jueves, 30 de septiembre de 2010

44.Cyber Storm III uses Internet to attack itself

Cyber Storm III uses Internet to attack itself

September 28, 2010 - 7:00am

WFED's Max Cacas
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Inside the National Cybersecurity and Communications and Integration Center, Sept. 27, 2010. WFED photo by Max Cacas.

43.World gripped by 'international currency war'

World gripped by 'international currency war'

• Brazilian finance minister Guido Mantega speaks out against devaluations
• Economists fear increasing currency volatility and instability

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Tim Webb
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 September 2010 09.39 BST

A Chinese bank teller counts notes in Beijing. China has kept the yuan weak to boost exports and has resisted US pressure to allow it to rise Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images

The world is in the midst of an "international currency war" according to Brazil's finance minister as governments force down the value of their currenciesto boost their struggling economies.

The comments are the first public admission made by a senior policymaker about a practice which has become increasingly widespread since the global economic downturn.

Many countries, notably China, have been deliberately weakening their currencies by selling them on foreign exchanges or keeping interest rates artificially low to make their exports cheaper.

Economists fear that such moves are resulting in increasing currency volatility and instability. Increasing competition among individual countries to devalue also makes it harder to mount a co-ordinated policy response to the economic downturn, particularly amid fears of a renewed slowdown.

The issue is likely to be high on the agenda at the upcoming G20 meeting in November in South Korea. China has resisted pressure from the US to allow the value of its currency, the yuan, to rise. Many countries in Asia, including the host, are reluctant to raise the issue for fear of antagonising China, a major trading partner. Switzerland also began selling Swiss francs on foreign exchanges last year to weaken its currency.

Brazilian finance minister Guido Mantega made his comments in a speech in Sao Paulo last night to Brazilian industrial leaders ahead of presidential elections on Sunday.

"We're in the midst of an international currency war, a general weakening of currency. This threatens us because it takes away our competitiveness," he said.

Brazil's economy is booming following economic reform and on the back of rising oil production. Foreign investors have flocked to the country because of high interest rates and new investment opportunities such as the $67bn (£42bn) share offering by state-controlled oil company Petrobras last week. According to investment bank Goldman Sachs, its currency, the real, is the most overvalued major currency in the world.

42.Don't Look Now, But It's Already Started The Next Mexican Revolution

Don't Look Now, But It's Already Started

The Next Mexican Revolution

By JOHN ROSS

Mexico City

As the 100th anniversary of the Mexican revolution steams into sight, U.S. and Mexican security agencies are closely monitoring this distant neighbor nation for red lights that could signal renewed rebellion. The most treacherous stretch for those keeping tabs on subversion south of the border is between September 15th the recently celebrated bicentennial commemorating the struggle for Mexico's independence from Spain, and November 20th, the day back in 1910 that the liberal Francisco Madero called upon his compatriots to take the plazas of their cities and towns and rise up against the Diaz government.

At least ten and as many as 44 armed groups are currently thought to be active in Mexico and the two months between the 200th anniversary of liberation from the colonial yoke and the 100th of the nation's landmark revolution, the first uprising of landless farmers in the Americas and a precursor of the Russian revolution, is a dramatic platform from which to strike at the right-wing government of President Felipe Calderon.

Among the more prominent armed formations is the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) which rose against the government in 1996 and is based in Guerrero and Oaxaca, and three distinct split-offs: the Democratic Revolutionary Tendency (TDR); the Justice Commandos - June 28th, thought to be linear descendents of the followers of guerrilla chieftain Lucio Cabanas who fought the government along the Costa Grande of Guerrero in the 1970s; and the Revolutionary Army of the Insurgent Peoples (ERPI) which also espouses Cabanas's heritage and is active in the Sierra of Guerrero where Lucio once roamed.

Others on the list released two years ago by the CISEN, Mexico's lead anti-subversion intelligence-gathering apparatus, include the largely-disarmed Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), an indigenous formation that rose in Chiapas in 1994; the Jose Maria Morelos National Guerrilla

Coordinating Body, thought to be based in Puebla; and the Jaramillista Justice Commandos that takes its name from Ruben Jaramillo, the last general of revolutionary martyr Emiliano Zapata's Liberating Army of the South gunned down by the government in 1964, which has taken credit for bombings in Zapata's home state of Morelos.

The TAGIN or National Triple Indigenous and Guerrilla Alliance, thought to be rooted in southeastern Mexico, boasted in a e-mail communiqué at the beginning of the year that a coalition of 70 armed groups have agreed on coordinated action in 2010.

Also in the revolutionary mix are an unknown number of anarchist cells, at least one of which takes the name of Praxides G. Guerrero, the first anarchist to fall 100 years ago in the Mexican revolution. Primarily operating in urban settings, anarchist cells have firebombed dozens of ATM machines and banks, new car showrooms, bullrings, and slaughterhouses (many anarchists are militant vegans) in Mexico City, Mexico state, Guadalajara, San Luis Potosi, and Tijuana. The U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has just added Mexican anarchist groups to the Obama government's terrorist lists.

Thus far, no group in this revolutionary rainbow has struck in 2010, and the window is narrowing if Mexico's twin centennials are to be a stage upon which to launch new uprisings. If this is to be the year of the next Mexican revolution, the time to move is now.

Objective conditions on the ground are certainly ripe for popular uprising. At least 70% of the Mexican people live in and around the poverty line while a handful of oligarchs continue to dominate the economy - Mexico accounts for half of the 12 million Latin Americans who have fallen into poverty during the on-going economic downturn. Despite Calderon's much scoffed-at claims that the recession-wracked economy is in recovery, unemployment continues to run at record levels. Hunger is palpable on the farm and in the big cities. Indeed, the only ray of light is the drug trade that now employs between a half million and a million mostly young and impoverished people.

Labor troubles, always a crucible of revolutionary dynamics, are on the rise. A hundred years ago, conditions were not dissimilar. The fall-out from the 1906-7 world depression that saw precious metal prices, the nation's sustenance, fall off the charts sent waves of unemployment across the land and severely impacted conditions for those still working. As copper prices bottomed, workers at the great Cananea copper pit scant miles from the Arizona border in Sonora state, went out on strike and owner Colonel William Green called in the Arizona Rangers to take the mine back. 26 miners were cut down and the massacre gave birth to the Mexican labor movement.

In March 2010, President Calderon dispatched hundreds of federal police and army troops to Cananea to break a protracted, near two-year strike at the behest of the Larrea family, the main stockholders in Grupo Mexicano Industrial which was gifted with the copper pit, the eighth largest in the world, after it was privatized by reviled ex-president Carlos Salinas in 1989. Calderon's hard-nosed labor secretary Javiar Lozano has threatened arrest of miners' union boss Napoleon Gomez Urrutia, now in self-exile in Vancouver Canada.

Lozano is also deeply embroiled in take-no-hostages battles with the Mexican Electricity Workers Union (SME) over privatization of electricity generation here that has cost the union, the second oldest in the country founded during the last Mexican revolution, 44,000 jobs. A near death hunger strike by the displaced workers failed to budge the labor secretary and SME members now threaten to shut down Mexico City's International Airport.

History is often colored with irony. The first important battles in the Mexican revolution were fought around Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, a key railhead on the U.S. border and a commercial lifeline to El Norte for dictator Porfirio Diaz. In skirmish after skirmish, the irregulars of Francisco Villa and Pascual Orozco challenged and defeated the dictator's Federales and began the long push south to hook up with Emiliano Zapata's southern army in Morelos state on the doorstep of the capitol.

Ciudad Juarez was devastated by the cruel battles between the revolutionaries and the dictator's troops. Dead wagons plied the dusty streets hauling off the bodies of those who had fallen to be burnt out in the surrounding desert. Today, once again, Ciudad Juarez is the murder capitol of Mexico.

Over 1800 have been killed in this border city so far in 2010, a record year for homicides, as the homegrown Juarez drug cartel and its local enforcers, the "La Linea" gang, try to defend the "plaza", the most pertinent drug crossing point on the 1964 mile border, from the Sinaloa cartel under the management of "El Chapo" Guzman, and his local associates "Gente Nueva" ("New People.")

Much as today when the narco kings like "El Chapo" or his recently slain associate "Nacho" Coronel are vilified by the Mexican press and President Calderon as "traitors" and "killers" and "cowards", 100 years back revolutionaries were cast as villains and vandals hell-bent on tearing down the institutions of law and order. Pancho Villa was universally dissed as a cattle rustler, a "bandido", "terrorista", and rapist. When Zapata, "the Attila of the South", and his peasant army came down to Mexico City in 1914 to meet with Villa, the "gente decente" (decent people) locked up their homes and their daughters to protect them from the barbarian hordes.

Similarly, in 2010, the corporate press lashes out at the cartels and their pistoleros as crazed, drug-addled mercenaries who will shoot their own mothers if enough cash and cocaine are offered. Villa's troops were no strangers to such accusations. "La Cucaracha", the Villista marching song, pleads for "marijuana para caminar" ("marijuana to march.")

All this duel centennial year, ideologically driven leftists here have been waiting with baited breath for a resurgence of armed rebellion such as in 1994 when the EZLN rose up against the "mal gobierno" in Chiapas, or in 1996 when the EPR staged a series of murderous raids on military and police installations - but the leftists may be barking up the wrong tree.

If revolution is to be defined as the overthrow of an unpopular government and the taking of state power by armed partisans, then the new Mexican revolution is already underway, at least in the north of the country where Calderon's ill-advised drug campaign against the cartels (in which according to the latest CISEN data 28,000 citizens have died) has morphed into generalized warfare.

Although the fighting has been largely confined to the north, it should be remembered that Mexico's 1910 revolution began in that geography under the command of Villa and Orozco, Venustiano Carranza, Alvaro Obregon, and Francisco Madero, and then spread south to the power center of the country.

Given the qualitative leap in violence, Edgardo Buscaglia, a keen analyst of drug policy at the prestigious Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico now describes Calderon's war as a "narco-insurgency" - a descriptive recently endorsed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Daily events reported in the nation's press lend graphic substance to the terminology.

Narco-commandos attack military and police barracks, carrying off arms and freeing prisoners from prisons in classic guerrilla fashion. As if to replay the 1910 uprising in the north, the narco gangs loot and torch the mansions of the rich in Ciudad Juarez. The narcos mount public massacres in northern cities like Juarez and Torreon that leave dozens dead and seem designed to terrorize the local populous caught up in the crossfire and impress upon the citizenry that the government can no longer protect them, a classic guerrilla warfare strategy.

One very 2010 wrinkle to the upsurge in violence: car bombs triggered by cell phones detonate in downtown Juarez, a technology that seems to have been borrowed from the U.S. invasion of Iraq (El Paso just across the river is home to several military bases where returning veterans of that crusade are housed.) Plastique-like C-4 explosives used in a July 15th car bombing that killed four in downtown Juarez are readily available at Mexican mining sites.

Further into the interior, commandos thought to be operating under the sponsorship of the Zetas cartel, have repeatedly shut down key intersections in Monterrey, Mexico's third largest city and the industrial powerhouse of the nation, with stolen construction equipment and stalled buses and trailer trucks purportedly to clear surrounding highways of traffic for the movement of troops and weaponry into this strategic region.

Now the narco-insurrection has invaded the political realm as manifested by the assassination of the one-time ruling PRI party's front-running candidate for governor of Tamaulipas state in July 4th elections. But party affiliation doesn't seem to be a determining factor in this ambience of fear and loathing. The kidnapping of right-wing PAN party Padrino Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, one of the most powerful politicos in Mexico and a possible presidential candidate in 2012, must send chills up and down the spines of Calderon and his associates.

Who actually put the snatch on "El Jefe" Diego remains murky. The Attorney General's office is now pointing fingers at the Popular Revolutionary Army, which is active in the Bajio region where the PANista was taken last May 14th. In 2007, the EPR claimed credit for the bombing of PEMEX pipelines in Guanajuato and Queretero in retaliation for the disappearances of two of its historical leaders.

The Mexican military has long calculated the eventual "symbiosis of criminal cartels with armed groups that are disaffected with the government" ("Combat Against Narco-Traffic 2008" issued by the Secretary of Defense.)

50,000 of the Mexican Army's 140,000 troops and large detachments of Naval Marines are currently in the field against the narco-insurrectionists. With an eye to the eventual "symbiosis" of the drug gangs with armed guerrilla movements, the U.S. North Command which is responsible for keeping the North American mainland free of terrorists and regards Mexico as its southern security perimeter recently sent counter-insurgency trainers here to assess threats - their visit was confirmed at a Washington D.C. press conference July 21st by Under-secretary of Defense William Wechsler.

Meanwhile, the military is setting up new advance bases in regions where there have been recent guerrilla sightings such as the Sierra Gorda, strategically located at the confluence of Queretero, Guanajuato, and San Luis Potosi states.

Leftists who have been awaiting a more "political" uprising in 2010 are not convinced by Buscaglia's nomenclature. A real revolution must be waged along ideological and class lines which the narco-insurrection has yet to manifest. Nonetheless, given the neo-liberal mindset of a globalized world in which class dynamics are reduced to market domination, the on-going narco-insurrection may well be the best new Mexican revolution this beleaguered nation is going to get.

John Ross is the author of El Monstruo. You can consult him on particulars atjohnross@igc.org

41.Human impact on world's rivers 'threatens water security of 5 billion'

Human impact on world's rivers 'threatens water security of 5 billion'

Study on effect of all human intervention on water supplies finds water security and biodiversity severely damaged

Adam Vaughan
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 September 2010 17.53 BST

Chemical water pollution in China: Yangtze river, Anhui, China

Chemical waste water is discharged into the Yangtze river Photograph: Lu Guang/Greenpeace

The world's rivers are so badly affected by human activity that the water security of almost 5 billion people, and the survival of thousands of aquatic species, are threatened, scientists warned .

The study, conducted by institutions across the globe, is the first to simultaneously look at all types of human intervention on freshwater – from dams and reservoirs to irrigation and pollution. It paints a devastating picture of a world whose rivers are in serious decline.

While developing countries are suffering from threats to both water security and biodiversity, particularly in Africa and central Asia, the authors were surprised by the level of threat posed to wildlife in rich countries.

"What made our jaws drop is that some of the highest threat levels in the world are in the United States and Europe," said Prof Peter McIntyre, one of the lead authors, who began the project as a Smith Fellow at the University of Michigan.

"Americans tend to think water pollution problems are pretty well under control, but we still face enormous challenges."

Some of the worst threats to aquatic species in the US are in the south-eastern states. Prof Charles Vörösmarty of the City University of New York, lead author and an expert on global water, said the impact on wildlife in developed countries was the result of river systems that had been heavily engineered and altered by man. "With all the protection the EU has in place, it was surprising to see it was a hotspot for biodiversity loss. But for a long time Europeans have altered their landscapes, including the removal of 90% of wetlands and floodplains, which are crucial parts of river ecosystems," he said.

The team behind the report, published in the journal Nature, examined datasets to produce a map of how 23 different human influences – such as dams, the introduction of alien non-native fish, and pollution – affect water security and biodiversity. Previous studies have tended to look at just one influence at a time.

Even the world's great rivers, such as the Yangtze, the Nile and the Ganges, are suffering serious biodiversity and water security stress.

Despite their size, more than 30 of the 47 largest rivers showed at least moderate threats to water security, due to a range of human impacts such as pollution and irrigation. Even the Amazon, considered to be relatively pristine, still has human fingerprints on it, said Vörösmarty.

"While the Amazon is in generally good shape, in the upstream regions, such as Peru, there are many high density areas of people that inject threat into the system.

"The legacy of that human threat passes downstream into the remote forested areas of the river."

Globally between 10,000 and 20,000 aquatic wildlife species are at risk or face extinction because of the human degradation of global rivers, the report said. The world's least affected rivers, the authors found, were those furthest from populated areas, such as remote parts of the tropics, Siberia and elsewhere in the polar regions.

Vörösmarty said he hoped the global report would highlight the need to address the root causes of the degradation of rivers. "We're spending trillions of US dollars to fix a problem we've created in the first place. It's much cheaper to treat the causes rather than the symptoms, which is what we do in the developed world today," he said.

In Britain rivers have been getting cleaner over the past decade. But a report by the UK's Environment Agency last year admitted only five of 6,114 rivers in England and Wales were considered pristine and three-quarters were likely to fail new European quality standards for various reasons.

40. The Female Factor A Woman Rises in Brazil

The Female Factor

A Woman Rises in Brazil

By LUISITA LOPEZ TORREGROSA

Published: September 28, 2010

NEW YORK — Latin America is no stranger to female leaders, but not many can match the radical political trajectory of Dilma Rousseff, the 62-year-old onetime Marxist guerrilla leader who stands to becomeBrazil’s first female president.

For Ms. Rousseff, a twice-divorced economist, to become Brazil’s president — either by winning outright in elections on Sunday, or in a later runoff — would be historic enough. What’s more, she would rule a country with the eighth-largest economy in the world, the wealthiest in Latin America.

Brazil has always been an exotic playground whose politics regularly feature corruption, violence and upheaval. But it is now a player in the world arena. It is a global power.

Up until a year or so ago, Ms. Rousseff, the former chief of staff of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, had worked mostly behind the scenes, by most accounts an effective and respected civil servant in the shadow of the popular president universally known as Lula. Forbidden by law to run for a third term, Mr. da Silva tapped Ms. Rousseff, cast his aura around her and became her loudest and most passionate cheerleader.

Underrated in the mostly male world of Brazil’s electoral politics, Ms. Rousseff took off slowly last year, mostly because she was undergoing treatment for lymphoma. She went on the campaign trail in full force in the spring and moved past her main opponent, the ex-governor of São Paulo, José Serra, who lost to Mr. da Silva in the race for president in 2002.

Ms. Rousseff had a mostly smooth ride until earlier this month, when local media reported allegations that the family of a former aide, Erenice Guerra, who succeeded her as chief of staff, was taking bribes to procure government contracts for businesses. Ms. Rousseff was not mentioned in the allegations; she has since wobbled somewhat in the polls but is still widely predicted to best Mr. Serra.

If she has a theme, it is her allegiance to Mr. da Silva’s policies. “I’m proud to be associated with the government of President Lula because we showed that distribution of income was a necessary condition to make Brazil independent and achieve stability,” she said last week during a televised debate in Brasilia. She emphasized that Brazil — sitting among other things on new oil fields discovered off its coast — no longer needed foreign assistance to meet external obligations.

Victory would place Ms. Rousseff in a gallery of female leaders in Latin America, most of them — like their counterparts in Western Europe or the United States — offspring of relatively privileged and educated families (unlike Lula himself, who rose from poverty to pinnacle). Among these successful Latin American ladies is Michelle Bachelet, 59, the first female president of Chile, single mother of three and pediatrician, who survived prison torture, exile and the Pinochet regime to win the presidency in 2006. She served through March of this year.

She made headlines in recent days with the announcement that she would head a new United Nations agency called U.N. Women. “Women are almost invisible in some places,” Ms. Bachelet said at the United Nations last Thursday. “They are second-class citizens. They are seen as people without rights. It is a shame for humanity.”

While Ms. Bachelet broke down barriers for women, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, 57, president of Argentina and wife of former President Néstor Kirchner, has battled for gay rights, successfully supportingsame-sex marriage. Ms. Fernández, a Peronista like her husband, can seem somewhat erratic, plying unorthodox economic policies, thumbing her nose at world lenders like the International Monetary Fund and having few financial ties to the world. But Argentina’s economy is booming, her approval ratings are improving and she may win a second term next year.

In Peru, Keiko Fujimori, the 35-year-old daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, supports the capitalist-oriented framework that has bolstered Peru’s economy. Although her father is in jail, a poll taken in late September showed Ms. Fujimori leading three potential opponents — all men — in the presidential election set for next spring.

The pragmatic economic policy of Brazil, which Ms. Rousseff has stoked in nearly 10 years in the da Silva administration, has helped vault her toward the presidency. She has said that Brazil can keep growing at a 7 percent annual rate, that she will create millions of jobs, improve infrastructure and use Brazil’s new wealth to support social-welfare plans and market-friendly policies.

Such capitalist talk seems far from the days when Ms. Rousseff’s nom de guerre was Stella, and she handled weapons and commanded male comrades. For her role in the armed underground resistance to the military dictatorship of the 1960s and ‘70s, she served three years in prison, where she was repeatedly tortured.

Ms. Rousseff grew up in an upper middle class household in Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais. Her father, Pedro Rousseff, who died in 1962, was born Petar Russev in Bulgaria; her mother, Dilma Jane Silva, was the daughter of ranchers. Young Dilma attended Catholic boarding schools, studied piano and French. But her structured life changed when she went to public school and discovered the underground movement. It was 1965, and she was 17.

In a few years, she joined the underground, got married, imposed herself among men, divorced her husband, married another and gave birth to a daughter, her only child (she has since divorced her second husband).

Out of prison, she left the underground and went to college. When democracy was restored in the mid-1980s, she had an economics degree and soon became energy secretary in Rio Grande do Sul. When Mr. da Silva was elected president she became his energy secretary, and later, chief of staff.

Analysts credit her surge in part to Brazil’s high-paced economy and expanded aid for low-income families. But more than any other factor (including the female one), Ms. Rousseff owes her success to Mr. da Silva, who has said, “She won’t only carry on my legacy but perfect it and do much more.”

39. Richard Lugar: Mexican drug lords 'most immediate' threat to U.S. security The Hill.By Mike Lillis - 09/26/10

Richard Lugar: Mexican drug lords 'most immediate' threat to U.S. security

The Hill.By Mike Lillis - 09/26/10

The Senate's top Republican on foreign policy said this weekend that drug traffickers operating on the Mexican border pose a more immediate national security threat than domestic terrorists.

Sen. Richard Lugar (Ind.), senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is calling on the White House to intensify efforts to help Mexico fight drug lords at the border, where escalating violence has killed tens of thousands of people in the past few years.

"Transnational drug trafficking organizations operating from Mexico represent the most immediate national security threat faced by the United States in the Western Hemisphere," Lugar said in remarks prepared for an Indiana-based training for Mexican prosecutors Sunday, Reuters reports.

"The United States should undertake a broad review of further steps the U.S. military and the intelligence community could take to help combat the Mexican cartels in association with the Mexican government."

The Indiana Republican is suggesting the U.S. military and intelligence communities provide Mexicowith more surveillance help, to combat the flow of drugs, money and weapons across the 1,969 mile border, Reuters reports.

38. New Cybersecurity Bill Gives Obama ‘Power To Shut Down Companies’

New Cybersecurity Bill Gives Obama ‘Power To Shut Down Companies’

Businesses who don’t follow government orders would be suspended for at least 90 days with no congressional oversight

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, September 28, 2010

An amalgamated cybersecurity bill that lawmakers hope to pass before the end of the year includes new powers which would allow President Obama to shut down not only entire areas of the Internet, but also businesses and industries that fail to comply with government orders following the declaration of a national emergency – increasing fears that the legislation will be abused as a political tool.

The draft bill is a combination of two pieces of legislation originally crafted by Senators Lieberman and Rockefeller. One of the differences between the new bill and the original Lieberman version is that the Internet “kill switch” power has been limited to 90 days without congressional oversight, rather than the original period of four months contained in the Lieberman bill.

In other words, President Obama can issue an emergency declaration that lasts 30 days and he can renew it for a further 60 days before congress can step in to oversee the powers.

The new powers would give Obama a free hand to not only shut down entire areas of the Internet and block all Internet traffic from certain countries, but under the amalgamated bill he would also have the power to completely shut down industries that don’t follow government orders, according to a Reuters summary of the new bill.

“Industries, companies or portions of companies could be temporarily shut down, or be required to take other steps to address threats,” states the report, citing concerns about an “imminent threat to the U.S. electrical grid or other critical infrastructure such as the water supply or financial network.”

The only protection afforded to companies under the new laws is that they would have to be defined as “critical” in order to come under government regulation, but since the government itself would decide to what companies this label applies, it’s hardly a comforting layer of security.

“Even in the absence of an imminent threat, companies could face government scrutiny. Company employees working in cybersecurity would need appropriate skills. It also would require companies to report cyber threats to the government, and to have plans for responding to a cyber attack,” states the report.

As we have highlighted, the threat from cyber-terrorists to the U.S. power grid or water supply is minimal. The perpetrators of an attack on such infrastructure would have to have direct physical access to the systems that operate these plants to cause any damage. The recent Stuxnet malware attack, for example, was introduced and spread through a physical USB device, not via the public Internet.

Any perceived threat from the public Internet to these systems is therefore completely contrived and strips bare what many fear is the real agenda behind cybersecurity – to enable the government to regulate free speech on the Internet.

(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)

New Cybersecurity Bill Gives Obama Power To Shut Down Companies 150709banner2

Handing Obama the power to shut down certain companies or businesses is likely to heighten already existing fears that the new cybersecurity federal bureaucracy could be used as a political tool.

As we reported back in March, the Obama administration’s release of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, a government plan to “secure” (or control) the nation’s public and private sector computer networks, coincided with Democrats attempting to claim that the independent news website The Drudge Report was serving malware, an incident Senator Jim Inhofe described as a deliberate ploy “to discourage people from using Drudge”.

Senator Joe Lieberman appeared to admit that the legislation had more to do with simply protecting US infrastructure when he told CNN’s Candy Crowleythat the bill was intended to mimic the Communist Chinese system of Internet policing.

“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” said Lieberman.

As we have documented, the Chinese government does not disconnect parts of the Internet because of genuine security concerns, it habitually does so only to oppress and silence victims of government abuse and atrocities, and to strangle dissent against the state, a practice many fear is the ultimate intention of cybersecurity in the United States.

The implementation of the cybersecurity apparatus would represent another huge expansion of the federal government, creating an Office of Cyber Policy within the executive branch and also “A new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) within the Department of Homeland Security, led by a separate director who would enforce cybersecurity policies throughout the government and the private sector.”

Lawmakers have indicated that they intend to push through the bill before the end of the year, though with Congress set to leave Friday amidst deadlock on a number of issues, cybersecurity looks like it will have to wait until mid-November, providing its opponents with extra time to point out the inherent threats the legislation poses to free speech and free enterprise.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.