Lazy Saturday Reads: Missing Plane, Crisis in Ukraine, and Russia-U.S. Espionage
Posted: March 8, 2014 Filed under: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, morning reads | Tags: Edward Snowden, Malaysia Airlines missing plane, Russian moles 36 Comments
Good Morning!!
Last night Malaysia Airlines announced it had lost contact with a plane headed for Beijing.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia Airlines said Saturday it lost contact with a plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Flight MH370 lost contact with the Subang air traffic control at 2:40 a.m. Saturday (18:40 GMT Friday). The flight was operated on the Boeing 777-200 aircraft.
It appears the plane “vanished” somewhere over Vietnam, and crews are now searching for it while families and friends of those on board wait for more information. From the LA Times: Crews searching for Malaysian plane spot oil slicks off Vietnam
BEIJING – As passengers’ relatives waited for news on the Malaysian Airlines jet that went missing Saturday en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, reports emerged that military aircraft had spotted two oil slicks off southern Vietnam.
The Associated Press reported that a Vietnamese government statement said the slicks were each between 6 miles and 9 miles long. The statement said the slicks were consistent with the kinds that would be left by fuel from a crashed jetliner.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 disappeared from radar screens with 239 people on board.
A delegation of Chinese painters and calligraphers, an American employee of IBM and two vacationing couples from Australia were among those believed to be passengers.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 lost contact with air traffic controllers around 2:40 a.m. local time, two hours after takeoff. More than 14 hours later, airline officials said they had been unable “to establish any contact or determine the whereabouts” of the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200.
The airline’s CEO, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, told a news conference in Kuala Lumpur that there was no distress call or bad weather report from the pilots before the plane lost contact with air control 120 nautical miles (140 miles) off the east coast of Kota Bharu, Malaysia.
NBC News has live updates: Desperate Wait for Families After Malaysia Airlines Jet Vanishes
And then there’s this from the LA Times: Terrorism not ruled out in disappearance of Malaysia Airlines jet.
BEIJING — Malaysian officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines plane Saturday said they were not ruling out terrorism — or any other causes — as reports emerged that two Europeans listed on the passenger manifest were not aboard and may have had their passports stolen….
Malaysia’s director general of civil aviation told a news conference Saturday night that authorities had reviewed closed-circuit TV footage of passengers and their luggage and hadn’t seen anything of concern. But Prime Minister Najib Razak cautioned that it was “too early” to come to any conclusions, and other officials said nothing was being ruled out of consideration at this point.
The crisis in Ukraine continues to escalate, it’s not clear what the U.S. can do about it, and the EU is apparently unwilling to take any action, so whatever the West does will be up to NATO–meaning the U.S. What a mess.
The crisis in Ukraine continues to escalate, it’s not clear what the U.S. can do about it, and the EU is apparently unwilling to take any action, so whatever the West does will be up to NATO–meaning the U.S. What a mess.
I hope at least some reasonable people who are able to apply logic to events are beginning to wake up to the fact that Russian intelligence probably has the NSA data that Edward Snowden stole, and Putin could very well be making his decisions based on the knowledge gained from their pale and nerdy guest. Logically, I think it makes a lot of sense to question whether Snowden was either working with Russia all along or was duped by Julian Assange of Wikileaks into the role of useful idiot. Keep in mind that there is a long history of Russia/the Soviet Union successfully inserting moles into U.S. intelligence agencies.
The following disturbing story was posted at CNN yesterday evening. Military spy chief: Have to assume Russia knows U.S. secrets.
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, made that clear when he told National Public Radio in an interview broadcast Friday how U.S. officials must plan for the possibility that Vladimir Putin’s Russia has access to American battle plans and other secrets possibly taken by classified leaker Edward Snowden.
“If I’m concerned about anything, I’m concerned about defense capabilities that he may have stolen from where he worked, and does that knowledge then get into the hands of our adversaries — in this case, of course, Russia,” Flynn said of the former National Security Agency contractor who fled to Moscow to seek asylum….
Flynn said he worried about what else Snowden knows, and how Russia — where Snowden lives now — may have access to the documents. He cited intelligence capabilities, operational capabilities, technology and weapons systems as potential subjects of so far unpublicized information Snowden — and Russia — may have.
Take that seriously, with a grain of salt, or a large box of salt, whichever you choose. I take it seriously. Based on what little has been revealed so far and the fact that most of it has focused on U.S. and U.K. cooperation with spy agencies in other countries, I no longer believe that Snowden ever intended to reveal domestic spying on Americans. His goal–and apparently Glenn Greenwald’s and Laura Poitras’ goals as well–was to damage U.S. foreign policy and national security as much possible.
Did you happen to see the latest post at Greenwald’s new site “The Intercept?” It’s a supposedly “humorous” piece by “investigative reporter” Peter Maass about an “advice columnist” who appears in an NSA publication. WTF?! This is supposed to be serious reporting from a publication that now owns the only complete sets of Snowden’s stolen NSA files? The purpose of the article can only be to make fun of NSA and any notion that it is engaged in serious work that makes a difference to U.S. national security.
That’s my rant for today, but I just want to add one more bit of newly-discovered information on Russian spying on the U.S. from John E. Dunn at TechWorld: Invisible Russian cyberweapon stalked US and Ukraine since 2005, new research reveals.
The mysterious ‘Uroburos’ cyberweapon named last week in Germany has been stalking its victims since as far back as 2005 and large enterprises and governments need to pay urgent attention to the threat it poses, UK security firm BAE Systems has urged.
German firm G Data’s recent analysis dubbed it ‘Uroburos’ while it is also known to some security firms as ‘Turla’. BAE Systems’ Applied Intelligence division, which today published its own research, prefers the catchier ‘Snake’ but under any name the picture is alarming.
According to BAE Systems, It now transpires that Snake has been slithering silently around networks in the US and its NATO allies and former Soviet states for almost a decade, stealing data, getting ever more complex and modular and remaining almost invisible.
To be clear, this isn’t any old malware. Snake is just too long-lived, too targeted, too sophisticated, too evasive, too innovative. It appears to be on par with any of the complex cyberweapons attributed to the US such as Flame, first analysed by Kaspersky Lab in 2012.
Based on the fact that the “Snake’s” target are all either Western countries or or former Russian controlled countries, the perpetrator of this malware is almost unquestionably Russia.
After several months of research, the UK firm takes what we know a lot further, offering for the first time some objective data on targets. Culling data from malware research sites (i.e. those to which suspected malware samples are submitted for inspection), it has been spotted 32 times in the Ukraine since 2010, 11 times in Lithuania, 4 times in the UK, and a handful of times altogether from the US, Belgium, Georgia, Romania, Hungary and Italy.
These are very small numbers but BAE Systems believes that on past experience they are highly indicative. While they represent a tiny fraction of the number of infections that will have occurred in these countries and beyond, they can be used to reliably infer that Snake has been aimed at Western and Western-aligned countries pretty much exclusively.
See also this earlier article by Dun, Is this Russia’s Stuxnet? Security firm spots suspicious ‘Uroburos’ rootkit.
Getting back to the crisis in Ukraine, here’s the latest news I could find:
CNN: Tensions flare as military standoff in Ukraine’s Crimea region continues
Simferopol, Ukraine (CNN) — Ukrainian officials accused pro-Russian forces in its Crimea region of fresh bullying tactics Saturday, as about 100 armed men reportedly took control of a military office in the regional capital, Simferopol.
The men — who are equipped with automatic weapons — say they belong to the Crimean self-defense forces, said Vladislav Seleznyov, head of the Ministry of Defense’s media office, on his Facebook page.
They have stationed armed men on each floor of the military registration office, he said….
Amid signs that the tense standoff of the past week is growing more volatile, Russian troops also stormed a Crimean border control point early Saturday, seizing the armory and driving the officers’ families from their living quarters, Ukraine’s border service said.
The troops beat up the senior officer on duty at the Schelkino border control point, near the city of Kerch, when he tried to stop them, the State Border Guard Service said on its website. Russian forces are now in control of the premises, it said.
How is the Ukraine situation affecting the Syrian conflict? From the WaPo: Assad taking advantage of U.S.-Russia split over Ukraine, observers say.
BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is taking advantage of the rift between Russia and the United States over Ukraine to press ahead with plans to crush the rebellion against his rule and secure his reelection for another seven-year term, unencumbered by pressure to compromise with his opponents.
The collapse last month of peace talks in Geneva, jointly sponsored by Russia and the United States, had already eroded the slim prospects that a negotiated settlement to the Syrian war might be possible. With backers of the peace process now at odds over the outcome of the popular uprising in Ukraine, Assad feels newly confident that his efforts to restore his government’s authority won’t be met soon with any significant challenge from the international community, according to analysts and people familiar with the thinking of the regime.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s defiant response to the toppling of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has further reinforced Assad’s conviction that he can continue to count on Russia’s unwavering support against the armed rebellion challenging his rule, said Salem Zahran, a Damascus-based journalist and analyst with close ties to the Syrian regime.
“The regime believes the Russians now have a new and stronger reason to keep Assad in power and support him, especially after the experience of Libya, and now Ukraine,” he said. “In addition, the regime believes that any conflict in the world which distracts the attention of the Americans is a factor which eases pressure on Syria.”
This is not good, folks.
I have few more interesting links, but I want to get this post up, so I’ll put them in the comment thread. What stories are you following today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Valerie Strauss at WaPo on the increasing push to force kids into academics when they should be learning through play: A very scary headline about kindergartners
This is why I put my children in Montessori.
My daughter is doing the same.
Not everyone can do that.
It’s a shame. The public school district where the girls went had that option too. There was a montessori grade school and you could apply to put your kids there.
CNN posted a breaking news headline saying that two passengers who were on the missing Malysian Airlines plane’s flight manifest were not actually on board.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/08/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane-missing/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Lot’s to read, and yes it’s getting scary in Ukraine – I agree on Snowden’s and Greenwald’s intent here.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “this crisis was not created by us. I guess it was the Polo Team’s fault.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26495378
Lavrov has been telling the same kind of lies for a very long time now. Very “flexible” kind of guy I imagine.
Oh yeah, that is always in the back of my mind…the useful idiot part. With Greenwald and Poitras also pulling some strings.
Behind Clash Between C.I.A. and Congress, a Secret Report on Interrogations
Nobody is wearing a white hat in that mess. Looks like everyone was trying to screw the other guy. Just what you expect in bureaucratic battles.
NBC News on the two stolen passports used on missing airplane:
Uh oh…
BB, when the Boston bombing happened and Russia was so helpful…(they were right? I can’t remember anything these days) I wonder what all this Ukraine mess effect is going to have on that investigation. I know that it is completely different, but it makes me think of Wag the Dog. Was Snowden in Russia at that time when Boston got bombed?
Snowden was still in Hawaii when Boston bombing happened. I don’t think Russia was particularly helpful. They accused US of ignoring warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. I think their main goal was to embarrass the administration. They also outed two CIA agents around that time.
Oh that is right, I am so out of it I don’t remember anything. Lately I have been forgetting so much…it all becomes a fog.
CPAC DUCK DYNASTY-SPEAK: CONVENTION OF THE ABSURD
http://www.the5thestate.net/2014/03/07/cpac-duck-dynasty-speak-convention-of-the-absurd/
Damn that was good. Bookmarked the site, thanks.
Jimmy Kimmel to Face Off With Texas Gov. Rick Perry During SXSW Week
May have to watch next week. This could be quite funny.
Are you going to listen to Snowden on Monday?
Not planning on it. He has nothing I really want to hear so far and I doubt that will change. Seems to me the Snowwald folk are trying to push young people to become Paulbots.
They may livestream it. I think quite a bit of those panels are broadcast.
Looks like not but it’s a simulcast so maybe someone will hack it 😉
Assange was livestreamed today. I didn’t watch it.
SXSW is so huge now that the blocked streets and gigantic crowds make it a nightmare for locals. Events are held all over town. Just take a look at this schedule for today!
http://schedule.sxsw.com/
Why jet might have disappeared
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/03/08/possible-reasons-behind-disappearance-malaysia-airlines-flight/Vo3LpfnPASTYaHfduzu58I/story.html
Whatever happened, it was quick; because no distress calls. Either sudden catastrophic breakup or bomb.
FBI to investigate disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines jet
http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-fbi-disappearance-malaysian-airlines-jet-20140308,0,5571373.story#ixzz2vQ966ors
Large electrical failure may have disabled communications as well, I would think anyway.
It was supposed to be the safest, most reliable plane evah.
Don’t Grow Texas: Friday Brain Fire: Men Against Women
James Moore focused on those who are most responsible in Texas and a poor future if Democrats don’t turn out to vote in large numbers in 2014.
This is pretty pathetic. U.Mass Amherst students had a “pre-St. Patrick’s Day Blowout” that got completely out of control. Isn’t St. Patrick’s day on the 17th?
DOZENS ARRESTED AT MASSACHUSETTS ‘BLARNEY BLOWOUT’
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/dozens-arrested-massachusetts-blarney-blowout
Snowmageddon must have those kids about ready to explode. Spring Break locations beware.
Oops: The Texas Miracle That Isn’t
Phillip Longman has a long read in Washington Monthly that is spot on correct! Should fully invalidate conservative economic arguments.
or…….. it could be that Russia has its own system in place to spy on other countries in much the same way that WE spy on other countries. If I remember correctly Russia attempted to warn us about the Boston marathon bombers because it was listening in to phone conversations(so this should be far from new for anyone paying attention.) Either way it’s positively hypocritical to say the US has a right to spy on other countries to protect its interests and then pull out the “it’s very dangerous” that other countries are doing the same argument. Spying to protect your interests is either wrong or it isn’t. The US doesn’t get “special” status in regards to the behavior IMO.
cwaltz,
It could be that Russia has a system in place to spy on other countries? No kidding. They are a lot better at it than anyone else in the world. They also spy on each and every one of their citizens–and they don’t just use metadata. They don’t have legal limits on domestic spying either.
But who said “it’s very dangerous” that other countries spy? I haven’t heard that one. Kind of silly.
None of this has anything to do with what Russia has gotten through their close relationship with Assange or from Snowden.
As for the Boston bombing, Russia sent a letter to the FBI in 2010 about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his activities in Dagestan. They also let Tamerlan leave Russia with no interference, suggesting that they were using him as an asset. The FBI very likely was doing the same thing with him, as he was on two watch lists but was allowed back into JFK airport with no interference. Anyone who takes what the FBI, the CIA, or the FSB says with no questions, is either extremely naive or terribly uninformed.
Thanks for stopping by, and best wishes.