Who, Exactly, Is President Trump Tryng to Protect?

This happened yesterday, last evening.

Rex Tillerson condemns Russia 

for UK nerve agent attack 

So what did Trump do today? What did he tweet within the last 2 hours?

Donald Trump just fired Rex Tillerson 

on Twitter

Is our President, Donald J Trump, protecting or trying to protect Russia, ladies and gentlemen? Or someone in it?

Let's ignore that he fired yet one more person of the highest rank in his own administration and by tweet, no less, the coward.

Who, really, is this Republican President working for?

Again, who is he trying to protect?

On This Election, Donald Trump and Russian Intervention

A Facebook friend of mine and area resident, one Kent Hartland wrote and posted the following on Facebook today. I thought it worth the time and thought.

The CIA says they have clear evidence Russia is hacking into American servers in an attempt to alter the apparent outcome of a presidential election. Twenty states have also reported evidence of Russia attacking servers in an attempt to overthrow state-wide elections for congress. Yet most folks here seem oblivious or complacent.

If Russia assassinated one of our candidates or launched a strike against us to eliminate the person we chose as our leader, we would all be down at the recruiting station to enlist. But that is what they are doing. The 21st century equivalent of a Regime Change. A political assassination.

No matter what your politics, if you claim to be an American, a patriot, then this should be your line in the sand. Do not facilitate, accept, brush aside or look away from what is currently happening.

Russia has launched a cyber attack on America. Our president has promised a proportional response. Russia is warning it's citizens and America of the growing risk of nuclear war.

Nuclear war.

This from CNN:

"It is now clear that the illegal hack of my personal email account was -- just like the other recent, election-related hacks -- the work of the Russian government," John Podesta said in a statement. "This level of meddling by a foreign power can only be aimed at boosting Donald Trump and should send chills down the spine of all Americans, regardless of political party."

Trump has called on Moscow to hack into Clinton's computers, downplayed criticism of Putin's authoritarian tendencies, tried to suggest that Russia hasn't hacked US systems and promoted foreign policy positions that jibe more closely with Moscow's than Washington's. He's relied on aides with ties to Russia and most recently, quoted an incorrect Russian news report to raise questions about Clinton.

"Russia, are you listening?" Trump said from the stage of a rally, calling for a foreign country to interfere in an election, an unprecedented moment in presidential politics.

Trump has taken foreign policy positions that analysts say would please Russia, declaring in March that he would consider pulling the US out of NATO because it's "obsolete." The 28-member organization, founded in 1949 to defend against the Soviet Union, is the core US-Atlantic security mechanism.

Trump campaign advisers have had ties to Russia. Former campaign chairman Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of Russian-backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich. Carter Page, described at one point by the campaign as an informal policy advisor, reportedly had investments in Russian gas company Gazprom and has publicly criticized the US in a speech in Moscow.

A Trump security adviser, Lt. General Mike Flynn, the retired head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, attended a December gala for the the state-backed Russia Today television network, placed two seats away from Putin, according to Politico.

Trump's refusal to release his tax returns makes it impossible to get a full sense of his investments and whether he has any in Russia, but he does have business ties to Russians.

Trump has also written about trying to build a Trump property in Moscow since 1987 in his book "The Art of the Deal," signing his most recent deal to build in Moscow in 2013, according to the Washington Post.

The Republican candidate worked with Russian oligarchs to stage the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in 2013. And his son Trump Jr told a real estate investment conference in 2008 that "Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets," adding that they "see a lot of money pouring in from Russia."

"I've been there many times, I've spent quite a bit of time in Moscow looking at deals," Trump Jr. said.

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If Russia doesn't want Clinton or the Democrats in power and DOES want Trump and the GOP in, that should tell you who to vote for.

Stand. Take a strong and immediate stand against these attacks. Russia cannot see a divided America, where some of the citizens are cool with Russia literally trying to overrule our choices for elected officials.

Back to me:

I don't think this, he, is overstating the situations. Seems like good to great food for thought.

Additionally, this story broke yesterday.

Trump's refusal to accept intelligence briefing on Russia stuns experts

I hope this is all only fascinating.

CIA Whistleblower, Missouri-born, In Prison

I hadn't heard this story but one CIA whistleblower, Jeffrey Sterling, "...an American lawyer and former CIA employee who was arrested, charged, and convicted of violating the Espionage Act for revealing details about Operation Merlin to journalist James Risen."  

Mr. Risen you may remember:

,,,is the author of the book State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (January 2006). The book conducted important investigations into Central Intelligence Agency activities. It states that the CIA carried out an operation in 2000 (Operation Merlin) intended to delay Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program by feeding it flawed blueprints for key missing components—which backfired and may actually have aided Iran, as the flaw was likely detected and corrected by a former Soviet nuclear scientist the operation used to make the delivery. In early 2003, the New York Times refrained from publication of the story after an intervention by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice with the NYT Executive Editor Howell Raines.

So Mr. Sterling "blew the whistle" on the CIA over their own illegal activities and now he's in jail. 

He's originally from our own Cape Girardeau. He also got his Juris Doctor degree from the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis.

Jeffrey Alexander Sterling was being investigated during the Bush administration. In 2010 he was indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917, one of the few people in US history whose alleged contact with a journalist was punished under espionage law.

In May 2015, Sterling was sentenced to 3½ years in prison.

So one more time, our government is found doing things illegal---against our own laws---as with Edward Snowden, it seems, someone blows the whistle, so to speak, and they end up in jail, no one else.

And check this out. According to the Wikipedia entry on Mr. Sterling:

Sterling was convicted of espionage charges on January 26, 2015. Sentencing was originally scheduled for April 24, but after learning of the sentence of no more than two years’ probation plus a fine given one day earlier to David Petraeus for the felony of providing classified information to an unauthorized person, Sterling's lawyers submitted a plea that Sterling "not receive a different form of justice" than Petraeus, asking for a similarly lenient sentence instead of the 19 to 24 years imprisonment sought by the federal prosecutors.

So the white General "provides classified information to an unauthorized person" and gets probation. 

The black guy in the CIA gets 3-1/2 years?

Really?

That's what passes for justice in America?

Link:  How Jeffrey Sterling Took on the CIA — and Lost Everything

The latest, best "educated guess" on the Stuxnet malware

As I said, the latest, best "educated guess" is out this morning on the Stuxnet malware program that seems to have been created to attack Iran's nuclear infrastructure: Computer attacks linked to wealthy group or nation WASHINGTON – A powerful computer code attacking industrial facilities around the world, but mainly in Iran, probably was created by experts working for a country or a well-funded private group, according to an analysis by a leading computer security company. The malicious code, called Stuxnet, was designed to go after several "high-value targets," said Liam O Murchu, manager of security response operations at Symantec Corp. But both O Murchu and U.S. government experts say there's no proof it was developed to target nuclear plants in Iran, despite recent speculation from some researchers. Creating the malicious code required a team of as many as five to 10 highly educated and well-funded hackers. Government experts and outside analysts say they haven't been able to determine who developed it or why. More: U.S. officials said last month that the Stuxnet was the first malicious computer code specifically created to take over systems that control the inner workings of industrial plants. The Energy Department has warned that a successful attack against critical control systems "may result in catastrophic physical or property damage and loss." Symantec's analysis of the code, O Murchu said, shows that nearly 60 percent of the computers infected with Stuxnet are in Iran. An additional 18 percent are in Indonesia. Less than 2 percent are in the U.S. "This would not be easy for a normal group to put together," said O Murchu. He said "it was either a well-funded private entity" or it "was a government agency or state sponsored project" created by people familiar with industrial control systems. A number of governments with sophisticated computer skills would have the ability to create such a code. They include China, Russia, Israel, Britain, Germany and the United States. But O Murchu said no clues have been found within the code to point to a country of origin. What would be fascinating to know throughout all this is what's going on behind the scenes, in the intelligence agencies of countries around the world--here in the US, in Europe, in Russia, China, everywhere. Additionally, it would be fascinating to know if all the "Western" or "free" countries are cooperating on this or if each is attacking the situation for knowledge about Stuxnet purely individually and secretly, away from the other countries. Naturally, they would, possibly, be able to learn more, quicker if cooperating but since this has so much to do with both internal national security for each country and because this Stuxnet problem has been described as a "missile" fired into the networks of computers worldwide, as it turns out. Finally, it will also be fascinating to find out, one day soon, hopefully, just what this malware has done, if anything, to computers and programs in Iran, specifically as it relates to their new nuclear reactor and/or other infrastructure. It would be great to know if it's done it's job already or not and, if it has, how effective and maybe devastating the program has been on the reactor. And for the Siemens company, it raises the question of if you get off Microsoft's software, I should think, if it's an option, since that lead to the weakness that could be exploited. I guarantee you, a whole lot of people worldwide have been spending a great deal of hours, around the clock, working on this and paying attention to what happened or what possibly happened. It will be a great story to keep an eye out for more details--real international computer espionage. Maybe the next movie out of Hollywood, if they can keep up with the story. Link to original post: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100927/ap_on_hi_te/us_computer_attacks;_ylt=AoEm_H4JUDDdS24Iv5GEm58k5I94;_ylu=X3oDMTNvaGMwbnA2BGFzc2V0Ay9zL2FwLzIwMTAwOTI3L2FwX29uX2hpX3RlL3VzX2NvbXB1dGVyX2F0dGFja3MEY2NvZGUDbXBfZWNfOF8xMARjcG9zAzEwBHBvcwMxMARzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZXMEc2xrA2NvbXB1dGVyYXR0YQ--