Dissident Veteran For Peace: Update: Israel & the SolarWinds/SUNBURST Hack

Dissident Veteran For Peace

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America." —Alexis de Tocquevile. Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter XV.

With a nod to the Most Rev. Dom Helder Camara: When I support Palestinians some call me an 'anti-Semite', when I try to explain why I stand in solidarity with Palestinians they call me a Nazi.

"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." —Major General Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.)

"... no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end." —character of O'Brien in 1984, part 3, ch. 3 by George Orwell.

"Every prophet has realized that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions. Every prophet has realized that most of us want peace at any price as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price. That is why the prophet Jeremiah said, ' "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace,' ..." —The Rev. William Sloane Coffin. "Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword."

Sunday, September 19, 2021

Update: Israel & the SolarWinds/SUNBURST Hack

Just over a week ago I decided to see if anyone else had written about a possible Israeli role in the SolarWinds/SUNBURST hack. Unsurprisingly, I could find no evidence of any interest in this subject by the mainstream corporate media since my post last December.

However, about a month after my post Whitney Webb did a much more thorough treatment of the subject on the The Last American Vagabond site. Her article is titled "Another Mega Group Spy Scandal? Samanage, Sabotage, and the SolarWinds Hack".

Readers may recall that I highlighted Samanage in the first numbered paragraph of my post. Webb also discusses Christopher Krebs (my paragraph #2) but does not mention the 2017 putative Israeli cell phone surveillance episode in DC that unfolded on Krebs' watch. Webb links to the same Israeli news source I linked regarding the boost in the stock prices of Israeli cybersecurity firms in the wake of the SolarWinds/SUNBURST hack.

In any case, I think Webb did very good work on this story and I recommend that you read it. Here are a couple of paragraphs from her piece:

... As Russiagate played out, it became apparent that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and a foreign power, but the nation was Israel, not Russia. Indeed, many of the reports that came out of Russiagate revealed collusion with Israel, yet those instances received little coverage and generated little media outrage. This has led some to suggest that Russiagate may have been a cover for what was in fact Israelgate.

Similarly, in the case of the SolarWinds hack, there is the odd case and timing of SolarWinds’ acquisition of a company called Samanage in 2019. As this report will explore, Samanage’s deep ties to Israeli intelligence, venture-capital firms connected to both intelligence and Isabel Maxwell, as well as Samange’s integration with the Orion software at the time of the back door’s insertion warrant investigation every bit as much as SolarWinds’ Czech-based contractor.

Labels: government, Israel, Russia, surveillance, technology, Trump