Australian Intelligence HQ Blueprints Hacked 180
SandmanWAIX writes "In an embarrassing revelation today it appears as though the blueprints to the new Australian federal intelligence agency ASIO headquarters have been stolen, reportedly by a cyber attack originating from China. Several other governmental departments have been reported as being breached also. The blueprints which have been compromised include the security system, comms network, floor plan and server locations of the new ASIO headquarters located in the Australian capital city, Canberra."
how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:4, Insightful)
When every other country stops doing the same?
Re: how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:2)
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Until China starts to face real responses?
Why do you think they are not facing them now?
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They won't face any response at all. It just gets filtered out, like their firewall.
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:5, Informative)
How doe the fact that only 2.7% of US consumer spending [frbsf.org] is spent on Chinese goods fit into your little narrative?
The average US consumer can't buy a "Made in China" home, nor a "Made in China" car, nor "Made in China" food, nor "Made in China" gas. As it turns out, housing, transportation, and food makes up the majority of a consumer's spending.
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually there are 2 'Made in China' car dealerships near me here in Australia. They are called Great Wall and Chery.
They looks quite good and cheap too.
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Chinese manufacturers made up for less than 1% [fleetcare.com.au] of auto sales in Australia last year.
I'm not denying you can buy Chinese cars overseas; my point was that the "average" consumer won't be driving a Made in China car in the West.
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:4, Insightful)
Chinese manufacturers made up for less than 1% [fleetcare.com.au] of auto sales in Australia last year.
I'm not denying you can buy Chinese cars overseas; my point was that the "average" consumer won't be driving a Made in China car in the West.
That's what they used to say about Japanese and Korean cars.
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It's been my observation of chinese made scooters and small gasoline engine products is that their basic metallurgy is lacking. Just on the exterior, the chrome flakes and peels, leaving the base metal to rust inside a few months of ownership. Any parts that wear tend to go quickly due to soft/impure alloys. Good luck finding replacements on any of this stuff, short of buying a whole unit to use as a parts source.
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It may not come easy to hear this for Americans, but fact is, China's owned the world for quite some time; the far far vast majority of everything you own and will use and own etc, comes from China. Everything depends on them. They're the ones with the power, not the US with their supposed big guns. Attacking China will just destroy everything about US, or just about any other first world nation.-
How doe the fact that only 2.7% [frbsf.org]
Because Glenn Beck said so in one of his monologues on Fox New?
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Can't buy made in china "assault rifles" anymore either. Thanks George Bush(41) for 922R! Asshole.
Re: how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:2, Insightful)
Americans.
China holds far less debt than mist people think.
Re: how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:5, Funny)
Who cares about mist people? They're all smoke and mirrors anyway.
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You are just FOS and you know it. Even Petroleum is mostly produced in the USA. Only a small percentage is imported and of the oil imports, most come from immediate neighbours Canada and Mexico.
Maybe the cheap tools you use for your hobbies to drive two nails and one screw per year come from China, but professional tools and parts are produced in the USA.
Food, well, as i said, you are just FOS.
The 'Oh my Gawd China Rulez de Werld!' nonsense, is just that. China is still a poor and struggling country with
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Maybe the cheap tools you use for your hobbies to drive two nails and one screw per year come from China, but professional tools and parts are produced in the USA.
Funny you should mention tools because US brands like Black & Decker or DeWalt have taken a real beating in the last few years. Some DeWalt stuff is still okay but B&D is mostly just crap. If you want quality you buy Japanese or German.
Just sayin'.
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>>"Made in China" home ... ? ... ?
>And all the tools to build that house, all the nails, all the little metal bits and wooden pieces come from where
>>"Made in China" car
>And all the metals and misc parts for the cars come from where
>>"Made in China" food
>I'm not even going to start with this one, considering only thing US has is corn and shitty beef
And China buys its metal and meat supplies from Australia!
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It may not come easy to hear this for Americans . . .
TFA is about alleged spying on Australia by China. OP to whom you were replying didn't mention his/her nationality.
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Although Chinese stuff seems to be pervasive - these are mostly low value consumer goods.
Well, I full-heartily agree with this. But again... I'm not an iPhone/iPad "Made in China" owner, so I don't mind them being called "cheap consumer goods"
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:5, Insightful)
U.S. and Britain have been doing it wholesale since at least World War II so that would set the bar to at least 70 years.
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:4)
Until China starts to face real responses?
Pray tell: what exactly real responses would you suggest?
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Maybe the answer is to say "stop carrying out cyber attacks on western nations, stop stealing western intellectual property etc or we will enforce sanctions against Chinese products"
Plenty of other countries with low cost base for manufacturers to move to (countries that aren't stealing western IP and government/military secrets)
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe the answer is to say "stop carrying out cyber attacks on western nations, stop stealing western intellectual property etc or we will enforce sanctions against Chinese products" Plenty of other countries with low cost base for manufacturers to move to (countries that aren't stealing western IP and government/military secrets)
Maybe the correct answer would be "Let's secure our shit". Highly likely to be a lot cheaper.
Let's put the things in perspective:
- the cost of ASIO's new building between 2007-2012: $631 mils [smh.com.au] (after 37% budget blow-out - and it's not completed yet).
- the Australia-China bilateral trade value for a single FY (2011-2012): $121.1 billion [wikipedia.org], Australia's exports to China of over $60 billion.
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Or is it a great test of disinformation? Draw up a set of plans for new building that's not the set of plans you plan to use. Just put it on some non-classified network. Then go and design the real plans on the classified side. Then just pretend it's an awful event when the fake plans get leaked.
Of course, the building plan is different. There'll be walls where there's supposed to be doors, dead ends where there's s
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:4, Interesting)
Or is it a great test of disinformation?
It may well be so. However, the target of disinformation may be the Australian tax payer... it really strikes me as unusual that this comes a short time after the Ozzie spooks cried for more money [abc.net.au] and in the conditions of serious budget blowouts for the ASIO's new building.
Maybe that's about another project budget overblow and this is an arranged cover-up? Nah, that's paranoia... the Ozzie spies are fairdinkum blokes and highly professional [abc.net.au].
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:4, Funny)
The problem with DNA targeted bioweapons: evolution. When the organisms run out of targeted DNA they evolve to target other DNA patterns.
We won't tell the bioweapons they're running out until it's too late. Pass it on.
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You won't need to tell them. By the time the real targets run out, there'll be a small percentage of those bioweapons that're happy munching on other DNA patterns.
Then after a few of their generations, we'll all be passing it on.
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Go read the "Wool" Omnibus from Amazon now, by Hugh Howey or something. The prequel is... not as good. The above line is a fair condensation of those 400 pages, but the Wool Omnibus is good.
I second, third and fourth this. Go read it right now [amazon.com]. (Think, um... City of Amber meets Doctor Strangelove as told by George Orwell and Stephen King... and that's pretty much Wool. It's your basic "cosy catastrophe nuclear bunker last refuge of humanity ark" story. Only not cosy, at all.)
It's a heck of a read, and the premise is probably only a paranoid nightmare from a sick brain.
Probably.
But then I remember that actual people who thought themselves sane built nuclear weapons, were perfecty prepared to bu
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"Life finds a way."
But not necessary humans' life.
Humans life (Score:2)
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The problem with DNA targeted bioweapons: evolution. When the organisms run out of targeted DNA they evolve to target other DNA patterns.
More mutations have failed than have succeeded. You are stating a possibility as a fact. I'm not in favor of any kind of bioweapon, but you're still overstating the case.
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*balls of disapproval*
There's a special place in hell for people with such ideas.
Fredrick, Maryland is a place in hell?
Seriously, we've been war-gaming this scenario since at least 1958, if not earlier. The Biological Weapons Convention was signed in 1972, as an addendum to the Geneva Convention. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Weapons_Convention [wikipedia.org]
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It's likely China has operatives working for the architect firm that designed the thing, and the construction sub and materials suppliers as well. It's certain that the American CIA did, and Israeli Mossad and whatever the KGB are calling themselves now as well. Other countries have spies too: South Korea and Argentina might give it a go, not with direct agents but secondary contacts that gather info from workers using the pillowtalk method. Hacking in remotely is just providing a plausible excuse for kn
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"the intrusion" - as if this found one were the only one. That's funny. It's likely this leak of plans is a false flag. That's what I would do if the knowledge about the plans was known to be general of the major powers: everybody we know has the plans, so leak them publicly and paint the blame of the leak on somebody even though we've all drunk from that well.
Yes, AU does share. The CIA and others still put their assets in to ensure what they're told is true. That's their job. They're quite seriou
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European nations and companies have been complaining for years that the US is spying on them for political and commercial. The EU even investigated it. The US spies on everyone all the time, friendly or otherwise.
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Evil Overlord List #65: "If I must have computer systems with publically available terminals, the maps they display of my complex will have a room clearly marked as the Main Control Room. That room will be the Execution Chamber. The actual main control room will be marked as Sewage Overflow Containment."
Re:how long will this behavior be tolerated... (Score:5, Informative)
It was quite amazing in the 1980's when we discovered that East Germany was beaming low powered microwaves at the American embassy in West Berlin. The thought was that they were attempting to slowly degrade the health of our diplomats. It turns out that there were cylinders buried in the walls that were passive under normal conditions but under microwave energy would sympathetically resonate with the microwave signal modulated by the ambient sound. Clever stuff that, 30 years ago.
This is nothing compared to Xerox providing copiers to the Soviet government that recorded on film a copy of every page to be retrieved only by an authorized Xerox technician called when the copier failed because the film was full. Ah, those were easy days of spy. We got a lot of good stuff out of that, and Xerox got some special privileges as well, including the ability to run their own experimental nuclear reactor.
If you think this isn't still going on, and has gotten more clever, you're in denial. That is part of the backlash about other countries driving tech. If Intel doesn't provide the chipsets for Iran's nuclear ambitions how are we going to know what they're up to? China's RockTech doesn't care to report that stuff. They just want to sell chips.
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They found microphones suspended on dipoles in the walls. The Russians beamed in radio waves and the microphones modulated the re-radiated radio waves. No power required.
The microphones were installed while the embassy was being built for the US by the USSR.
There was an article about it in one of the tech mags about 30 years ago. Showed photos of grim US diplomats and the offending dipoles (which were simply wires cut to length).
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Microsoft: 9 out of 10 Windows PCs in China are running pirated copies of Windows
http://www.neowin.net/news/ballmer-9-out-of-10-copies-of-windows-in-china-is-pirated [neowin.net]
Microsoft: 91% of the pirated versions of Windows in China are infected with malware
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9234657/Microsoft_Most_PCs_running_pirated_Windows_in_China_have_security_issues [computerworld.com]
Thus China is botnet heaven. Anyone out there running a zombie network is going to have a metric fuckton of Chinese clients. Thus, when the botn
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Real Responses?
Fuck man, everyone bounced through China back in the day, they were like the default launching pad for most cyber attacks in my era.
Why? Because *everyone* owned them.....
From an old fart in Australia!
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Until China starts to face real responses?
And what makes you think it's really China, in the first place?
Because someone said so? :)
Wrong question (Score:2)
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Australia has long had a love/hate understanding with IT, funding and tech.
The left saw it as a privileged plaything of private schools with 1st gen laptops and PC spending.
The right saw the power of the telecommunications unions as something to be totally smashed at any cost.
Our universities poured out 1000's of Ada, C Unix, Java graduates.
Between all this you had a rush to privatise, the buying in of anything that would solve a prob
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In my (limited) experience, plans and specs are distributed and shared among the parties involved via the internet using limited, password-style protections. But nobody sees the security blueprints except the security system designer/installer and the owner. The general contractor never sees them. The electrical contractor only gets a plan with power requirements and conduit layouts. Those drawings are not freely shared with other sub-co
Is it the same agency... ? (Score:2)
For a moment I thought you said Austrian (Score:2)
China spying on Austrailia now that it knows the floor plan of the intelligence agency?
Or them using the blue prints to rebuild it in China [nbcnews.com]
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Which is the bigger threat:
China spying on Austrailia now that it knows the floor plan of the intelligence agency?
Or them using the blue prints to rebuild it in China [nbcnews.com]
That would be a really silly idea, as enemy countries already have the plans they know where all the vents and shitters they can hide in are.
The hack came from outer space (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone who says a "cyber attack" originates from China should be smacked in the head with an Ethernet cable. How would you know exactly where an attack originates?
Oh, and anyone who says "cyber attack" should be shot.
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with an Ethernet cable.
You'll find that a nice length of thicknet [wikipedia.org] cable is more effective.
Could be a decoy (Score:5, Insightful)
There's always the possibility the attackers found a "fake" blueprint under a lighter level of security, put there to make them think they found something worthwhile and back out to avoid further detection. Then you make it public (like it now has) and make the enemy believe something that's actually a complete ruse.
Sure, it looks embarrassing for you, but one of the major elements of intelligence is counter-intelligence and misdirection. Let the enemy believe they now know something juicy, and they'll further base actions on incorrect intel.
Just a thought. Of could be as simple as the Aussie Government completely fucking up by running a poorly patched Windows XP infected with a compromised USB. Some idiot on the article's comments section (tonyy) did suggest Linux would have been more secure. As if the Chinese wouldn't know how to write Linux malware and infect via social engineering if it were the predominant OS used on Government machines (which it will never be - Windows is just too well designed for corporate use on the desktop).
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The hacked system belonged to contractors/a construction company involved with the building, not a government system. Still highly embarrassing, but it wasn't an ASIO screw-up (this time, at least).
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There's always the possibility the attackers found a "fake" blueprint under a lighter level of security, put there to make them think they found something worthwhile and back out to avoid further detection. Then you make it public (like it now has) and make the enemy believe something that's actually a complete ruse.
It's equally as possible that China's blatant attack to ge the fake blueprints was a ruse for the real attack which acquired the actual blueprints.
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Only in bad spy novels or if the real life 'enemy' is stupid or incompetent. In real life, it's much harder as even moderately competent intelligence agencies are on the look out for being spoofed and seek to confirm intelligence from multiple sources.
Air gaps (Score:2)
At the risk of spilling top-secret intelligence procedures, I've heard about this thing called an "air gap" where, if you don't want anyone to be able to hack into a particular system, you don't plug it into the Internet. Seems like something they might want to consider.
(Yes, I know Stuxnet was designed to penetrate air gaps. But it wasn't designed to send packages home, either.)
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Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) is ~CIA
Defence Signals Directorate is ~NSA
The Defence Signals Directorate would know all about air gaps given its close working relationship with the NSA file structures.
Australian Secret Intelligence Service would at least have some institutional knowledge of what the CIA can do with any network.
ASIO is growing and in very public ways,
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FIB, CIA, NSA don't they all work for the MPAA and RIAA?
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Don't think you can compare ASIO to the FBI since ASIO never seem to investigate crimes. At least not publically.
Minutes ago I invented a solution (Score:3)
Even the guys with the Rob Ford Crack video wouldn't let the reporter hold their phone.
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Yeah, enjoy your sniper party. If you've got it encrypted heavily then just upload it via bittorrent for all the world to not see. That's the point of encryption. Once you've done that the offline copy in a physical safe is moot -- Only a risk to you if it's the only copy. Only you have the key to decode the video, right? Combine that with a deadman switch that releases the code unless you check in. Even better: Just delete the video and keep a small non-incriminating bit of it, to prove you still h
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Combine that with a deadman switch that releases the code unless you check in.
So, um. This deadman switch will presumably not be in your house, otherwise it will get turned off when the snipers turn up. So it's up in the Cloud somewhere?
Which means you just uploaded the encryption key to your super-secret encrypted file to a server you don't control. And your ISP probably are mandated to keep packet logs of all your net traffic. So the government just talks to them, finds out the IP address of your remote server, talks to the hosting company, drops all the servers you host.. and the
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That's great for you, and your embarrassing video that you want nobody but you to see. That's not the usual use-case for security though. It's usually the case that you want people to see it - often geographically separated people. Sometimes you want geographically separated people to be able to change it, and receive the changes others have made, in near real-time. The issue is, you want only certain, select people to have those privileges.
So how would you adapt your under-the-mattress approach to such a u
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The latency sucks.
hacked != stolen (Score:2)
just saying, if they were hacked then they would biuld a gigantic MEC using the same parts just reconfigured, breaking into a computer system and stealing files does not mean those files were hacked, the system was
Wonder if they used Windows.... (Score:2)
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The US goes to great efforts to train, fund and invite police officials from around the world with the gift of the latest tech and software.
They go home with an aid deal, new insights and later enjoying the new US software.
The real question is why was Australia, a country that has seen the USA/UK govs own the worlds communications systems is now so lax with its own internal n
I miss the old internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Now all we hear is a few buzzwords, a few propaganda works, and no more real information than what is in the headline. For all we know it never actually happened. Maybe they just found malware on a computer and overreacted.
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Back when most people on the internet were still computer literate, a report like this would explain how the attack happened, how it was discovered, and other interesting/important details
Ahh... those were the days when men were men and wrote their own drivers! :)
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Ahh... those were the days when men were men and wrote their own drivers! :)
Or when they at least gave a single interesting detail about a hack.....even in the late 90s they still did that.
You deserve it. (Score:2)
You're not taking security seriously and you deserve to be embarrassed repeatedly until you do or fail so spectacularly that no one ever trusts you again with anything.
Its a big issue in the US as well. Old government agencies and shotty IT.
You're not paranoid enough. You're literally paid to be paranoid and you're not doing your job. Its disgusting. Wake up and realize if you don't assume worst case you'll always be playing catch up.
Wait a second (Score:2)
I think I've seen this episode of 24. Don't worry, the Australian Jack Bauer will keep everyone safe.
So what? (Score:2)
Any attack made by against ASIO headquarters would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they've obtained.
Nice to see ASIO.. (Score:2)
Hacked? (Score:2)
since when did "hacked" mean "took a copy off" - come on if they had hacked the building plans they'd have added secret tunnels or something, at the very least installed the doors with the hinges on the outside
Things do change.. (Score:2)
As a kid I used to wonder around the grounds and bildings of the Russell Offices [wikipedia.org] in Canberra and home of the Australian Department of Defence. Security in the 80's was a joke,I used to just wander in and out of buildings and around the grounds.. I was only quested once, and that was when I was about 13.. I sort of stopped going after that.
Most of my floppy disks as a kid came from ones just thrown out the windows.. If i needed paper to scribble on, reams of old school data prints were just thrown out, half
Don't have senstive stuff accessable from the Inet (Score:2)
I mean, really. If you got shit you don't want anyone to get into, you do NOT put the fucking stuff on a computer that has internet access. How many stupid ass people/corporations/governments are going to keep getting hacked? Lots. Mainly if your a government, you are 100% a target.
Crisis Timeline (Score:2)
May 2013: blueprints to the new Australian federal intelligence agency ASIO headquarters have been stolen
June 2013: a man in London plants a small tenant garden outside a flat in London. The peas and carrots are arranged in geometric shapes that depict the seating arrangement of the ASIO conference room. By the time this pattern is discovered in August, he will have disappeared.
June 2013: Better Bathrooms magazine June issue contains an artist's rendition of "a functional yet stylish layout, corporate wash
But they found out about it (Score:2)
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Re: the closer that australia gets to china, .... (Score:2, Insightful)
As an Aussie I would like to remind you of a certain gentleman by the name of Bradley Manning -I seem to remember he was responsible for the largest recent security breach of the Western Alliance.
So who exactly is the weakest link?
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America is the weak link. We continue to push Windows into our gov. and buy cheap chinese junk and then are surprised that we have high unemployment and that China is cracking us.
Pot calling the silver spoons black (Score:3)
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And since you do not have a clue, let me point out that the next president and prime minster of India are going to be VERY conservative due to this [qz.com]
It was not needed at this time, but, perhaps it is for the best.
But then again, you will not get it.
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Make ineffective bleating noises since China have the guys that pay for political campaigns and "lobby" money in the USA by the economic balls. See the US 1930s government and business reaction to Italy and Germany for what happens in such situations - Democrats wanted to appease and some Republicans were financing people deep in Nazi politics - make nobody look good at the rich end of town apart from Charlie Chaplin who took a lot of flak for opposing it.
As for Australia, we're too
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