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On many occasions, our website has relied on 'Wikileaks' revelations to report depth of U.S.-Israel relationship
Philip Weiss on April 17, 2019 12 Comments
Assange in a government vehicle following his arrest on April 11, 2019. Getty images.
Yesterday the New York Times published a juicy piece about Democratic Party apparatchik Neera Tanden that included a revelation from the Wikileaks dump of documents from the Democratic National Committee in 2016: Tanden hosted Benjamin Netanyahu for a fawning interview at her thinktank, the Center for American Progress, even as Netanyahu was trying to undermine President Obama's Iran deal, so she could recruit a pro-Israel board member, Jonathan Lavine, who gave the organization $1 million last year.
The Times's reliance on Wikileaks to provide important information about our political process is a timely reminder of the public role of the man dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy last Thursday, headed for criminal proceedings related to his obtaining and publishing government documents. Julian Assange is a journalistic source. I've been in the news business for a long time and I've always been told to protect sources. And by the way, not all these sources had great character or reputation. That wasn't the point. The First Amendment protected news gathering, and sources are a critical element of the process.
The value I can add to the Assange debate is to convey to readers how much his organization Wikileaks has contributed to our understanding of the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel. I will not itemize every revelation we've published that we got off Wikileaks, we'd be here all day. But I do want to convey the range and depth of these revelations. In every case these were important reports about how officials and public figures worked behind closed doors to make sure that Israel and its interests stayed at the forefront of US deliberations. We would not have that understanding without Assange. Full stop. You can say anything about his personality or his support for Trump, that's not the issue.
Apropos of yesterday's Times report, the 2016 dump from the DNC itemized numerous collaborations between the Clinton campaign and pro-Israel donors to shape policy when she got to the White House. I'll get to them in a minute. First, some earlier documents.
This 2009 cable from the State Department quoted Netanyahu — forget about his lip service to two states — saying he was only willing to give Palestinians a Bantustan: "a Palestinian state must be demilitarized, without control over its air space and electro-magnetic field, and without the power to enter into treaties or control its borders."
This 2008 Wikileaks cable established the State Department's own understanding of the cruelty of the Israeli policy toward Gaza: to staunch the banking system to keep Gaza on the "brink of collapse."
Israeli officials have confirmed to econoffs on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge…
This cable showed that the State Department had publicly lied about its response to an Israeli hit in Dubai in February 2010 that Dubai was angered about, as State sought to protect Israel.
In 2011 Wikileaks showed that the U.S. under Obama was deeply enmeshed in the United Nations response to the Gaza slaughter of '08-'09, including behind the scenes efforts to stifle the Goldstone Report so it wouldn't get to the International Criminal Court. Foreign Policy reported that story under the title "Special Relationship."
The new documents, though consistent with public U.S. statements at the time opposing a U.N. investigation into Israeli military operations, reveal in extraordinary detail how America wields its power behind closed doors at the United Nations. They also demonstrate how the United States and Israel were granted privileged access to highly sensitive internal U.N. deliberations on an "independent" U.N. board of inquiry into the Gaza war, raising questions about the independence of the process.
Yes, in one of those cables, Ambassador Susan Rice called U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon three times on one day, May 4, 2009, to block a recommendation by the U.N. to carry out a "sweeping inquiry" into war crimes by Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants. She said that the recommendation far exceeded the legitimate scope of an investigation, and set a "bad precedent." Ban Ki-moon then assured her that his staff was "working with an Israeli delegation" on revisions of the inquiry's mandate.
This 2006 State Department cable, released in 2011, showed that the U.S. State Department was privately expressing sharp reservations about fascistic currents in Israeli political life, even as the U.S. government was holding its tongue about these trends. The cable was subtitled: RIGHT-WING LIEBERMAN UNABASHEDLY ADVOCATES TRANSFER OF ISRAELI ARABS. That cable includes government minister Avigdor Lieberman's endorsement of the idea to strip Palestinians of their citizenship if they wouldn't swear a loyalty oath.
In 2010, Wikileaks published cables from the State Department reflecting the view that there was growing distrust of the U.S. globally because of our close alliance with Israel. As Josh Ruebner wrote:
In an explosive WikiLeaks revelation, Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, the head of the Political Military Bureau of Israel's Ministry of Defense, while discussing Israeli requests for U.S. military aid, "acknowledged the sometimes difficult position the U.S. finds itself in given its global interests, and conceded that Israel's security focus is so narrow that its QME [Qualitative Military Edge] concerns often clash with broader American security interests in the region," according to the State Department.
Fast forward to the 2016 political race. Wikileaks showed that the special relationship was alive and well and influencing the Clinton campaign.
DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz wondered if Bernie Sanders believes in God. "The Israel stuff is disturbing," she wrote, when she was supposed to be a referee of the process (and later resigned over the widely-reported email).
Hillary Clinton made a host of promises to megadonor Haim Saban under the prodding of Saban and her Israel liaison guy, Stu Eizenstat. She would come out against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), so as to balance her support for the Iran deal. She would make a publicized phone call to Malcolm Hoenlein of the rightwing Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Orgs to indicate that she was going to turn the page on Obama's difficult relationship with Netanyahu. Eizenstat warned the campaign that "in Israel there is wall-to-wall opposition" to the Iran Deal– as if anyone should care what Israelis think! (Yes, ask Ilhan Omar.) Eizenstat met with Netanyahu and conveyed his counsel to Clinton: to "attack, attack, attack" BDS. Oh and Clinton should oppose the Obama administration's rumored efforts to pass a UN Security Council resolution against settlements. (Obama did her the service of waiting till the election was over on that one.)
Netanyahu must be invited to the White House as soon as Clinton gets there herself: "Bibi should be invited for early talks on how the partnership with Israel can be strengthened to combat Iran and Israel's other avowed enemies," Eizenstat counseled.
The importance of these leaks is that they documented in riveting detail an important (and negative) force in U.S. policymaking, the depth and extent of Israel's influence at the highest levels. Return to Neera Tanden and the Iran Deal. The Democratic Party's own disavowals of that deal alongside Netanyahu played an important role in its destruction.
We wouldn't know all this without Julian Assange. I hope that other reporters and editors stand up for that work in the days to come.
A forthcoming book from OR books edited by Tariq Ali and Margaret Ratner Kunstler is sure to make related points. It is to include chapters by Noam Chomsky, Charles Glass, Chris Hedges and Angela Richter among others.
JWalters on April 17, 2019, 4:37 pm
Thank you Phil, for another important and well-done article. Freedom of the press is a bedrock of Americans' liberty. The significance of this assault on Americans' liberty by its un-elected financial rulers cannot be overstated.
The American government's lies, revealed by Wikileaks, show vividly that American politicians are, in the main, in effect, Israel's puppets. Surely all Americans would want to know this, deserve to know this, and are legally entitled to know this. The only party that wants to keep this hidden is Israel. The secondary implication is that America's mainstream media, who also hide this critical information from American citizens, are also Israel's puppets. From these revelations it follows clearly that Israel is not America's friend. When we add in the facts about Israel's spying on America, stealing nuclear materials, and viciously attacking Americans when they deem it necessary (USS Liberty), the inescapable conclusion is that Israel is, in practical terms, more of an enemy than a friend. Naturally Israel, and those who gain from this arrangement, want to keep that hidden from Americans.
Julian Assange is one of the most courageous and consequential publishers in history. Every American should rally for his freedom, as he has valiantly suffered for ours.
Consortium News has been running an excellent series of articles exposing the criminal persecution of Assange. One good example is
"7 Years of Lies About Assange Won't Stop Now"
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/12/7-years-of-lies-about-assange-wont-stop-now/
Another worthwhile article is at Truthdig.
"The Martyrdom of Julian Assange"
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-martyrdom-of-julian-assange/
Finally, I'm sure most thoughtful readers of Mondoweiss have considered the dangers Phil and Adam have accepted in the courageous, uphill battle of publishing the truth at Mondoweiss. And though they have turned down a number of my posts, I know they have done so to maintain their effective balance of passion and intellectual integrity.
Citizen on April 17, 2019, 5:46 pm
Yes, Phil & Adam are brave guys.
umm al-hamam on April 18, 2019, 7:50 am
The idea that the United States is Israel's puppet is a ridiculous inversion of reality. The United States and its military and economic aid essentially built the Israeli economy and military—without the US's patronage, Israel would collapse within a month, tops. The Israeli armed forces can't breathe in the direction of another country without the US approving it, and as soon as the US decides it wants an Israeli war or massacre to end (or not happen in the first place), its will is done. Acts such as spying on US citizens and stealing nuclear secrets could not happen without the tacit approval of the US government, because they are in the US government's interests.
One example: at the moment the US sends Israel $4 billion in military aid a year—money which is earmarked to get advance access to new US weapons systems and technologies. These weapons then get battlefield tested in its many wars and counterinsurgency operations that it carries out essentially at the bidding of the US, essentially acting as an advertisement investment for the US arms industry, which makes $34 billion a year (& this number is growing). It's a very worthwhile investment and no US government is going to end it as long as the US has a Department of Defense.
Another example: In 1967, before Israel was a US puppet state, the US's already-existing puppet state Saudi Arabia was badly losing to Egypt in the two countries' proxy war in Yemen (an internationally funded "civil war"). The very first action Israel took in the Six Day War was to destroy the majority of the Egyptian air force, decisively turning the tide of the Yemeni civil war in favour of the Saudis. From this point onwards, including the attack on the USS Liberty (which may have happened for a variety of reasons but which regardless the US government decided was acceptable collateral damage), Israel's position as US puppet state was well established—and of course the entire reason the USS Liberty was present in the area in the first place was to assess whether Israeli military capabilities were sufficient for the US's purposes.
The simple fact is that Israel's interests are the US's interests—although there may be disagreements on a few issues such as how best to remove Iran's autonomy, these disagreements stem from within US politics itself, not from any conflict of interest between the two countries. This is because Israel is at this point not an independent state but a protectorate employed to do all the things the US's democratic system makes it difficult to do (e.g. send weapons to apartheid South Africa after the US congress imposed sanctions; send weapons to Central American contras when Reagan became embroiled in scandal for doing that; bomb Syrian government targets when the US can't for fear of igniting war with Russia; etc.)
Misterioso on April 18, 2019, 10:26 am
@umm al-hamam
"The Israeli armed forces can't breathe in the direction of another country without the US approving it."
And the number one job of the U.S. pro-Israel lobby (e.g., AIPAC, Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, loony Evangelists, et. al.) is to convince Washington to approve and support Israel's illegal expansionist wars, its brutal dispossession, expulsion of the indigenous Palestinians and its barbaric occupation of their and other Arab lands.
One example:
Haaretz, Dec. 7/18, by Amir Tibon
WASHINGTON – "Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson is reportedly spending at least $55 million during the upcoming midterm elections in order to keep Republicans in control of Congress."
"The Casino billionaire's total contributions to various Republican causes surpass $100 million, according to the New York Times, possibly making him the largest single donor in American politics today."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50387.htm
Sheldon Adelson: "Best Government Money Can Buy" By Philip M. Giraldi
October 6/18, Information Clearing House.
"Very few Americans know who Sheldon Adelson is and fewer still appreciate that, as America's leading political donor, when he speaks the Republican Party listens. By virtue of his largesse, he has been able to direct GOP policy in the Middle East in favor of Israel, which might well be regarded as his true home while the United States exists more as a faithful friend that can be produced at intervals whenever Israel finds itself in need of a bit of cash or political cover.
"Adelson's recent successes in translating his political donations into policy favorable to Israel have included shifting the US Embassy to Jerusalem, cutting aid to Palestinians, ending the Iranian nuclear monitoring agreement and closing the Palestine Liberation Organization's diplomatic office in Washington. All those Trump Administration measures were reportedly worked out privately by Adelson speaking directly with the president.
"Adelson's activities in buying politicians reflect what he believes, he reportedly having said that 'there's no such thing as a Palestinian.' Nor does his world view include much concern for the country that has sheltered him and made him wealthy. He served in the US Army in World War 2 and has said that he regrets having done so, as he would rather have worn an Israeli army uniform. He also expressed his desire that his son might become an Israeli Army sniper.
"Adelson benefits from his exceptional access to the White House to the detriment of actual American interests. A New York Times article 'Sheldon Adelson Sees a Lot to Like in Trump's Washington,' states that he 'enjoys a direct line to the president' and meets the president monthly 'in private in-person meetings and phone conversations.' He has been delighted with the openly expressed threats emanating from the Administration's key foreign and national security policy spokesmen regarding Iran. He would like to see the United States go to war with the Iranians to destroy their government and bring about some kind of regime change, and, judging from recent developments, he just might get what he seeks, which could easily have catastrophic consequences for the entire region and beyond.
"Adelson is somewhat unhinged on the issue of Iran and has even called for dropping a nuclear bomb on a desert region of the country as a negotiating tactic to show 'we mean business' so Washington could then 'impose its demands [on Iran] from a position of strength.' If Iran continued to resist, Adelson would to drop the next one on Tehran. If Tehran were to be nuked millions of Iranians would die, which doesn't bother Adelson one bit. Such a development would, in Adelson's opinion, be good for Israel, which is his primary concern."
"Congressional Research Service, U.S. Foreign aid to Israel, Jeremy M. Sharpe, Specialist in Middle East Affairs, April 10, 2018."
"Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II. To date, the United States has provided Israel $134.7 billion (current, or non inflation-adjusted, dollars) in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding. Almost all U.S. bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance, although in the past Israel also received significant economic assistance. At a signing ceremony at the State Department on September 14, 2016, representatives of the U.S. and Israeli governments signed a new 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on military aid covering FY2019 to FY2028. Under the terms of the MOU, the United States pledges to provide $38 billion in military aid ($33 billion in Foreign Military Financing grants plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations) to Israel. This MOU replaces a previous $30 billion 10-year agreement, which runs through FY2018."
In large measure, "the tail wags the dog."
genesto on April 18, 2019, 12:42 pm
How does this jibe with your notion of Israel being a puppet of the US?
@genesto:
There are obviously different factions within the US government—one of which (the one that controls Israel) believes Israel is the best first-line actor to carry out US policy in the Middle East and worldwide, another of which is wary of putting all its eggs in one basket and sees deploying Israel as simply one of several tools in the US's toolbox. This also reflects the different factions within the Israeli government—Gilad's view here represents the second of these views, one also shared by the US's professional defense policy establishment and much of the Democratic Party. Whereas people like Netanyahu and much of the Republican Party would disagree on this point and argue that, e.g., relying on Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Turkey instead of Israel compromises American interests, because these countries are not as militarily effective as Israel is.
Israel's "qualitative military edge" is in practice a euphemism for its ability to test new American weapons systems on captive populations before the rest of the market gets access to them. So Gilad is referring to situations where Israeli live fire weapons tests failed to advance US security interests, such as the 2006 Lebanon "war", which damaged American efforts to foment sectarian divisions across the Middle East by uniting the Arab world behind Hezbollah (and revealing that even with the hi-tech US equipment the Israeli military is fairly ineffective). In his view, events like that should not have happened, whereas that war was promoted and seen as positive by the Bush-Adelson-Raytheon-Likud wing of American/Israeli politics.
Keith on April 17, 2019, 5:06 pm
PHIL- "A forthcoming book from OR books edited by Tariq Ali and Margaret Ratner Kunstler is sure to make related points. It is to include chapters by Noam Chomsky, Charles Glass, Chris Hedges and Angela Richter among others."
Thanks for the heads up! Good article, albeit somewhat belated. As usual, the imperial media is in full propaganda mode, freedom of the press and/or democracy an illusion. And most (all?) of the imperial human rights/feminist organizations fall into line with empire.
"It brings to mind a question, a question many so-called activists in the United States and elsewhere have to ask themselves: Where were they in regards to Chelsea Manning? Why were there only ten people outside the courthouse? Where is Amnesty International, where are the women's groups, the LGBT groups? Where are the Pride people? Why aren't they massing in support of Chelsea Manning? This is the most significant act of principle, an inspiration to all decent people. People should be in the streets." (John Pilger) https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/chelsea-manning-locked-down-again/
I link to a must see interview with Roger Waters whose knowledge and clarity on this is exceptional. Highly recommended. http://thesaker.is/roger-waters-julian-assange-arrest-proves-uk-is-a-satellite-state-of-us-empire/
DaBakr on April 18, 2019, 12:21 am
@pw
"……as if anybody should care about what Israel thinks…..".. Lol. Suppose that is the rub. Millions of Americans do care. Too bad. Guess it's just a conspiracy that won't fool you of the enlightened set.
bcg on April 18, 2019, 10:25 am
@DeBakr: Recently I heard Jeff Halper ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Halper ) speak in the U.S., and the church was packed with Americans who care about what happens in Israel, and the people in the audience I talked to told me that they knew many people who care about what happens in Israel, so I guess you're right.
@DaBakr
Wake up and smell the coffee. Israel's image in the U.S. is in free fall.
Elizabeth Block on April 18, 2019, 8:09 am
Thank you for the reminder of what Wikileaks has done that was good and necessary.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: If you don't support the rights of people you don't like, you don't support the rights of anyone, including yourself.
tony greenstein on April 18, 2019, 11:32 am
Excellent article. I didn't read it as saying that Israel was in control of US foreign policy. But nor is Israel the US's puppet. It is an ongoing relationship in which Israel seeks to persuade sections of the US ruling class as to what is in its interests and this is mediated through think tanks, donors etc.


It's Nolahn's birthday and he asked that we cover 1966's "Batman: The Movie", the one with Adam West. And we cover it, in it's campiness glory.
First, Jason and Nolahn plug a whole bunch of stuff, including some new podcasts and some YouTube channels to check out!


A quiver of one for all mountain skiers, the all new Legend W 84 merges freeride DNA with a modern all mountain shape for versatile, all terrain performance.
This is a light, easy to use playful ski that feels accessible to all levels of skier. It's rocker and easy to predict sidecut means that it feels that it's always at the beck and call of the skier, rather than taking too much charge. It carves well on the piste, and although it has limits, for most skiers they would really enjoy any type of turns on hardpack. In the off piste it skis really well, with the light construction and well judged profile making it an easy, fun ski to use in any conditions and terrain. Overall this is a great all mountain ski that would work really well for recreational to advanced skiers.
They were happy to cruise but turned up a gear when pushed on piste. Light and agile in the off piste but just lacked a bit of power and stability underfoot.


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Rely on Precisions' Commercial Division to repair or maintain your Businesses' Sectional Doors.
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There are many definitions of aggression circulating in the science on dogs and which suggest that there are many causes, but in reality, no matter the context or its object, all incidents of aggression have the same cause, fear. Thus we can defineAggression as "Blocked Attraction." This block is fear.
Fear can be acquired through the experience of pain and emotional trauma but also through a slow, steady build up of a daily anxiety from seemingly innocuously sources, for example, excess stimulation. This unused energy is converted into a generic kind of fear and stored in an "emotional battery" as stress. Dogs respond differently to stress based on their genetic predispositions and this is whyaggression in its varied forms appears to have a myriad of causes when this is not the case.
The adaptive purpose that fear serves, in addition to avoiding potential danger, is to add intensity to behavior. Thus, if the intensity builds to a level that surpasses the dog's capacity to feel attracted to its owner, the dog feels blocked and acts problematically. It's not accurate to say that a dog turns or snaps, or is acting out of a chemical imbalance. All of these phenomena are the result of intensity reaching an overwhelming proportion in the dog's emotional system. These sudden purges are why aggressive dogs are often characterized as having "turned," snapped, or possessed of a Jekyll and Hyde personality as well as why historically "friendly" dogs who have never known any overt trauma or aggressive disposition can suddenly act aggressively as if the episode came out of the blue. It didn't. It had been building for a long time because the emotional connection to the owner wasn't strong enough to "ground" out all that fear. The dog was becoming more and more intense in personality displays, or fixations on certain activities, until these displacement activities could no longer drain the emotional battery, hence the sudden discharge.
The problem is not that your dog isn't "smart" or doesn't know how to heel, sit, down and stay; the problem isn't that your dog is anti-social or a canine psychopath, and the problem isn't that you haven't given your dog enough exercise or haven't been consistent, positive, or dominant enough. The problem is that due to the compounding effect of fear, your dog is becoming more and more intense, no longer as playful and easy going as he used to be. This process of intensification has been underway despite any of the things you have been doing in the hopes of calming or controlling the dog, and as a matter of fact many of the things commonly prescribed to help, more exercise, lots of ball playing, more attention, more jobs to do, make the dog even more intense. Superficial definitions of aggression(territoriality, dominance, possessiveness) fail to address the root cause of the syndrome. The real problem is that when your dog reaches a certain level of intensity, his fight/flight reflex takes over and the truth is, nobody's home. That's not your dog in that body and mind that is lunging, snarling, and/or in general freaking out. Your dog's body and mind has been overwhelmed by a charge of intensity that is as old as evolution. When a dog is overwhelmed with intensity, he can't feel a thing. Such a condition is adaptive for wild animals living in a static environment as it facilitates survival, but it is always maladaptive for a dog living in our domestic world of incessant change and our arbitrary comings and goings. When a dog is overwhelmed with "the charge," he can't feel that the dog it is attacking is a fellow dog, or that the hand it is biting belongs to its owner or to an innocent, vulnerable child.
The answer is to increase a dog's emotional capacity so that he can process stress differently. The goal is not to change the dog, but to change how the dog responds to stress. And the good news in this regard is that the emotional battery and stress evolved in service to a cooperative dynamic. Resolving stress through synchronized group activity (which is why dogs love to ride in cars) is how dogs learn to work together as a coordinated group, it's why we can even train dogs to do police service, therapy functions, search and rescue, arson, drug, cadaver, contraband detection, and my favorite example, herd sheep rather than kill them. When a dog's emotional capacity is increased then when he becomes charged, he is still able to feel. He can still feel its owner and therefore can still listen to his owner. He can still feel that the dog before him is a dog of the present, not an ogre from its past. If a dog can feel, it can adapt. It's that simple.
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Q: Get entries with most recent timestamp per month I have a table prices that stores prices for various products as they update throughout the day, structured as below:

+---------+--------+-------------------+
| product | price  | creationTimestamp |
+---------+--------+-------------------+
| A       | 34.234 | 30/10/20 01:48:48 |
| A       | 34.598 | 30/10/20 21:43:12 |
| A       | 33.129 | 31/10/20 08:52:58 |
| B       | 13.440 | 31/10/20 15:22:01 |
| B       | 12.914 | 31/10/20 23:24:42 |
| C       |  1.494 | 31/10/20 04:36:00 |
+---------+--------+-------------------+

What I would like to do is for the past 5 years,  extract the last price for each product, per month based on the most recent create timestamp. e.g.
+----------------+---------+-----------------+
| endOfMonthDate | product | endOfMonthPrice |
+----------------+---------+-----------------+
| 31/10/2020     | A       |          33.129 |
| 31/10/2020     | B       |          12.914 |
| 31/10/2020     | C       |           1.494 |
+----------------+---------+-----------------+

(this only displays the last month as an example, but i want to show prices for the preceding 5 years)
My query so far is
select
*
from
prices p1
where creationTimestamp >= sysdate - interval '5' year
and creationTimestamp in (select max(creationTimestamp) from prices p2 where p1.product = p2.prices)

which returns the most recent timestamp price per product. However I am unsure how to group this expression per month and year. can anybody help correct my query?

A: You can use window functions:
select p.*
from (select p.*,
             row_number() over (partition by product, trunc(creationTimestamp, 'MON')
                                order by creationTimestamp desc
                               ) as seqnum
      from prices p
      where creationTimestamp >= sysdate - interval '5' year
     ) p
where seqnum = 1;

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LA City Council Approves Games Agreement for 2028 Olympic Games – NBC Los Angeles
by admin | Comments Off on LA City Council Approves Games Agreement for 2028 Olympic Games – NBC Los Angeles |
The Los Angeles City Council has approved a Games Agreement with the Los Angeles Organizing Committee for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games — providing a framework for an array of details, including insurance for disasters and ticket loss and the city's financial liability in the event of a deficit.
The council unanimously voted in 2017 to approve L.A.'s bid for the 2028 Olympics. The Games Agreement serves as a roadmap for the games as the city prepares to host the estimated $6.9 billion event.
According to the agreement — which passed by an 11-2 margin — the games are paid for by the nonprofit Los Angeles Organizing Committee, or LA28.
In the event of a deficit, the city is on the hook for the first $270 million owed, with the state taking over for the next $270 million. After the state's portion of the costs, the city would be on the line for all additional costs.
City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo and Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso briefed council members about the agreement before the vote Friday, saying that while it is impossible to eliminate all risk, the city has done its best to mitigate risk.
"At the end of the day, we're trying to protect against any fiscal shortfalls" Tso said.
Councilman Mike Bonin and Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who both raised concerns about the city's financial responsibility in the event of a deficit, voted no on approval of the contract.
"What we're talking about today is whether we agree with the specific details of this agreement … it's not about whether or not we're pro- or anti-Olympics," said Bonin, who also noted that he voted in favor of the city's bid for the Olympics in 2017.
"I am concerned about the things that we can't imagine. A few years ago we couldn't have imagined COVID. There was a time we couldn't have imagined flying planes into buildings, and terrorists."
The Games Agreement specifies that LA28 is required to maintain insurance to protect against "natural disasters, communicable diseases, terrorism, civil unrest, cyber-attacks, event cancellation and coverage for reduced ticket sales and other venue losses should the events become less appealing."
Szabo noted that the city is at less risk of running over budget because it already has sports arenas and other infrastructure in place to hold the games, meaning it will have less unexpected construction costs than previous host cities.
While some Angelenos have raised concerns about the cost of the Olympics being put on taxpayers in the event that LA28 over-spends, the organization NOlympics L.A. also contends that the 2028 Olympics will accelerate displacement and the militarization of police in Los Angeles at a time when many Angelenos and officials are looking at ways to decrease policing and re-imagine public safety.
Activists have cited a June 2020 neighborhood council meeting at which an LAPD officer said the department needs a 30% expansion to prepare for the Olympics.
NOlympics L.A. also cites worries that the games will accelerate gentrification, criminalize homelessness and privatize public space.
Councilman Paul Krekorian, who chairs the city's Budget and Finance Committee, spoke before the vote about anticipated benefits of hosting a successful Olympics in Los Angeles, including:
job creation beginning years ahead of the games as the city undergoes construction projects and other preparations;
the $160 million Youth Sports Program, which launched this year, funded by LA28 to provide subsidized coaching, mentoring and instruction for youth at Department of Recreation and Parks centers;
procurement opportunities for Los Angeles businesses;
thousands of people traveling to Los Angeles for the games and spending money at local businesses;
and increased tourism after the games.
The Games Agreement approved Friday also stated that LA28 would develop and implement a program to ensure that small, local and underrepresented businesses have access and can participate in contract opportunities with the Olympics.
However, Szabo said that while the agreement said the program will be developed, it does not give further details.
The Games Agreement also said that LA28 will work with the city to ensure the workforce is fully representative of the diversity of Los Angeles, and the committee will develop solutions to make tickets to the games available and affordable to city residents in an equitable manner.
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text:
Written on 10th January 2023
The Greater Manchester Colleges Group is supporting Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester ahead of a "game changer" devolution deal to shape technical education, including new T-Level courses, in order to plug skills gaps in the regional economy.
The Mayor, who is also supported by Clive Memmott, chief executive of Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and Councillor Eamonn O'Brien, GMCA lead for Education, Skills, Work, Apprenticeships and Digital wants to involve local businesses in shaping technical education courses to support both students and employers.
Andy Burnham said employers would be at the heart of a new integrated skills and work system alongside the Department of Education and a new Greater Manchester technical skills board. He also called for the city-region to be given further powers to become the first city region to develop an integrated skills system, giving young people a clear line of sight to available opportunities.
He said: "As we continue to negotiate with Government on the next round of devolution, we are offering government the opportunity to work with us to create the country's first integrated technical education system in Greater Manchester.
"To achieve our ambitions, we need to integrate the skills system, giving young people a clear sight of the available opportunities by matching employers and learners. The system would boost Government's delivery of T-levels, through more joined up working with colleges and businesses."
Burnham claimed that by closely working with businesses locally Greater Manchester could show a way to make T-levels work.
Lisa O'Loughlin, Principal at Greater Manchester College, said the proposals had the potential for businesses to work with colleges on a local curriculum: "If Greater Manchester is to realise its full potential and develop a highly skilled workforce that drives economic growth it is vital that it is able to develop a best-in-class technical education system which connects people from across the region with the economic opportunities that are available to them. Key to this is enabling and encouraging employers to work in partnership with education providers across the region to ensure that curriculums are equipping learners with the skills that they will need in their workforce."
Councillor Eamonn O'Brien said a lack of technical skills within Greater Manchester's workforce is holding business back. "With an integrated work and skills system, we can create a system that is resilient and flexible, adapting to meet employers' needs in the rapidly changing 21st century world of work.
"We want to make sure that businesses want to invest and create good jobs in Greater Manchester, and that our residents have the best chance to access those new opportunities across the city-region. Our devolution proposals would play a big part in creating opportunity, addressing skills shortages and building Greater Manchester's economy."
Clive Memmott, Chief Executive of Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, said: "This is a very important initiative because technical education has been the poor relation to academic education in this country for far too long."


text:
package soottocfg.cfg.optimization;

import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;

import com.google.common.base.Verify;

import soottocfg.cfg.expression.BinaryExpression;
import soottocfg.cfg.expression.Expression;
import soottocfg.cfg.expression.IdentifierExpression;
import soottocfg.cfg.expression.IteExpression;
import soottocfg.cfg.expression.TupleAccessExpression;
import soottocfg.cfg.expression.UnaryExpression;
import soottocfg.cfg.expression.literal.BooleanLiteral;
import soottocfg.cfg.expression.literal.IntegerLiteral;
import soottocfg.cfg.expression.literal.NullLiteral;
import soottocfg.cfg.method.CfgBlock;
import soottocfg.cfg.method.CfgEdge;
import soottocfg.cfg.method.Method;
import soottocfg.cfg.statement.AssertStatement;
import soottocfg.cfg.statement.AssignStatement;
import soottocfg.cfg.statement.AssumeStatement;
import soottocfg.cfg.statement.CallStatement;
import soottocfg.cfg.statement.HavocStatement;
import soottocfg.cfg.statement.NewStatement;
import soottocfg.cfg.statement.PullStatement;
import soottocfg.cfg.statement.PushStatement;
import soottocfg.cfg.statement.Statement;
import soottocfg.cfg.util.CfgVisitor;

//DSN should this be an abstract class
//DSN There might be value in tracking whether an expression actually changed.  Possible optimization
public class CfgUpdater extends CfgVisitor {

	protected Boolean changed = false;

	public boolean updateMethod(Method m) {
		changed = false;
		processMethod(m);
		return changed;
	}

	public boolean runFixpt(Method m) {
		boolean everChanged = false;
		while (updateMethod(m)) {
			everChanged = true;
		}
		return everChanged;
	}

	public CfgUpdater() {
	}

	@Override
	protected void processCfgBlock(CfgBlock block) {
		setCurrentCfgBlock(block);
		// We need to update the statements
		block.setStatements(processStatementList(block.getStatements()));
		// and also the graph conditions, in case those have been changed by the
		// analysis
		for (CfgEdge edge : block.getMethod().outgoingEdgesOf(block)) {
			if (edge.getLabel().isPresent()) {
				edge.setLabel(processExpression(edge.getLabel().get()));
			}
		}
		setCurrentCfgBlock(null);
	}

	@Override
	protected List<Statement> processStatementList(List<Statement> sl) {
		List<Statement> rval = new LinkedList<Statement>();
		for (Statement s : sl) {
			rval.add(processStatement(s));
		}
		return rval;
	}

	@Override
	protected Statement processStatement(AssertStatement s) {
		Expression e = processExpression(s.getExpression());
		return new AssertStatement(s.getSourceLocation(), e);
	}

	@Override
	protected Statement processStatement(PullStatement s) {
		List<IdentifierExpression> lhs = new LinkedList<IdentifierExpression>();
		for (IdentifierExpression l : s.getLeft()) {
			lhs.add((IdentifierExpression)processExpression(l));
		}
		IdentifierExpression obj = (IdentifierExpression) processExpression(s.getObject());
		return new PullStatement(s.getSourceLocation(), s.getClassSignature(), obj, lhs);
	}

	@Override
	protected Statement processStatement(PushStatement s) {
		List<Expression> rhs = new LinkedList<Expression>();
		for (Expression r : s.getRight()) {
			rhs.add(processExpression(r));
		}
		IdentifierExpression obj = (IdentifierExpression) processExpression(s.getObject());
		return new PushStatement(s.getSourceLocation(), s.getClassSignature(), obj, rhs);
	}

	@Override
	protected Statement processStatement(AssignStatement s) {
		Expression lhs = processExpression(s.getLeft());
		Expression rhs = processExpression(s.getRight());
		return new AssignStatement(s.getSourceLocation(), lhs, rhs);
	}

	@Override
	protected Statement processStatement(AssumeStatement s) {
		Expression e = processExpression(s.getExpression());
		return new AssumeStatement(s.getSourceLocation(), e);
	}

	@Override
	protected Statement processStatement(CallStatement s) {
		List<Expression> args = processExpressionList(s.getArguments());
		List<Expression> rec = new LinkedList<Expression>();
		for (Expression e : s.getReceiver()) {
			rec.add(processExpression(e));
		}
		return new CallStatement(s.getSourceLocation(), s.getCallTarget(), args, rec);
	}

	@Override
	protected Statement processStatement(HavocStatement s) {
            Expression newVar = processExpression(s.getHavocedExpression());
            Verify.verify(newVar instanceof IdentifierExpression);
            return new HavocStatement(s.getSourceLocation(),
                                      (IdentifierExpression)newVar);
	}

	@Override
	protected Statement processStatement(NewStatement s) {
		Expression e = processExpression(s.getLeft());
		Verify.verify(e instanceof IdentifierExpression);
		return new NewStatement(s.getSourceLocation(), (IdentifierExpression) e, s.getClassVariable());
	}

	/// Expressions
	@Override
	protected List<Expression> processExpressionList(List<Expression> el) {
		List<Expression> rval = new LinkedList<Expression>();
		for (Expression e : el) {
			rval.add(processExpression(e));
		}
		return rval;
	}

	@Override
	protected Expression processExpression(BinaryExpression e) {
		Expression left = processExpression(e.getLeft());
		Expression right = processExpression(e.getRight());
		return new BinaryExpression(e.getSourceLocation(), e.getOp(), left, right);
	}

	@Override
	protected Expression processExpression(BooleanLiteral e) {
		return e;
	}

	@Override
	protected Expression processExpression(NullLiteral e) {
		return e;
	}

	@Override
	protected Expression processExpression(IdentifierExpression e) {
		return e;
	}

	@Override
	protected Expression processExpression(IntegerLiteral e) {
		return e;
	}

	@Override
	protected Expression processExpression(TupleAccessExpression e) {
		return e;
	}

	@Override
	protected Expression processExpression(IteExpression ite) {
		Expression i = processExpression(ite.getCondition());
		Expression t = processExpression(ite.getThenExpr());
		Expression e = processExpression(ite.getElseExpr());
		return new IteExpression(ite.getSourceLocation(), i, t, e);
	}

	@Override
	protected Expression processExpression(UnaryExpression e) {
		Expression exp = processExpression(e.getExpression());
		return new UnaryExpression(e.getSourceLocation(), e.getOp(), exp);
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


They say that the first Month is the most challenging. The most exciting but the most challenging .
You get used to the fact that you don't have a house and a room "back home" to go to when you get tired, instead you curl up on your lumpy bungalow mattress and just get on with it. You stutter and stumble when someone asks you where your from and what your job is (uh.. Im a writer? More like a professional homeless person). The first month is also when the excitement is most real. You have so many times when you realise you're actually doing it!
Our first month took us from Malaysia, Southern Thailand and has left us in Nepal.I really felt that we got a great overview of Southern-Thailand and we both had an amazing time. From the reefs of Koh Tao to the Jungles of Khao Sok and the beaches of Railay.
– Getting on the bus at the LCCT in Kuala Lumpur after our flight from Australia. Not exactly a thrilling activity but for me this was the moment that it really hit me that we were actually doing it!
– A delicious breakfast of Roti Canai and TehTahrik on our first morning in Malaysia. We literally just saw a line of people and a small food stall and just winged it. I was probably the best breakfast we had the whole month.
– Our night in the second class sleeper train on our way to Thailand. There is something so exciting about sleeping on a train!
– Every time we ate at Su Chilli's on Koh Tao. I can't express how amazing the food was. It was the highlight of our time in Koh Tao. The Pad Thai was so tasty with lots of peanuts, big pieces of chicken and tofu and a dash of lime. Im drooling just remembering the nutty, spicy flavour.
– Diving the clear blue water around Mango Bay on Koh Tao. We spent hours in the water diving down with all the fish. It was like being in our own little world.
– Chris seeing his first shark in the wild. We managed to see two little black-tipped reef sharks in Sae Daeng Bay in Koh Tao and we even got them on video. They are just so beautiful to watch (I can't believe Australia is killing these magnificent creatures).
– Getting down to 20 meters on a single breath of air when we learnt to free dive on Koh Tao. I never thought I could do something like that and it was exhilarating and empowering.
-Spending a night in a "fancy hotel" in Surat Thani. Think comfy bed, hot shower, white sheets and breakfast in bed. After two weeks living in a very basic bungalow in Koh Tao, this was heaven.
– Hiking through Nam Talu Cave and swimming in the warm jungle lake of Khao Sok National Park. There is nothing quite like swimming in warm lake in the middle of a beautiful jungle.
– Making friends on a day doing Deep Water Soloing in Tonsai, Railay. We sucked at the rock climbing part but it was great fun watching other people climb and chatting with the people on our boat.
– Going a little crazy at H&M in Kuala Lumpur. I love H&M!
– The bus ride from hell. Lets just say that I thought we were going to die, I cried, we got off the bus and in the end it all worked out. I learnt a valuable lesson, if you're scared and you think your life is in danger, get off the bus. Its not worth it!
– The overall touristy, douchness of Koh Tao was a little disappointing. We did stay directly in Sairee beach so this could have been avoided of we had stayed in a more remote location. The whole island is outfitted for the needs of tourists and it just wasn't authentic in the slightest. At times it felt like a theme park for young, drunk tourists from around the world.
– Getting mad at Japanese tourists in Mango Bay on Koh Tao who thought it was a fun game to feed the fish and then catch them in small plastic bags. They then proceeded to throw the fish around. One fish actually ended up getting thrown onto sharp rocks. I am the least confrontational person but I ended up getting so angry that I took all the plastic bags off the tourists. Don't worry I saved all the fish and they are hopefully swimming happily in Mango Bay as we speak.
– Every breakfast in Thailand. Thai people just don't get breakfasts. They just don't.
– The worst Pad Thai ever at the Jungle Huts in Khao Sok. Soggy pink noodles with strips of carrot and cabbage. EW.
– The lumpiest mattress in all the world in Tonsai, Railay. It was like sleeping on a small, bumpy hillside.
– Getting food poisoning in Krabi. Still not sure what caused this horrible onset of food poisoning but it was awful. Thankfully we were checked into a nice hotel with air conditioning and a clean western toilet, so this made the experience less awful. But throwing up eleven times in 12 hours was horrendous. Chris did do a great job of looking after me though!
– Discovering my passport had gotten wet and the picture was barely visible. Post about this soon but I will let you know that it all worked out in the end.
The next month will we spent in Kathmandu, Nepal. We have been here for four days already and I love it. Its very cold at the moment so I am siting all rugged up writing this. The next month also brings about our foray into trekking. It so great to stop for awhile and unpack the bags. We are staying with my sister in her cute apartment and I more relaxed than I have been in a long time.
Thanks for following our journey with us! How has your last month been? Leave us a comment or email us at dirtypawsblog@gmail.com.


text:
Leadership in Incident Response
Business continuity during a cybersecurity incident is more than just having a plan in place. It is about leadership—acting as a "human firewall" that can communicate internally and externally effectively. On episode 15 of CyberSound, Jason and Paul sit down with Fred Cass, Associate CIO of Trinity College, to discuss what leadership looks like during incident response.
[00:00:01.210] – Speaker
This is CyberSound, your simplified and fundamentals-focused source for all things cybersecurity, with your hosts, Jason Pufahl and Steve Maresca.
[00:00:12.250] – Jason Pufahl
Welcome to CyberSound. I'm your host, Jason Pufahl, showing as always by Steve Maresca. And today, we've got special guest, the Associate CIO of Trinity College, Fred Kass.
[00:00:21.190] – Fred Kass
[00:00:21.850] – Steve Maresca
Hey, Fred.
Alright. So again, I think that we have demonstrated already in the first half-hour just chatting around this podcast that this is a topic that we're all interested in here. We're going to talk about incident response, not the traditional; hey, what led to an incident? And let's talk about your technical things.
Really. I think it's much more of the human element of incident response, discussing how incidents impact an institution, how it impacts people, how you effectively manage emotions and workloads, and everything else as you work through an unexpected event like this. For a little context for everybody, Trinity College had an incident six months ago. Is it around there?
Over a year.
Over a year? That's just how time moves. So an incident over a year ago that Trinity College in Vancord worked together. And so I think we can bring some pretty unique perspectives just around how that felt, how communications influenced an incident, how keeping people as fresh as you can in spite of maybe 18-hour workdays is important.
Fred, we were chatting a little bit before, and you said spending time on the idea of business continuity and managing business operations and incidents. So maybe that's a great spot to segue into.
Yeah. I guess I'll say, Jason, we've known each other for a while, and I think one of the times we spent a lot of time together in the past was around leadership in an organization that we're both in. I'm a big proponent of thinking about leadership and where that fits into these conversations. So I guess I'll say in my case, I think part of business continuity is actually the leadership and the people side of it.
So you got to think about the servers and their uptime and all that kind of stuff. But in my mind, part of the planning process really has to do with the team. Does the team work well together? Do you understand your roles? Do you understand how you're most effective as a high-performing team? And that's important just in general. But in an incident response, it's really heightened, like it's a different level of stress. So it's about leadership in a crisis or leadership and stress and how you manage those processes.
Roles change. It's in bottom line. And people who are really the leaders of a conversation in a relaxed environment certainly may not be when under the gun. And that is a big challenge in these events. I care a lot about the human element in these, and managing that and keeping everyone calm, collected, and making decisions based on good data is effectively the primary challenge in my view.
So how did it start? And by that, I mean, you had an event. You had staff that probably came into work feeling like it was a normal day. I always say you have to manage almost the excitement that surrounds these initially because there's a crisis. And then everybody feels like they need to get involved, and they need to contribute because the institution they work for, that they care about, is under attack. How do you slow that down a little bit and make sure you're making good decisions right out of the gate?
That's a good question. It's funny. I feel like you keep asking me questions, and I answer different questions.
But that's normal [crosstalk 00:03:56]
What I think I like about our relationship. We have a very different approach on the scene or different angle on the same thought. Incident response, in some ways, is dealing with… Everyone in the IT world has dealt with when the system is down. And so some of that crisis management or response is normally built into IT people, so to speak, like, "Oh, crap. Something broke. We got to go fix it."
And so I think that that response that you're talking about is normal. I think we're used to in the olden days when you ran your own email. But when the email server went down or when the network melted down, it always became all hands on deck event. I think understanding how you come together as a team and how you assign roles in that process is an important part of it. I don't know. Did I answer your question, or I went on my own?
So it's funny. No. So I almost think like, well, then, are you in effect doing tabletops every time something breaks. And I never really thought about it that way.
My view on that is that that's true. However, the tenor of the moment is very different in an incident. There's uncertainty. You don't know where the origin is. The scale could be tiny, or it could be enormous. You don't know at the outset. And wrapping around that is a far bigger challenge than something reported by a user. Clearly, the email server's down. Okay. Let's go figure that out. We know how to solve that problem. People work best when problems are divisible and put into small boxes. Incidents are inherently the opposite.
Yeah. I think you're right to an extent. But understanding whether the email is down because the server room is underwater or because there was a small bug in a software code, so that part of it, I think to me, has a similar cadence to it. But the thing that really differentiates it is, once you understand what's going on with the machine room in the email, example, you can then react to it. What I think is different about a cybersecurity incident is there is an active adversary on the other side who is reacting to you.
[crosstalk 00:06:28] of the moment is very, very different.
Yeah. Answering your question from a moment ago, that first hour, no, maybe half-hour, feels very similar to any sort of business crisis-
And evaluation phase. Sure.
But it's the next phase of it because you can't wrap your hands around it and go, all right, I understand this problem, and I understand how to solve it. Now, I develop a plan. I mean, that's true. But the plans have to be more adaptable and more changing. And the environment becomes bigger. I think the discovery process is different, too. I feel like it's very easy to narrow down the discovery of a technical problem, but narrowing down the discovery of an event every couple of hours, you could learn a new piece of information.
And that's not going to happen.
In a potentially active adversary.
Who are clearing logs, trying to hide, deliberately being evasive? It's a different environment, but the thought process is similar, I would agree.
Except for that, meeting to be more adaptable. That's, I think, the key differentiating factor.
I think we were talking earlier about making decisions when you have poor information. That is absolutely the case in an incident.
And conveying the rationale behind the decisions. I think specifically to the event that we all work together. You had the incident. You took some containment steps that arguably reduced functionality at the institution. And you had to be able to justify that. So then you are managing communication upstream around. Here is a significant change that we're going to make to hopefully reduce the negative impact on the incident.
But people won't be able to get on the network. People won't be able to get out of the institution, describe the communications, say up to leadership, even down to staff to demonstrate like, we're making the best decision we can with the information we have now. Right?
Yeah. And I think some of that, going back to my old analogy, is the same. I'm a firm believer and that you should have a human firewall between your technical staff and your external communication. I'm a firm believer that you have to communicate externally regularly, both to the public, to your user base, so to speak, and to your senior management.
But I think what's different in a cybersecurity incident is you've got to involve lawyers, and you've got to involve a lot more thought in that. There's something different about the communication flow that you've got to make sure you're meeting the regulatory goals as well as the operational goals and the community building goals.
It's not just, hey, give me an update in the event. You're obligated to tell some agency something, perhaps, depending what the type of data. So yeah, they're very different communications in that case.
One example that we've encountered regularly is that people will casually throw around… We've had a breach. Well, okay. You're using a word that you know is associated with incidents, but that takes on a very specific meaning, especially in the legal context for notification purposes. We have to be very careful when doing our best to communicate broadly because the language matters in ways that they don't typically.
That's true. And it's also an odd for those of us who have been in the field a long time. I remember when people would get into pedantic arguments about hackers, crackers, and all these kinds of things in there. They're different, and you have to know. And then the communications people would go and be like, no one cares. What they want to do is communicate out a message that humans understand.
And so, in this case, you're absolutely right because you still have that communications person in the room being like, nobody understands what you're saying. And then you have the lawyer in the room saying, "You really want to use these words." And so that's an odd, difficult balance.
Right. And you're trying to strike a secondary balance along the lines of saying, at the moment, we don't know one way or the other whether data has been accessed, but we're doing our best to learn more about the situation. We'll let you know when we have more info. We're trying to throw a very fine line to communicate accurately without making people more anxious than they already are, but at least letting them know that you're on top of something.
Absolutely. And it is a difficult balance to thread, but an important one. And that's why you have to have that human firewall between the technical people and the ones that are working on that communication problem.
I think what you did in your event well was balancing communications with restoration because we've definitely been in scenarios where people opted not to communicate at all. And the excuse might be, well, we need every resource focused on that recovery or restoring operations. The reality is you're probably going to be out for a protracted amount of time. It's critical that people understand to the degree that you can tell them why it's happening, what the potential impact is. Set some expectations, maybe being vague at the same time because you don't know what the outcomes are going to be.
But every event, you're always balancing that recovery quality with the other activities that happen in there. So you're forced down into a position sometimes where you're actively telling folks, "All right. You've been out of for 18 hours. You need to take a break." While potentially, people are saying, "Well, how fast can you get this up?" And those are at odds, right?
Yeah. I'm waiting for Steve to come in because the third odd in there is making sure that your environment is secure, and you're following a diligent process because I've heard that from Steve a few times, and it is an important one.
It was a repeating theme. But honestly, I wasn't going to go there. I was actually thinking more about the anxiety of people beyond IT because you have staff with no technical role; really, you have broader constituency in general, partner organizations. They perceive there's an issue. It's relatively easy to see both internally as staff and faculty, students; you name it.
But also beyond, if email doesn't work and emails bounce, it's pretty obvious something's going on. So electing in some cases, in incidents we've seen not to communicate really is a damaging act as well, because it lets bigger, darker cloud gather when arguably at least saying something.
Transparency is so important. We advocate that. Everything that we do in incident responses they're different. There are events that people want to sweep onto the rug a little bit and keep quiet. But the reality is, the more people know, I think typically, the better received they're going to be by the community and by your business partners and by anybody else you have to tell. It's definitely worthwhile.
Especially in 2021, most organizations have experienced some security incident of some kind. It no longer has the black mark that it may have 10 or 12 years ago, and therefore PR is a bit easier to manage, in my opinion.
Yeah, it's true. It's unfortunate but true. I do think the other part of that that you were talking about is interesting to me is the demand for restoring operations versus the ability to do that and how you set this. In my mind, your most important thing as an organization is your data and protecting your data, and uptime comes second to that.
But that's really important, too. And so balancing both those needs with really the staffing, that's a very tricky balance to make sure you're setting that cadence in an emergency so that you can solve the problems in a timely way.
And honestly, it's a little bit of a science and a little bit of an art. In some cases, you act as a field general and try to hope you're making the right choices, and you have the right people in the room to give you advice and react to that.
I like the field general comment. You made decisions in the middle of the incident to bring in other resources. That potentially comes at a cost because now you have to onboard other people, and you have to make sure that everybody's comfortable with the fact that you're bringing somebody in and make sure that it's effective. There's a lot of complicated decision-making that happens. And again, you have to communicate to people why you're doing it, and you're making sure it actually makes sense.
They're not easy to manage. It's not just about resting people. It's not just about having those conversations. But you want people to be productive, which means, in some cases, conveying information that people don't want to hear and yet keeping them innovative or motivated to keep working, which is hard to do.
I think of a related subject because we're dancing around the notion where people are really keen to have services restored, and incident response is largely about, at least at the beginning, pumping the brakes and avoiding that conversation because you're not ready to have it.
I think immediately about business continuity and disaster recovery planning. And frankly, those plans it's just like a battle plan to extend your analogy. They don't survive contact with the enemy every time you learn something new about an oversight or maybe over-optimistic beliefs about ability to restore. And managing that problem in and of itself, especially while trying to defend infrastructure, is a very challenging one.
I'm interested to hear some of your thoughts on that front because I think that every organization dealing with an incident has to deal with that specific problem.
Just because no plan is going to be the perfect plan doesn't mean you shouldn't have a plan, right? I think that the best plans have an adaptability to them. But even so, no matter what you plan for, how many times they plan, but you're going to have a problem. You're going to have to react to that.
I'm going back to leadership. I think part of that is knowing the strengths of your team and knowing the weaknesses, and knowing how. And honestly, I'm going back to Jason's point; you can make a difficult call. But if you have a trusting understanding with the people that you work with, they know it's not personal, and they know it's not coming from a negative place. It's coming from a need to make… I guess, one of the other I'm going to go all of them…
There's a decision paralysis that sometimes happens. And that's a difficult balance between not making a decision or making the right decision and when to do those. And again, you're not always going to be perfect. So I think you've got to… I'm a 9-10 person. You got to be close enough to thinking that this is the right way to go. But knowing that if I tried to get to 100 percent, it's going to take too long. And I think that battlefield operations it's very different than the way we run our day-to-day businesses where you usually want to be very sure of something before you do it.
Right. Absolutely. That often translates into compartmentalizing services in ways that don't make sense for normal operations but allows you to bring them up in a more measured way, in a safe way that in an incident, you'll scale back from afterward. But it's part of that calculus. There's a very different approach to the normal day-to-day operations. Making those decisions are often… You're confronted with data that you may not have conclusive evidence about, in general. At best, we're trusting tools. We're trusting the defenses that have been provided and put into place, but you may never have better than 60 percent confidence that something is the right path to pursue.
Yeah. It's funny. Again, I think we have a slightly different perspective on the same thing. I'm trusting people, and that people are trusting tools, right?
Right. [crosstalk 00:19:07]
Because it's a different perspective.
So I think we've got to be at around our limit, I'd say, at this point. If there's anything I think we've conveyed today, its incident response is hugely more complicated than, do you know your systems technically, and can you bring them back? And I would argue, frankly, managing that initial response. Managing the people through a pretty protracted stressful event is really important.
Developing to your point, Fred, trust ahead of time. Trust within the community, not just say stuff that reports to people in IT. But people need to trust that there's an event going on. People are doing their best to restore things in the most expeditious time that they can. But that might take days, and trusting the information they're getting through the process. I think a lot of it does come through business continuity planning, maybe incident response planning, having some communications upfront.
Relationships are key, clearly. I really would argue these are less… They're technical exercises, but they're less technicalized technical exercises than they are management exercises and managing through a really difficult event. So I don't know if you guys have any last things that you want to say. Would that siege ending?
I'd say that all incidents have a bit of a long tail attached to them after business returns to normal. And that follow-through is the most important concept to keep in mind because if there aren't those final conclusions, the lessons learned, the outward communications to resolve anxieties alike and provide notifications to affected parties, the incident hasn't been successfully concluded. That may take a great deal of time after the immediate event has subsided, but in my opinion, it's just as important as anything else. And I feel that you experience the same long tail.
Ultimately, I'm interested to know whether it felt concluded in a timely fashion for you or if it was really protracted and frustrating.
That's a difficult question. I think it's true. And I'm going to go back to… I think you're absolutely right. I think there's the initial part. There's the full activity in it part. And then there's the long tail at the end. And I think they all have their points of importance. Actually, I'm sorry. I want to cover Jason's; there's the pre-planning point. So I think [crosstalk 00:21:57]
I tried end a minute ago. So we'll get there.
Yes, we did. That's a trouble in conversations, I guess.
I think the long tail is hard, too, right? All parts of those have challenges. And then, honestly, where the long tail ends and where regular, good cybersecurity practice begins is a tricky balance. They smelled into each other in a way that you're never really sure where you've reached that point. But I think that's part of the maturity of the process. You have to continuously have done those steps in order to be prepared. In some ways, the long tail never ends because it's just part of the continuous cycle of improvement in cybersecurity.
Right. Absolutely.
So I am going to end, but I'm going to end it this way. It's clear that we all have issues in incident response. I think managing them effectively, and just generally, the space has a lot to carve out in terms of how to make them effective.
As always, I'd say, if anybody wants to talk more about it, feel free to reach out to us on LinkedIn at Vancord or Twitter at VancordSecurity. I'm pretty confident we can get Fred back. Candidly, I was really looking forward to having you here because I knew it would be a good and easy conversation—just an enjoyable one. And I think we all did that. So I'm really happy about that. But I think there's a lot more here. If people are interested in it, we could do a part two.
Extended-release version?
We could. Yeah, we'll add content. So with that, I appreciate everybody listening as always. I hope you get some value out of this. If you do want to talk more about it, let us know, and we'll be happy to do a video. Thanks, Fred.
Thanks, Steve.
Stay digital. Stay resilient. This has been CyberSound.
Fred Kass


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