1. SolarWinds - an IT monitoring company with the NSA, all five military branches of the Pentagon, and several major civilian agencies, had their software hacked by the Russian hacker group Cozy Bear yesterday, the same group responsible for the 2016 DNC hack.

Scoop: FULL TEXT of @StateDept Dissent Cable I obtained, signed by over 100 officials: 1/many

1. On January 6, 2021, the United States witnessed an unprecedented effort by American citizens to violently subvert the democratic will of the American people...

After months of promoting baseless claims of voter fraud, which were rejected by the judiciary in dozens of cases, President Trump encouraged supporters, some armed, to storm the U.S. Capitol while Congress was certifying the results of a free and fair presidential election...

His incitement led to a violent riot in the U.S. Capitol, five deaths, untold injuries, destruction and vandalism of government property, and incalculable damage to our democratic system and our image abroad...

He played an integral role in breaking the 220-year streak of peaceful transfer of power between political parties during U.S. elections. (End of point 1).

Continuing....

STATE DEPARTMENT DISSENT CABLE POINT 2:

The Department of State should explicitly denounce President Trump's role in this violent attack on the U.S. government. Just as we routinely denounce foreign leaders who use violence and intimidation to interfere in peaceful democratic...

1) I have a theory on what’s happening in DC right now. Keep in mind, we’re in unprecedented times. To my knowledge, there has never been a time where foreign powers have infiltrated every level of government in the US, down to the State level.

Ever since 9/11, we've been instructed that tiny minorities of extremists are solely responsible for their reprehensible actions. There was no greater sin than blaming law-abiding people who share some of their beliefs.

That's how we got the "lone wolf terrorist" cliche. A great herd of lone wolves swept across the world, each completely isolated from anything but the most direct support for their heinous deeds. "Tiny minorities of extremists" were blamed for "hijacking" the beliefs of millions.

The Western world did backflips to completely firewall the actions of terrorists from the larger bodies of people they claimed to represent. We hired a legion of consultants to show us exactly where the line between extremism and legitimate belief was drawn.

We wouldn't even name the adversaries of civilization. We declared a "global war" on their methods, to avoid criticizing their beliefs. The Obama administration launched a huge, expensive "Countering Violent Extremism" initiative that pointedly treated extremism as generic.

The greatest of pains were taken to draw very sharp and bright lines between violent extremism and even the most provocative and incendiary acts of legitimate speech and political organization. This was true of the race riots in the Obama years, as well as terrorism.

Is the European Union really being unreasonable over the City of London?

Or are we seeing an inevitable consequence of a Brexit that prioritised sovereignty over financial services?

A thread…🧵💵🏦🇬🇧🇪🇺

Andrew Bailey’s Mansion House speech this week showed clear signs of frustration about the EU’s foot dragging in granting “equivalence” to UK regulators on financial

The view among UK financial lobbyists and regulators is that the EU has various financial equivalence agreements already with a host of other third countries (even the US) so why not the UK, which is currently, of course, totally aligned?...3/

But the view in the EU is that the UK is different from those other countries because it’s so dominant in finance - and they fear outsourcing regulation to an authority outside the bloc when that regulated activity could potentially affect EU markets/business so profoundly ...4/

Andrew Bailey thinks the EU is gearing up to demand the UK be a simple “rule taker” in return for equivalence, unable to unilaterally change UK rules, which he says would be "intolerable"....5/