Vriess posted:

Plenty of poppies though, right?

'cuz they care a lot about that flower

It would be kinda funny if the UK boomers couldn't get the flower for their armistace day stuff because of Brexit.

Bored As gently caress posted:

I'd be surprised if people aren't shorting the British pound already.

poo poo's gonna negatively affect the rest of the world's economy in some bad ways. I don't think it'll be of the magnitude of the 2008 financial crisis, but it'll definitely have ripples, especially across Europe.

poo poo's gonna get real hosed up.






On the topic of weaponizing carfentanyl or a similar drug, the Russians already did weaponize and aerosolize it, as noted above. That hostage situation was a goat gently caress. The Wikipedia entry on it is very well-sourced. Over 3 dozen terrorists, hundreds of hostages. The way they executed the entry into the theater was brilliant. There's no way any entry could have been made into the theater without massive casualties to the hostages and the Alfa (a spetznaz group) operators. None of the hostages were killed in the initial entry and clearing of the building, because they, along with most of the Chechen terrorists (who all had suicide vests on) were knocked out. Alfa took out the rest.

But the Russian military botched the recovery. They failed to stage ambulances, medical crews, and military doctors nearby. They also failed to prep the hospitals for incoming patients. They laid out the hostages on their backs on the sidewalk and steps of the theater. Some choked on their own tongues, others on their own vomit. Once the hostages were at hospitals, the Russian government repeatedly refused to release any information as to what kind of substance it was, or how to treat the patients. 120 hostages died because of that. Very few, or possibly even no hostages would be dead had the Russian government prepped better, and released information regarding the substance to the hospitals.




poo poo was bad.

Casimir Radon posted:

Remember Beslan? Where the Russians tried to use tanks and flamethrowers to resolve a hostage situation?

Casimir Radon posted:

Remember Beslan? Where the Russians tried to use tanks and flamethrowers to resolve a hostage situation?

EBB posted:

Belfast better be ready for Troubles II: Carbomb Boogaloo

TF CURES GENERATOR posted:

https://youtu.be/BZThYjiUJ8w

Bored As gently caress posted:

I know I'm spamming but holy gently caress this is funny


https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612974/once-hailed-as-unhackable-blockchains-are-now-getting-hacked/

Once hailed as unhackable, blockchains are now getting hacked

quote:

The two leaders of Otzma Yehudit who could win Knesset seats, depending on the merged party’s share of the vote in April, are Michael Ben Ari and Itamar Ben Gvir. They are co-founders of Lehava, a group that opposes Jewish-Arab relationships and was implicated in a 2014 arson attack on a school for Jewish and Arab children in Jerusalem.

Mr. Ben Ari calls Arabs the “enemy” and advocates expelling them. He was denied a visa to the United States in 2012 as a member of a terrorist organization.

Mr. Ben Gvir, who was a legislative aide for Mr. Ben Ari, has acknowledged having a picture in his home of Baruch Goldstein, the Kahane follower who massacred 29 Palestinians while they were praying at a mosque in Hebron in 1994.

He first gained notoriety in 1995, as a radical opponent of the Oslo peace process, when he stole the hood ornament from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s car and said, “We got to his car, and we’ll get to him, too.” Weeks later, Mr. Rabin was assassinated by a member of a group that also had roots in Kahanism.

Bored As gently caress posted:

I know I'm spamming but holy gently caress this is funny


https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612974/once-hailed-as-unhackable-blockchains-are-now-getting-hacked/

Once hailed as unhackable, blockchains are now getting hacked

psydude posted:

Netanyahu, desperate to cling to power, has formed an alliance with a literal terrorist group in order to win a couple of extra votes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/24/...pgtype=Homepage

CMD598 posted:

Does anyone even take Russians hostage anymore?

CMD598 posted:

Does anyone even take Russians hostage anymore?

Doc Hawkins posted:

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1100002139282309121?s=21

Best Friends posted:

Literally everything Bitcoin enthusiasts love to say about Bitcoin is false. It's not safe, it's not private, it's not convenient, and whatever the future of it is, it's not going to replace dollars. It does have some utility, but the things its fans usually say about it are wrong.

Part of the problem is it attracted the Reddit type of "I'm a dork, therefore I'm smart" guys who can memorize and enthusiastically repeat taglines, but cannot or will not critically think. The other part of the problem is that it also attracted straight up scammers who like to lie. These groups fused info a uniquely and infuriatingly dishonest culture.

Anyway, it's as hackable as anything else secured by information. If people accidentally or by deceit give up their login credentials to their online banking, of course they can be tricked into giving up their private keys. And if people store their private key somewhere accessible, they're only as secure as that somewhere. All those who bought the lie it was "unhackable" and didn't secure their keys appropriately are just the latest victims in the Bitcoin scam economy.

Edit: re the 51% attack, that's been a known issue since launch. But it's rarely talked about, because Bitcoin culture cannot speak honestly of weaknesses proactively. The smart contract stuff is also super funny. Ye who plays word games with sovereign citizen types is asking for it.

USMC503 posted:

lmfao


Eh, the 51% has been talked about, but it's one of those things that has been deemed so improbable due to the requirements to pull it off that it'd likely never happen (at least to a major crypto).

With that, I am genuinely super curious how the dude did it, because the computational power you'd need to achieve that would be insane.

Reign Of Pain posted:

Looks like I'll be meeting with the IRS commissioner next month. Post questions you want me to ask Commissioner Rettig

I'm already gonna ask him why is Dirty Donny such a giant orange dickburger so that'll be covered.

Internet Wizard posted:

Speaking of the theater hostage situation, y'all need to read Chechen Jihad. My old OIC, a humint marsoc dude, lent it to me to read on my convo leave after a surgery and it does a really good job of covering how the Chechen independence movement got taken over by religious groups and basically served as a test run for how Al Qaeda handled stuff in the middle east.

It covers the theater hostage situation in depth from both sides and also covers some other less-famous attacks like the time Chechens managed to get on the construction crew of a school and hide bombs in the structure of the building for a later attack.

quote:

Claims of FSB involvement
The Duma refused to consider a proposal by the liberal democratic Union of Rightist Forces party to form an investigative commission charged with probing the government's actions in the theater siege.

An independent investigation of the event was undertaken by Russian politicians Sergei Yushenkov, Sergei Kovalev, journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Hoover Institute scholar John B. Dunlop, and former FSB officers Aleksander Litvinenko and Mikhail Trepashkin. According to their version, FSB knew about the terrorist group's arrival in Moscow and directed them to the theater through their agent provocateur Khanpasha Terkibayev ("Abu Bakar"), whose name was in the list of hostage takers and who left the theater alive.[52][87][88][89] In April 2003 Litvinenko gave information about Terkibayev ("the Terkibayev file") to Sergei Yushenkov when he visited London. Yushenkov passed this file to Politkovskaya and she was able to interview Terkibayev in person.[90] A few days later, Yushenkov was assassinated by gunfire in Moscow. Terkibayev was later killed in an apparent car crash in Chechnya.

In June 2003, Litvinenko stated in an interview with the Australian television programme Dateline, that two of the Chechen militants involved in the siege—whom he named "Abdul the Bloody" and "Abu Bakar"—were working for the FSB, and that the agency manipulated the terrorists into staging the attack.[91] Litvinenko said: "[w]hen they tried to find [Abdul the Bloody and Abu Bakar] among the rotting corpses of dead terrorists, they weren't there. The FSB got its agents out. So the FSB agents among Chechens organized the whole thing on FSB orders, and those agents were released".[92] "Abu Bakar" (presumably Terkibayev) was also described as an FSB agent and organizer of the theater siege by Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Khinshtein and other journalists.[93][94][95][96][97][98] It seems though that Litvinenko and Politkovskaya had been the victims of an elaborate and clever trap, laid by the former's former employer, the FSB. Sanobar Shermatova and a co-author had pointed out in "Moskovskie novosti" that Terkibaev, almost certainly linked to the FSB, had for a number of years been involved in "anti-Wahhabi" activities and would therefore not have been an acceptable participant to the "Abu Bakar" group, to say the least.[99]

John Dunlop identifies "Abu Bakar" as Ruslan Elmurzaev, claimed by Mikhail Trepaskin to have been a resident of Moscow, not Chechnya, and to have been involved in various criminal activities operating out of the Hotel Salyut in Moscow. There were reports that Elmurzaev had not been killed in the storming of the theatre. Film director Sergei Govorukhin, one of the volunteer negotiators at Dubrovka, has said that he is convinced that Elmurzaev, who he identified as an FSB agent, is still alive. Russian prosecutors were unable to show Elmurzaev's corpse and during a visit to Chechnya in October 2003, Russian intelligence officers confirmed to him that Elmurzaev was alive and well and living in Chechnya.[100]

The titular leader of the hostage takers was one Movsar Baraev, the nephew of the late and infamous "wahhabi" kidnapper Arbi Baraev, a figure reported to have shadowy connections to both the FSB and GRU. In January 2003, the French journalist Anne Nivat reported that Baraev had been arrested two months before the hostage-taking incident. This information being true, Baraev was already in Russian custody when the theatre siege occurred. Nivat also reported that two of the female hostage takers were also in Russian custody at the time of the siege while late Duma Deputy Yurii Shchekochikhin wrote that another female hostage taker was in custody at the time.[100]

That "Abu Bakar" was in control and not Baraev was supported by an article in "Moskovskie novosti" by journalists Shermatova and Teit, in which it was reported that a hushed conversation between Abu Bakar and Baraev had been accidentally captured by NTV. Baraev declared that the hostage takers had been sent by Shamil Basaev only to be quietly corrected by Abu Bakar to add 'Aslan Maskhadov', in order to link the latter to the hostage taking.[99]

There is also the figure of Arman Menkeev, a retired major in the GRU and a specialist in making explosive devices. He was arrested by the Interior Ministry in November 2002 at the Moscow Oblast base allegedly used by the terrorists but was released shortly afterwards. He may have subsequently been rearrested but was not charged with a crime and is apparently not in custody. FSB officers, who interrogated Menkeev in Lefortovo prison, classified him as "loyal to the Russian government", adding that "He knows how to keep a military and state secret".[100] The plastic explosive used by the terrorists was in fact "imitation plastic explosives" which had a "Ministry of Defence origin". The Moscow City Prosecutor's Office claimed that Menkeev could have been the source of this material.[101] Apart from two suicide belts, which were more of a danger to the wearers, the bombs placed in the theatre (and elsewhere in Moscow prior to the siege) lacked essential elements like batteries; this provided the required conditions for the successful storming of the theatre.[100]

What would have been the motive for possible Russian involvement? During the period preceding the hostage taking, heavy pressure was being brought to bear by the West and within Russia on Putin to negotiate with the Chechen moderates and their leader, Aslan Maskhadov. Public opinion polls in Russia showed that the conflict was eroding the popularity of the president. Promising peacemaking initiatives were also proceeding in the months preceding the theatre siege, some backed by the Council of Europe and the OSCE. Once the Russian special forces had re-taken the theatre, support for the war rose among the Russian public.[100] As evidence against Maskhadov, Russians cited a tape first shown on Al Jazeera and subsequently on Russian television, although only a fragment of the original tape was shown on Russian TV. On the original full length tape it was evident that it had been made in late summer, not in October, and had concerned a military operation against federal forces, not an act of hostage taking.[99] Nevertheless, Maskhadov had been discredited although there is no credible evidence to link him with the siege. In the end, it could be said that both the Russian government and the Chechen extremists had achieved their goals; talk of negotiations had ended and Maskhadov's reputation had been damaged.[100]

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.

Reign Of Pain posted:

Looks like I'll be meeting with the IRS commissioner next month. Post questions you want me to ask Commissioner Rettig

I'm already gonna ask him why is Dirty Donny such a giant orange dickburger so that'll be covered.

Bernard McFacknutah posted:

Bernard McFacknutah posted:

Well, I wouldn't hold your breath, looks like the opposition are whipping for a 2nd referendum motion tomorrow and TM is allowing a vote for an extension.

Also, the poppies people wear aren't actually flowers, they are made of paper.

mlmp08 posted:

Wildest part of Brexit: they could still just say “never mind”

But don’t want to for reasons.

Reign Of Pain posted:

Looks like I'll be meeting with the IRS commissioner next month. Post questions you want me to ask Commissioner Rettig

I'm already gonna ask him why is Dirty Donny such a giant orange dickburger so that'll be covered.

Proud Christian Mom posted:

Woke: blaming Bernie for not campaigning for Clinton
Bespoke: blaming Bernie for using a private jet because he campaigned for Clinton so much

https://twitter.com/politico/status/1099984876235833355?s=19

quote:

“I’m not shocked that while thousands of volunteers braved the heat and cold to knock on doors until their fingers bled in a desperate effort to stop Donald Trump, his Royal Majesty King Bernie Sanders would only deign to leave his plush D.C. office or his brand new second home on the lake if he was flown around on a cushy private jet like a billionaire master of the universe,” said Zac Petkanas, who was the director of rapid response for the Clinton campaign.

Eej posted:

These people deserve to have a comet drop on them

FAUXTON posted:

yeah can the CI department return my calls when I find a bitcoiner

Eej posted:

These people deserve to have a comet drop on them

Jose posted:

https://twitter.com/nattyover/status/1100063361021169665