addresses is being sent to U.S. government servers in an attempt to overload them”. The solution pitched was the rather inelegant, and potentially useless, advice to “apply anti-spam measures to block all e-mail from China’s .cn domain if necessary”.
Ellen Messmer writes for CNN (Serb supporters sock it to NATO, U.S. Web sites) that “NATO’s mail servers are taking a beating, getting hit with more than 10,000 e-mails per day – many infected with dangerous computer viruses”. So lastly we have what the head of NATO’s Integrated Data Service Chris Scheurweghs described as “macro viruses”.
According to Scheurweghs, hackers also attacked NATO’s e-mail systems with the Happy 1999 macro virus, which he said was similar in function but far less devastating than the Melissa virus that wreaked havoc in the United States last week (see story).
Dan Verton, “Serbs launch cyberattack on NATO“, FCW, April 4th, 1999
Happy99 is a very odd choice for a virus to attach to an e-mail for malicious purposes as, according the the Virus Encyclopedia, “although Happy99 is wild, it has no destructive payload and is, as its author describes, a ”sympathetic hitchhiker who uses your internet connection to travel, and thank you for the trip with a small animation””.
Final thoughts
What is the take away from all of this, and was it really the first international hacktivist cyberwar?
The first question is easier to answer. Hacktivism has traditionally been reactive, you have a pool of active hackers organised into groups or loose affiliations who are ready to act on what they perceive to be provocations.
Most of the hacking groups or alliances involved in the Kosovo conflict were already active in the defacement scene or at the very least had infrastructure or output of some kind, they were already visibly doing things online. NATO’s bombing campaign against the Yugoslav government provided the catalyst for involvement, either for or against the intervention.
The interesting exception to this are the hackers aligned with China, I couldn’t find defacements archived from groups like ChinaEagle or RedHackers from before the Embassy incident, although I fully admit here that my knowledge of, and visibility into, the Chinese hacking scene of 1999 is a little dismal.
A previous Chinese hacking group, the Green Army, had been involved in a previous international hacktivist action though, attacks on Indonesian websites in 1998 after “reports of looting, violence and rape committed against ethnic Chinese during riots in May [of 1998]”, as detailed by the BBC at the time. Much of the analysis I have read has pointed to these riots in Indonesia as a galvanising event that helped unite the Chinese hacking community.
Indonesian websites have also come under attack from political hackers. The home page of a site at http://www.bkkbn.go.id has been replaced with a message saying “Warning from Chinese.”
“This page is hacked for your national day. Please keep this page for 48 hours and punish the murderers in May immediately,” says the hacker, including a list of links to sites about the violence.
Chris Nuttall, “Chinese protesters attack Indonesia through Net“, BBC News, August 19th, 1998
The groups representing China that became involved in the Kosovo War can be seen as offshoots of this original organized backlash against Indonesia.
The Indonesian riots also give birth to what would become the “Red Hacker Alliance”, one of the most significant cyber-groups in the internet’s short history. The political nature of this patriotic campaign led to the creation of something entirely new, and would be the first time the term “red hacker” (红客 hongke) would be used. The attacks in the country functioned as the facilitator that brought together individuals who normally operated independently under the guise of nationalism, establishing not only a group but also the notion of red
hackers which still exists today.William Howlett IV, “The Rise of China’s Hacking Culture: Defining Chinese Hackers“, June 2016
When an American spy plane had a collision with a Chinese jet in April of 2001, killing a Chinese pilot, the online warfare between American and Chinese hackers reignited over this “Hainan Island incident” and the resulting website defacements showed that the Kosovo War was still very much on the mind of hackers in China.
“China is no longer a country like Yugoslavia, we have the best army”, defacement by DCBOY in 2001, from FBI FOIA documents relating to Honker UnionIn looking through old gazeta.ru articles relating to hacking from around this time I found a link to an article that is preserved on the Wayback Machine entitled “Hackers of U.S. servers face criminal liability” (as translated by DeepL), the article is written by Dmitry Chepchugov, head of the Department for Combating Computer Crimes of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The article is essentially an exhortation to Russian hackers to not attack NATO or the U.S. accompanied by some strident threats of criminal liability.
To date, we have not received any statements from official U.S. bodies regarding “attacks” on servers from Russian territory or damage related to protests against NATO actions in Yugoslavia. If such information is received, it will undoubtedly be verified in full, with the perpetrators identified and brought to justice as prescribed by law.
I would like to take this opportunity to address the people who know the intricacies of network technology. No matter how much your civic consciousness is outraged by NATO’s actions in Yugoslavia, no matter how much you want to express your own feelings about these events – don’t go down this road, don’t become the aggressor yourself. You are breaking the law, you are making yourself the perpetrator of an arbitrary massacre. Is this not what your mind rebels against?
Dmitry Chepchugov, “Hackers of U.S. servers face criminal liability”, March 28th, 1999 (translated by DeepL)
I have been unable to work out how real these threats by the Russian authorities are and whether any Russian hackers were ever charged or convicted of hacking offences, but it certainly forms an interesting bookend for current attitudes within the country towards hackers who attack targets externally.
“Electronic infiltration is burgeoning war zone of hackers worldwide”, Patti Hartigan, April 1999I see certain parallels between the hacker elements of the Kosovo War and armed conflicts that have taken place since that included a ‘cyberwar’ facet. The Syrian Electronic Army, KILLNet, the CyberBerkut, we can see echoes of the Black Hand here, hacktivists either fully backed by, or at the very least actively encouraged, by the authoritarian regimes that they support.
Was the Kosovo War the first international hacktivist cyberwar?
The New York Times claims it was the conflict inspired by the American spy-plane incident and China in 2001.
It was a Big Hack Attack, a harbinger of World Wide Web War I, with ”zombies” throwing ”worms,” Chinese patriots invoking the ultimate sacrifice and American teenagers giving electronic Bronx cheers.
After last month’s collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese jet, hackers in the United States and China began defacing Web sites on both sides of the Pacific. Then Chinese hackers, led by a group called the Honkers Union, declared war.
Criag S. Smith, “May 6-12; The First World Hacker War”, New York Times, May 13th, 2001
I for one am sceptical, I’m of the opinion that the Kosovo War is a better candidate for that title, but I’m also under no illusions that there aren’t preceding conflicts that are also potential contenders for this dubious award.
There were organised hacking attacks carried out by hackers from one country against online infrastructure from another country before the Kosovo War but in those earlier examples, Chinese hackers attacking Indonesian websites for instance, I couldn’t find any evidence of retaliation. The Kosovo War wound up involving a back and forth of hack attacks between hackers from different nations in a way that I don’t think the world had seen before.
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“Yugoslav hackers hit NATO Web site” – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Thursday April 1st, 1999On April 3rd 1999 Ashley Dunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, described how the Kosovo War was “turning cyberspace into an ethereal war zone where the battle for the hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings, and hacking attacks.”
The Kosovo War lasted from February 1998 through to June 1999. The war was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (at this time, Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who were fighting for regional autonomy. The conflict ended in June of 1999, after NATO intervention through air strikes in March 1999 against Yugoslav infrastructure which resulted in Yugoslav forces eventually withdrawing from Kosovo.
In parallel with the brutal physical conflict was an online battle between hackers from Russia, the US, China, Brazil, Netherlands and of course parts of the former Yugoslavia, among others, forming a truly international ‘cyberwar’. The aftermath of this ‘cyberwar’ went on to shape aspects of international hacker relations and the development of hacktivism and the organisation of hacktivist groups both regionally and internationally, as well as their tactics, for years after.
an ethereal war zone where the battle for the hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings, and hacking attacks
Ashley Dunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, April 3rd 1999
Before I get into the history of this online conflict I want to make sure to clarify that the actual warfare, in particular the brutal war crimes committed by Serbian forces against the Kosovar people, is the most important part of the story of the Kosovo War. The online elements are what I am covering here specifically, because this is the history of hacking.
In researching for this blog I have drawn on contemporaneous newspaper reports from 1998 and 1999, archives of website defacements from that time, Internet Archive website archives of various news sites, government and government agency reports and finally academic papers that touch on cyber elements of the Balkan conflicts.
When I found articles in a newspaper archive about hackers and the Kosovo War I started trying to search for more information and came up with shockingly few detailed accounts of something that was front page news back in 1999. That’s why I decided to write this blog.
I have purposefully avoided discussing nation state actors (military or intel orgs) or NATO hackers in this blog, as I feel that would be an entirely separate topic deserving of it’s own blog. Rest assured though that there was coverage from the time of confirmed or suspected cyber-attacks carried out by US government agencies and the military as well as NATO itself.
US Naval Medical Information Management Center, defacement by CHC – 27th March, 1999Let’s break down this history as a quick list of dates and notable events and then dig into the details.
28th February 1998Kosovo War begins24th March 1999NATO strikes against Serbian military28th March 1999Serbian hackers attack US military systems30th March 1999hydra defaces University of Belgrade1st April 1999Reports NATO servers are attacked29th April 1999Team Spl0it defaces US FAA website8th May 1999NATO bombs Chinese Embassy in Belgrade12th May 1999Chinese hacktivists take down White House site12th May 1999Chinese hacktivists deface US gov sites11th June 1999Kosovo War endsKosovo War & cyber elements timelineThat timeline is of course by no means exhaustive, we are going to dig into the various hacking groups involved, tactics used by those hacktivists and the hacking techniques used in the furtherance of the hacker’s goals.
Hacktivists Involved
Mirjana Drakulic and Ratimir Drakulic presented a paper entitled “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace” at the British and Irish Law Education Technology Association (BILETA) conference at the College of Ripon & York St. John, York, England, in March of 1999.
This paper discusses the history and nature of the primary Serbian and Kosovar hacking groups that were involved in the Kosovo War online.
WWW.HR – Croatian Homepage, defacement by Black Hand – June 20th, 1999First we have the Black Hand, representing the Serbian nationalist side, working to advance Serbian interests in maintaining control of Kosovo. Academics Mirjana and Ratimar Drakulic describe the Black Hand as a “group of hackers [that] wanted to inherit such a reputation regarding themselves as patriots and liberators”. They clarify that the hackers who called themselves the Black Hand were “alluding to the namesake organization which overthrew the Dynasty in Serbia in the first years of the 20th century”, explicitly linking their struggle in the late 1990s to the secret military society that engaged in violent conspiracies to further the cause of a united Serbia in the early 1900s.
An illustration of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by the original Black Hand in June of 1914“By the end of the October 1998 it raided the site of the Croatian news agency “Vjesnik” and left there a message: “The Black Hand wants to change the false image which orbits the planet that the Serbs are villains.” Further they stated that they do not mean war and that they mean no evil. “Vjesnik” immediately reported that the members of the “Black Hand” were discovered and where and how they approached the site.”
Mirjana Drakulic, Ph.D., Ratimir Drakulic, M.S., “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace“, March 30th, 1999
Mijana and Ratimar discuss various theories about the Black Hand in their paper “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace“, the suspected origin and makeup or the group and state that some people “are close to the view that this group exists but is followed by numerous satellites of less skilled imitators determined to get attention by the public or acquire the
“pass” to join the group”.The Croatian news agency Vjesnik that was hacked by the Black Hand claimed, based on investigation by their journalists, that the hack and defacement of their site was done “from the computers of two faculties they pointed to Serbian academic network claiming that hackers still travel and act from within it”, although those computers themselves could have been simply a jump box used by the Black Hand.
As well as the Black Hand we also have other players on the Serbian side, the Beograd Hackers group that carried out some defacements and the Serbian Angels. Serbian Angels, based on what little I have managed to find out about them, functioned as an offensive hacking group but also maintained a website (long since lost) that carried news about events relating to the war in Serbia, maintained various news e-mail lists and created for distribution physical CD archives of news, photos and videos from the Serbian side of the conflict after the NATO campaign ended.
“Stop Nato2”, defacement by Kosova Hackers Group – August 4th, 1999On the Kosovo side there was, as reported by Patrick Riley in his FOX article from April 15th 1999 “E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight“, “a coalition of European and Albanian hackers calling themselves the Kosovo Hackers Group has replaced at least five sites with black and red “Free Kosovo” banners”.
As well as hackers that purported to be from the former Yugoslavia there were other groups involved in this “cyberwar” that were motivated by ideological or nationalist impulses to throw their lot in with either the Serbian or Kosovar people, or to push for peace treaties or oppose NATO actions generally. It is important to note that most, if not all, of these hacking groups from outside the former Yugoslavia became especially active in the online conflict after the start of the NATO military campaign in March of 1999.
US Federal Aviation Authority, defacement by Team Spl0it – April 29th, 1999In the United States there was Team Spl0it (or Team Sploit) who opposed the bombing of Serbian infrastructure by NATO and expressed the opinion that “without the support of the people in Serbia NATO is not gonna get very far”. As CNN described it at the time, “American hackers are on a political binge, breaking into Web sites to leave what amounts to anti-war graffiti”.
Watching the news today, I found out that Serbia has been bombed for the 4th week in row. And I wondered what has been accomplished after these 4 weeks of air strikes. Who has gained from it, and who has lost ? Many targets inside Serbia have been hit, many civilians were killed. But Milosevich, the Serbian President doesn’t give a damn about his people. He couldn’t care less if they are dead or alive. What is the good of actions when the president doesn’t care about the targets that have been hit ?
f0bic, nostalgic, cellbl0ck, jay, text from defacement of US FAA website, April 29th, 1999
Also on the US side, although primarily memorialised only in throwaway comments in newspaper articles from the time, were “Hackers of the West Coast”. As described by Patti Hartigan, writing in the Boston Globe on April 4th, 1999, “Hackers on the West Coast are trying to crack the Serbian government site, although the server is said to be extremely secure and based in London”. I can find no evidence that Hackers on the West Coast succeeded in their goal. You can see the whole article below.
The pro-Serbia Russian Hackers Union was a loose affiliation of Russian hacking groups that, for the most part, already seem to have been present and active in the defacement scene before NATO started bombing Serbian infrastructure, prompting a change in the themes of website defacements carried out.
KpZ in particular wracked up some notable defacements but seemed to be very difficult to track down further information on until I dug into Russian hacker magazine XAKEP. Websites defaced by KpZ ran the gamut from a juicy .mil hosted U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station all the way through to the somewhat more random, and rather lacklustre, “airbed.com”. A hacker known as Mishgan seems to be one of their primary defacers around this time, KpZ appears to have been made up of primarily Russian hackers but also at least one member who identifies themselves as Romanian.
Russian XAKEP (“Hacker”) magazine issue four had an article about KpZ that offers some insight into the group. I’ve written about XAKEP before, I covered issue one in some detail.
The group in question was formed at the end of August 1998. Just when thousands of teenagers, having watched the movie “Hackers” and read articles about hackers, rushed to the Internet, thinking they were professional hackers. And the initial idea of the group was to show children that they are wrong, and the World Wide Web is not a place for such entertainment and for people with delusions of grandeur.
XAKEP Issue 4, “KPZ hacker group – from the inside“, 1999 (translation by DeepL)
XAKEP lists the members of KpZ as Tarantino, Delta, MAL, v00d00, 5pider and Mishgan. The hacker nick “v00d00” has been used by at least 3 different hackers over the years, sometimes very active at the same time, which can cause confusion.
“Emergency Issue” CD-ROM produced by KpZ, 1999Above you can see a photo of a CD-ROM that KpZ provided to XAKEP that the XAKEP writers describe “when this CD was brought to our office today, we were shocked. What’s it like, huh?” They go on to give details of this CD entitled “Hackers are bombing NATO” and how it “has tons of information on what to do and how to do it, including explanations of security holes in security systems and a bunch of other documentation”. The CD-ROM essentially contained instructional content for budding Russian hacktivists, “a special training course for a separate unit of a special brigade for information provocation”.
XAKEP interview MAL and Mishgan as part of issue four, MAL describes the group as having started after he received an ICQ message that said that there was a desire to organize “a group to combat underdeveloped admins and shameful sites.” In the same interview Mishgan claims that he is 15 years old, this fits with interviews I have read with other Russian hacker groups from this time.
Illustration from XAKEP Issue 4, “KPZ hacker group – from the inside“, 1999KpZ also seem to have forged some sort of alliance with Romanian hacking and defacement crew Pentaguard, although I can find no evidence of defacements by Pentaguard in opposition to NATO during the Kosovo War.
US Joint Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Project, defacement by Pentaguard – January 25th, 1999Also tagged in some of the KpZ defacements are legion2000, a Russian group that seems to have been more concerned with security advisories, releasing code and working on projects than defacements in 1999, from what I can turn up. There is an interview with Webster, one of the legion2000 members, from 2001 over at xakep that seems to imply some falling out between legion2000 and KpZ.
http://www.legion2000.cc/ – via Internet ArchiveThe few defacements I can find by legion2000 occur in 1998 and are of Russian websites.
kopitan.ru, defacement by legion2000 – December 6th, 1998 pentagon.yu, defacement by xoloth1 of DutchThreat – May 2nd, 1999DutchThreat, a Holland based hacker group, came in on the side of NATO and in support of the Kosovar people.
NATO does not prosecute innocent people
NATO does not raid
NATO does not create the mass-graves in your country
NATO is not out for blood, but out for peace
xoloth1, meestervervalser, defacement of pentagon.yu – May 2nd, 1999
CNN described how DutchThreat became involved in the hacker conflict that accompanied the Kosovo War, “Xoloth1 said he got mad when a “Serbian guy” in a chat room started calling NATO and the U.S. a bunch of criminals and Nazis” He also resented that one of the main Yugoslavian ISPs had set up an anti-NATO Web page with the domain name pentagon.co.yu”. CNN’s Ellen Messmer went on to explain “Dutchthreat’s leader, named Acos, says he thinks most of the Kosovo-inspired hacking going on is not motivated by genuine political concerns, but is simply a way of getting attention. But Acos adds he, too, doesn’t care to hear NATO called fascist.”
I was able to find an old archive of the DutchThreat website, but there was very little about the Kosovo War mentioned on it, other than a reference to an article that included information about the group that they approvingly posted.
Newsmax.com, defaced by Chaos Hackers Crew (CHC) – 28th February, 1999Russian hackers Chaos Hackers Crew were a fairly standard defacement for internet clout group prior to the start of the NATO bombings against the Serbian military, as seen above.
After the NATO military campaign began in March of 1999, CHC switched to strident anti-NATO messaging on compromised websites.
An example of a defacement post March is below.
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, defaced by Chaos Hackers Crew – 6th April, 1999I have seen speculation online that CHC were a Kremlin backed group based in Moscow. I’m not sure I see any evidence of this direct government association though, their choices of targets before the Kosovo War and the profile that they seemed to want to maintain online doesn’t really fit in my opinion.
A group of teenage hackers called Chaos Hackers Crew (CHC) is active in anti-NATO attacks: an interview with a representative of this group has been published in an electronic paper Gazeta.ru (Leibov 1999). The young man turned out to have been apolitical before the crisis in Kosovo. He had very limited knowledge about the reasons NATO was bombing Yugoslavian targets, and the sites the CHC chose for its attacks had nothing to do with the military ones (for example, a Chinese site was mistakenly attacked).
Brian D. Loader, Douglas Thomas, “Cybercrime : law enforcement, security and surveillance in the information age“, 2000
After some search engine chicanery I managed to track down the Gazeta interview with the self-professed members of CHC, the reference to Kulibin below is to the “Russian Archimedes” Ivan Kulibin, a self-taught inventor who lived in Russia in the 1800s.
“Chaos Hackers Crew,” the hackers say, “there are four of us in total. And there are different ages. There’s a third year of university, too.” “The older one is kind of a guru? Did you even have a teacher in the networking life?” “Nope,” Yuri answers, “we’re kind of all equals. Only taught everything myself.” “Kulibin! – I admire, by manuals?” “What?” – The interlocutor is perplexed. “Kulibin,” I explain, “self-taught like that. “Yeah, like that.” “By the way, do you know any foreign hackers by correspondence?” – I change the subject again.
Indeed, hackers are like Freemasons or workers, they must have international solidarity.
“Nope,” they replied, “only from Romania. Well, Romania is also a foreign country. Though, of course, not very far.
Roman Leibov, “Our Hacker Brothers II. The beginning is here”, gazeta.ru, April 15th, 1999 (translated by DeepL)
I think it is safe to say we can put the Kremlin backed hackers theory to rest here, although if you google CHC you will see that it is an opinion that was widely held despite a lack of evidence.
US Department of the Interior, defaced by unknown Chinese hacktivists – 10th of May 1999After the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on the 8th of May in 1999, China Redhack, Hong Kong Danger Duo, China Eagle, Chinese Emergency Hackers’ Group Center and other hacking groups representing Chinese nationalist interests took to the internet to protest what they saw as a deliberate act of violence against the Chinese state by NATO and in particular the US.
Combined News Services, “Hackers Hit U.S. Government Web Sites“, 12th May 1999“We are Chinese hackers who take no care about politics,” said the message signed by “Rocky.” But with three Chinese nationals left dead after the embassy bombing, the hackers were wrathful: “You have owed Chinese people a bloody debt which you must pay for! We will not stop attacking until the war stops!”
Ellen Messner, “Kosovo cyber-war intensifies: Chinese hackers targeting U.S. sites, government says“, CNN, May 12th, 1999
By this time US hacking group Legion of the Underground had already declared a brief “cyber war” on China and Iraq, calling for “the complete destruction of all computer systems” in both countries, so the genie was well out of the bottle to some extent in terms of hacker conflict between the US and China.
Solid Design Inc, defacement by RedHack – April 30th 2001Two years after the Embassy bombing Chinese hackers were still defacing US websites in protest, as the BBC reported on the 5th of May 2001, “hackers promised a cyber-offensive against US sites in observance of Chinese of Labour Day on 1 May and Youth Day on 4 May, and also in remembrance of the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago on 7 May”.
This round of attacks in 2001 resulted in the defacement of, according to the BBC at the time, “more than 660 sites” in the space of a week and the “White House confirmed that for two hours and 15 minutes their website was down”. It is important to note that this particular hacktivist action from Chinese hackers was also motivated by the US spy plane incident in April of 2001 and Bush administration arms sales to Taiwan.
Tactics & Techniques
“NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said hackers in the Yugoslavian capital, Belgrade, attacked the Web site by launching what is known as a “Ping bombardment strategy.” Ping, short for Packet Internet Groper, refers to the practice of sending out a packet of information to a server and waiting for a response, which is a way for users to determine whether a system is up and running on the Internet.”
Dan Verton, “Serbs launch cyberattack on NATO“, FCW, April 4th, 1999
After reading over all of the available documents and analysis of the Kosovo War’s online components I was able to find four primary techniques used by hackers involved.
The first is denial of service, or DoS, this seems to have been primarily used by Eastern European hackers opposed to NATO intervention in Serbia and hackers supportive of China after the Belgrade Embassy bombing.
The BBC explains denial of service (DoS) basics (described here as a “ping storm”) in an article entitled “Kosovo info warfare spreads“, by Chris Nuttall from April 1st 1999.
The article details DoS attacks against NATO that had been ongoing since the 28th of March and had slowed parts of their web infrastructure and caused “erratic service”.
CNN reported in April of 1999 that to counter incoming DoS attacks “the NATO network crew swapped out a Sun SPARC 20 for the more powerful UltraSPARC for faster processing of the Serbian pings.” And that “NATO switched from a 256K bit/sec access line to the European equivalent of a T-1 to keep the pings from eating up bandwidth”.
Next up we have website defacements, screenshots of defacements are peppered throughout this blog so I won’t dwell too long on this aspect beyond noting that it is interesting that these hacks were not accompanied by leaks of data from the servers involved.
Faculty of Physical Chemistry University of Belgrade, defacement by hydra – March 30th 1999I can only ascribe this to either data exfiltration and leaking simply not being a common hacktivist activity at the time, the issue of slow internet connections for transferring data back in 1999 and a lack of file sharing servers to upload to or that the servers hacked did not include data that was worth leaking. I’m personally inclined towards the first and second explanations.
Richard Clark is not in the military, but when he heard news reports
earlier this month that NATO’s Web site had been attacked by Belgrade hackers, he wanted to do his part to help the allies. So he turned to his keyboard.Using software available on the Internet, the California resident sent
an “e-mail bomb” to http://www.gov.yu, the Yugoslav government’s main Web
site. On April 3, a few days and 500,000 e-mails into the siege, the
site went down, Clark said.Clark does not claim full responsibility for the cyber-sabotage; he
assumes others may have had similar ideas. But he is confident he
“played a part.”He is just one of untold numbers of civilians on both sides of the
conflict who have gone to battle from their desktops, raising new
questions about the role of civilians during times of war.Patrick Riley, “E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight”, FOX News, April 15th, 1999
The third technique we can see in use is e-mail bombing or spamming, sending thousands upon thousands of emails which are intended to annoy or overwhelm recipients and, in 1999 at least, potentially prevent the mail server itself from functioning.
From the Washington Post on April 1st, 1999, article entitled “Hackers irritate NATO”. The article describes how e-mail bombing campaigns by Serbia aligned hackers have impacted NATO’s online infrastructure. One such attack “effectively blocked mail service in and out of the NATO computer system”.
“That means that rogue computer users are sending a lot of messages and computer commands into NATO’s computers, said Carlo Tomad, a NATO network specialist in Brussels. One computer, he said “has sent about 2,500 messages in one hour,” a method of harassment known as “spamming.” That attack effectively blocked mail service in and out of the NATO computer system, Tomad said.”
“It’s the infowar equivalent of ringing someone’s doorbell and running away, but many thousands of times”, concludes the article.
Happy99 Virus in actionHackers enraged by the Chinese Embassy bombing latched on to this technique soon after online protests over the incident began. In May of 1999 CNN reported that “Sandy Spark, a manager at DOE’s Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC), warned that a Chinese tidal wave of e-mail with unresolvable IP addresses is being sent to U.S. government servers in an attempt to overload them”. The solution pitched was the rather inelegant, and potentially useless, advice to “apply anti-spam measures to block all e-mail from China’s .cn domain if necessary”.
Ellen Messmer writes for CNN (Serb supporters sock it to NATO, U.S. Web sites) that “NATO’s mail servers are taking a beating, getting hit with more than 10,000 e-mails per day – many infected with dangerous computer viruses”. So lastly we have what the head of NATO’s Integrated Data Service Chris Scheurweghs described as “macro viruses”.
According to Scheurweghs, hackers also attacked NATO’s e-mail systems with the Happy 1999 macro virus, which he said was similar in function but far less devastating than the Melissa virus that wreaked havoc in the United States last week (see story).
Dan Verton, “Serbs launch cyberattack on NATO“, FCW, April 4th, 1999
Happy99 is a very odd choice for a virus to attach to an e-mail for malicious purposes as, according the the Virus Encyclopedia, “although Happy99 is wild, it has no destructive payload and is, as its author describes, a ”sympathetic hitchhiker who uses your internet connection to travel, and thank you for the trip with a small animation””.
Final thoughts
What is the take away from all of this, and was it really the first international hacktivist cyberwar?
The first question is easier to answer. Hacktivism has traditionally been reactive, you have a pool of active hackers organised into groups or loose affiliations who are ready to act on what they perceive to be provocations.
Most of the hacking groups or alliances involved in the Kosovo conflict were already active in the defacement scene or at the very least had infrastructure or output of some kind, they were already visibly doing things online. NATO’s bombing campaign against the Yugoslav government provided the catalyst for involvement, either for or against the intervention.
The interesting exception to this are the hackers aligned with China, I couldn’t find defacements archived from groups like ChinaEagle or RedHackers from before the Embassy incident, although I fully admit here that my knowledge of, and visibility into, the Chinese hacking scene of 1999 is a little dismal.
A previous Chinese hacking group, the Green Army, had been involved in a previous international hacktivist action though, attacks on Indonesian websites in 1998 after “reports of looting, violence and rape committed against ethnic Chinese during riots in May [of 1998]”, as detailed by the BBC at the time. Much of the analysis I have read has pointed to these riots in Indonesia as a galvanising event that helped unite the Chinese hacking community.
Indonesian websites have also come under attack from political hackers. The home page of a site at http://www.bkkbn.go.id has been replaced with a message saying “Warning from Chinese.”
“This page is hacked for your national day. Please keep this page for 48 hours and punish the murderers in May immediately,” says the hacker, including a list of links to sites about the violence.
Chris Nuttall, “Chinese protesters attack Indonesia through Net“, BBC News, August 19th, 1998
The groups representing China that became involved in the Kosovo War can be seen as offshoots of this original organized backlash against Indonesia.
The Indonesian riots also give birth to what would become the “Red Hacker Alliance”, one of the most significant cyber-groups in the internet’s short history. The political nature of this patriotic campaign led to the creation of something entirely new, and would be the first time the term “red hacker” (红客 hongke) would be used. The attacks in the country functioned as the facilitator that brought together individuals who normally operated independently under the guise of nationalism, establishing not only a group but also the notion of red
hackers which still exists today.William Howlett IV, “The Rise of China’s Hacking Culture: Defining Chinese Hackers“, June 2016
When an American spy plane had a collision with a Chinese jet in April of 2001, killing a Chinese pilot, the online warfare between American and Chinese hackers reignited over this “Hainan Island incident” and the resulting website defacements showed that the Kosovo War was still very much on the mind of hackers in China.
“China is no longer a country like Yugoslavia, we have the best army”, defacement by DCBOY in 2001, from FBI FOIA documents relating to Honker UnionIn looking through old gazeta.ru articles relating to hacking from around this time I found a link to an article that is preserved on the Wayback Machine entitled “Hackers of U.S. servers face criminal liability” (as translated by DeepL), the article is written by Dmitry Chepchugov, head of the Department for Combating Computer Crimes of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The article is essentially an exhortation to Russian hackers to not attack NATO or the U.S. accompanied by some strident threats of criminal liability.
To date, we have not received any statements from official U.S. bodies regarding “attacks” on servers from Russian territory or damage related to protests against NATO actions in Yugoslavia. If such information is received, it will undoubtedly be verified in full, with the perpetrators identified and brought to justice as prescribed by law.
I would like to take this opportunity to address the people who know the intricacies of network technology. No matter how much your civic consciousness is outraged by NATO’s actions in Yugoslavia, no matter how much you want to express your own feelings about these events – don’t go down this road, don’t become the aggressor yourself. You are breaking the law, you are making yourself the perpetrator of an arbitrary massacre. Is this not what your mind rebels against?
Dmitry Chepchugov, “Hackers of U.S. servers face criminal liability”, March 28th, 1999 (translated by DeepL)
I have been unable to work out how real these threats by the Russian authorities are and whether any Russian hackers were ever charged or convicted of hacking offences, but it certainly forms an interesting bookend for current attitudes within the country towards hackers who attack targets externally.
“Electronic infiltration is burgeoning war zone of hackers worldwide”, Patti Hartigan, April 1999I see certain parallels between the hacker elements of the Kosovo War and armed conflicts that have taken place since that included a ‘cyberwar’ facet. The Syrian Electronic Army, KILLNet, the CyberBerkut, we can see echoes of the Black Hand here, hacktivists either fully backed by, or at the very least actively encouraged, by the authoritarian regimes that they support.
Was the Kosovo War the first international hacktivist cyberwar?
The New York Times claims it was the conflict inspired by the American spy-plane incident and China in 2001.
It was a Big Hack Attack, a harbinger of World Wide Web War I, with ”zombies” throwing ”worms,” Chinese patriots invoking the ultimate sacrifice and American teenagers giving electronic Bronx cheers.
After last month’s collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese jet, hackers in the United States and China began defacing Web sites on both sides of the Pacific. Then Chinese hackers, led by a group called the Honkers Union, declared war.
Criag S. Smith, “May 6-12; The First World Hacker War”, New York Times, May 13th, 2001
I for one am sceptical, I’m of the opinion that the Kosovo War is a better candidate for that title, but I’m also under no illusions that there aren’t preceding conflicts that are also potential contenders for this dubious award.
There were organised hacking attacks carried out by hackers from one country against online infrastructure from another country before the Kosovo War but in those earlier examples, Chinese hackers attacking Indonesian websites for instance, I couldn’t find any evidence of retaliation. The Kosovo War wound up involving a back and forth of hack attacks between hackers from different nations in a way that I don’t think the world had seen before.
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“Yugoslav hackers hit NATO Web site” – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Thursday April 1st, 1999On April 3rd 1999 Ashley Dunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, described how the Kosovo War was “turning cyberspace into an ethereal war zone where the battle for the hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings, and hacking attacks.”
The Kosovo War lasted from February 1998 through to June 1999. The war was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (at this time, Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who were fighting for regional autonomy. The conflict ended in June of 1999, after NATO intervention through air strikes in March 1999 against Yugoslav infrastructure which resulted in Yugoslav forces eventually withdrawing from Kosovo.
In parallel with the brutal physical conflict was an online battle between hackers from Russia, the US, China, Brazil, Netherlands and of course parts of the former Yugoslavia, among others, forming a truly international ‘cyberwar’. The aftermath of this ‘cyberwar’ went on to shape aspects of international hacker relations and the development of hacktivism and the organisation of hacktivist groups both regionally and internationally, as well as their tactics, for years after.
an ethereal war zone where the battle for the hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings, and hacking attacks
Ashley Dunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, April 3rd 1999
Before I get into the history of this online conflict I want to make sure to clarify that the actual warfare, in particular the brutal war crimes committed by Serbian forces against the Kosovar people, is the most important part of the story of the Kosovo War. The online elements are what I am covering here specifically, because this is the history of hacking.
In researching for this blog I have drawn on contemporaneous newspaper reports from 1998 and 1999, archives of website defacements from that time, Internet Archive website archives of various news sites, government and government agency reports and finally academic papers that touch on cyber elements of the Balkan conflicts.
When I found articles in a newspaper archive about hackers and the Kosovo War I started trying to search for more information and came up with shockingly few detailed accounts of something that was front page news back in 1999. That’s why I decided to write this blog.
I have purposefully avoided discussing nation state actors (military or intel orgs) or NATO hackers in this blog, as I feel that would be an entirely separate topic deserving of it’s own blog. Rest assured though that there was coverage from the time of confirmed or suspected cyber-attacks carried out by US government agencies and the military as well as NATO itself.
US Naval Medical Information Management Center, defacement by CHC – 27th March, 1999Let’s break down this history as a quick list of dates and notable events and then dig into the details.
28th February 1998Kosovo War begins24th March 1999NATO strikes against Serbian military28th March 1999Serbian hackers attack US military systems30th March 1999hydra defaces University of Belgrade1st April 1999Reports NATO servers are attacked29th April 1999Team Spl0it defaces US FAA website8th May 1999NATO bombs Chinese Embassy in Belgrade12th May 1999Chinese hacktivists take down White House site12th May 1999Chinese hacktivists deface US gov sites11th June 1999Kosovo War endsKosovo War & cyber elements timelineThat timeline is of course by no means exhaustive, we are going to dig into the various hacking groups involved, tactics used by those hacktivists and the hacking techniques used in the furtherance of the hacker’s goals.
Hacktivists Involved
Mirjana Drakulic and Ratimir Drakulic presented a paper entitled “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace” at the British and Irish Law Education Technology Association (BILETA) conference at the College of Ripon & York St. John, York, England, in March of 1999.
This paper discusses the history and nature of the primary Serbian and Kosovar hacking groups that were involved in the Kosovo War online.
WWW.HR – Croatian Homepage, defacement by Black Hand – June 20th, 1999First we have the Black Hand, representing the Serbian nationalist side, working to advance Serbian interests in maintaining control of Kosovo. Academics Mirjana and Ratimar Drakulic describe the Black Hand as a “group of hackers [that] wanted to inherit such a reputation regarding themselves as patriots and liberators”. They clarify that the hackers who called themselves the Black Hand were “alluding to the namesake organization which overthrew the Dynasty in Serbia in the first years of the 20th century”, explicitly linking their struggle in the late 1990s to the secret military society that engaged in violent conspiracies to further the cause of a united Serbia in the early 1900s.
An illustration of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by the original Black Hand in June of 1914“By the end of the October 1998 it raided the site of the Croatian news agency “Vjesnik” and left there a message: “The Black Hand wants to change the false image which orbits the planet that the Serbs are villains.” Further they stated that they do not mean war and that they mean no evil. “Vjesnik” immediately reported that the members of the “Black Hand” were discovered and where and how they approached the site.”
Mirjana Drakulic, Ph.D., Ratimir Drakulic, M.S., “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace“, March 30th, 1999
Mijana and Ratimar discuss various theories about the Black Hand in their paper “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace“, the suspected origin and makeup or the group and state that some people “are close to the view that this group exists but is followed by numerous satellites of less skilled imitators determined to get attention by the public or acquire the
“pass” to join the group”.The Croatian news agency Vjesnik that was hacked by the Black Hand claimed, based on investigation by their journalists, that the hack and defacement of their site was done “from the computers of two faculties they pointed to Serbian academic network claiming that hackers still travel and act from within it”, although those computers themselves could have been simply a jump box used by the Black Hand.
As well as the Black Hand we also have other players on the Serbian side, the Beograd Hackers group that carried out some defacements and the Serbian Angels. Serbian Angels, based on what little I have managed to find out about them, functioned as an offensive hacking group but also maintained a website (long since lost) that carried news about events relating to the war in Serbia, maintained various news e-mail lists and created for distribution physical CD archives of news, photos and videos from the Serbian side of the conflict after the NATO campaign ended.
“Stop Nato2”, defacement by Kosova Hackers Group – August 4th, 1999On the Kosovo side there was, as reported by Patrick Riley in his FOX article from April 15th 1999 “E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight“, “a coalition of European and Albanian hackers calling themselves the Kosovo Hackers Group has replaced at least five sites with black and red “Free Kosovo” banners”.
As well as hackers that purported to be from the former Yugoslavia there were other groups involved in this “cyberwar” that were motivated by ideological or nationalist impulses to throw their lot in with either the Serbian or Kosovar people, or to push for peace treaties or oppose NATO actions generally. It is important to note that most, if not all, of these hacking groups from outside the former Yugoslavia became especially active in the online conflict after the start of the NATO military campaign in March of 1999.
US Federal Aviation Authority, defacement by Team Spl0it – April 29th, 1999In the United States there was Team Spl0it (or Team Sploit) who opposed the bombing of Serbian infrastructure by NATO and expressed the opinion that “without the support of the people in Serbia NATO is not gonna get very far”. As CNN described it at the time, “American hackers are on a political binge, breaking into Web sites to leave what amounts to anti-war graffiti”.
Watching the news today, I found out that Serbia has been bombed for the 4th week in row. And I wondered what has been accomplished after these 4 weeks of air strikes. Who has gained from it, and who has lost ? Many targets inside Serbia have been hit, many civilians were killed. But Milosevich, the Serbian President doesn’t give a damn about his people. He couldn’t care less if they are dead or alive. What is the good of actions when the president doesn’t care about the targets that have been hit ?
f0bic, nostalgic, cellbl0ck, jay, text from defacement of US FAA website, April 29th, 1999
Also on the US side, although primarily memorialised only in throwaway comments in newspaper articles from the time, were “Hackers of the West Coast”. As described by Patti Hartigan, writing in the Boston Globe on April 4th, 1999, “Hackers on the West Coast are trying to crack the Serbian government site, although the server is said to be extremely secure and based in London”. I can find no evidence that Hackers on the West Coast succeeded in their goal. You can see the whole article below.
The pro-Serbia Russian Hackers Union was a loose affiliation of Russian hacking groups that, for the most part, already seem to have been present and active in the defacement scene before NATO started bombing Serbian infrastructure, prompting a change in the themes of website defacements carried out.
KpZ in particular wracked up some notable defacements but seemed to be very difficult to track down further information on until I dug into Russian hacker magazine XAKEP. Websites defaced by KpZ ran the gamut from a juicy .mil hosted U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station all the way through to the somewhat more random, and rather lacklustre, “airbed.com”. A hacker known as Mishgan seems to be one of their primary defacers around this time, KpZ appears to have been made up of primarily Russian hackers but also at least one member who identifies themselves as Romanian.
Russian XAKEP (“Hacker”) magazine issue four had an article about KpZ that offers some insight into the group. I’ve written about XAKEP before, I covered issue one in some detail.
The group in question was formed at the end of August 1998. Just when thousands of teenagers, having watched the movie “Hackers” and read articles about hackers, rushed to the Internet, thinking they were professional hackers. And the initial idea of the group was to show children that they are wrong, and the World Wide Web is not a place for such entertainment and for people with delusions of grandeur.
XAKEP Issue 4, “KPZ hacker group – from the inside“, 1999 (translation by DeepL)
XAKEP lists the members of KpZ as Tarantino, Delta, MAL, v00d00, 5pider and Mishgan. The hacker nick “v00d00” has been used by at least 3 different hackers over the years, sometimes very active at the same time, which can cause confusion.
“Emergency Issue” CD-ROM produced by KpZ, 1999Above you can see a photo of a CD-ROM that KpZ provided to XAKEP that the XAKEP writers describe “when this CD was brought to our office today, we were shocked. What’s it like, huh?” They go on to give details of this CD entitled “Hackers are bombing NATO” and how it “has tons of information on what to do and how to do it, including explanations of security holes in security systems and a bunch of other documentation”. The CD-ROM essentially contained instructional content for budding Russian hacktivists, “a special training course for a separate unit of a special brigade for information provocation”.
XAKEP interview MAL and Mishgan as part of issue four, MAL describes the group as having started after he received an ICQ message that said that there was a desire to organize “a group to combat underdeveloped admins and shameful sites.” In the same interview Mishgan claims that he is 15 years old, this fits with interviews I have read with other Russian hacker groups from this time.
Illustration from XAKEP Issue 4, “KPZ hacker group – from the inside“, 1999KpZ also seem to have forged some sort of alliance with Romanian hacking and defacement crew Pentaguard, although I can find no evidence of defacements by Pentaguard in opposition to NATO during the Kosovo War.
US Joint Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Project, defacement by Pentaguard – January 25th, 1999Also tagged in some of the KpZ defacements are legion2000, a Russian group that seems to have been more concerned with security advisories, releasing code and working on projects than defacements in 1999, from what I can turn up. There is an interview with Webster, one of the legion2000 members, from 2001 over at xakep that seems to imply some falling out between legion2000 and KpZ.
http://www.legion2000.cc/ – via Internet ArchiveThe few defacements I can find by legion2000 occur in 1998 and are of Russian websites.
kopitan.ru, defacement by legion2000 – December 6th, 1998 pentagon.yu, defacement by xoloth1 of DutchThreat – May 2nd, 1999DutchThreat, a Holland based hacker group, came in on the side of NATO and in support of the Kosovar people.
NATO does not prosecute innocent people
NATO does not raid
NATO does not create the mass-graves in your country
NATO is not out for blood, but out for peace
xoloth1, meestervervalser, defacement of pentagon.yu – May 2nd, 1999
CNN described how DutchThreat became involved in the hacker conflict that accompanied the Kosovo War, “Xoloth1 said he got mad when a “Serbian guy” in a chat room started calling NATO and the U.S. a bunch of criminals and Nazis” He also resented that one of the main Yugoslavian ISPs had set up an anti-NATO Web page with the domain name pentagon.co.yu”. CNN’s Ellen Messmer went on to explain “Dutchthreat’s leader, named Acos, says he thinks most of the Kosovo-inspired hacking going on is not motivated by genuine political concerns, but is simply a way of getting attention. But Acos adds he, too, doesn’t care to hear NATO called fascist.”
I was able to find an old archive of the DutchThreat website, but there was very little about the Kosovo War mentioned on it, other than a reference to an article that included information about the group that they approvingly posted.
Newsmax.com, defaced by Chaos Hackers Crew (CHC) – 28th February, 1999Russian hackers Chaos Hackers Crew were a fairly standard defacement for internet clout group prior to the start of the NATO bombings against the Serbian military, as seen above.
After the NATO military campaign began in March of 1999, CHC switched to strident anti-NATO messaging on compromised websites.
An example of a defacement post March is below.
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, defaced by Chaos Hackers Crew – 6th April, 1999I have seen speculation online that CHC were a Kremlin backed group based in Moscow. I’m not sure I see any evidence of this direct government association though, their choices of targets before the Kosovo War and the profile that they seemed to want to maintain online doesn’t really fit in my opinion.
A group of teenage hackers called Chaos Hackers Crew (CHC) is active in anti-NATO attacks: an interview with a representative of this group has been published in an electronic paper Gazeta.ru (Leibov 1999). The young man turned out to have been apolitical before the crisis in Kosovo. He had very limited knowledge about the reasons NATO was bombing Yugoslavian targets, and the sites the CHC chose for its attacks had nothing to do with the military ones (for example, a Chinese site was mistakenly attacked).
Brian D. Loader, Douglas Thomas, “Cybercrime : law enforcement, security and surveillance in the information age“, 2000
After some search engine chicanery I managed to track down the Gazeta interview with the self-professed members of CHC, the reference to Kulibin below is to the “Russian Archimedes” Ivan Kulibin, a self-taught inventor who lived in Russia in the 1800s.
“Chaos Hackers Crew,” the hackers say, “there are four of us in total. And there are different ages. There’s a third year of university, too.” “The older one is kind of a guru? Did you even have a teacher in the networking life?” “Nope,” Yuri answers, “we’re kind of all equals. Only taught everything myself.” “Kulibin! – I admire, by manuals?” “What?” – The interlocutor is perplexed. “Kulibin,” I explain, “self-taught like that. “Yeah, like that.” “By the way, do you know any foreign hackers by correspondence?” – I change the subject again.
Indeed, hackers are like Freemasons or workers, they must have international solidarity.
“Nope,” they replied, “only from Romania. Well, Romania is also a foreign country. Though, of course, not very far.
Roman Leibov, “Our Hacker Brothers II. The beginning is here”, gazeta.ru, April 15th, 1999 (translated by DeepL)
I think it is safe to say we can put the Kremlin backed hackers theory to rest here, although if you google CHC you will see that it is an opinion that was widely held despite a lack of evidence.
US Department of the Interior, defaced by unknown Chinese hacktivists – 10th of May 1999After the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on the 8th of May in 1999, China Redhack, Hong Kong Danger Duo, China Eagle, Chinese Emergency Hackers’ Group Center and other hacking groups representing Chinese nationalist interests took to the internet to protest what they saw as a deliberate act of violence against the Chinese state by NATO and in particular the US.
Combined News Services, “Hackers Hit U.S. Government Web Sites“, 12th May 1999“We are Chinese hackers who take no care about politics,” said the message signed by “Rocky.” But with three Chinese nationals left dead after the embassy bombing, the hackers were wrathful: “You have owed Chinese people a bloody debt which you must pay for! We will not stop attacking until the war stops!”
Ellen Messner, “Kosovo cyber-war intensifies: Chinese hackers targeting U.S. sites, government says“, CNN, May 12th, 1999
By this time US hacking group Legion of the Underground had already declared a brief “cyber war” on China and Iraq, calling for “the complete destruction of all computer systems” in both countries, so the genie was well out of the bottle to some extent in terms of hacker conflict between the US and China.
Solid Design Inc, defacement by RedHack – April 30th 2001Two years after the Embassy bombing Chinese hackers were still defacing US websites in protest, as the BBC reported on the 5th of May 2001, “hackers promised a cyber-offensive against US sites in observance of Chinese of Labour Day on 1 May and Youth Day on 4 May, and also in remembrance of the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago on 7 May”.
This round of attacks in 2001 resulted in the defacement of, according to the BBC at the time, “more than 660 sites” in the space of a week and the “White House confirmed that for two hours and 15 minutes their website was down”. It is important to note that this particular hacktivist action from Chinese hackers was also motivated by the US spy plane incident in April of 2001 and Bush administration arms sales to Taiwan.
Tactics & Techniques
“NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said hackers in the Yugoslavian capital, Belgrade, attacked the Web site by launching what is known as a “Ping bombardment strategy.” Ping, short for Packet Internet Groper, refers to the practice of sending out a packet of information to a server and waiting for a response, which is a way for users to determine whether a system is up and running on the Internet.”
Dan Verton, “Serbs launch cyberattack on NATO“, FCW, April 4th, 1999
After reading over all of the available documents and analysis of the Kosovo War’s online components I was able to find four primary techniques used by hackers involved.
The first is denial of service, or DoS, this seems to have been primarily used by Eastern European hackers opposed to NATO intervention in Serbia and hackers supportive of China after the Belgrade Embassy bombing.
The BBC explains denial of service (DoS) basics (described here as a “ping storm”) in an article entitled “Kosovo info warfare spreads“, by Chris Nuttall from April 1st 1999.
The article details DoS attacks against NATO that had been ongoing since the 28th of March and had slowed parts of their web infrastructure and caused “erratic service”.
CNN reported in April of 1999 that to counter incoming DoS attacks “the NATO network crew swapped out a Sun SPARC 20 for the more powerful UltraSPARC for faster processing of the Serbian pings.” And that “NATO switched from a 256K bit/sec access line to the European equivalent of a T-1 to keep the pings from eating up bandwidth”.
Next up we have website defacements, screenshots of defacements are peppered throughout this blog so I won’t dwell too long on this aspect beyond noting that it is interesting that these hacks were not accompanied by leaks of data from the servers involved.
Faculty of Physical Chemistry University of Belgrade, defacement by hydra – March 30th 1999I can only ascribe this to either data exfiltration and leaking simply not being a common hacktivist activity at the time, the issue of slow internet connections for transferring data back in 1999 and a lack of file sharing servers to upload to or that the servers hacked did not include data that was worth leaking. I’m personally inclined towards the first and second explanations.
Richard Clark is not in the military, but when he heard news reports
earlier this month that NATO’s Web site had been attacked by Belgrade hackers, he wanted to do his part to help the allies. So he turned to his keyboard.Using software available on the Internet, the California resident sent
an “e-mail bomb” to http://www.gov.yu, the Yugoslav government’s main Web
site. On April 3, a few days and 500,000 e-mails into the siege, the
site went down, Clark said.Clark does not claim full responsibility for the cyber-sabotage; he
assumes others may have had similar ideas. But he is confident he
“played a part.”He is just one of untold numbers of civilians on both sides of the
conflict who have gone to battle from their desktops, raising new
questions about the role of civilians during times of war.Patrick Riley, “E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight”, FOX News, April 15th, 1999
The third technique we can see in use is e-mail bombing or spamming, sending thousands upon thousands of emails which are intended to annoy or overwhelm recipients and, in 1999 at least, potentially prevent the mail server itself from functioning.
From the Washington Post on April 1st, 1999, article entitled “Hackers irritate NATO”. The article describes how e-mail bombing campaigns by Serbia aligned hackers have impacted NATO’s online infrastructure. One such attack “effectively blocked mail service in and out of the NATO computer system”.
“That means that rogue computer users are sending a lot of messages and computer commands into NATO’s computers, said Carlo Tomad, a NATO network specialist in Brussels. One computer, he said “has sent about 2,500 messages in one hour,” a method of harassment known as “spamming.” That attack effectively blocked mail service in and out of the NATO computer system, Tomad said.”
“It’s the infowar equivalent of ringing someone’s doorbell and running away, but many thousands of times”, concludes the article.
Happy99 Virus in actionHackers enraged by the Chinese Embassy bombing latched on to this technique soon after online protests over the incident began. In May of 1999 CNN reported that “Sandy Spark, a manager at DOE’s Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC), warned that a Chinese tidal wave of e-mail with unresolvable IP addresses is being sent to U.S. government servers in an attempt to overload them”. The solution pitched was the rather inelegant, and potentially useless, advice to “apply anti-spam measures to block all e-mail from China’s .cn domain if necessary”.
Ellen Messmer writes for CNN (Serb supporters sock it to NATO, U.S. Web sites) that “NATO’s mail servers are taking a beating, getting hit with more than 10,000 e-mails per day – many infected with dangerous computer viruses”. So lastly we have what the head of NATO’s Integrated Data Service Chris Scheurweghs described as “macro viruses”.
According to Scheurweghs, hackers also attacked NATO’s e-mail systems with the Happy 1999 macro virus, which he said was similar in function but far less devastating than the Melissa virus that wreaked havoc in the United States last week (see story).
Dan Verton, “Serbs launch cyberattack on NATO“, FCW, April 4th, 1999
Happy99 is a very odd choice for a virus to attach to an e-mail for malicious purposes as, according the the Virus Encyclopedia, “although Happy99 is wild, it has no destructive payload and is, as its author describes, a ”sympathetic hitchhiker who uses your internet connection to travel, and thank you for the trip with a small animation””.
Final thoughts
What is the take away from all of this, and was it really the first international hacktivist cyberwar?
The first question is easier to answer. Hacktivism has traditionally been reactive, you have a pool of active hackers organised into groups or loose affiliations who are ready to act on what they perceive to be provocations.
Most of the hacking groups or alliances involved in the Kosovo conflict were already active in the defacement scene or at the very least had infrastructure or output of some kind, they were already visibly doing things online. NATO’s bombing campaign against the Yugoslav government provided the catalyst for involvement, either for or against the intervention.
The interesting exception to this are the hackers aligned with China, I couldn’t find defacements archived from groups like ChinaEagle or RedHackers from before the Embassy incident, although I fully admit here that my knowledge of, and visibility into, the Chinese hacking scene of 1999 is a little dismal.
A previous Chinese hacking group, the Green Army, had been involved in a previous international hacktivist action though, attacks on Indonesian websites in 1998 after “reports of looting, violence and rape committed against ethnic Chinese during riots in May [of 1998]”, as detailed by the BBC at the time. Much of the analysis I have read has pointed to these riots in Indonesia as a galvanising event that helped unite the Chinese hacking community.
Indonesian websites have also come under attack from political hackers. The home page of a site at http://www.bkkbn.go.id has been replaced with a message saying “Warning from Chinese.”
“This page is hacked for your national day. Please keep this page for 48 hours and punish the murderers in May immediately,” says the hacker, including a list of links to sites about the violence.
Chris Nuttall, “Chinese protesters attack Indonesia through Net“, BBC News, August 19th, 1998
The groups representing China that became involved in the Kosovo War can be seen as offshoots of this original organized backlash against Indonesia.
The Indonesian riots also give birth to what would become the “Red Hacker Alliance”, one of the most significant cyber-groups in the internet’s short history. The political nature of this patriotic campaign led to the creation of something entirely new, and would be the first time the term “red hacker” (红客 hongke) would be used. The attacks in the country functioned as the facilitator that brought together individuals who normally operated independently under the guise of nationalism, establishing not only a group but also the notion of red
hackers which still exists today.William Howlett IV, “The Rise of China’s Hacking Culture: Defining Chinese Hackers“, June 2016
When an American spy plane had a collision with a Chinese jet in April of 2001, killing a Chinese pilot, the online warfare between American and Chinese hackers reignited over this “Hainan Island incident” and the resulting website defacements showed that the Kosovo War was still very much on the mind of hackers in China.
“China is no longer a country like Yugoslavia, we have the best army”, defacement by DCBOY in 2001, from FBI FOIA documents relating to Honker UnionIn looking through old gazeta.ru articles relating to hacking from around this time I found a link to an article that is preserved on the Wayback Machine entitled “Hackers of U.S. servers face criminal liability” (as translated by DeepL), the article is written by Dmitry Chepchugov, head of the Department for Combating Computer Crimes of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The article is essentially an exhortation to Russian hackers to not attack NATO or the U.S. accompanied by some strident threats of criminal liability.
To date, we have not received any statements from official U.S. bodies regarding “attacks” on servers from Russian territory or damage related to protests against NATO actions in Yugoslavia. If such information is received, it will undoubtedly be verified in full, with the perpetrators identified and brought to justice as prescribed by law.
I would like to take this opportunity to address the people who know the intricacies of network technology. No matter how much your civic consciousness is outraged by NATO’s actions in Yugoslavia, no matter how much you want to express your own feelings about these events – don’t go down this road, don’t become the aggressor yourself. You are breaking the law, you are making yourself the perpetrator of an arbitrary massacre. Is this not what your mind rebels against?
Dmitry Chepchugov, “Hackers of U.S. servers face criminal liability”, March 28th, 1999 (translated by DeepL)
I have been unable to work out how real these threats by the Russian authorities are and whether any Russian hackers were ever charged or convicted of hacking offences, but it certainly forms an interesting bookend for current attitudes within the country towards hackers who attack targets externally.
“Electronic infiltration is burgeoning war zone of hackers worldwide”, Patti Hartigan, April 1999I see certain parallels between the hacker elements of the Kosovo War and armed conflicts that have taken place since that included a ‘cyberwar’ facet. The Syrian Electronic Army, KILLNet, the CyberBerkut, we can see echoes of the Black Hand here, hacktivists either fully backed by, or at the very least actively encouraged, by the authoritarian regimes that they support.
Was the Kosovo War the first international hacktivist cyberwar?
The New York Times claims it was the conflict inspired by the American spy-plane incident and China in 2001.
It was a Big Hack Attack, a harbinger of World Wide Web War I, with ”zombies” throwing ”worms,” Chinese patriots invoking the ultimate sacrifice and American teenagers giving electronic Bronx cheers.
After last month’s collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese jet, hackers in the United States and China began defacing Web sites on both sides of the Pacific. Then Chinese hackers, led by a group called the Honkers Union, declared war.
Criag S. Smith, “May 6-12; The First World Hacker War”, New York Times, May 13th, 2001
I for one am sceptical, I’m of the opinion that the Kosovo War is a better candidate for that title, but I’m also under no illusions that there aren’t preceding conflicts that are also potential contenders for this dubious award.
There were organised hacking attacks carried out by hackers from one country against online infrastructure from another country before the Kosovo War but in those earlier examples, Chinese hackers attacking Indonesian websites for instance, I couldn’t find any evidence of retaliation. The Kosovo War wound up involving a back and forth of hack attacks between hackers from different nations in a way that I don’t think the world had seen before.
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“Yugoslav hackers hit NATO Web site” – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Thursday April 1st, 1999On April 3rd 1999 Ashley Dunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, described how the Kosovo War was “turning cyberspace into an ethereal war zone where the battle for the hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings, and hacking attacks.”
The Kosovo War lasted from February 1998 through to June 1999. The war was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (at this time, Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who were fighting for regional autonomy. The conflict ended in June of 1999, after NATO intervention through air strikes in March 1999 against Yugoslav infrastructure which resulted in Yugoslav forces eventually withdrawing from Kosovo.
In parallel with the brutal physical conflict was an online battle between hackers from Russia, the US, China, Brazil, Netherlands and of course parts of the former Yugoslavia, among others, forming a truly international ‘cyberwar’. The aftermath of this ‘cyberwar’ went on to shape aspects of international hacker relations and the development of hacktivism and the organisation of hacktivist groups both regionally and internationally, as well as their tactics, for years after.
an ethereal war zone where the battle for the hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings, and hacking attacks
Ashley Dunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, April 3rd 1999
Before I get into the history of this online conflict I want to make sure to clarify that the actual warfare, in particular the brutal war crimes committed by Serbian forces against the Kosovar people, is the most important part of the story of the Kosovo War. The online elements are what I am covering here specifically, because this is the history of hacking.
In researching for this blog I have drawn on contemporaneous newspaper reports from 1998 and 1999, archives of website defacements from that time, Internet Archive website archives of various news sites, government and government agency reports and finally academic papers that touch on cyber elements of the Balkan conflicts.
When I found articles in a newspaper archive about hackers and the Kosovo War I started trying to search for more information and came up with shockingly few detailed accounts of something that was front page news back in 1999. That’s why I decided to write this blog.
I have purposefully avoided discussing nation state actors (military or intel orgs) or NATO hackers in this blog, as I feel that would be an entirely separate topic deserving of it’s own blog. Rest assured though that there was coverage from the time of confirmed or suspected cyber-attacks carried out by US government agencies and the military as well as NATO itself.
US Naval Medical Information Management Center, defacement by CHC – 27th March, 1999Let’s break down this history as a quick list of dates and notable events and then dig into the details.
28th February 1998Kosovo War begins24th March 1999NATO strikes against Serbian military28th March 1999Serbian hackers attack US military systems30th March 1999hydra defaces University of Belgrade1st April 1999Reports NATO servers are attacked29th April 1999Team Spl0it defaces US FAA website8th May 1999NATO bombs Chinese Embassy in Belgrade12th May 1999Chinese hacktivists take down White House site12th May 1999Chinese hacktivists deface US gov sites11th June 1999Kosovo War endsKosovo War & cyber elements timelineThat timeline is of course by no means exhaustive, we are going to dig into the various hacking groups involved, tactics used by those hacktivists and the hacking techniques used in the furtherance of the hacker’s goals.
Hacktivists Involved
Mirjana Drakulic and Ratimir Drakulic presented a paper entitled “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace” at the British and Irish Law Education Technology Association (BILETA) conference at the College of Ripon & York St. John, York, England, in March of 1999.
This paper discusses the history and nature of the primary Serbian and Kosovar hacking groups that were involved in the Kosovo War online.
WWW.HR – Croatian Homepage, defacement by Black Hand – June 20th, 1999First we have the Black Hand, representing the Serbian nationalist side, working to advance Serbian interests in maintaining control of Kosovo. Academics Mirjana and Ratimar Drakulic describe the Black Hand as a “group of hackers [that] wanted to inherit such a reputation regarding themselves as patriots and liberators”. They clarify that the hackers who called themselves the Black Hand were “alluding to the namesake organization which overthrew the Dynasty in Serbia in the first years of the 20th century”, explicitly linking their struggle in the late 1990s to the secret military society that engaged in violent conspiracies to further the cause of a united Serbia in the early 1900s.
An illustration of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by the original Black Hand in June of 1914“By the end of the October 1998 it raided the site of the Croatian news agency “Vjesnik” and left there a message: “The Black Hand wants to change the false image which orbits the planet that the Serbs are villains.” Further they stated that they do not mean war and that they mean no evil. “Vjesnik” immediately reported that the members of the “Black Hand” were discovered and where and how they approached the site.”
Mirjana Drakulic, Ph.D., Ratimir Drakulic, M.S., “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace“, March 30th, 1999
Mijana and Ratimar discuss various theories about the Black Hand in their paper “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace“, the suspected origin and makeup or the group and state that some people “are close to the view that this group exists but is followed by numerous satellites of less skilled imitators determined to get attention by the public or acquire the
“pass” to join the group”.The Croatian news agency Vjesnik that was hacked by the Black Hand claimed, based on investigation by their journalists, that the hack and defacement of their site was done “from the computers of two faculties they pointed to Serbian academic network claiming that hackers still travel and act from within it”, although those computers themselves could have been simply a jump box used by the Black Hand.
As well as the Black Hand we also have other players on the Serbian side, the Beograd Hackers group that carried out some defacements and the Serbian Angels. Serbian Angels, based on what little I have managed to find out about them, functioned as an offensive hacking group but also maintained a website (long since lost) that carried news about events relating to the war in Serbia, maintained various news e-mail lists and created for distribution physical CD archives of news, photos and videos from the Serbian side of the conflict after the NATO campaign ended.
“Stop Nato2”, defacement by Kosova Hackers Group – August 4th, 1999On the Kosovo side there was, as reported by Patrick Riley in his FOX article from April 15th 1999 “E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight“, “a coalition of European and Albanian hackers calling themselves the Kosovo Hackers Group has replaced at least five sites with black and red “Free Kosovo” banners”.
As well as hackers that purported to be from the former Yugoslavia there were other groups involved in this “cyberwar” that were motivated by ideological or nationalist impulses to throw their lot in with either the Serbian or Kosovar people, or to push for peace treaties or oppose NATO actions generally. It is important to note that most, if not all, of these hacking groups from outside the former Yugoslavia became especially active in the online conflict after the start of the NATO military campaign in March of 1999.
US Federal Aviation Authority, defacement by Team Spl0it – April 29th, 1999In the United States there was Team Spl0it (or Team Sploit) who opposed the bombing of Serbian infrastructure by NATO and expressed the opinion that “without the support of the people in Serbia NATO is not gonna get very far”. As CNN described it at the time, “American hackers are on a political binge, breaking into Web sites to leave what amounts to anti-war graffiti”.
Watching the news today, I found out that Serbia has been bombed for the 4th week in row. And I wondered what has been accomplished after these 4 weeks of air strikes. Who has gained from it, and who has lost ? Many targets inside Serbia have been hit, many civilians were killed. But Milosevich, the Serbian President doesn’t give a damn about his people. He couldn’t care less if they are dead or alive. What is the good of actions when the president doesn’t care about the targets that have been hit ?
f0bic, nostalgic, cellbl0ck, jay, text from defacement of US FAA website, April 29th, 1999
Also on the US side, although primarily memorialised only in throwaway comments in newspaper articles from the time, were “Hackers of the West Coast”. As described by Patti Hartigan, writing in the Boston Globe on April 4th, 1999, “Hackers on the West Coast are trying to crack the Serbian government site, although the server is said to be extremely secure and based in London”. I can find no evidence that Hackers on the West Coast succeeded in their goal. You can see the whole article below.
The pro-Serbia Russian Hackers Union was a loose affiliation of Russian hacking groups that, for the most part, already seem to have been present and active in the defacement scene before NATO started bombing Serbian infrastructure, prompting a change in the themes of website defacements carried out.
KpZ in particular wracked up some notable defacements but seemed to be very difficult to track down further information on until I dug into Russian hacker magazine XAKEP. Websites defaced by KpZ ran the gamut from a juicy .mil hosted U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station all the way through to the somewhat more random, and rather lacklustre, “airbed.com”. A hacker known as Mishgan seems to be one of their primary defacers around this time, KpZ appears to have been made up of primarily Russian hackers but also at least one member who identifies themselves as Romanian.
Russian XAKEP (“Hacker”) magazine issue four had an article about KpZ that offers some insight into the group. I’ve written about XAKEP before, I covered issue one in some detail.
The group in question was formed at the end of August 1998. Just when thousands of teenagers, having watched the movie “Hackers” and read articles about hackers, rushed to the Internet, thinking they were professional hackers. And the initial idea of the group was to show children that they are wrong, and the World Wide Web is not a place for such entertainment and for people with delusions of grandeur.
XAKEP Issue 4, “KPZ hacker group – from the inside“, 1999 (translation by DeepL)
XAKEP lists the members of KpZ as Tarantino, Delta, MAL, v00d00, 5pider and Mishgan. The hacker nick “v00d00” has been used by at least 3 different hackers over the years, sometimes very active at the same time, which can cause confusion.
“Emergency Issue” CD-ROM produced by KpZ, 1999Above you can see a photo of a CD-ROM that KpZ provided to XAKEP that the XAKEP writers describe “when this CD was brought to our office today, we were shocked. What’s it like, huh?” They go on to give details of this CD entitled “Hackers are bombing NATO” and how it “has tons of information on what to do and how to do it, including explanations of security holes in security systems and a bunch of other documentation”. The CD-ROM essentially contained instructional content for budding Russian hacktivists, “a special training course for a separate unit of a special brigade for information provocation”.
XAKEP interview MAL and Mishgan as part of issue four, MAL describes the group as having started after he received an ICQ message that said that there was a desire to organize “a group to combat underdeveloped admins and shameful sites.” In the same interview Mishgan claims that he is 15 years old, this fits with interviews I have read with other Russian hacker groups from this time.
Illustration from XAKEP Issue 4, “KPZ hacker group – from the inside“, 1999KpZ also seem to have forged some sort of alliance with Romanian hacking and defacement crew Pentaguard, although I can find no evidence of defacements by Pentaguard in opposition to NATO during the Kosovo War.
US Joint Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Project, defacement by Pentaguard – January 25th, 1999Also tagged in some of the KpZ defacements are legion2000, a Russian group that seems to have been more concerned with security advisories, releasing code and working on projects than defacements in 1999, from what I can turn up. There is an interview with Webster, one of the legion2000 members, from 2001 over at xakep that seems to imply some falling out between legion2000 and KpZ.
http://www.legion2000.cc/ – via Internet ArchiveThe few defacements I can find by legion2000 occur in 1998 and are of Russian websites.
kopitan.ru, defacement by legion2000 – December 6th, 1998 pentagon.yu, defacement by xoloth1 of DutchThreat – May 2nd, 1999DutchThreat, a Holland based hacker group, came in on the side of NATO and in support of the Kosovar people.
NATO does not prosecute innocent people
NATO does not raid
NATO does not create the mass-graves in your country
NATO is not out for blood, but out for peace
xoloth1, meestervervalser, defacement of pentagon.yu – May 2nd, 1999
CNN described how DutchThreat became involved in the hacker conflict that accompanied the Kosovo War, “Xoloth1 said he got mad when a “Serbian guy” in a chat room started calling NATO and the U.S. a bunch of criminals and Nazis” He also resented that one of the main Yugoslavian ISPs had set up an anti-NATO Web page with the domain name pentagon.co.yu”. CNN’s Ellen Messmer went on to explain “Dutchthreat’s leader, named Acos, says he thinks most of the Kosovo-inspired hacking going on is not motivated by genuine political concerns, but is simply a way of getting attention. But Acos adds he, too, doesn’t care to hear NATO called fascist.”
I was able to find an old archive of the DutchThreat website, but there was very little about the Kosovo War mentioned on it, other than a reference to an article that included information about the group that they approvingly posted.
Newsmax.com, defaced by Chaos Hackers Crew (CHC) – 28th February, 1999Russian hackers Chaos Hackers Crew were a fairly standard defacement for internet clout group prior to the start of the NATO bombings against the Serbian military, as seen above.
After the NATO military campaign began in March of 1999, CHC switched to strident anti-NATO messaging on compromised websites.
An example of a defacement post March is below.
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, defaced by Chaos Hackers Crew – 6th April, 1999I have seen speculation online that CHC were a Kremlin backed group based in Moscow. I’m not sure I see any evidence of this direct government association though, their choices of targets before the Kosovo War and the profile that they seemed to want to maintain online doesn’t really fit in my opinion.
A group of teenage hackers called Chaos Hackers Crew (CHC) is active in anti-NATO attacks: an interview with a representative of this group has been published in an electronic paper Gazeta.ru (Leibov 1999). The young man turned out to have been apolitical before the crisis in Kosovo. He had very limited knowledge about the reasons NATO was bombing Yugoslavian targets, and the sites the CHC chose for its attacks had nothing to do with the military ones (for example, a Chinese site was mistakenly attacked).
Brian D. Loader, Douglas Thomas, “Cybercrime : law enforcement, security and surveillance in the information age“, 2000
After some search engine chicanery I managed to track down the Gazeta interview with the self-professed members of CHC, the reference to Kulibin below is to the “Russian Archimedes” Ivan Kulibin, a self-taught inventor who lived in Russia in the 1800s.
“Chaos Hackers Crew,” the hackers say, “there are four of us in total. And there are different ages. There’s a third year of university, too.” “The older one is kind of a guru? Did you even have a teacher in the networking life?” “Nope,” Yuri answers, “we’re kind of all equals. Only taught everything myself.” “Kulibin! – I admire, by manuals?” “What?” – The interlocutor is perplexed. “Kulibin,” I explain, “self-taught like that. “Yeah, like that.” “By the way, do you know any foreign hackers by correspondence?” – I change the subject again.
Indeed, hackers are like Freemasons or workers, they must have international solidarity.
“Nope,” they replied, “only from Romania. Well, Romania is also a foreign country. Though, of course, not very far.
Roman Leibov, “Our Hacker Brothers II. The beginning is here”, gazeta.ru, April 15th, 1999 (translated by DeepL)
I think it is safe to say we can put the Kremlin backed hackers theory to rest here, although if you google CHC you will see that it is an opinion that was widely held despite a lack of evidence.
US Department of the Interior, defaced by unknown Chinese hacktivists – 10th of May 1999After the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on the 8th of May in 1999, China Redhack, Hong Kong Danger Duo, China Eagle, Chinese Emergency Hackers’ Group Center and other hacking groups representing Chinese nationalist interests took to the internet to protest what they saw as a deliberate act of violence against the Chinese state by NATO and in particular the US.
Combined News Services, “Hackers Hit U.S. Government Web Sites“, 12th May 1999“We are Chinese hackers who take no care about politics,” said the message signed by “Rocky.” But with three Chinese nationals left dead after the embassy bombing, the hackers were wrathful: “You have owed Chinese people a bloody debt which you must pay for! We will not stop attacking until the war stops!”
Ellen Messner, “Kosovo cyber-war intensifies: Chinese hackers targeting U.S. sites, government says“, CNN, May 12th, 1999
By this time US hacking group Legion of the Underground had already declared a brief “cyber war” on China and Iraq, calling for “the complete destruction of all computer systems” in both countries, so the genie was well out of the bottle to some extent in terms of hacker conflict between the US and China.
Solid Design Inc, defacement by RedHack – April 30th 2001Two years after the Embassy bombing Chinese hackers were still defacing US websites in protest, as the BBC reported on the 5th of May 2001, “hackers promised a cyber-offensive against US sites in observance of Chinese of Labour Day on 1 May and Youth Day on 4 May, and also in remembrance of the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago on 7 May”.
This round of attacks in 2001 resulted in the defacement of, according to the BBC at the time, “more than 660 sites” in the space of a week and the “White House confirmed that for two hours and 15 minutes their website was down”. It is important to note that this particular hacktivist action from Chinese hackers was also motivated by the US spy plane incident in April of 2001 and Bush administration arms sales to Taiwan.
Tactics & Techniques
“NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said hackers in the Yugoslavian capital, Belgrade, attacked the Web site by launching what is known as a “Ping bombardment strategy.” Ping, short for Packet Internet Groper, refers to the practice of sending out a packet of information to a server and waiting for a response, which is a way for users to determine whether a system is up and running on the Internet.”
Dan Verton, “Serbs launch cyberattack on NATO“, FCW, April 4th, 1999
After reading over all of the available documents and analysis of the Kosovo War’s online components I was able to find four primary techniques used by hackers involved.
The first is denial of service, or DoS, this seems to have been primarily used by Eastern European hackers opposed to NATO intervention in Serbia and hackers supportive of China after the Belgrade Embassy bombing.
The BBC explains denial of service (DoS) basics (described here as a “ping storm”) in an article entitled “Kosovo info warfare spreads“, by Chris Nuttall from April 1st 1999.
The article details DoS attacks against NATO that had been ongoing since the 28th of March and had slowed parts of their web infrastructure and caused “erratic service”.
CNN reported in April of 1999 that to counter incoming DoS attacks “the NATO network crew swapped out a Sun SPARC 20 for the more powerful UltraSPARC for faster processing of the Serbian pings.” And that “NATO switched from a 256K bit/sec access line to the European equivalent of a T-1 to keep the pings from eating up bandwidth”.
Next up we have website defacements, screenshots of defacements are peppered throughout this blog so I won’t dwell too long on this aspect beyond noting that it is interesting that these hacks were not accompanied by leaks of data from the servers involved.
Faculty of Physical Chemistry University of Belgrade, defacement by hydra – March 30th 1999I can only ascribe this to either data exfiltration and leaking simply not being a common hacktivist activity at the time, the issue of slow internet connections for transferring data back in 1999 and a lack of file sharing servers to upload to or that the servers hacked did not include data that was worth leaking. I’m personally inclined towards the first and second explanations.
Richard Clark is not in the military, but when he heard news reports
earlier this month that NATO’s Web site had been attacked by Belgrade hackers, he wanted to do his part to help the allies. So he turned to his keyboard.Using software available on the Internet, the California resident sent
an “e-mail bomb” to http://www.gov.yu, the Yugoslav government’s main Web
site. On April 3, a few days and 500,000 e-mails into the siege, the
site went down, Clark said.Clark does not claim full responsibility for the cyber-sabotage; he
assumes others may have had similar ideas. But he is confident he
“played a part.”He is just one of untold numbers of civilians on both sides of the
conflict who have gone to battle from their desktops, raising new
questions about the role of civilians during times of war.Patrick Riley, “E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight”, FOX News, April 15th, 1999
The third technique we can see in use is e-mail bombing or spamming, sending thousands upon thousands of emails which are intended to annoy or overwhelm recipients and, in 1999 at least, potentially prevent the mail server itself from functioning.
From the Washington Post on April 1st, 1999, article entitled “Hackers irritate NATO”. The article describes how e-mail bombing campaigns by Serbia aligned hackers have impacted NATO’s online infrastructure. One such attack “effectively blocked mail service in and out of the NATO computer system”.
“That means that rogue computer users are sending a lot of messages and computer commands into NATO’s computers, said Carlo Tomad, a NATO network specialist in Brussels. One computer, he said “has sent about 2,500 messages in one hour,” a method of harassment known as “spamming.” That attack effectively blocked mail service in and out of the NATO computer system, Tomad said.”
“It’s the infowar equivalent of ringing someone’s doorbell and running away, but many thousands of times”, concludes the article.
Happy99 Virus in actionHackers enraged by the Chinese Embassy bombing latched on to this technique soon after online protests over the incident began. In May of 1999 CNN reported that “Sandy Spark, a manager at DOE’s Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC), warned that a Chinese tidal wave of e-mail with unresolvable IP addresses is being sent to U.S. government servers in an attempt to overload them”. The solution pitched was the rather inelegant, and potentially useless, advice to “apply anti-spam measures to block all e-mail from China’s .cn domain if necessary”.
Ellen Messmer writes for CNN (Serb supporters sock it to NATO, U.S. Web sites) that “NATO’s mail servers are taking a beating, getting hit with more than 10,000 e-mails per day – many infected with dangerous computer viruses”. So lastly we have what the head of NATO’s Integrated Data Service Chris Scheurweghs described as “macro viruses”.
According to Scheurweghs, hackers also attacked NATO’s e-mail systems with the Happy 1999 macro virus, which he said was similar in function but far less devastating than the Melissa virus that wreaked havoc in the United States last week (see story).
Dan Verton, “Serbs launch cyberattack on NATO“, FCW, April 4th, 1999
Happy99 is a very odd choice for a virus to attach to an e-mail for malicious purposes as, according the the Virus Encyclopedia, “although Happy99 is wild, it has no destructive payload and is, as its author describes, a ”sympathetic hitchhiker who uses your internet connection to travel, and thank you for the trip with a small animation””.
Final thoughts
What is the take away from all of this, and was it really the first international hacktivist cyberwar?
The first question is easier to answer. Hacktivism has traditionally been reactive, you have a pool of active hackers organised into groups or loose affiliations who are ready to act on what they perceive to be provocations.
Most of the hacking groups or alliances involved in the Kosovo conflict were already active in the defacement scene or at the very least had infrastructure or output of some kind, they were already visibly doing things online. NATO’s bombing campaign against the Yugoslav government provided the catalyst for involvement, either for or against the intervention.
The interesting exception to this are the hackers aligned with China, I couldn’t find defacements archived from groups like ChinaEagle or RedHackers from before the Embassy incident, although I fully admit here that my knowledge of, and visibility into, the Chinese hacking scene of 1999 is a little dismal.
A previous Chinese hacking group, the Green Army, had been involved in a previous international hacktivist action though, attacks on Indonesian websites in 1998 after “reports of looting, violence and rape committed against ethnic Chinese during riots in May [of 1998]”, as detailed by the BBC at the time. Much of the analysis I have read has pointed to these riots in Indonesia as a galvanising event that helped unite the Chinese hacking community.
Indonesian websites have also come under attack from political hackers. The home page of a site at http://www.bkkbn.go.id has been replaced with a message saying “Warning from Chinese.”
“This page is hacked for your national day. Please keep this page for 48 hours and punish the murderers in May immediately,” says the hacker, including a list of links to sites about the violence.
Chris Nuttall, “Chinese protesters attack Indonesia through Net“, BBC News, August 19th, 1998
The groups representing China that became involved in the Kosovo War can be seen as offshoots of this original organized backlash against Indonesia.
The Indonesian riots also give birth to what would become the “Red Hacker Alliance”, one of the most significant cyber-groups in the internet’s short history. The political nature of this patriotic campaign led to the creation of something entirely new, and would be the first time the term “red hacker” (红客 hongke) would be used. The attacks in the country functioned as the facilitator that brought together individuals who normally operated independently under the guise of nationalism, establishing not only a group but also the notion of red
hackers which still exists today.William Howlett IV, “The Rise of China’s Hacking Culture: Defining Chinese Hackers“, June 2016
When an American spy plane had a collision with a Chinese jet in April of 2001, killing a Chinese pilot, the online warfare between American and Chinese hackers reignited over this “Hainan Island incident” and the resulting website defacements showed that the Kosovo War was still very much on the mind of hackers in China.
“China is no longer a country like Yugoslavia, we have the best army”, defacement by DCBOY in 2001, from FBI FOIA documents relating to Honker UnionIn looking through old gazeta.ru articles relating to hacking from around this time I found a link to an article that is preserved on the Wayback Machine entitled “Hackers of U.S. servers face criminal liability” (as translated by DeepL), the article is written by Dmitry Chepchugov, head of the Department for Combating Computer Crimes of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The article is essentially an exhortation to Russian hackers to not attack NATO or the U.S. accompanied by some strident threats of criminal liability.
To date, we have not received any statements from official U.S. bodies regarding “attacks” on servers from Russian territory or damage related to protests against NATO actions in Yugoslavia. If such information is received, it will undoubtedly be verified in full, with the perpetrators identified and brought to justice as prescribed by law.
I would like to take this opportunity to address the people who know the intricacies of network technology. No matter how much your civic consciousness is outraged by NATO’s actions in Yugoslavia, no matter how much you want to express your own feelings about these events – don’t go down this road, don’t become the aggressor yourself. You are breaking the law, you are making yourself the perpetrator of an arbitrary massacre. Is this not what your mind rebels against?
Dmitry Chepchugov, “Hackers of U.S. servers face criminal liability”, March 28th, 1999 (translated by DeepL)
I have been unable to work out how real these threats by the Russian authorities are and whether any Russian hackers were ever charged or convicted of hacking offences, but it certainly forms an interesting bookend for current attitudes within the country towards hackers who attack targets externally.
“Electronic infiltration is burgeoning war zone of hackers worldwide”, Patti Hartigan, April 1999I see certain parallels between the hacker elements of the Kosovo War and armed conflicts that have taken place since that included a ‘cyberwar’ facet. The Syrian Electronic Army, KILLNet, the CyberBerkut, we can see echoes of the Black Hand here, hacktivists either fully backed by, or at the very least actively encouraged, by the authoritarian regimes that they support.
Was the Kosovo War the first international hacktivist cyberwar?
The New York Times claims it was the conflict inspired by the American spy-plane incident and China in 2001.
It was a Big Hack Attack, a harbinger of World Wide Web War I, with ”zombies” throwing ”worms,” Chinese patriots invoking the ultimate sacrifice and American teenagers giving electronic Bronx cheers.
After last month’s collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese jet, hackers in the United States and China began defacing Web sites on both sides of the Pacific. Then Chinese hackers, led by a group called the Honkers Union, declared war.
Criag S. Smith, “May 6-12; The First World Hacker War”, New York Times, May 13th, 2001
I for one am sceptical, I’m of the opinion that the Kosovo War is a better candidate for that title, but I’m also under no illusions that there aren’t preceding conflicts that are also potential contenders for this dubious award.
There were organised hacking attacks carried out by hackers from one country against online infrastructure from another country before the Kosovo War but in those earlier examples, Chinese hackers attacking Indonesian websites for instance, I couldn’t find any evidence of retaliation. The Kosovo War wound up involving a back and forth of hack attacks between hackers from different nations in a way that I don’t think the world had seen before.
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“Yugoslav hackers hit NATO Web site” – The Philadelphia Inquirer, Thursday April 1st, 1999On April 3rd 1999 Ashley Dunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, described how the Kosovo War was “turning cyberspace into an ethereal war zone where the battle for the hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings, and hacking attacks.”
The Kosovo War lasted from February 1998 through to June 1999. The war was fought between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (at this time, Serbia and Montenegro), which controlled Kosovo before the war, and the Kosovo Albanian rebel group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who were fighting for regional autonomy. The conflict ended in June of 1999, after NATO intervention through air strikes in March 1999 against Yugoslav infrastructure which resulted in Yugoslav forces eventually withdrawing from Kosovo.
In parallel with the brutal physical conflict was an online battle between hackers from Russia, the US, China, Brazil, Netherlands and of course parts of the former Yugoslavia, among others, forming a truly international ‘cyberwar’. The aftermath of this ‘cyberwar’ went on to shape aspects of international hacker relations and the development of hacktivism and the organisation of hacktivist groups both regionally and internationally, as well as their tactics, for years after.
an ethereal war zone where the battle for the hearts and minds is being waged through the use of electronic images, online discussion group postings, and hacking attacks
Ashley Dunn, writing in the Los Angeles Times, April 3rd 1999
Before I get into the history of this online conflict I want to make sure to clarify that the actual warfare, in particular the brutal war crimes committed by Serbian forces against the Kosovar people, is the most important part of the story of the Kosovo War. The online elements are what I am covering here specifically, because this is the history of hacking.
In researching for this blog I have drawn on contemporaneous newspaper reports from 1998 and 1999, archives of website defacements from that time, Internet Archive website archives of various news sites, government and government agency reports and finally academic papers that touch on cyber elements of the Balkan conflicts.
When I found articles in a newspaper archive about hackers and the Kosovo War I started trying to search for more information and came up with shockingly few detailed accounts of something that was front page news back in 1999. That’s why I decided to write this blog.
I have purposefully avoided discussing nation state actors (military or intel orgs) or NATO hackers in this blog, as I feel that would be an entirely separate topic deserving of it’s own blog. Rest assured though that there was coverage from the time of confirmed or suspected cyber-attacks carried out by US government agencies and the military as well as NATO itself.
US Naval Medical Information Management Center, defacement by CHC – 27th March, 1999Let’s break down this history as a quick list of dates and notable events and then dig into the details.
28th February 1998Kosovo War begins24th March 1999NATO strikes against Serbian military28th March 1999Serbian hackers attack US military systems30th March 1999hydra defaces University of Belgrade1st April 1999Reports NATO servers are attacked29th April 1999Team Spl0it defaces US FAA website8th May 1999NATO bombs Chinese Embassy in Belgrade12th May 1999Chinese hacktivists take down White House site12th May 1999Chinese hacktivists deface US gov sites11th June 1999Kosovo War endsKosovo War & cyber elements timelineThat timeline is of course by no means exhaustive, we are going to dig into the various hacking groups involved, tactics used by those hacktivists and the hacking techniques used in the furtherance of the hacker’s goals.
Hacktivists Involved
Mirjana Drakulic and Ratimir Drakulic presented a paper entitled “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace” at the British and Irish Law Education Technology Association (BILETA) conference at the College of Ripon & York St. John, York, England, in March of 1999.
This paper discusses the history and nature of the primary Serbian and Kosovar hacking groups that were involved in the Kosovo War online.
WWW.HR – Croatian Homepage, defacement by Black Hand – June 20th, 1999First we have the Black Hand, representing the Serbian nationalist side, working to advance Serbian interests in maintaining control of Kosovo. Academics Mirjana and Ratimar Drakulic describe the Black Hand as a “group of hackers [that] wanted to inherit such a reputation regarding themselves as patriots and liberators”. They clarify that the hackers who called themselves the Black Hand were “alluding to the namesake organization which overthrew the Dynasty in Serbia in the first years of the 20th century”, explicitly linking their struggle in the late 1990s to the secret military society that engaged in violent conspiracies to further the cause of a united Serbia in the early 1900s.
An illustration of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by the original Black Hand in June of 1914“By the end of the October 1998 it raided the site of the Croatian news agency “Vjesnik” and left there a message: “The Black Hand wants to change the false image which orbits the planet that the Serbs are villains.” Further they stated that they do not mean war and that they mean no evil. “Vjesnik” immediately reported that the members of the “Black Hand” were discovered and where and how they approached the site.”
Mirjana Drakulic, Ph.D., Ratimir Drakulic, M.S., “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace“, March 30th, 1999
Mijana and Ratimar discuss various theories about the Black Hand in their paper “Balkan Hackers War in Cyberspace“, the suspected origin and makeup or the group and state that some people “are close to the view that this group exists but is followed by numerous satellites of less skilled imitators determined to get attention by the public or acquire the
“pass” to join the group”.The Croatian news agency Vjesnik that was hacked by the Black Hand claimed, based on investigation by their journalists, that the hack and defacement of their site was done “from the computers of two faculties they pointed to Serbian academic network claiming that hackers still travel and act from within it”, although those computers themselves could have been simply a jump box used by the Black Hand.
As well as the Black Hand we also have other players on the Serbian side, the Beograd Hackers group that carried out some defacements and the Serbian Angels. Serbian Angels, based on what little I have managed to find out about them, functioned as an offensive hacking group but also maintained a website (long since lost) that carried news about events relating to the war in Serbia, maintained various news e-mail lists and created for distribution physical CD archives of news, photos and videos from the Serbian side of the conflict after the NATO campaign ended.
“Stop Nato2”, defacement by Kosova Hackers Group – August 4th, 1999On the Kosovo side there was, as reported by Patrick Riley in his FOX article from April 15th 1999 “E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight“, “a coalition of European and Albanian hackers calling themselves the Kosovo Hackers Group has replaced at least five sites with black and red “Free Kosovo” banners”.
As well as hackers that purported to be from the former Yugoslavia there were other groups involved in this “cyberwar” that were motivated by ideological or nationalist impulses to throw their lot in with either the Serbian or Kosovar people, or to push for peace treaties or oppose NATO actions generally. It is important to note that most, if not all, of these hacking groups from outside the former Yugoslavia became especially active in the online conflict after the start of the NATO military campaign in March of 1999.
US Federal Aviation Authority, defacement by Team Spl0it – April 29th, 1999In the United States there was Team Spl0it (or Team Sploit) who opposed the bombing of Serbian infrastructure by NATO and expressed the opinion that “without the support of the people in Serbia NATO is not gonna get very far”. As CNN described it at the time, “American hackers are on a political binge, breaking into Web sites to leave what amounts to anti-war graffiti”.
Watching the news today, I found out that Serbia has been bombed for the 4th week in row. And I wondered what has been accomplished after these 4 weeks of air strikes. Who has gained from it, and who has lost ? Many targets inside Serbia have been hit, many civilians were killed. But Milosevich, the Serbian President doesn’t give a damn about his people. He couldn’t care less if they are dead or alive. What is the good of actions when the president doesn’t care about the targets that have been hit ?
f0bic, nostalgic, cellbl0ck, jay, text from defacement of US FAA website, April 29th, 1999
Also on the US side, although primarily memorialised only in throwaway comments in newspaper articles from the time, were “Hackers of the West Coast”. As described by Patti Hartigan, writing in the Boston Globe on April 4th, 1999, “Hackers on the West Coast are trying to crack the Serbian government site, although the server is said to be extremely secure and based in London”. I can find no evidence that Hackers on the West Coast succeeded in their goal. You can see the whole article below.
The pro-Serbia Russian Hackers Union was a loose affiliation of Russian hacking groups that, for the most part, already seem to have been present and active in the defacement scene before NATO started bombing Serbian infrastructure, prompting a change in the themes of website defacements carried out.
KpZ in particular wracked up some notable defacements but seemed to be very difficult to track down further information on until I dug into Russian hacker magazine XAKEP. Websites defaced by KpZ ran the gamut from a juicy .mil hosted U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station all the way through to the somewhat more random, and rather lacklustre, “airbed.com”. A hacker known as Mishgan seems to be one of their primary defacers around this time, KpZ appears to have been made up of primarily Russian hackers but also at least one member who identifies themselves as Romanian.
Russian XAKEP (“Hacker”) magazine issue four had an article about KpZ that offers some insight into the group. I’ve written about XAKEP before, I covered issue one in some detail.
The group in question was formed at the end of August 1998. Just when thousands of teenagers, having watched the movie “Hackers” and read articles about hackers, rushed to the Internet, thinking they were professional hackers. And the initial idea of the group was to show children that they are wrong, and the World Wide Web is not a place for such entertainment and for people with delusions of grandeur.
XAKEP Issue 4, “KPZ hacker group – from the inside“, 1999 (translation by DeepL)
XAKEP lists the members of KpZ as Tarantino, Delta, MAL, v00d00, 5pider and Mishgan. The hacker nick “v00d00” has been used by at least 3 different hackers over the years, sometimes very active at the same time, which can cause confusion.
“Emergency Issue” CD-ROM produced by KpZ, 1999Above you can see a photo of a CD-ROM that KpZ provided to XAKEP that the XAKEP writers describe “when this CD was brought to our office today, we were shocked. What’s it like, huh?” They go on to give details of this CD entitled “Hackers are bombing NATO” and how it “has tons of information on what to do and how to do it, including explanations of security holes in security systems and a bunch of other documentation”. The CD-ROM essentially contained instructional content for budding Russian hacktivists, “a special training course for a separate unit of a special brigade for information provocation”.
XAKEP interview MAL and Mishgan as part of issue four, MAL describes the group as having started after he received an ICQ message that said that there was a desire to organize “a group to combat underdeveloped admins and shameful sites.” In the same interview Mishgan claims that he is 15 years old, this fits with interviews I have read with other Russian hacker groups from this time.
Illustration from XAKEP Issue 4, “KPZ hacker group – from the inside“, 1999KpZ also seem to have forged some sort of alliance with Romanian hacking and defacement crew Pentaguard, although I can find no evidence of defacements by Pentaguard in opposition to NATO during the Kosovo War.
US Joint Tactical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Project, defacement by Pentaguard – January 25th, 1999Also tagged in some of the KpZ defacements are legion2000, a Russian group that seems to have been more concerned with security advisories, releasing code and working on projects than defacements in 1999, from what I can turn up. There is an interview with Webster, one of the legion2000 members, from 2001 over at xakep that seems to imply some falling out between legion2000 and KpZ.
http://www.legion2000.cc/ – via Internet ArchiveThe few defacements I can find by legion2000 occur in 1998 and are of Russian websites.
kopitan.ru, defacement by legion2000 – December 6th, 1998 pentagon.yu, defacement by xoloth1 of DutchThreat – May 2nd, 1999DutchThreat, a Holland based hacker group, came in on the side of NATO and in support of the Kosovar people.
NATO does not prosecute innocent people
NATO does not raid
NATO does not create the mass-graves in your country
NATO is not out for blood, but out for peace
xoloth1, meestervervalser, defacement of pentagon.yu – May 2nd, 1999
CNN described how DutchThreat became involved in the hacker conflict that accompanied the Kosovo War, “Xoloth1 said he got mad when a “Serbian guy” in a chat room started calling NATO and the U.S. a bunch of criminals and Nazis” He also resented that one of the main Yugoslavian ISPs had set up an anti-NATO Web page with the domain name pentagon.co.yu”. CNN’s Ellen Messmer went on to explain “Dutchthreat’s leader, named Acos, says he thinks most of the Kosovo-inspired hacking going on is not motivated by genuine political concerns, but is simply a way of getting attention. But Acos adds he, too, doesn’t care to hear NATO called fascist.”
I was able to find an old archive of the DutchThreat website, but there was very little about the Kosovo War mentioned on it, other than a reference to an article that included information about the group that they approvingly posted.
Newsmax.com, defaced by Chaos Hackers Crew (CHC) – 28th February, 1999Russian hackers Chaos Hackers Crew were a fairly standard defacement for internet clout group prior to the start of the NATO bombings against the Serbian military, as seen above.
After the NATO military campaign began in March of 1999, CHC switched to strident anti-NATO messaging on compromised websites.
An example of a defacement post March is below.
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, defaced by Chaos Hackers Crew – 6th April, 1999I have seen speculation online that CHC were a Kremlin backed group based in Moscow. I’m not sure I see any evidence of this direct government association though, their choices of targets before the Kosovo War and the profile that they seemed to want to maintain online doesn’t really fit in my opinion.
A group of teenage hackers called Chaos Hackers Crew (CHC) is active in anti-NATO attacks: an interview with a representative of this group has been published in an electronic paper Gazeta.ru (Leibov 1999). The young man turned out to have been apolitical before the crisis in Kosovo. He had very limited knowledge about the reasons NATO was bombing Yugoslavian targets, and the sites the CHC chose for its attacks had nothing to do with the military ones (for example, a Chinese site was mistakenly attacked).
Brian D. Loader, Douglas Thomas, “Cybercrime : law enforcement, security and surveillance in the information age“, 2000
After some search engine chicanery I managed to track down the Gazeta interview with the self-professed members of CHC, the reference to Kulibin below is to the “Russian Archimedes” Ivan Kulibin, a self-taught inventor who lived in Russia in the 1800s.
“Chaos Hackers Crew,” the hackers say, “there are four of us in total. And there are different ages. There’s a third year of university, too.” “The older one is kind of a guru? Did you even have a teacher in the networking life?” “Nope,” Yuri answers, “we’re kind of all equals. Only taught everything myself.” “Kulibin! – I admire, by manuals?” “What?” – The interlocutor is perplexed. “Kulibin,” I explain, “self-taught like that. “Yeah, like that.” “By the way, do you know any foreign hackers by correspondence?” – I change the subject again.
Indeed, hackers are like Freemasons or workers, they must have international solidarity.
“Nope,” they replied, “only from Romania. Well, Romania is also a foreign country. Though, of course, not very far.
Roman Leibov, “Our Hacker Brothers II. The beginning is here”, gazeta.ru, April 15th, 1999 (translated by DeepL)
I think it is safe to say we can put the Kremlin backed hackers theory to rest here, although if you google CHC you will see that it is an opinion that was widely held despite a lack of evidence.
US Department of the Interior, defaced by unknown Chinese hacktivists – 10th of May 1999After the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade on the 8th of May in 1999, China Redhack, Hong Kong Danger Duo, China Eagle, Chinese Emergency Hackers’ Group Center and other hacking groups representing Chinese nationalist interests took to the internet to protest what they saw as a deliberate act of violence against the Chinese state by NATO and in particular the US.
Combined News Services, “Hackers Hit U.S. Government Web Sites“, 12th May 1999“We are Chinese hackers who take no care about politics,” said the message signed by “Rocky.” But with three Chinese nationals left dead after the embassy bombing, the hackers were wrathful: “You have owed Chinese people a bloody debt which you must pay for! We will not stop attacking until the war stops!”
Ellen Messner, “Kosovo cyber-war intensifies: Chinese hackers targeting U.S. sites, government says“, CNN, May 12th, 1999
By this time US hacking group Legion of the Underground had already declared a brief “cyber war” on China and Iraq, calling for “the complete destruction of all computer systems” in both countries, so the genie was well out of the bottle to some extent in terms of hacker conflict between the US and China.
Solid Design Inc, defacement by RedHack – April 30th 2001Two years after the Embassy bombing Chinese hackers were still defacing US websites in protest, as the BBC reported on the 5th of May 2001, “hackers promised a cyber-offensive against US sites in observance of Chinese of Labour Day on 1 May and Youth Day on 4 May, and also in remembrance of the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade two years ago on 7 May”.
This round of attacks in 2001 resulted in the defacement of, according to the BBC at the time, “more than 660 sites” in the space of a week and the “White House confirmed that for two hours and 15 minutes their website was down”. It is important to note that this particular hacktivist action from Chinese hackers was also motivated by the US spy plane incident in April of 2001 and Bush administration arms sales to Taiwan.
Tactics & Techniques
“NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said hackers in the Yugoslavian capital, Belgrade, attacked the Web site by launching what is known as a “Ping bombardment strategy.” Ping, short for Packet Internet Groper, refers to the practice of sending out a packet of information to a server and waiting for a response, which is a way for users to determine whether a system is up and running on the Internet.”
Dan Verton, “Serbs launch cyberattack on NATO“, FCW, April 4th, 1999
After reading over all of the available documents and analysis of the Kosovo War’s online components I was able to find four primary techniques used by hackers involved.
The first is denial of service, or DoS, this seems to have been primarily used by Eastern European hackers opposed to NATO intervention in Serbia and hackers supportive of China after the Belgrade Embassy bombing.
The BBC explains denial of service (DoS) basics (described here as a “ping storm”) in an article entitled “Kosovo info warfare spreads“, by Chris Nuttall from April 1st 1999.
The article details DoS attacks against NATO that had been ongoing since the 28th of March and had slowed parts of their web infrastructure and caused “erratic service”.
CNN reported in April of 1999 that to counter incoming DoS attacks “the NATO network crew swapped out a Sun SPARC 20 for the more powerful UltraSPARC for faster processing of the Serbian pings.” And that “NATO switched from a 256K bit/sec access line to the European equivalent of a T-1 to keep the pings from eating up bandwidth”.
Next up we have website defacements, screenshots of defacements are peppered throughout this blog so I won’t dwell too long on this aspect beyond noting that it is interesting that these hacks were not accompanied by leaks of data from the servers involved.
Faculty of Physical Chemistry University of Belgrade, defacement by hydra – March 30th 1999I can only ascribe this to either data exfiltration and leaking simply not being a common hacktivist activity at the time, the issue of slow internet connections for transferring data back in 1999 and a lack of file sharing servers to upload to or that the servers hacked did not include data that was worth leaking. I’m personally inclined towards the first and second explanations.
Richard Clark is not in the military, but when he heard news reports
earlier this month that NATO’s Web site had been attacked by Belgrade hackers, he wanted to do his part to help the allies. So he turned to his keyboard.Using software available on the Internet, the California resident sent
an “e-mail bomb” to http://www.gov.yu, the Yugoslav government’s main Web
site. On April 3, a few days and 500,000 e-mails into the siege, the
site went down, Clark said.Clark does not claim full responsibility for the cyber-sabotage; he
assumes others may have had similar ideas. But he is confident he
“played a part.”He is just one of untold numbers of civilians on both sides of the
conflict who have gone to battle from their desktops, raising new
questions about the role of civilians during times of war.Patrick Riley, “E-Strikes and Cyber-Sabotage: Civilian Hackers Go Online to Fight”, FOX News, April 15th, 1999
The third technique we can see in use is e-mail bombing or spamming, sending thousands upon thousands of emails which are intended to annoy or overwhelm recipients and, in 1999 at least, potentially prevent the mail server itself from functioning.
From the Washington Post on April 1st, 1999, article entitled “Hackers irritate NATO”. The article describes how e-mail bombing campaigns by Serbia aligned hackers have impacted NATO’s online infrastructure. One such attack “effectively blocked mail service in and out of the NATO computer system”.
“That means that rogue computer users are sending a lot of messages and computer commands into NATO’s computers, said Carlo Tomad, a NATO network specialist in Brussels. One computer, he said “has sent about 2,500 messages in one hour,” a method of harassment known as “spamming.” That attack effectively blocked mail service in and out of the NATO computer system, Tomad said.”
“It’s the infowar equivalent of ringing someone’s doorbell and running away, but many thousands of times”, concludes the article.
Happy99 Virus in actionHackers enraged by the Chinese Embassy bombing latched on to this technique soon after online protests over the incident began. In May of 1999 CNN reported that “Sandy Spark, a manager at DOE’s Computer Incident Advisory Capability (CIAC), warned that a Chinese tidal wave of e-mail with unresolvable IP addresses is being sent to U.S. government servers in an attempt to overload them”. The solution pitched was the rather inelegant, and potentially useless, advice to “apply anti-spam measures to block all e-mail from China’s .cn domain if necessary”.
Ellen Messmer writes for CNN (Serb supporters sock it to NATO, U.S. Web sites) that “NATO’s mail servers are taking a beating, getting hit with more than 10,000 e-mails per day – many infected with dangerous computer viruses”. So lastly we have what the head of NATO’s Integrated Data Service Chris Scheurweghs described as “macro viruses”.
According to Scheurweghs, hackers also attacked NATO’s e-mail systems with the Happy 1999 macro virus, which he said was similar in function but far less devastating than the Melissa virus that wreaked havoc in the United States last week (see story).
Dan Verton, “Serbs launch cyberattack on NATO“, FCW, April 4th, 1999
Happy99 is a very odd choice for a virus to attach to an e-mail for malicious purposes as, according the the Virus Encyclopedia, “although Happy99 is wild, it has no destructive payload and is, as its author describes, a ”sympathetic hitchhiker who uses your internet connection to travel, and thank you for the trip with a small animation””.
Final thoughts
What is the take away from all of this, and was it really the first international hacktivist cyberwar?
The first question is easier to answer. Hacktivism has traditionally been reactive, you have a pool of active hackers organised into groups or loose affiliations who are ready to act on what they perceive to be provocations.
Most of the hacking groups or alliances involved in the Kosovo conflict were already active in the defacement scene or at the very least had infrastructure or output of some kind, they were already visibly doing things online. NATO’s bombing campaign against the Yugoslav government provided the catalyst for involvement, either for or against the intervention.
The interesting exception to this are the hackers aligned with China, I couldn’t find defacements archived from groups like ChinaEagle or RedHackers from before the Embassy incident, although I fully admit here that my knowledge of, and visibility into, the Chinese hacking scene of 1999 is a little dismal.
A previous Chinese hacking group, the Green Army, had been involved in a previous international hacktivist action though, attacks on Indonesian websites in 1998 after “reports of looting, violence and rape committed against ethnic Chinese during riots in May [of 1998]”, as detailed by the BBC at the time. Much of the analysis I have read has pointed to these riots in Indonesia as a galvanising event that helped unite the Chinese hacking community.
Indonesian websites have also come under attack from political hackers. The home page of a site at http://www.bkkbn.go.id has been replaced with a message saying “Warning from Chinese.”
“This page is hacked for your national day. Please keep this page for 48 hours and punish the murderers in May immediately,” says the hacker, including a list of links to sites about the violence.
Chris Nuttall, “Chinese protesters attack Indonesia through Net“, BBC News, August 19th, 1998
The groups representing China that became involved in the Kosovo War can be seen as offshoots of this original organized backlash against Indonesia.
The Indonesian riots also give birth to what would become the “Red Hacker Alliance”, one of the most significant cyber-groups in the internet’s short history. The political nature of this patriotic campaign led to the creation of something entirely new, and would be the first time the term “red hacker” (红客 hongke) would be used. The attacks in the country functioned as the facilitator that brought together individuals who normally operated independently under the guise of nationalism, establishing not only a group but also the notion of red
hackers which still exists today.William Howlett IV, “The Rise of China’s Hacking Culture: Defining Chinese Hackers“, June 2016
When an American spy plane had a collision with a Chinese jet in April of 2001, killing a Chinese pilot, the online warfare between American and Chinese hackers reignited over this “Hainan Island incident” and the resulting website defacements showed that the Kosovo War was still very much on the mind of hackers in China.
“China is no longer a country like Yugoslavia, we have the best army”, defacement by DCBOY in 2001, from FBI FOIA documents relating to Honker UnionIn looking through old gazeta.ru articles relating to hacking from around this time I found a link to an article that is preserved on the Wayback Machine entitled “Hackers of U.S. servers face criminal liability” (as translated by DeepL), the article is written by Dmitry Chepchugov, head of the Department for Combating Computer Crimes of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The article is essentially an exhortation to Russian hackers to not attack NATO or the U.S. accompanied by some strident threats of criminal liability.
To date, we have not received any statements from official U.S. bodies regarding “attacks” on servers from Russian territory or damage related to protests against NATO actions in Yugoslavia. If such information is received, it will undoubtedly be verified in full, with the perpetrators identified and brought to justice as prescribed by law.
I would like to take this opportunity to address the people who know the intricacies of network technology. No matter how much your civic consciousness is outraged by NATO’s actions in Yugoslavia, no matter how much you want to express your own feelings about these events – don’t go down this road, don’t become the aggressor yourself. You are breaking the law, you are making yourself the perpetrator of an arbitrary massacre. Is this not what your mind rebels against?
Dmitry Chepchugov, “Hackers of U.S. servers face criminal liability”, March 28th, 1999 (translated by DeepL)
I have been unable to work out how real these threats by the Russian authorities are and whether any Russian hackers were ever charged or convicted of hacking offences, but it certainly forms an interesting bookend for current attitudes within the country towards hackers who attack targets externally.
“Electronic infiltration is burgeoning war zone of hackers worldwide”, Patti Hartigan, April 1999I see certain parallels between the hacker elements of the Kosovo War and armed conflicts that have taken place since that included a ‘cyberwar’ facet. The Syrian Electronic Army, KILLNet, the CyberBerkut, we can see echoes of the Black Hand here, hacktivists either fully backed by, or at the very least actively encouraged, by the authoritarian regimes that they support.
Was the Kosovo War the first international hacktivist cyberwar?
The New York Times claims it was the conflict inspired by the American spy-plane incident and China in 2001.
It was a Big Hack Attack, a harbinger of World Wide Web War I, with ”zombies” throwing ”worms,” Chinese patriots invoking the ultimate sacrifice and American teenagers giving electronic Bronx cheers.
After last month’s collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese jet, hackers in the United States and China began defacing Web sites on both sides of the Pacific. Then Chinese hackers, led by a group called the Honkers Union, declared war.
Criag S. Smith, “May 6-12; The First World Hacker War”, New York Times, May 13th, 2001
I for one am sceptical, I’m of the opinion that the Kosovo War is a better candidate for that title, but I’m also under no illusions that there aren’t preceding conflicts that are also potential contenders for this dubious award.
There were organised hacking attacks carried out by hackers from one country against online infrastructure from another country before the Kosovo War but in those earlier examples, Chinese hackers attacking Indonesian websites for instance, I couldn’t find any evidence of retaliation. The Kosovo War wound up involving a back and forth of hack attacks between hackers from different nations in a way that I don’t think the world had seen before.
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CW: Disturbing fantasy art
The tooth fairy needs a million tonnes of enamel to build the portal for the dread nameless ones to enter this earthly realm.
Just a few more baby teeth. So close now. -
CW: Disturbing fantasy art
The tooth fairy needs a million tonnes of enamel to build the portal for the dread nameless ones to enter this earthly realm.
Just a few more baby teeth. So close now. -
CW: Disturbing fantasy art
The tooth fairy needs a million tonnes of enamel to build the portal for the dread nameless ones to enter this earthly realm.
Just a few more baby teeth. So close now. -
CW: Disturbing fantasy art
The tooth fairy needs a million tonnes of enamel to build the portal for the dread nameless ones to enter this earthly realm.
Just a few more baby teeth. So close now. -
CW: Disturbing fantasy art
The tooth fairy needs a million tonnes of enamel to build the portal for the dread nameless ones to enter this earthly realm.
Just a few more baby teeth. So close now.