Terrifying Effigies posted:

Someone should reply back with photos of 1959 Castro and 2019 Castro.

Acebuckeye13 posted:

He's trying to threaten Maduro over Twitter, because that's the exciting reality we live in.

mlmp08 posted:

https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1099726515292508162?s=21

This fuckin’ guy

Fallom posted:

https://twitter.com/sofarcadia/status/1099766294809845761

lmfao the Russian trolls don't have the background to deal with that one, I guess

Chichevache posted:

It sounds like we should invade Russia.

Bored As gently caress posted:

The idea of just getting some Chinese made carfentanil and just air dropping it over Russia seems better and better.


Though I'm sure the Russian govt and mob (same difference in many cases) will want a cut.

BigDave posted:

I'm legit surprised no one has used carfentanil as a bioweapon yet. Pour half a kilo into a HVAC system, you could take out a whole building.

C.M. Kruger posted:

Should have tweeted it at Putin.

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

Which is by all rights a clear violation of their terms of service, but as usual rules don't apply to the powerful.

BigDave posted:

I'm legit surprised no one has used carfentanil as a bioweapon yet. Pour half a kilo into a HVAC system, you could take out a whole building.

M_Gargantua posted:

Wouldn’t that quantity of carfentynl be just as difficult to produce as a real nerve agent? If it’s something you can make in a shed I’d expect more people to be making it rather than importing heroin.

Milo and POTUS posted:

There is also no way in hell Jack doesn't vote republican so he'll protect his own


This has been a legit fear of mine for years now. And that much would kill way more than a building's worth with the right dispersal. I also think nobody takes the threat seriously. We do not need a major terror attack in general and we god drat sure don't need one with this moron in office.

M_Gargantua posted:

Wouldn’t that quantity of carfentynl be just as difficult to produce as a real nerve agent? If it’s something you can make in a shed I’d expect more people to be making it rather than importing heroin.

Eugene V. Dubstep posted:

Is this a joke about the 2002 Moscow theater hostage situation?

M_Gargantua posted:

Wouldn’t that quantity of carfentynl be just as difficult to produce as a real nerve agent? If it’s something you can make in a shed I’d expect more people to be making it rather than importing heroin.

Eugene V. Dubstep posted:

Is this a joke about the 2002 Moscow theater hostage situation?

Don Dongington posted:

Apparently it's comparably easier to make than fentanyl and heroin, and chinese labs are cranking the poo poo out like crazy, hence the worry that a terrorist group might be able to procure a sizable quantity via a dark web source and manage to get it aerosol in a public space.

The LD50 isn't actually that much worse than Fentanyl, but the opioid potency is something like 100x and it's still been likened to a nerve agent in terms of toxicity.

Nostalgia4Butts posted:

pantslesswithwolves posted:

Ooh! I’ll take “Reasons Why You Should Never Voluntarily Dismantle Your Nuclear Program” for $800, please!

Reign Of Pain posted:

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1099832970997833730

Reign Of Pain posted:

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1099832970997833730

EBB posted:

Just a brief off-cycle reminder that in about a month the UK is going to implode up its own rear end in a top hat.

The AP posted:

https://www.apnews.com/256605b7679d4a61bde9a8eac8906ea9
The Russian government acknowledged that the aerosol contained fentanyl-related compounds, but refused to reveal the exact composition. Years later, British government scientists tested clothing and urine samples from three survivors and concluded that the aerosol contained carfentanil, one of the most potent opioids on the planet, as well as the less-powerful remifentanil.

Today, carfentanil is readily available from vendors in China, who offer to export the deadly substance around the world, no questions asked, an Associated Press investigation has found. Carfentanil is not a controlled substance in China, the world’s largest chemicals exporter, despite U.S. efforts to get Beijing to blacklist it.

The Moscow Times posted:

No Closure for Victims of Theater Hostage Crisis, 12 Years On
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014/10/22/no-closure-for-victims-of-theater-hostage-crisis-12-years-on-video-a40678
As the gas took effect, Russian troops stormed the theater, shot the terrorists dead and began removing the unconscious hostages. Hostages were laid haphazardly on the front steps of the theater, making it nearly impossible for medical personnel on the scene to monitor who had already been treated and administer to the hostages with any kind of method.

The paramedics were not told what kind of gas had been used in the operation and were therefore unable to provide patients with a proper antidote. Nor were local hospitals warned of the arrival of the unconscious hostages.

"No one told the waiting buses where to take the people. Can you imagine?" Karpova says. "There was such a panic that the drivers were asking each other where they were supposed to take the injured hostages."

Some families did not know where their loved ones were or what had become of them for days after the operation, only to eventually track them down themselves by visiting the city's morgues. Karpova's hopes were dashed when she found her son's body in a hospital morgue.

A few days after the siege ended, Health Minister Yury Shevchenko said the gas was composed of fentanyl derivatives, a non-lethal opioid broadly used in medicine. Independent observers have said the use of fentanyl was extremely unlikely given the manner in which the hostages quickly became unconscious. To this day, authorities have not publicly identified the gas, and no one has been held accountable for the botched rescue operation.

"Could special forces have avoided storming the building? We don't know, we are not military strategists," Karpova says. "But what ordinary Russians cannot understand is how you can conduct an operation without knowing what comes next. They released the gas but didn't know how to get it out of people's systems."

In the aftermath of the siege, authorities claimed that the fatalities had occurred not as a result of the gas, but among people who had in fact succumbed to pre-existing chronic medical conditions.

"Sasha was young and healthy," Karpova says. "I was told that he died because his kidneys and liver were chronically diseased and that they had failed. There was not an ounce of truth in this. Even the children who died were listed as having had serious chronic illnesses."

..........

Karpova spearheaded an investigation into the siege that she says found that 97 of the 130 hostages who perished, including her son, had not been given any medical assistance.

She has in her possession six official documents she says prove that Alexander was alive for more than 6 1/2 hours after the special forces' operation, but that he was put in a bus filled with corpses.

Nephzinho posted:

What a loving oval office.

Former Acting CIA Director Mike Morell posted:

https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column_article/opioid-crisis-becomes-national-security-threat

The Opioid Crisis Becomes a National Security Threat
SEPTEMBER 3, 2017

[background on the Moscow theater hostage crisis]

Fast forward to June 2016, when authorities in Vancouver, Canada seized one kilogram of carfentanil. The agent was sent via mail from China to an address in Canada, and it was hidden in a package that was declared on a customs form to be printer accessories. It was the largest seizure of carfentanil to date.

Carfentanil, a synthetic opioid, is highly toxic. The drug is 10,000 times stronger than morphine and 5,000 times more potent than heroin. Only 20 micrograms, roughly the size of a grain of salt, can be fatal. The seizure in Vancouver was enough to kill 50 million people – every man, women, and child in Canada.

Carfentanil was developed in the 1970s as a tranquilizer for large animals – elephants and hippos. Dr. Rob Hilsenroth, the executive director of the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians said last year that carfentanil is so powerful that zoo officials wear protective gear “just a little bit short of a hazmat suit” when sedating animals because even one drop in a person’s eye or nose can be fatal.

The extreme lethality of carfentanil has led most countries to classify it as a chemical weapon. It is banned from the battlefield under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Andrew Weber, President Barack Obama’s Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Program, said it plainly and simply last year: “It’s a weapon.”

So, what is a chemical weapon doing on the streets of Canada – and the U.S.? Over the past year, drug dealers have learned that they can cut carfentanil into the heroin they sell to increase the “high” and to increase profits, as heroin is 15 times more expensive than carfentanil. In a public warning last fall, the Drug Enforcement Administration said “carfentanil is surfacing in more and more communities” and that it “has been linked to a significant number of overdose deaths in various parts of the country.”

The drug is largely produced in China by thousands of small chemical firms and shipped either through Mexico and Canada to the United States or directly through the mail system, often after an order is placed online. It is also produced by drug cartels in Mexico (with key ingredients imported from China). China, working with the United States, is now regulating carfentanil production and export, but the large number of producers there means the problem has only been reduced, not resolved.

There are signs that the production of carfentanil could be moving here as well, particularly after the Chinese government’s crack down. Some of equipment used to make carfentanil in China has been found in the United States. And the key ingredient to fentanyl – a less potent cousin of carfentanil – has also been discovered in the U.S., suggesting that fentanyl is being manufactured here. In May, federal agents in Massachusetts seized 50 kilograms of a key chemical used to make fentanyl.

The public discussion about – and the government focus on – carfentanil is all about the dangerous role it plays in the contemporary drug epidemic – with good reason. Drug overdoses, with a growing number caused by carfentanil, are now the leading cause of death from injury in the United States, surpassing motor vehicle accidents, suicides, and homicides. Some police and paramedics have themselves overdosed after coming into contact with carfentanil.

But the drug also constitutes a significant threat to national security. It is a weapon of mass destruction.

Indeed, carfentanil is the perfect terrorist weapon. It is readily available in large quantities. It comes in several forms – including tablets, powder, and spray. It can be absorbed through the skin or through inhalation. It acts quickly. And, it is deadly. Peter Ostrovsky, a senior official of the Immigration and Customs Service, said last fall, “Could it be weaponized? Yeah, it could be weaponized.” In short, a single terrorist attack using carfentanil could kill thousands of Americans.

And, there has been little focus on the drug as a terrorist weapon. In the Director of National Intelligence’s 2017 Worldwide Threat hearings, the issue of synthetic opioids was treated as part of the international drug problem, not as a terrorism risk. No one from either the Obama or Trump administrations has spoken publicly about the threat. The same is true for Congress. There has been little to no work by think tanks or the media on the terrorism risks.

This needs to change. There needs to be an NSC-directed policy and strategy on getting our arms around the national security risks of carfentanil – including increasing the focus of the Intelligence Community as well as the law enforcement and homeland security communities. There needs to be a focus by Congress, in part, to oversee the work of the Executive Branch. There needs to be work done at the state and local level that is integrated with what is happening at the federal level. There is a great deal to do.

Both al Qaeda and ISIS have said they are interested in acquiring weapons of mass destruction and that they would use them if they acquired them. Osama bin Laden called it a religious duty to do so. ISIS has used chemical weapons on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria. And now such a weapon is easily available to them. It would be a terrible tragedy if foreign terrorists were to use the consequences of our own domestic drug problem against us – particularly when it is so easy to see what might be coming.

EBB posted:

Just a brief off-cycle reminder that in about a month the UK is going to implode up its own rear end in a top hat.

Bored As gently caress posted:

No more fresh flowers or fruit for the Brits.

quote:

In total, hackers have stolen nearly $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency since the beginning of 2017, mostly from exchanges, and that’s just what has been revealed publicly. These are not just opportunistic lone attackers, either. Sophisticated cybercrime organizations are now doing it too: analytics firm Chainalysis recently said that just two groups, both of which are apparently still active, may have stolen a combined $1 billion from exchanges.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Blockchains are particularly attractive to thieves because fraudulent transactions can’t be reversed as they often can be in the traditional financial system. Besides that, we’ve long known that just as blockchains have unique security features, they have unique vulnerabilities. Marketing slogans and headlines that called the technology “unhackable” were dead wrong.