U.S. HYPOCRISY IS BREATHTAKING TO BEHOLD

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Posted on 13th October 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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It is amazing to me that our government has the balls to act outraged at Iran’s use of cyberwarfare against Saudi Arabia and anyone else that is supporting America’s ongoing undeclared war against Iran. We are systematically destroying their economy. We have wiped out the savings of their middle class by causing hyperinflation with our economic sanctions. We have worked with Israel to murder Iranian scientists. WE released the stuxnet virus into Iranian computer systems, destroying hundreds of centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility.

The United States intitiated this war on Iran and now WE’RE outraged that they are fighting back. The hypocrisy of Panetta’s words is breathtaking to behold. Even sadder is the fact that 99.5% of Americans don’t even know we are at war with Iran. They will know when Iran is able to bring down our electrical grid or destroy one of our nuclear facilities. How dare they fight back. They’re supposed to cow down before the great American empire.

I’ve got news for the oligarchs running this show. Countries around the world are tiring of our bullying and bribery. We are an empire in decline. The rot is evident to anyone with a brain. The Chinese, Russians, Iranians and other countries around the world are not going to take it anymore. Our only hope would be withdrawing as the policeman of the world and adapting our economy to the new reality. There is no chance this will happen. The hubris of the ruling class will result in the inevitable fall of the empire.   

US warning reflects fears of Iranian cyberattack

By LOLITA C. BALDOR | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s pointed warning that the U.S. will strike back against a cyberattack underscores the Obama administration’s growing concern that Iran could be the first country to unleash cyberterrorism on America.

Panetta’s unusually strong comments Thursday came as former U.S. government officials and cybersecurity experts said the U.S. believes Iranian-based hackers were responsible for cyberattacks that devastated computer systems of Persian Gulf oil and gas companies.

Unencumbered by diplomatic or economic ties that restrain other nations from direct conflict with the U.S., Iran is an unpredictable foe that national security experts contend is not only capable but willing to use a sophisticated computer-based attack.

Panetta made it clear that the military is ready to retaliate — though he didn’t say how — if it believes the nation is threatened by a cyberattack, and he made it evident that the U.S. would consider a preemptive strike.

“Iran is a country for whom terror has simply been another tool in their foreign policy toolbox, and they are a country that feels it has less and less to lose by breaking the norms of the rest of the world,” said Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and now in private law practice. “If anybody is going to release irresponsible unlimited attacks, you’d expect it to be Iran.”

National security experts have long complained that the administration needs to be much more open about what the military could and would do if the U.S. were to be the victim of cyberattacks. They argue that such deterrence worked in the Cold War with Russia and would help convince would-be attackers that an assault on America would have dire results.

Panetta took the first steps toward answering those critics in a speech analysts said was a thinly veiled warning to Iran, and the opening salvo in the campaign to convince Tehran that any cyberattack against America would trigger a swift and deadly response.

“Potential aggressors should be aware that the United States has the capacity to locate them and hold them accountable for actions that harm America or its interests,” Panetta said in a speech in New York City to the Business Executives for National Security.

And while he did not directly connect Iran to the Gulf cyberattacks, he warned that Iran’s abilities were growing.

Security analysts agree.

The presumed Iranian cyberattacks hit the Saudi Arabian state oil company Aramco and Qatari natural gas producer RasGas using a virus, known as Shamoon, which can spread through networked computers and ultimately wipes out files by overwriting them.

In his speech, Panetta said the Shamoon virus replaced crucial system files at Aramco with the image of a burning U.S. flag, and also overwrote all data, rendering more than 30,000 computers useless and forcing them to be replaced. He said the Qatar attack was similar.

“This one worries me,” said Richard Bejtlich, chief security officer for the Virginia-based cybersecurity firm Mandiant.  “I’m not an alarmist, but when I saw that 30,000 computers at Saudi Aramco got just deleted, that was a big deal. You don’t see the Chinese government, you don’t see the Russian government, or even their patriotic hackers go out and delete anything for the most part.”

From the Iranians’ point of view, however, attacks against the U.S. may be justified because American sanctions leveled on the country for refusing to cooperate with international norms on its nuclear program have hit Iran hard. Tehran also believes that the U.S. and Israel were behind the Stuxnet cyberattack that forced the temporary shutdown of thousands of centrifuges at a nuclear facility there in 2010.

As a result, said Bejtlich, Iran already believes it is at war with the U.S.

Frank Cilluffo, , a former special assistant for homeland security to President George W. Bush, said U.S. authorities have suspected Iran of trying to plot cyberattacks against American targets, including nuclear plants. And he said that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps appears to now be trying to bring some of the patriotic hacker groups under its control, so it can draw on their abilities.

“Iran has been doing a lot of cyber saber-rattling,” said Cilluffo, now director of George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute. “What they lack in capabilities, they more than make up for in intent.”

Tehran has not made any public comment on Panetta’s comments, but the Iranians routinely report the discovery of viruses and other malicious programs in government, nuclear, oil and industrial networks, blaming Israel and the United States.

While Panetta’s warnings received high marks from security experts, those people also were quick to say that much more needs to be done.

The U.S., said former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, must lay out the rules of the road and figure out what kind of proof authorities would need before taking action.

“We still have work to do,” said Chertoff, who is now chairman of the Chertoff Group, a global security firm. “Will we take action to preempt something rather than simply retaliate, and how early and how much warning will we need before we take that action?”

He noted that most conflicts arise over misunderstandings, when one side doesn’t realize what the other will do if provoked.

The administration has repeatedly warned of the cybersecurity threats, particularly against critical infrastructure such as financial networks, transportation systems and utility companies. More recently, the White House has been considering using the president’s executive power to encourage critical industries to better protect their networks because legislation to do so stalled in Congress.

“While the message has been sent over and over again it doesn’t seem to have acquired urgency across the board,” said Chertoff. “We need to make it clear that this is not just background noise you have to deal with, but that it really strikes at the fundamentals of our national security.”

STATE OF DENIAL

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Posted on 5th February 2012 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

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You have to hand it to our leaders. Not only are they incapable of understanding economics, but their hubris is so extreme they think they can start a war without comprehending the unintended consequences of that decision. Worldwide catastrophe will be the result if a shooting war with Iran is the chosen course of TPTB. Remember – war only benefits the war industry and the bankers loaning the money to fight the war and build the weapons. It does not benefit the average American in any way.

State of Denial in Coming War Catastrophe

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

The world economy is in the tank, and the Federal Reserve’s decision to extend its zero interest rate policy to, at least, the end of 2014 proves it.  What will happen if the fragile world economy also has to deal with a war with Iran?  That should have been the big headline coming out of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, but what was reported was concern over slow or no growth in the world.  All the signs are that the West is careening towards war with Iran, and there is not a peep about it from world leaders.  Are they in a state of denial in a coming war catastrophe?  I say yes. 

One of the first shots fired by the EU was in the form of increased sanctions to boycott Iranian oil in about five months.  The second shot looks like it will be fired by the Iranians who won’t wait for sanctions to kick in and will move to cut off oil exports of around 600,000 barrels a day to the Eurozone.  (Click here for more on this story.)  The Iranians have not yet cut off the oil.   MSNBC reported yesterday, “The Islamic Republic declared itself optimistic about a visit by U.N. nuclear experts that began on Sunday but also warned the inspectors to be “professional” or see Tehran reducing cooperation with the world body on atomic matters.  The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection delegation will seek to advance efforts to resolve a row about nuclear work which Iran says is for making electricity but the West suspects is aimed at seeking a nuclear weapon.”  (Click here to read the latest CNBC story.) 

The immediate cut off of oil to the EU would be a disaster, and the Iranians do not have to close the Strait of Hormuz to do it.  This would cause major pain to a European economy teetering on the brink of collapse.  How well do you think the Eurozone would perform with a spike in energy prices?  Talk about no growth, how about a giant contraction and an implosion of some of the biggest banks on both sides of the Atlantic.  This is not all out war, mind you, just an immediate cut of Iranian oil to Europe.   

Some say this is all just a high stakes game of poker with both sides saber rattling and jockeying for position.  Stratfor.com, global intelligence experts, said in a report last week, “It is in this context that the possibility of negotiations has arisen. The Iranians have claimed that the letter the U.S. administration sent to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that defined Iran’s threats to Strait of Hormuz as a red line contained a second paragraph offering direct talks with Iran. After hesitation, the United States denied the offer of talks, but it did not deny it had sent a message to the Iranian leadership.”  (Click here to read the complete report.)   

I think this view is extremely optimistic and on the edge of wishful thinking in light of the comments made by the Israeli Defense Minister a few days ago.  The UK Telegraph reported, “Reviving Western concerns that his government is still contemplating unilateral military action against Iran, Ehud Barak gave one of the clearest signs yet that Israel’s support for new US and EU sanctions remains strictly limited.  “We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear,” he told the World Economic Forum in Davos. “And even the American president and opinion leaders have said that no option should be removed from the table.  It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them.”  (Click here to read the complete UK Telegraph story.)  This doesn’t sound like a peace plan to me.   

Debka.com, a leading intelligence website, reported the possible time table for war in a post yesterday.  The Debka.com analysis says actions by the U.S. Navy on deploying a special commando ship in the Persian Gulf point to a conflict that is just a few months away.  The report said, “The target date for deploying the commando platform in the Persian Gulf in four or five months indicates Washington is preparing for military clashes to blow up with Iran in the late spring or early summer.” (Click here for the complete Debka.com report.)  Then again, what if the Iranians feel war is going to happen no matter what and don’t wait for the U.S. to be fully set.  What if the Israelis take charge and strike first?  If the U.S. lost an aircraft carrier or two, would the conflict turn nuclear?  These are all real world questions with catastrophic implications for the fragile Western economy that is cocked full of insolvent banks that use phony accounting to stay afloat.  If real war breaks out, the charade will be over—pronto.   

I am not advocating war–just pointing out that war is coming unless something is done to avert it.  If war does come, it will be bloody on both sides.  The Iranians surely possess sophisticated supersonic Chinese and Russian missiles that are capable of sinking an aircraft carrier.  The Iranians, also, probably have Russian torpedoes that travel at speeds of at least 200 miles per hour—underwater!   Check out this example of a Russian torpedo that can sink vessels above and below the water.   

Does the U.S. have countermeasures to Chinese and Russian missiles and torpedoes?   Yes, but no countermeasure is 100% effective.  It would be naïve to think the U.S. could come out of this conflict without a loss of vessels and lives.  The U.S would win the war, but the world economy would collapse in a matter of days if the saber rattling turned into full metal-to-metal contact.  An imploding global economy would happen in Internet time and would make the Great Depression look like a party.

The Last Crusade Part III

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Posted on 30th January 2011 by Reverse Engineer in Economy |Social Issues |Technology

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Continuing on here with the Theme of the Last Crusade, in this Installment I am going to analyze the underpinning of the battle we are engaged in here, which as I see it is one which pits Technological Progress against a reversion to the mean of sustainable technologies. The factual stuff I posted verbatim from MSM sources and the Blogosphere in Part II of this series with respect to the direct consequences of these choices speaks for itself in terms of what is happening right now in the M.E.  My purpose in writing on TBP and Reverse Engineering is to look at the driving forces which underpin the choices that we make as individuals and as a society.  By looking at the real consequences as we travel down the Collapse Highway, it is my hope that what I write can help individuals make better choices to help insure their own survival and that of their loved ones. I write to inform with my own view of how our civilization developed and where it is likely to go.  It is a personal view based on my own life experience and my own choices.  I leave it to the reader to decide how much of what I write is valid, and what is not.  If you CHOOSE to read what follows, it is up to you to consider its validity with respect to your own life and those you care for.

As I mentioned in Part I, the Battle which is developing here is not so much one of Islam v. Christianity or even the Haves v. the Have Nots, but one of perpetuating the Industrial paradigm v. REVERSE ENGINEERING back to a lower Energy Footprint for Human Civilization.  This is a concept most people in the Western World refuse to consider as the necessary outcome of our currently Collapsing Model.

For people immersed in our Energy dependent society who do accept the Peak Oil hypothesis but wish to see our society continue to develop along this paradigm, for the most part they hang their hopes on the development of Nuke Power.  I have written before extensively on why I do not believe Nuke Power can substitute for liquid fuels derived from fossil resources, I am not going to rehash those arguments here in this post.  If we go off on that tangent I’ll rehearse them as necessary in the dialogue which follows.

 

A smaller percentage of people (on TBP anyhow) hang their hopes on forms of Renewable Energy like Wind, Hydro and Geothermal power.  While I do believe we should attempt to rev up in these areas, I don’t believe they can generate enough power in the near term to substitute on a Kilowatt for Kilowatt, Joule for Joule, Calorie for Calorie (yes, Food is Energy measured in Calories convertible mathematically to Joules or Kilowatts) basis to substitute for employing fossil fuel Energy to do Work, so even if you do ramp them up, you still have to move toward much lower energy and power consumption overall.  Please remember your basic Physics here, which is that Power is Force distributed out over Time, the two are integrally related, and Power and Work are synonymous concepts.  Also remember how Entropy fits into Thermodynamic balance, and that all systems that do not have an Energy input move toward greater Disorder. Dependence on GREAT Energy to maintain Order in a complex system means that once that energy is no longer available, the complex system MUST fall into greater disorder.  This is PHYSICAL LAW that cannot be denied.  Our complex energy dependent society MUST fall into disorder without the input of great quantities of energy. You cannot wish that away.

 

If you take a Time Trip with Sherman back in Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine, it was realized at the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution that coming to depend on the Energy of Fossil Fuels and the Machines they powered was a MISTAKE.  The Luddite movement was composed of people who worked in tasks like Weaving Cloth, who were displaced out of their work by Industrial Looms powered by Oil.  These folks were so unhappy about this that they went about destroying the Machinery until they themselves were destroyed.

 

The Amish also foreswore the use of thermodynamically powered Machinery, for Religious based principles on the inherent value of Human Labor, based on the Biblical injunction that People must actually WORK for their daily bread, in the real sense of the word which is Physical Labor.  Sitting at a Bloomberg Terminal and Naked Short selling somebody’s currency would NOT count as Work for an Amish person, obviously.

Even BEFORE the Amish and the Luddites and even BEFORE the Industrial Revolution however, another group of Religious Fanatics foreswore against Progress at any Cost, and they pretty much stopped their development in the 7th Century.  Today, we know this group of people as Muslims, the followers of Islam and their Prophet Mohammed.  The result of this for them was that as Western Society progressed through the Enlightenment and developed Industrialization, they got stuck with being the perpetual Have Nots in the world that came to be.

 

Even once Industrialization took serious hold on the world and the Muslims found themselves sitting on top of the world’s biggest supply of the Lifeblood Oil of Industrial civilization, they chose not to Industrialize.  Rather, they simply sold off the resource to the Western Illuminati, which allowed the Ruling Class of Islamic society to become immensely wealthy while the general population remained mired in deep poverty and eventual Dependency.

 

Further to the East in Asia, another path was taken very late in the Industrialization Game, where the basically Agrarian populations became Industrial level Slaves in order to hopefully partake of the “benefits” of industrialization.  For the most part, coming in a Day Late and a Yuan Short here to this game, the main Benefit they got was an extremely Polluted environment and massive Population Overshoot.  A few Chinese Oligarchs running this very large Slave Labor paradigm also became immensely Wealthy, but they now have the same problem the M.E. Sheiks have, which is a HUGE population of the Underclass which will Revolt when they have nothing left to lose, since they are going to be Starving in the Economic sense, unable to Buy Food they no longer produce themselves.

 

For the populations of the First World, for the moment they still remain in the Catbird Seat, as long as they are able to keep the Oil flowing into the Industrial Food apparatus centered in the heart of the best Ag Land left on the Planet, which is the Grain Belt of the Midwestern FSofA.  However, the fact said Oil for the most part has to be Imported from areas of the world where as we speak many people are already facing Economic Starvation means that keeping said Oil flowing will be increasingly more difficult, and even if managed through War and Genocide it still has an eventual termination date not that far into the future.  So eventually and likely sooner rather than later the very same problems of feeding the population 3rd world countries currently have will also hit the 1st World countries.

 

In ALL the cases, 1st World and 3rd World (whatever happened to 2nd World?), Power Down is Coming Soon to their Theatres.  The only real choices now are in how that Power Down is managed, or in the more likely case, NOT managed but rather fought against until the battle is inevitably lost.  In Part II of ths series, I was accused as “favoring” a Holocaust by having the temerity to suggest that we should make such systems as HVAC (an example I gave as a highly energy dependent system we need to lose) Illegal.  I maintain precisely the opposite is the case. By utilizing remaining energy resources in this manner, we condemn FAR more people to near term DEATH than we do if we utilize that energy to maintain our Food Supply as long as possible.  Like the Amish and like the Luddites, I believe in the value of Human Labor and I think that becoming Dependent on Fossil Fuels to do our work for us is the proximal cause for the current collapse of our civilization, now in progress and rapidly accelerating.  I look for ways we could transition back to a lower energy footprint with the least amount of Human Suffering possible.  That there will be IMMENSE suffering is without question, mostly it now is a question of who will suffer the most and whether a few people will continue to live high on the hog while MANY people suffer immensely; or whether we can distribute out the pain so that all people only suffer as much as is necessary to suffer in order to REVERSE ENGINEER to a lower energy footprint on the planet.

 

Might it have been different had we not made the Discoveries we did resulting from the Enlightenment, leading to Industrialization?  Yes and No.  Yes in the sense that we never would have gone so far into Population Overshoot as we have gone now.  No in the sense that even just with Agriculture as it was practiced through to 1750, eventually the Grain belt of the FSofA would have suffered the same fate the Ag Land did down in the “Fertile Crescent” of the Middle East, where Civilization of the Ag Sense began. Eventual depletion of the resource over a few millennia.  Prior to the “discovery” of the New World by the Europeans in the 15th Century, the Old World had already reached a Maxima, with Plagues and Famines taking down the population and keeping it relatively steady state at around 500M for that land mass. Completely populating the New World under the same paradigm, perhaps we might have grown to 800M before running into similar problems.  However, under that paradigm, that 800M would have lasted a whole lot longer than the 6.3B that EXPLODED onto the surface of the Earth once the Thermodynamic Energy of Fossil Fuels was accessed.

 

It is of course true that regardless of the paradigm, Homo Sapiens and in fact all life on this planet faces a Termination Date, when the Sun goes Red Giant and fries the planet to a crisp.  On the assumption its better to live a longer life than a short one though, better Stewardship of the Planet and its resources would have enabled a longer lifespan than we will get as a result of walking down the path of Industrialization, and in fact Agriculture as well.  Perhaps God designed us as a species to Burn Brightly for a brief period, to “Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Good Looking Corpse” as the saying goes.  If that is so, then following along the paradigm here we have engaged in will most certainly follow God’s Plan.  It did not HAVE to be this way though, and it still does not, although making the choices necessary to allow for a more lengthy inhabitance of this planet are unlikely to be made at this point on the aggregate level of Global society.  Individually however, you still have the choice available here to attempt to extend out your OWN life and that of your progeny somewhat, by attempting to avoid the worst of the near term dislocations likely to occur as the Conduits of Industrial society fall into failure mode.  Some of you have more ability than others to attempt that, if you’re more economically well off and have not already fallen off the economic cliff.  I pass out my advice here on how to do that, advice I follow myself for the most part so it is not hypocrisy to do that.  Your choice to follow this advice or not.  You may not like the Message I deliver of Impending Doom in the relatively near future, you may think I am wrong and so not choose to follow the advice, again this is your choice. I am not forcing anyone to read my stuff or to follow the advice.  I am just calling it as I see it.

 

See You on the Other Side.

 

RE