industryterm:bank

  • Leaked Documents Expose Stunning Plan to Wage Financial War on Qatar — and Steal the World Cup
    https://theintercept.com/2017/11/09/uae-qatar-oitaba-rowland-banque-havilland-world-cup

    A plan for the United Arab Emirates to wage financial war against its Gulf rival Qatar was found in the task folder of an email account belonging to UAE Ambassador to the United States Yousef al-Otaiba and subsequently obtained by The Intercept.

    The economic warfare involved an attack on Qatar’s currency using bond and derivatives manipulation. The plan, laid out in a slide deck provided to The Intercept through the group Global Leaks, was aimed at tanking Qatar’s economy, according to documents drawn up by a bank outlining the strategy.

    The outline, prepared by Banque Havilland, a private Luxembourg-based bank owned by the family of controversial British financier David Rowland, laid out a scheme to drive down the value of Qatar’s bonds and increase the cost of insuring them, with the ultimate goal of creating a currency crisis that would drain the country’s cash reserves.

  • Israeli occupation’s brutal routine: Nightly raids, boys cuffed for hours and seized jewelry
    There’s never a dull night in the village of Beit Ummar, where the Israeli army is a regular visitor
    Gideon Levy and Alex Levac Nov 02, 2017 5:28 PM

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.820741

    It’s the last street at the southern edge of the West Bank town of Beit Ummar, between Bethlehem and Hebron. The settlement of Karmei Tzur looms on the hill across the way. A street like any other: one- and two-story homes, potholes, no sidewalk. On this long road, which doesn’t even have a name and where grace does not abound, hardly a night goes by without a raid by the Israel Defense Forces. The troops swoop in four or five times a week, usually in the dead of night.

    Here’s what they’ve done in the past few weeks: They caught a boy who was suspected of throwing stones, dragged him across rock-strewn ground for hundreds of meters, thrust him into a room and forced him to stay there for six hours, blindfolded and hands bound; they confiscated money and jewelry from a number of homes; wrested a few young people from their beds; and handcuffed members of an entire family, including the women, leaving them bound that way after they left.

    This is how the occupation looks in Beit Ummar.

    Khaled Bahar, a small, lean, smiling boy of 13 with a chirpy voice and who looks younger than his age, is well groomed and sports a trendy haircut. He relates what happened to him one night two weeks ago just like an adult; children here grow up fast. This week, when we visited his home in Beit Ummar, located at the far end of the street of troubles, he was sitting on the living room sofa in the company of his family. Logs were burning in the fireplace: Winter, too, has descended on the village, early.

    Khaled’s father works in the local branch of a Jordanian bank. In addition to the nighttime raids, Israeli soldiers also appear on his street daily at the same time, around dusk, from Karmei Tzur. About 400 meters [1,310 feet] separate the settlement’s iron gate and the street. Like a ritual, the children wait for the soldiers, follow them and occasionally throw stones at them from afar. They also talk to them, says Khaled.

    On October 16, too, soldiers entered the town and took up positions in the structure of an unfinished house on the street. Khaled and his friends stood below the house, leaning on a stone wall. According to Khaled, the rocks his friends threw didn’t even get close to the four or five soldiers. He himself did not throw any, he adds.

    After watching the 10 or so children for a time, the soldiers came down to the street, splitting into two units. One unit got to Khaled, who describes the event as though it were some sort of strategic offensive. Two of the soldiers grabbed him, one by the neck, the other by an arm. You have to see how small Khaled is to appreciate the absurdity of this situation. They dragged him forcibly in the direction of the settlement. He says he stumbled a few times along the way and was scratched by thorns. He was very frightened but didn’t cry, and when he tried to ask them where they were taking him, they told him to shut up.

    Khaled’s cousin, Abded Kader Bahar, ran after them. He’s the same age as Khaled but even leaner, and has an even fancier hairdo. He shouted at the soldiers, then tried to kick them. One of the soldiers thrust his rifle butt into Abded’s back and tried to shoo him away. Khaled called out to his cousin to run. Other members of Khaled’s family, among them his mother and an uncle, arrived and tried to pry Khaled loose from the soldiers’ grip.

    “Mom, don’t be afraid, I’m alright,” Khaled cried out to his frightened mother. His uncle, Moussa, urged the soldiers to hand over his nephew. “I will educate him,” he told them. “All these years, none of you have educated him,” the soldier-pedagogue replied, vanishing with Khaled behind the settlement’s gate.

    Khaled was taken to a room, handcuffed and blindfolded, and made to sit on a chair, where he remained for the next six hours ­– scared, tired, bound. He remembers that he was given water and offered food, but declined it because he didn’t trust the soldiers. He wanted to go to sleep, but just as his head drooped, he suddenly heard the barking of a dog next to him. Scared, he thought they were siccing a dog on him to prevent him from sleeping, but through a slit in the blindfold, he saw someone’s fingers scratching his legs. It turned out to be a practical joke: A soldier was on his knees and barking like a dog in order to scare the boy. War games.

    Khaled was cold and asked for a blanket; after a time, someone brought him one. The chair was uncomfortable, but the soldiers refused to move him. Khaled thought about his mother, he says. Just as he was drifting off again, he heard a soldier calling him: “Yallah, yallah, get up.” They told him they were taking him somewhere. He asked where, and one of the soldiers replied, “First to Kiryat Arba, then to Etzion [a security forces facility] and then to Ben Gurion Airport.” Hearing “airport” unnerved the boy. He was placed in a military vehicle and taken to the police station in Kiryat Arba, adjacent to Hebron. By now it was late at night.

    At the station, he was taken to an interrogation room and the blindfold was removed. When he asked to go to the restroom, the handcuffs were taken off.

    “Why did you throw stones?” the interrogator demanded.

    “I didn’t,” Khaled insisted.

    The policeman showed him a photo on a cell phone and asked, “Who is this?” Khaled said he didn’t know. “But he’s wearing the same shirt you have on,” the officer said. As usual in the territories, no lawyer and no parents were present – as stipulated by law in Israel for minors.

    “If you throw stones again, we’ll kill you,” the policeman said.

    Khaled was released following a brief interrogation. It was 2 A.M. Palestinian security liaison personnel took him to the gas station at the entrance to Beit Ummar, where his father was waiting for him. Back home, he didn’t want to eat or drink, only to sleep. He didn’t go to school the next day. Nor did little Abded Kader Bahar, as a token of solidarity. Khaled’s sister says that the next night, Khaled cried out in his sleep, “Don’t pull me, it wasn’t me! I didn’t throw anything!”

    Khaled doesn’t remember a thing.

    ‘They’re choking me’

    Ibrahim Abu Marya, a 50-year-old electrician from Beit Ummar, lives up the street from Khaled’s family. On October 25, soldiers invaded his home at about 2:30 A.M. After so many times, he’s used to it by now.

    There was an explosion near the front door and around 30 soldiers entered, along with a K-9 dog. Mahdi, his 14-year-old son, was bound by the troops and a soldier gripped him by the neck. “They’re choking me,” Mahdi shouted to his father. Ibrahim was pushed away; seven soldiers encircled him, he says. Bara, his daughter, who’s 17, tried to come to the aid of her brother, but the soldiers bound her hands with plastic handcuffs. She’s a pretty girl with a ponytail, now wearing a sweatshirt that says “I love you,” and slippers with rabbit ears. There were no female soldiers among the Israeli force. The older sister, Ala, 23, was also handcuffed when she tried to help Mahdi.

    Ibrahim asked the soldiers why they were being so violent, but got no reply. From the kitchen, he heard the shouts of his other son, Mohammed, 22, whom the soldiers had come to arrest. The mother, Faduah, 50, was locked in her room and not allowed to leave.

    The soldiers took Mohammed outside and as they were about to leave, Ibrahim asked one of them to release him and the others from their handcuffs. “It’s not my business,” the soldier told him. The soldiers spent about an hour in the home, before leaving with Mohammed. He is now being detained in Ashkelon prison. A neighbor arrived to remove the handcuffs.

    Soldiers have raided the Abu Marya home about 20 times in the past few years. It’s routine. The previous visit was less routine, though.

    On October 4, soldiers arrived at dusk and went up to the roof. They left after a while and returned at night to conduct a search. Ibrahim told Faduah to bring the cash they had in the house – 20,000 shekels ($5,680), which he’d borrowed from his brother-in-law to help pay for a heart operation for his father, Abdel Hamid, who is 83. He shows us the documents stating that his father was in Al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron at the time.

    A female soldier took the bag containing the cash and counted the money, taking 10,500 shekels and giving Ibrahim 9,500 shekels. The authorization form, signed by Inbal Gozlan, describes the cash as “Hamas money”: 52 200-shekel bills and one of 100. The form, a “Seizure Order in Arabic,” is rife with clauses and sub-clauses citing security and emergency regulations, according to which the money was impounded.

    Ibrahim tells us he has no ties with Hamas or any other organization: “My ‘party’ is the municipality and the electrician’s profession,” he says.

    How did the soldier determine that about half the money was Hamas funds and the rest was not? It’s hard to know. The authorization form contains a phone number for appeals, but Ibrahim says he was told that hiring a lawyer will cost him more than the money taken. He has written off the money.

    According to Musa Abu Hashhash, a field researcher for the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, IDF soldiers have lately been confiscating money with great frequency in the Hebron area. That same night, troops raided three other homes in Beit Ummar, confiscating money and property. Soldiers removed all the jewelry that Amal Sabarna – whose husband, Nadim, is in administrative detention (imprisoned without trial) – was wearing around her neck and hands, and impounded it. She received the items as a gift, she says. The soldiers also removed a gold earring from an earlobe of her daughter.

    The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit stated in response: “With respect to the first incident mentioned in the article, the suspect was arrested after he was caught throwing stones at the gate of the settlement of Karmei Tzur, held for interrogation and released thereafter without being taken to the police station.

    “As to the second incident, during a nighttime operation, terror activist Mohammed Abu Marya was arrested. Participating in the activity were female soldiers who checked the women in the house. It must be stressed that members of the family were not bound at any stage during the operation.

    “As to the third incident, authorization was given for impounding the 10,500 shekels, which were received from a terror organization.

    “As for the last incident, it should be emphasized that no jewelry was removed from [the person of] any of the individuals in the house. Rather, jewelry was confiscated in the presence of representatives of the police, of a value that had been approved in advance.

    “In spite of the above, following the incident the protocol was clarified and it was decided that confiscation of jewelry instead of terror funds will take place only in the event that specific approval has been given for doing so.”

    Soldiers returned to Beit Ummar this past week, too, of course. On Sunday night, they entered the home of Ibrahim Abu Marya’s brother, who lives nearby, and ordered his 16-year-old son, Muhand, to show them where another resident, Ahmed Abu Hashem lives. The boy refused. When the soldiers finally got to the Abu Hashem house, they arrested Ahmed’s son, Kusai, who’s also 16.

  • How Azerbaijan, Georgia, And Turkey Subverted Russia And Isolated Armenia With New Railway

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2017/10/30/new-silk-road-azerbaijan-georgia-and-turkey-unite-over-new-rail-line-armenia

    Depuis le temps qu’on en parle. Un événement social, politique et économique majeur dans le Caucase

    After many years of anticipation and delays, the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) rail line has ceremoniously gone into service. Its first train just pulled out of the New Port of Baku on Monday, making its first official run across Azerbaijan and Georgia to the east of Turkey. The presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey along with the prime ministers of Georgia and Kazakhstan showed up at the commencement gala and symbolically drove in the final railroad spikes.

    BTK Overview

    The BTK rail line, which extends from the bank of the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan to the capital city of Georgia before carrying on to Turkey, where it feeds into the broader Turkish rail system to Europe beyond, was first envisioned in 1993 after an existing railway that went to Baku via Armenia was shut down due to the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict.

    #caucase #Transport_ferroviaire #arménie #géorgie #azerbaïdjan #turquie #btk

  • une idée intéressante ; utiliser l’imagerie des timbres comme un tarot de Marseille.

    http://mysteryarts.com/stamps/tarot

    The Stamp Album #Tarot
    http://mysteryarts.com/stamps/tarot

    In Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, Bruno Schulz explains how a stamp album is an occult guidebook to the universe:

    “Where is truth to shelter, where is it to find asylum if not in a place where nobody is looking for it: . . . stamp albums?”

    “In [the stamp album] were strange abbreviations and formulae, recipes for civilizations, handy amulets that allowed one to hold his thumb and finger between the essence of climates and provinces. These were bank drafts on empires and republics, on archipelagoes and continents. Emperors and usurpers, conquerers and dictators could not possess anything greater.”

    The stamp album is a “march-past of creation,” a “parade of countries, shining processions” swarming with “a gypsy babble of entangled lettering.”

    Exemples :

    As d’épées

    Roi de coupes

    L’étoille

    L’hermite

    L’impératrice

  • #SwissLeaks : the map of the globalized tax evasion - Blog About Infographics and Data Visualization - Cool Infographics

    http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/2017/10/3/swissleaks-the-map-of-the-globalized-tax-evasion.html

    pas mal du tout ... Et merci à Etienne Côme de l’avoir signalé sur Twitter

    http://www.coolinfographics.com/storage/post-images/Swissleaks-tax-havens.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1506570336216

    HSBC “Swiss Leaks” data shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reflect the globalization of tax evasion. While billions of dollars are inconceivable, mapping the origin of bank account holders allows an overview. This map is only a small contribution to the understanding of the Swiss Leaks data.
    Why this map?

    This map does voluntary not strictly stick to the geographical reality. It is a response to too many maps published in the media these days that are made unreadable by regrettable graphic choices: top-ten limited, overlapping points, colored territories (small countries and islands disappear), etc.
    What does it show?

    The number of affected countries and their diversity is very important. Note the strong presence of the Caribbean. In proportion to their population, South and East Asia are very poorly represented, while the Middle East is over-represented. The strong presence of “tax havens” is explained by the use of intermediates by the holders of bank accounts.

    #évasion_fiscale #paradis_fiscal #corruption #visualisation #anamorphose

  • How a tax haven is leading the race to privatise space | News | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/15/luxembourg-tax-haven-privatise-space

    The nation of Luxembourg is one of Planetary Resources’ main boosters. The country’s pledge of €25m (£22.5m) – which includes both direct funding and state support for research and development – is just one element of its wildly ambitious campaign to become a terrestrial hub for the business of mining minerals, metals and other resources on celestial bodies. The tiny country enriched itself significantly over the past century by greasing the wheels of global finance; now, as companies such as Planetary Resources prepare for a cosmic land grab, Luxembourg wants to use its tiny terrestrial perch to help send capitalism into space.

    And the fledgling “NewSpace” industry – an umbrella term for commercial spaceflight, asteroid mining and other private ventures – has found eager supporters in the investor class. In April, Goldman Sachs sent a note to clients claiming that asteroid mining “could be more realistic than perceived”, thanks to the falling cost of launching rockets and the vast quantities of platinum sitting on space rocks, just waiting to be exploited.

    “[Mining asteroids] is not a new idea, but what’s new is state support of the idea,” says Chris Voorhees, the chief engineer of Planetary Resources. “Everyone thought it was inevitable but they weren’t sure when it would occur.” Now, he says, Luxembourg is “making it happen”.

    Loi du Luxembourg qui enterre l’idée de l’espace comme un commun

    And in July, the parliament passed its law – the first of its kind in Europe, and the most far-reaching in the world – asserting that if a Luxembourgish company launches a spacecraft that obtains water, silver, gold or any other valuable substance on a celestial body, the extracted materials will be considered the company’s legitimate private property by a legitimate sovereign nation.

    Une vieille histoire au Luxembourg

    Luxembourg’s first significant attempts at liberalisation began in the late 1920s and early 1930s. As radio grew popular, the grand duchy decided not to create a publicly funded radio service like its neighbours. Instead, it handed its airwaves to a private, commercial broadcasting company. That company – now known as RTL – became the first ad-supported commercial station to broadcast music, culture and entertainment programmes across Europe in multiple languages. “By handing the rights to a public good to a private company, the state commercialised, for the first time, its sovereign rights in a media context,” notes a 2000 book on Luxembourg’s economic history. The title of the book, published by a Luxembourgish bank, is, tellingly, The Fruits of National Sovereignty.

    Then, just three months before the stock market collapsed in 1929, Luxembourg’s parliament passed legislation exempting holding companies – that is, parent firms that exist solely to own parts of or control other companies – from paying corporation taxes. In the first five years after the law’s passing, 700 holding companies were established; in 1960, there were 1,200, and by the turn of the century, some 15,000 “letterbox” firms – one for every 18 citizens – were incorporated in Luxembourg. (In 2006, the European commission found that this exemption violated EU rules, so Luxembourg promptly created a new designation, the “family estate management company”, that complied with the country’s EU treaty obligations while offering many of the same money-saving advantages.)

    Crucially, Luxembourg never seemed to let an opportunity pass it by. Following its support for commercial radio 50 years prior, the country was the first in Europe to privatise satellite television. In 1985, the grand duchy granted a company called Société Européenne des Satellites (SES) the right to broadcast TV directly to viewers’ homes from a satellite positioned in space. “The big innovation is that this was a privatisation of space,” says Schmit, who served for 17 years on the SES board. “All the other operators were owned by governments through international agreements. This was the first commercial company that set out to use space for broadcasting.” When SES grew profitable, Luxembourg’s bet paid off: the tiny country became home to a telecoms giant, and, as an early investor, received a piece of the pie.

    In the early 2000s, Luxembourg pounced at the chance to court retailers such as Amazon and Apple with tax incentives. There were the perks the state was happy to publicise – the lowest VAT in Europe, for instance – and there were case-by-case deals with large companies that it kept rather quieter. The companies flocked in, but in the aftermath of the financial crisis, with awareness of wealth inequality growing and austerity measures bruising ordinary Europeans across the continent, Luxembourg could only keep these arrangements under wraps for so long.

    Les lois américaines et luxembourgeoises sur la propriété de ce qui est rapporté de l’espace. Ils ont décidé tout seuls, en vieux reste Wesphaliens

    Since the emergence of the NewSpace sector, individual countries have attempted to lend some clarity to eager entrepreneurs, reasoning that the prospect of private property in space will encourage hard work and innovation. The American Space Act, passed in 2015, is the first “finders, keepers” law that recognises ownership of space resources, but it only does so for companies owned by US citizens.

    In October 2015, Luxembourg commissioned a study on whether it could fill that legal void. The report, completed in 2016, noted that “while legal uncertainty remains, under the current legal and regulatory framework, space mining activities are (at least) not prohibited” and concluded that Luxembourg should pass legislation that gives miners the right to keep the extraterrestrial bounty they extract.

    Such a law was drafted shortly after the study’s completion, and on 1 August 2017, it went into effect. Luxembourg’s bill does not discriminate by nationality, or even by the location of a company’s headquarters. In fact, the law indicates the country’s willingness to serve as a sort of flag of convenience for spacecrafts, allowing them to play by one country’s futuristic rules in the absence of universal, binding agreements. Rick Tumlinson, of Deep Space Industries, another space exploration company in which Luxembourg has invested, told me that there was value in Luxembourg’s law because it saw no citizens and no borders: just one blue planet from high above.

    Zucman shares Schmitz’s view. “Adapting this strategy to the business of space conquest is what being an offshore financial centre means,” he says. “It’s not diversification. It’s just extending the logic of being a tax haven to new area.”

    Le mythe de “l’argent propre” au Luxembourg. Mourrir de rire

    His speech focused on the financial aspects of Luxembourg’s space race, and the country’s intention to get in on the ground floor of commercial space exploration. “Under the US Space Act, your capital has to be majority US capital,” he said, referring to US willingness to recognise property rights in space for its citizens. “We don’t really care where the money comes from in our country, as long as the money is clean.”

    #Luxembourg #Espace #Enclosure #Communs #Europe

  • #Fureai_Kippu

    The Fureai Kippu (literally ‘ticket for a caring relationship’) refers to a variety of Japanese national schemes and networks of mutual support dedicated to providing elderly care through the exchange of a complementary currency 1. The schemes enable individuals to earn time-credits by providing care to elderly people or people with disabilities. Those credits can then be transferred to relatives or friends in need of care, or be saved for the future when sick or old.

    Of the two most prominent models of Fureai Kippu, one stands close to traditional timebanking, whereas the other enables conventional money transactions alongside time credits in exchange for the service provided. In the latter, volunteers can decide whether to receive a combination of national currency (yen) and time credits or either one as compensation for providing services 2.

    The Fureai Kippu schemes can be considered as the Japanese versions of co-production through timebanking. The term Fureai Kippu has been in use since 1992 3.

    http://community-currency.info/fr/monnaies/asie/fureai-kippu
    #time_bank #monnaies_locales #monnaies_complémentaires #Japon #banque_du_temps #aide_aux_personnes_âgées #personnes_âgées

  • UK banks to check 70m bank accounts in search for illegal immigrants

    Exclusive: From January banks will be enrolled in Theresa May’s plans to create ‘hostile environment’ for illegal migrants

    Exclusive: From January banks will be enrolled in Theresa May’s plans to create ‘#hostile_environment’ for illegal migrants

    https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/sep/21/uk-banks-to-check-70m-bank-accounts-in-search-for-illegal-immigrant
    #it_has_begun #régression #migrations #sans-papiers #UK #surveillance #Angleterre #collaboration #police #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers #politique_migratoire #environnement_hostile #persécution #harcèlement

    #frontières_mobiles? #mobile_borders

    Si d’autres personnes veulent bien m’aider avec des tags...

    cc @reka

  • Farsnews
    http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960629000537

    Pour tenter d’empêcher l’armée syrienne de passer à l’est de l’Euphrate pour compléter leur victoire sur Daesh, les Kurdes soutenus par les USA ouvrent les vannes des barrages...

    The army units continued to liberate the Euphrates valley East of Deir Ezzur city with the help of the Russian Air Force, the statement from the ministry said, adding that the government forces had retaken more than 60 square kilometers on the left (Eastern) bank of the Euphrates from the ISIL.

    The army also faced difficulties as it cut across the Euphrates River, where the water level surprisingly rose within several hours. Such water-level changes could only be the result of a deliberate flush at the dams that are also currently controlled by the militant groups backed by the US-led coalition, the major general said.

    The Syrian army crossed the Euphrates to deploy on the Eastern bank of the river last week.

  • What Is CamperForce ? Amazon’s Nomadic Retiree Army | WIRED
    https://www.wired.com/story/meet-camperforce-amazons-nomadic-retiree-army


    Cet article décrit comment des centaines de miliers d’étatsuniens ayant atteint l’age de la retraite sont obligés à vivre dans les camps de travail d’Amazon. L’exploitation du prolétariat US est totale et continue jusqu’au moment de partir dans un cerceuil. Voilà ce qui arrive dans une société sans régime de retraite solidaire. #grave

    Chuck still remembers the call from Wells Fargo that brought the 2008 financial crisis crashing down on his head. He had invested his $250,000 nest egg in a fund that supposedly guaranteed him $4,000 a month to live on. “You have no more money,” he recalls his banker saying flatly. “What do you want us to do?” Unable to think of a better answer, Chuck told him, “Well, shove your foot up your ass.” Then he hung up.

    Barb had lost her savings too, some $200,000 in investments. And with the travel industry flattened by the Great Recession, bookings at Carolina Adventure Tours dwindled. By the time Barb and Chuck got married in 2009, they were upside down on their mortgage and grappling with credit card debt.

    The couple was facing bankruptcy, which scared Chuck to death. It brought back the terror of growing up poor—the pervasive insecurity he’d stamped out by going to work at 16. But by 2012, they had run out of options.

    After filing their papers, Chuck and Barb began liquidating their lives. They shuttered ­Carolina Adventure Tours and handed their 2009 ­Chrysler Town & Country over to the bank. They sold most of their possessions, including all of their appliances and furniture. What didn’t sell on ­Craigslist went to an auctioneer. Barb let go of her record collection and two pianos. Chuck ­surrendered his golf clubs. Objects they couldn’t bear to part with—including Chuck’s letter from Ray Kroc, framed and hanging on the wall—went to one of Barb’s daughters for safekeeping. (Barb and Chuck each have three kids.)

    Whatever survived the purge had to fit in their new dwelling: a 29-foot 1996 National RV Sea Breeze motor home, which Barb’s brother sold to them for $500. The rig had dry-rotted tires, a dead generator, and a leak in the gas line. Back when the Stouts had money, they’d idly fantasized about becoming carefree vagabonds in a nice RV. Their current situation didn’t quite align with that dream, but they embraced it anyway. Perhaps, Barb reflected, this was destiny—the universe pushing them toward the lifestyle they’d wanted all along. She decided to call their next move “Barb and Chuck’s Great Adventure.”

    #USA #travail #économie #social #disruption

  • Lynx Users Guide v2.7
    http://www.neurophys.wisc.edu/comp/lynx_users_guide.html


    Le plus ancien web browser encore en service est toujours d’actualité. A l’époque du #paywall il permet de contourner pas mal d’obstacles parce qu’il est considéré comme inoffensif par pas mal de scriptes qui bloquent l’accès à des pages pour le reste des visiteurs non connectés au sites payants.

    Bonus gratuit : Avec Lynx on est à totalement l’abri des scripts nocifs sur les pages web, enfin prèsque.

    Lynx a un seul inconvénient : les pages qui ne marchent qu’àvec #javascript restent inaccessibles - mais ne faites pas confiance au message d’erreur qui s’affiche quand vous éteignez JS dans votre brouteur habituel ; assez souvent Lynx affiche joliment des pages web qui exigent du JS dans Chrome, Firefox et d’autres systèmes plus « modernes ».

    Lynx is a fully-featured World Wide Web (WWW) client for users running cursor-addressable, character-cell display devices (e.g., vt100 terminals, vt100 emulators running on PCs or Macs, or any other character-cell display). It will display Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents containing links to files on the local system, as well as files on remote systems running http, gopher, ftp, wais, nntp, finger, or cso/ph/qi servers, and services accessible via logins to telnet, tn3270 or rlogin accounts (see URL Schemes Supported by Lynx). Current versions of Lynx run on Unix and VMS.

    Lynx can be used to access information on the WWW, or to build information systems intended primarily for local access. For example, Lynx has been used to build several Campus Wide Information Systems (CWIS). In addition, Lynx can be used to build systems isolated within a single LAN.

    Pour le #mail c’est pareil, je redécouvre #Mutt qui est très puissant aussi.

    The Mutt E-Mail Client
    http://www.mutt.org

    “All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.” -me, circa 1995

    web browser - Using Lynx on potentially malicious websites - Information Security Stack Exchange
    https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/97873/using-lynx-on-potentially-malicious-websites

    in theory, you are still vulnerable. Even in Lynx there are still components that parse HTML, interact with the network, keep track of cookies, etc (tip: use curl or wget to just download the page without even parsing it to be even more careful). That is still quite a big attack surface, though I would consider it safe enough at this point. Maybe not safe enough against a targeted attack from a powerful attacker, but definitely safe enough for random Android websites.

    Deluge of Browser Security Issues Drives Mass Migration | Netcraft
    https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2009/04/01/deluge_of_browser_security_issues_drives_mass_migration.html

    April Erste, Public Relations Manager at the First National Bank of Oki Koki, told Netcraft that users are migrating to Lynx because of its speed and advanced security features. She added: “Lynx has not once suffered a buffer overflow in its image processing, and indeed has suffered no security vulnerabilities at all in the last 2 years.” By comparison, the most recent Firefox security update was only 4 days ago.

    The bank also notes that Telnet remains popular with a small group of its customers. Although it lacks the sophisticated user interface of Lynx, many security experts argue that Telnet is significantly more secure and has the largest installed base of any browser.

    Erste said that while the bank is dedicated to providing an accessible online banking experience, some customers still report difficulties when trying to make HTTPS requests through Telnet without the aid of an extended keyboard layout.

    #humour

    Lynx Information
    http://lynx.browser.org

    Many user questions are answered in the online help provided with Lynx. Press the ’?’ key to find this help.

    LYNX – The Text Web-Browser
    http://lynx.invisible-island.net

    This is the toplevel page for the Lynx software distribution site.

    The current development sources have the latest version of Lynx available (development towards 2.8.9).
    The main help page for lynx-current is online; the current User Guide is part of the online documentation.
    The most recent stable release is lynx2.8.8.

    P.S. Lynx marche très bien sous Windows ;-)

    #WWW #censure #privatisation

  • A decade of G7 central bank collusion - and counting... - Thoughts - Nomi Prins
    http://www.nomiprins.com/thoughts/2017/8/29/a-decade-of-g7-central-bank-collusion-and-counting.html

    Since late 2007, the Federal Reserve has embarked on grand-scale collusion with other G-7 central banks to manufacture a massive amount of money. The scope and degree of this collusion are historically unprecedented and by admission of the perpetrators, unconventional in approach, and - depending on the speech - ineffective.

    Central bank efforts to provide liquidity to the private banking system have been delivered amidst a plethora of grandiose phrases like “unlimited” and “by all means necessary.” Central bankers have played a game with no defined goalposts, no clock rundown, no max scores, and no true end in sight.

    At the Fed’s instigation, central bankers built policy on the fly. Their science experiment morphed into something even Dr. Frankenstein couldn’t have imagined. Confidence in the Fed and the U.S. dollar (as well as in other major central banks globally) has dropped considerably, even as this exercise remains in motion, and even though central bankers have tactiltly admitted that their money creation scheme was largely a bust, though not in any one official statement.

    Cracks in the Facade

  • Lacking land rights, historic black communities in Canada ...
    http://news.trust.org/item/20170906225619-fy8nt

    Hundreds of people in Canada’s historic black communities do not formally own the land where they have lived for generations, officials and lawyers say, in what critics call a case of long-running discrimination and economic exclusion.

    Many parcels of land in Nova Scotia, settled by black loyalists who fought with the British during the American Revolution or by escaped U.S. slaves, lack formal deeds, say advocates seeking to obtain property rights for local residents.

    Lack of a land title can prevent people from using property as collateral for bank loans to start businesses and complicates inheritance claims, legal experts say. It also makes property disputes more common.

    The situation in Eastern Canada is an anomaly in the world’s second largest country where property rights are generally well-defined.

    #Canada #droit_foncier #discrimination

  • Why We Had to Change the Meaning of Nothing - Facts So Romantic
    http://nautil.us/blog/why-we-had-to-change-the-meaning-of-nothing

    “Nothing,” in physics, is really quite something.Photograph by www.cafecredit.com / FlickrNothing” isn’t what it used to be. It used to be something self-evident: the opposite, or the absence, of something. We still use the word this way colloquially, of course. When I’m asked, on the sidewalk, if I can spare some change or a dollar, I say, if I have neither, “Sorry, I got nothing.” But this sense of the term doesn’t make much sense in science—at least, not anymore. “Nothing” used to be taken as an empty void, the space in which no particles exist. This way of thinking works for money. You either have it, in your wallet or your bank, or you don’t. But it doesn’t work with matter, energy, space, and time. “Nothing,” in physics, is really quite something. The cosmologist and theoretical physicist (...)

  • India’s Supreme Court says privacy is a fundamental right in blow to government - The Washington Post
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/indias-supreme-court-says-privacy-is-an-intrinsic-right-in-blow-to-government/2017/08/24/2c0b762c-8828-11e7-96a7-d178cf3524eb_story.html

    Le gouvernement fasciste indien vient de connaître un retour de bâton sur sa tentative de ficher toute la population. Mais ils essaieront autrement.

    A noter : « c’est pour lutter contre la fraude aux aides sociales » est devenu un leitmotiv pour tous les gouvernements réactionnaires. Le deal « une fiche biométrique contre un crouton de pain » est une insulte à la dignité humaine.

    NEW DELHI — In a blow to the Indian government’s efforts to roll out the world’s biggest biometric database on its billion citizens, India’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that privacy was a fundamental right for people.

    Over the past few years, the government has aggressively pushed to compile the database, known as Aadhar, by sending officials out to remote villages to take iris scans and fingerprints. To ensure complete enrollment, the government this year put out several notices restricting access to essential government services for those not part of the system.

    The unanimous ruling by the nine-judge bench will have huge implications in a number of ongoing cases involving Aadhar, which means base or foundation in Hindi.

    It could put an end to the government’s efforts of making enrollment mandatory. It also guarantees privacy for Indian citizens as an intrinsic right — removing it could have had far reaching implications beyond biometric IDs for the daily lives of Indians such as the possible decriminalization of homosexuality.

    In recent months, government notices said that as part of the Aadhar program, Indians would have to use a 12-digit unique identification number (known as the UID) to participate in almost every aspect of civic life — filing income tax returns, applying for railway job s or opening bank accounts.

    Government rules especially targeted the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society, Ramanathan said, by restricting access to services such as free midday meals and allowances for tuberculosis patients.

    Unlike social security numbers, UIDs would be accessible to various government agencies and private organizations. In recent months, government websites have mistakenly leaked thousands of UIDs.

    #Vie_privée #Inde #Surveillance

  • Bitcoin and digital currency : A guide for your Mom – Hacker Noon
    https://hackernoon.com/bitcoin-and-digital-currency-a-guide-for-your-mom-5b6001662d08

    C’est intéressant de voir combien les technologies ont besoin de la mythification pour exister. Les discours amphigouriques des années 80 (Stewart Brand, Alvin Toffler and C°) ont changé, mais la logique reste la même : rien ne sera plus jamais comme avant, et si vous n’êtes pas dans le bon train, vous finirez sur une voie de garage.

    Dans tous les cas, le moteur libertartien est la fin des intermédiaires... ce qui nous a conduit au monde au delà de la vérité que nous connaissons, et qui transformera l’échange marchand en zone minée. Heureusement, les monnaies locales (qui sont des formes politiques et non économiques) pourront permettre la survie. Et puis les Etats-nations ne sont pas prêts de disparaître, même si leur forme post-westphalienne doit changer, donc les monnaies resteront des outils de politique économique... et de guerre.

    We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the way people buy and own goods, one that is so radical and unexpected that it will change the economics of the world forever. It is not far fetched to say that we are witnessing the rise of the “economic internet”. I don’t mean the spending of money online, we have all been doing that for some time. I mean a shift to where the money is baked right into this new iteration of the internet. This is a subtle but massive difference, one with no middlemen facilitating the banking, the transactions, or dictating the rules. Once it gains traction it will upend everything we know about the current systems.

    I don’t blame you for the skepticism, a little skepticism is good when it comes to something new. My argument is that if you are on the fence then just hop over and get in, this is transformational, and not so new anymore, the early internet was transformation but lots of people were skeptical of it. It’s not like you couldn’t do business in the early days of the internet without using it.

    #Bitcoin #Cryptocurrency #Monnaie_numerique #Discours #Mythification

  • M-Pesa, MTN, Orange, others lead Africa’s mobile money revolution — Quartz
    https://qz.com/1039896/m-pesa-mtn-orange-others-lead-africas-mobile-money-revolution
    https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/h_50814711-e1501169334527.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1600

    Mobile money accounts in sub-Saharan Africa have surpassed bank accounts, says a report from global trade body GSMA.

    (…) Analysts believe there is still plenty more ground to break by mobile money’s impact in Africa. Only 17% of the viable mobile money rural market has been tapped says GSMA, Tanzania for instance still has up to 92% of its people especially in rural areas still unbanked.

    #mpesa #kenya #banques #mobile

  • Briton who stopped WannaCry attack arrested over separate malware claims | Technology | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/03/researcher-who-stopped-wannacry-ransomware-detained-in-us?CMP=twt_gu

    Marcus Hutchins, the 23-year-old British security researcher who was credited with stopping the WannaCry outbreak in its tracks by discovering a hidden “kill switch” for the malware, has been arrested by the FBI over his alleged involvement in another malicious software targeting bank accounts.

    According to an indictment released by the US Department of Justice on Thursday, Hutchins is accused of having helped to create, spread and maintain the banking trojan Kronos between 2014 and 2015.

    The Kronos malware was spread through emails with malicious attachments such as compromised Microsoft word documents, and hijacked credentials like internet banking passwords to let its user steal money with ease.

    “A lot of us thought of Kronos as crimeware-as-a-service,” Kalember said, since a Kronos buyer would also be getting “free updates and support” and that “implied there’s a large group behind it”.

    This could very easily be the FBI mistaking legitimate research activity with being in control of Kronos infrastructure
    Ryan Kalember, security researcher

    He also warned that the actions of a researcher examining the malware can look very similar to those of a criminal in charge of it. “This could very easily be the FBI mistaking legitimate research activity with being in control of Kronos infrastructure. Lots of researchers like to log in to crimeware tools and interfaces and play around.”

    On top of that, for a researcher looking into the world of banking hacks, “sometimes you have to at least pretend to be selling something interesting to get people to trust you”, he said. “It’s not an uncommon thing for researchers to do and I don’t know if the FBI could tell the difference.”

    Hutchins, better known online by his handle MalwareTech, had been in Las Vegas for the annual Def Con hacking conference, the largest of its kind in the world. He was at the airport preparing to leave the country when he was arrested, after more than a week in the the city without incident.

    #Virus #Cybersécurité #Malware

  • Meyer Lansky - Cuba
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_Lansky

    After World War II, Luciano was paroled from prison on the condition that he permanently return to Sicily. However, Luciano secretly moved to Cuba, where he worked to resume control over American Mafia operations. Luciano also ran a number of casinos in Cuba with the sanction of Cuban president General Fulgencio Batista, though the US government succeeded in pressuring the Batista regime to deport Luciano.

    Batista’s closest friend in the Mafia was Lansky. They formed a renowned friendship and business relationship that lasted for a decade. During a stay at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in the late 1940s, it was mutually agreed upon that, in exchange for kickbacks, Batista would offer Lansky and the Mafia control of Havana’s racetracks and casinos. Batista would open Havana to large scale gambling, and his government would match, dollar for dollar, any hotel investment over $1 million, which would include a casino license. Lansky would place himself at the center of Cuba’s gambling operations. He immediately called on his associates to hold a summit in Havana.

    The Havana Conference was held on December 22, 1946, at the Hotel Nacional. This was the first full-scale meeting of American underworld leaders since the Chicago meeting in 1932. Present were such figures as Joe Adonis and Albert “The Mad Hatter” Anastasia, Frank Costello, Joseph “Joe Bananas” Bonanno, Vito Genovese, Moe Dalitz, Thomas Luchese, from New York, Santo Trafficante Jr. from Tampa, Carlos Marcello from New Orleans, and Stefano Magaddino, Joe Bonanno’s cousin from Buffalo. From Chicago there were Anthony Accardo and the Fischetti brothers, “Trigger-Happy” Charlie and Rocco, and, representing the Jewish interest, Lansky, Dalitz and “Dandy” Phil Kastel from Florida. The first to arrive was Lucky Luciano, who had been deported to Italy, and had to travel to Havana with a false passport. Lansky shared with them his vision of a new Havana, profitable for those willing to invest the right sum of money. According to Luciano’s evidence, and he is the only one who ever recounted the events in any detail, he confirmed that he was appointed as kingpin for the mob, to rule from Cuba until such time as he could find a legitimate way back into the U.S. Entertainment at the conference was provided by, among others, Frank Sinatra who flew down to Cuba with his friends, the Fischetti brothers.

    In 1952, Lansky even offered then President Carlos Prío Socarrás a bribe of U.S. $250,000 to step down so Batista could return to power. Once Batista retook control of the government in a military coup in March, 1952 he quickly put gambling back on track. The dictator contacted Lansky and offered him an annual salary of U.S. $25,000 to serve as an unofficial gambling minister. By 1955, Batista had changed the gambling laws once again, granting a gaming license to anyone who invested $1 million in a hotel or U.S. $200,000 in a new nightclub. Unlike the procedure for acquiring gaming licenses in Vegas, this provision exempted venture capitalists from background checks. As long as they made the required investment, they were provided with public matching funds for construction, a 10-year tax exemption and duty-free importation of equipment and furnishings. The government would get U.S. $250,000 for the license plus a percentage of the profits from each casino. Cuba’s 10,000 slot machines, even the ones that dispensed small prizes for children at country fairs, were to be the province of Batista’s brother-in-law, Roberto Fernandez y Miranda. An Army general and government sports director, Fernandez was also given the parking meters in Havana as a little something extra. Import duties were waived on materials for hotel construction and Cuban contractors with the right “in” made windfalls by importing much more than was needed and selling the surplus to others for hefty profits. It was rumored that besides the U.S. $250,000 to get a license, sometimes more was required under the table. Periodic payoffs were requested and received by corrupt politicians.

    Lansky set about reforming the Montmartre Club, which soon became the “in” place in Havana. He also long expressed an interest in putting a casino in the elegant Hotel Nacional, which overlooked El Morro, the ancient fortress guarding Havana harbor. Lansky planned to take a wing of the 10-story hotel and create luxury suites for high-stakes players. Batista endorsed Lansky’s idea over the objections of American expatriates such as Ernest Hemingway and the elegant hotel opened for business in 1955 with a show by Eartha Kitt. The casino was an immediate success.[18]

    Once all the new hotels, nightclubs and casinos had been built Batista wasted no time collecting his share of the profits. Nightly, the “bagman” for his wife collected 10 percent of the profits at Trafficante’s interests; the Sans Souci cabaret, and the casinos in the hotels Sevilla-Biltmore, Commodoro, Deauville and Capri (part-owned by the actor George Raft). His take from the Lansky casinos, his prized Habana Riviera, the Nacional, the Montmartre Club and others, was said to be 30 percent. What exactly Batista and his cronies actually received in total in the way of bribes, payoffs and profiteering has never been certified. The slot machines alone contributed approximately U.S. $1 million to the regime’s bank account.

    Revolution

    The 1959 Cuban revolution and the rise of Fidel Castro changed the climate for mob investment in Cuba. On that New Year’s Eve of 1958, while Batista was preparing to flee to the Dominican Republic and then on to Spain (where he died in exile in 1973), Lansky was celebrating the $3 million he made in the first year of operations at his 440-room, $18 million palace, the Habana Riviera. Many of the casinos, including several of Lansky’s, were looted and destroyed that night.

    On January 8, 1959, Castro marched into Havana and took over, setting up shop in the Hilton. Lansky had fled the day before for the Bahamas and other Caribbean destinations. The new Cuban president, Manuel Urrutia Lleó, took steps to close the casinos.

    In October 1960, Castro nationalized the island’s hotel-casinos and outlawed gambling. This action essentially wiped out Lansky’s asset base and revenue streams. He lost an estimated $7 million. With the additional crackdown on casinos in Miami, Lansky was forced to depend on his Las Vegas revenues.

    ...

    When asked in his later years what went wrong in Cuba, the gangster offered no excuses. “I crapped out,” he said. Lansky even went as far as to tell people he had lost almost every penny in Cuba and that he was barely scraping by.

    ...

    Since the warming of relations between the United States and Cuba in 2015, Lansky’s grandson, Gary Rapoport, has been asking the Cuban government to compensate him for the confiscation of the Riviera hotel that his grandfather built in Havana.

    #Cuba #USA #mafia #histoire

  • Hero of Israel
    Gideon Levy | Jul 27, 2017
    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.803684

    Netanyahu, Einat Schlein, Israel’s ambassador to Jordan and Ziv, an embassy security officer, at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, July 25, 2017. Haim Zach / GPO

    The new hero of Israel wears torn jeans, lives in a religious cooperative community in the south, has a girlfriend and he kills Arabs. Heroes of Israel have always killed Arabs, but sometimes they did so bravely; today they do so with rather pathetic cowardice. They’re scared of a teen with a screwdriver.

    The hero of Israel kills Arabs indiscriminately, including ones who are innocent or who did not deserve to die. The Israeli hero is a young man of principles, principles he absorbed while serving in the occupied territories. He learned dehumanization in the Givati Brigade and how to kill civilians in Operation Protective Edge. He learned that the first action to take against an Arab is always to shoot to kill; the alternatives can be considered later.

    He learned that it’s perfectly fine, even heroic, to kill an Arab, no matter why. He trained in the territories and put it to use in Jordan — what difference does it make, all Arabs are the same, whether on the east or the west bank of the Jordan River. His friends say he’s a “man’s man,” that this wasn’t his first time in a tough situation, like that teen with a screwdriver, and that he’s calm and considered. Imagine what might have happened if he weren’t. He might have killed five people, maybe 10.

    The hero of Israel killed civilians: a physician, for no reason, and a teenager who was assembling furniture and who threatened him with that doomsday weapon, the screwdriver, in the heat of some argument, not even an attack. The hero of Israel didn’t blink. A hero of Israel never counts to 10. He draws and fires. Two dead, two more kill notches.

    Our newest hero’s name is Ziv, but we can’t show his face. His blurred visage as he is embraced by the prime minister only adds to his aura. He replaces his predecessor, the more exalted Elor Azaria. The former killed a dying man, the latter killed two civilians. Don’t accuse him. That’s what he was taught to do in “tough situations” in the territories — to shoot and to kill. That’s what he was trained to be, a blind machine gun.

    He is considered a hero. No one would dream of seriously questioning him as a suspect, beyond the formality promised to Jordan, and it’s already been said it would lead to nothing. Perhaps he committed murder, or perhaps negligent manslaughter? Perhaps he violated the rules of engagement? How would we know? We won’t know. We don’t want to know. Instead of that, we got the prime minister’s unsurprising phone call to him. “Did you make a date with your girlfriend yet?” asked Benjamin Netanyahu in that fatherly manner reserved for heroes. After that came the brave embrace in his office. Look, Jordan, look, these are the heroes of Israel, your sister in peace, the killers of your citizens. And the Palestinians are accused of exalting terrorists.

    When a Jordanian soldier killed seven Israeli schoolgirls in Naharayim in 2007, Jordan’s King Hussein cut short his trip to Spain and hurried to Beit Shemesh to kneel before the grieving families and beg forgiveness. He also visited the wounded and his kingdom paid compensation. But when an Israeli government security guard kills two Jordanians, at least one of them completely innocent, the Israeli prime minister won’t even consider apologizing. Condemnations we demand only from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. We can only fantasize about a condolence call or the payment of compensation. Why, who died, as the saying goes? Two Arabs, nothing more.

    King Hussein of jordan consoling an Israeli family whose daughter was killed by a Jordanian soldier during a class trip to Naharayim, 2007.Avi Ohayon / GOP

    Two dead Arabs, and a hero of Israel who returned home safely, overcoming his injuries. Ziv the hero will recite his version of events, and perhaps even return to service. Tens of thousands of young Israelis dream of being Ziv. They dream of serving in the territories in the occupation army, of abusing and killing Arabs, of traveling to India and to Guatemala before becoming embassy security guards. If they’re lucky, they might even get to kill some teenager with a screwdriver and a doctor who happened to be there, as in the good old days in Qalandiyah.

    Salute the heroes of Israel. They are the finest of our youth.

    #Jordanie #Ziv

  • Hundreds died in Rohingya camps on Thai-Malaysia border
    http://www.atimes.com/article/hundreds-died-rohingya-camps-thai-malaysia-border

    More details have emerged about Thailand’s ugly trade in people now that a marathon trial has ended in Bangkok with 62 people convicted of human trafficking and other serious crimes.

    Camps set up by traffickers in the jungle on the Thai-Malaysian border to hold Rohingya and other ‘boat people’ existed for many years prior to government crackdown in mid-2015 that curtailed the brutal trade, a key activist group has said.

    Freeland, a Bangkok-based non-government group that fights wildlife trafficking and human slavery, worked with Thai police to identify key figures in the smuggling networks that were rounded up and put on trial.

    The group said on Friday it “believes that more than 500 people died in the camps where the people in this particular trafficking chain were held, and that the camps were probably there for at least five years or more”.

    It also had “digital forensics experts” able to help police access vital data on mobile phones found on drivers and in cars stopped with smuggled Rohingya on board. Data on the phones indicated “the precise route the drivers had taken on multiple occasions… [and] filled in pieces of the trafficking supply chain, and ultimately uncovered the location of some holding camps.”

    The data also allegedly led to bank transfers to a senior military officer convicted of trafficking, Lieutenant General Manas Kongpaen. Manas, who was sentenced to 27 years jail, was involved in the notorious ‘pushbacks’ affair in December 2008 and January 2009, when vessels carrying hundreds of Rohingya were towed back into the Andaman Sea and set adrift.

  • Ethereum : nouveau casse sans arme, ni violence de 30 millions de dollars

    http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/ethereum-nouveau-casse-sans-arme-ni-violence-de-30-millions-de-dollars-3985524 #cryptomonnaie

    Sécurité : La société britannique Parity, qui édite un client pour les utilisateurs d’ #Ethereum, a annoncé qu’une faille avait été détectée dans certaines versions de ses porte-monnaie. Un #cybercriminel s’est servi de cette vulnérabilité afin de dérober l’équivalent de 30 millions de dollars en ether.

    via https://diasp.eu/p/5773163

    • A hacker stole $31M of Ether — how it happened, and what it means for Ethereum

      https://medium.freecodecamp.org/a-hacker-stole-31m-of-ether-how-it-happened-and-what-it-means-f

      [...]

      Around 12:00 PST, an unknown attacker exploited a critical flaw in the Parity multi-signature wallet on the Ethereum network, draining three massive wallets of over $31,000,000 worth of Ether in a matter of minutes. Given a couple more hours, the hacker could’ve made off with over $105,000,000 from vulnerable wallets.

      But someone stopped them.

      Having sounded the alarm bells, a group of benevolent white-hat hackers from the Ethereum community rapidly organized. They analyzed the attack and realized that there was no way to reverse the thefts, yet many more wallets were vulnerable. Time was of the essence, so they saw only one available option: hack the remaining wallets before the attacker did.

      By exploiting the same vulnerability, the white-hats hacked all of the remaining at-risk wallets and drained their accounts, effectively preventing the attacker from reaching any of the remaining $77,000,000.

      Yes, you read that right.

      To prevent the hacker from robbing any more banks, the white-hats wrote software to rob all of the remaining banks in the world. Once the money was safely stolen, they began the process of returning the funds to their respective account holders. The people who had their money saved by this heroic feat are now in the process of retrieving their funds.

      It’s an extraordinary story, and it has significant implications for the world of cryptocurrencies.

      It’s important to understand that this exploit was not a vulnerability in Ethereum or in #Parity itself. Rather, it was a vulnerability in the default smart contract code that the Parity client gives the user for deploying multi-signature wallets.

      [...]

      Most programmers today are trained on the web development model. Unfortunately, the blockchain security model is more akin to the older model.

      In blockchain, code is intrinsically unrevertible. Once you deploy a bad smart contract, anyone is free to attack it as long and hard as they can, and there’s no way to take it back if they get to it first. Unless you build intelligent security mechanisms into your contracts, if there’s a bug or successful attack, there’s no way to shut off your servers and fix the mistake. Being on Ethereum by definition means everyone owns your server.

      A common saying in cybersecurity is “attack is always easier than defense.” Blockchain sharply multiplies this imbalance. It’s far easier to attack because you have access to the code of every contract, know how much money is in it, and can take as long as you want to try to attack it. And once your attack is successful, you can potentially steal all of the money in the contract.

      Imagine that you were deploying software for vending machines. But instead of a bug allowing you to simply steal candy from one machine, the bug allowed you to simultaneously steal candy from every machine in the world that employed this software. Yeah, that’s how blockchain works.

      In the case of a successful attack, defense is extremely difficult. The white-hats in the Parity hack demonstrated how limited their defense options were — there was no way to secure or dismantle the contracts, or even to hack back the stolen money; all they could do was hack the remaining vulnerable contracts before the attacker did.

      This might seem to spell a dark future.

      But I don’t think this is a death knell for blockchain programming. Rather, it confirms what everyone already knows: this ecosystem is young and immature. It’s going to take a lot of work to develop the training and discipline to treat smart contracts the way that banks treat their ATM software. But we’re going to have to get there for blockchain to be successful in the long run.

      This means not just programmers maturing and getting more training. It also means developing tools and languages that make all of this easier, and give us rigorous guarantees about our code.

      It’s still early. Ethereum is a work in progress, and it’s changing rapidly. You should not treat Ethereum as a bank or as a replacement for financial infrastructure. And certainly you should not store any money in a hot wallet that you’re not comfortable losing.

      [...]

      via https://diasp.eu/posts/5775397

  • He sang ’Creep,’ but we expected more of Thom Yorke
    One can fight politicians, global warming, big corporations and Donald Trump without needing much courage. Not so with the occupation
    By Gideon Levy | Jul. 20, 2017 | 4:09 AM | 4
    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.802304

    “When we got the call / Saw dollars in my eyes / We’re supporting apartheid / But the pay’s really high / I float like white phosphorous / Over Beit Hanoun skies / I wish I was ethical / We’re so very unethical / But I’m a creep / I’m playing Israel / What the hell am I doing here? / I don’t belong here I don’t even notice / No Palestinians around.”

    These lyrics were superimposed by BDS activists in England on a video from a Radiohead performance of their hit song “Creep,” to protest the band’s appearance Wednesday night in Tel Aviv. Similarly, Scottish activists posted a cover of another Radiohead song, “Karma Police,” with the lyrics “They’re playing apartheid / While Palestinians wait / They’re the worst kind of hypocrites.”

    So these versions circulated online, while Radiohead gathered tens of thousands in Yarkon Park. Gaza is enveloped in darkness and they laughed all the way to the bank. While doors all over the world are being slammed in Roger Waters’ face as part of the delegitimization of the BDS movement, Radiohead can appear anywhere and not pay any price for identifying with Israel and the occupation, and it only got more ridiculous as lead singer Thom Yorke became more entrenched in his positions.

    This battle of music icons, between the protest singer, Waters, and the checkbook singer, Yorke; between the voice of morality and conscience and the voice of escapism and apathy, always ends in victory for Yorke’s “music without borders.” It’s always more comfortable to be an apolitical singer, one who “doesn’t mix music with politics.”

    We expected more from Yorke. Perhaps if he knew more about the occupation than what he probably heard from the Israeli wife of his guitarist, he would change his stance. After all, he’s known to be an artist who gives a damn, a vegan who battles against globalization, supports fairness in trade, opposes Donald Trump and fights for the environment. But that’s just the point: You don’t pay any price for these battles, justified as they may be. They are luxury struggles, like those of Aviv Geffen, our own protest singer.

    One can battle against politicians, against global warming, multinational corporations and the U.S. president without needing much courage. You can be in favor of liberating Tibet and against the occupation of Kashmir; against whale hunting and the oppression of the Falun Gong in China, in favor of animal rights, Native Americans, the Inuit, the Roma and the Aborigines – all of which are justified causes – without it costing a thing.

    There’s only one struggle for which anyone putting his hand in the fire gets immediately burned. Anyone who dares to say “No” to the occupation is immediately accused of anti-Semitism. Say “BDS” and you risk prosecution. That’s why the real test of an artist’s guts and integrity is the struggle against the occupation and Israeli apartheid. That’s the litmus test. The cowards flee from it, only the brave dare take it on. That’s why there are so few Waterses in the world and lots of Yorkes.

    There is no more powerful, rich, well-oiled, effective and aggressive lobby like the one that fights opponents of the Israeli occupation. You can be Yorke, fight Wall Street, be considered a person of conscience and not get hurt. Or you can be Waters, who’s in the middle of a dizzying world tour, and in the midst of this success hasn’t neglected the struggle that burns within him more than any other, and for which he’s paying a heavy price. Nothing will stop him, not even when American governors and mayors threaten to block his appearances. Not even when they call him an anti-Semite or even a Nazi. Waters dreams of appearing in Gaza, and isn’t intimidated when the mayor of Miami Beach threatens to prevent him from appearing in his city. The scandalous criminalization of BDS is already taking its toll, but Waters and his ilk are not afraid.

    Yorke was born with a sealed left eye, which was opened by a series of operations. There’s something symbolic about that. Waters was born with both eyes open. They’ve never met. Their respective level of daring and integrity separates them, apparently forever. Which of them will be more admired? Which will be remembered?