I was also in Sendai, a touristic zone for the connoisseur that wanted to flee the Financial-Military-Industrial Complex with its 70 million ant-workers, coming out of the subways in white and black at 7.50 pm. Within 10 minutes all were in their cubicles. Their company-mothers were asking them a sacrifice that summer: they were sweating at work without air conditioned to save more money to their owners, but they were told this was to reduce global warming, a campaign paid by the Nuclear Industry, the placebo that hides the more pressing problems of the evolution of robotics that throw us from jobs and nuclear weapons and predators that will kill us when the FMI complex becomes truly a biological ecosystem of machines that has displaced man as man displaced mammals from mother-earth.
20110330
Fukushima, the FMI and the silent victims.
9/11 Peter Jennings ABC World Trade Center Demolition Special Report
disintegrate |disˈintəˌgrāt|
verb [ intrans. ]
break up into small parts, typically as the result of impact or decay : when the missile struck, the car disintegrated in a sheet of searing flame.
• (of a society, family, or other social group) weaken or break apart : the marriage disintegrated amid allegations that she was having an affair.
• informal deteriorate mentally or physically : I thought that when I finished working on the book I'd disintegrate.
• Physics undergo or cause to undergo disintegration at a subatomic level : [ intrans. ] a meson can spontaneously disintegrate | [ trans. ] it has become a relatively easy matter to disintegrate almost any atom.
20110329
In Our Backyard (A Monsanto Introspective)
The focus of the piece is on a small village just east of St. Louis known as Sauget. Years ago this tiny area was incorporated as Monsanto. For those who remain unaware Monsanto Company was one of the leading chemical producers of the twentieth century and has been responsible for producing chemicals like DDT, an insecticide known to be carcinogenic. Agent Orange, a dioxin riddled chemical used as a defoliant in the Vietnam war. Still to this day in Vietnam we can see horrible genetic mutations, horrid skin conditions, and cancers attributed to the effects of Agent Orange. Also, Bovine Growth Hormones, which Monsanto continuously tries to keep under wraps, due to the fact it makes cows sick, thus their bacteria and the antibiotics they are pumped full of go right back into American milk. As a result BGH has been banned in Europe and Canada. Today Monsanto is an agricultural biotechnology company that is known for their genetically altering and patenting of various seed varieties, which are injected with a protein in order make the plants resistant to Roundup Weed Killer, one of Monsanto's best selling products. Solutia is currently Monsanto's chemical division, a subsidiary made years ago when the Monsanto name became tainted. Monsanto and Solutia have received an array of negative publicity, and we must question why. We also must question what good has Monsanto Company done for this world? There are two toxic dumping sites in Sauget known as superfund sites, in which Monsanto and Solutia have been found directly attributed to. While filming Solutia company my crew and I nearly got arrested while on public property, and were coerced into surrendering our ID's only to be placed on a FBI domestic terrorist watch list. It's important to question what exactly Monsanto and Solutia are afraid of. This film is only a brief introduction into the atrocities occurring at the hands of Monsanto in the areas surrounding St. Louis, and the world.
20110326
Amidst Growing World Doubts About 9/11, Career Army Officer Takes Bush Administration Officials to Court April 5th Represented by the Center for 9/11 Justice
Iranian hackers obtain fraudulent HTTPS certificates: How close to a Web security meltdown did we get?
"On March 15th, an HTTPS/TLS Certificate Authority (CA) was tricked into issuing fraudulent certificates that posed a dire risk to Internet security. Based on currently available information, the incident got close to — but was not quite — an Internet-wide security meltdown. As this post will explain, these events show why we urgently need to start reinforcing the system that is currently used to authenticate and identify secure websites and email systems.
There is a post up on the Tor Project's blog by Jacob Appelbaum,analyzing the revocation of a number of HTTPS certificates last week. Patches to the major web browsers blacklisted a number of TLS certificates that were issued after hackers broke into a Certificate Authority. Appelbaum and others were able to cross-reference the blacklisted certificates' serial numbers against a comprehensive collection of Certificate Revocation Lists (these CRLURLs were obtained by querying EFF's SSL Observatory databases) to learn which CA had been affected. The answer was the UserTrust "UTN-USERFirst-Hardware" certificate owned by Comodo, one of the largest CAs on the web. Comodo has now published a statement about the improperly issued certs, which were for extremely high-value domains including google.com, login.yahoo.com and addons.mozilla.org (this last domain could be used to trojan any system that was installing a new Firefox extension, though updates to previously installed extensions have a second layer of protection from XPI signatures). One cert was for "global trustee" — not a domain name. That was probably a malicious CA certificate that could be used to flawlessly impersonate any domain on the Web..." https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/03/iranian-hackers-obtain-fraudulent-httpsTwo New OLC Opinions on Warrantless Surveillance
20110325
20110323
Use of Military Force in Domestic Disturbances (1945)
20110322
Photos of U.S. soldiers and Afghan corpse published
20110321
“U.L.’s testing procedures helped make that possible”
"When I was fired by Underwriters Laboratories (UL) for publicly questioning the company’s testing related to the World Trade Center (WTC), and its role in the WTC investigation being conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), UL claimed that there was “no evidence” that any company had tested the WTC steel components.
Of course, that was a lie. The company had already admitted that it was responsible for the fire resistance testing related to the WTC buildings, in an April 2002 letter to the editor of the New York Times. Below is that letter. UL had also certified the fireproofing material and had consulted with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey throughout the life of the buildings. The author of the letter to the editor, UL’s manager of its Fire Protection division, Tom Chapin, wrote in defense of ASTM E119, the standard test UL had used to ensure fire resistance of the buildings. The NYC code, which UL’s CEO had confirmed to me was used to guide the testing, required two hours of fire resistance for the steel columns and 3 hours of fire resistance for floor assemblies. One of the buildings fell in 56 minutes..."http://ultruth.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/u-l-s-testing-procedures-helped-make-...
20110320
Follow the Money Trail
20110319
Goldman Sachs Code-Stealer Hit With Harsh Sentence
By Ashby Jones
When last we checked in on Sergey Aleynikov, the former Goldman Sachs computer programmer convicted of stealing the confidential source code of Goldman’s high-speed trading system, prosecutors were debating with his lawyers over his sentence.
Prosecutors were arguing for 10 years, while Aleynikov’s lawyer was asking for probation — no jail time at all.
Well, the sentence came down Friday afternoon — and the prosecutors, well, won. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote sentenced Aleynikov to more than eight years behind bars.
“I very much regret the foolish decision to download information, part of this information was proprietary to Goldman,” Aleynikov said before sentencing. “I never meant to cause Goldman any harm. I did not intend to harm anyone.”
However, Judge Cote didn’t agree. “He knew that what he was doing would harm Goldman Sachs. There is no other impact,” she said. Click here for Chad Bray’s story in the WSJ.
Aleynikov was convicted of theft of trade secrets and transportation of stolen property in December.
Kevin Marino, Aleynikov’s lawyer, had previously argued that Aleynikov only intended to use portions of the downloaded code that were “open source,” or freely available.
But on Friday, Marino was singing a slightly different tune: “He made a tragic mistake,” he said. Marino said, however, that Aleynikov plans to appeal his conviction.
Mr. Aleynikov is the second person to be convicted in recent months of stealing proprietary computer code related to an investment bank’s high-frequency trading business.
Samarth Agrawal, a former Société Générale SA trader, was sentenced to three years in prison in February for the theft of the French investment bank’s computer code. He was convicted in November of theft of trade secrets and transportation of stolen property.
How Knowledge Changes Us
"This blog isn’t really about politics, but sometimes I’ll veer into the psychology of politics. For example, when people hold high office they change a zillion different ways. They have power, with all the attendant corruptions. They become the center of every room they enter, with all the attendant narcissism. They also have inside information, and often leap to the conclusion that people who don’t have this information are simply not worth listening to.
I’ve asked two presidents and several former CIA directors if the top secret information they have access to gives them an entirely different picture of the world than the rest of us, who rely on the Times and other public media sources. The general answer I get is that the secret information gives you more granularity, but it doesn’t really change the basic way you see the world..." http://brooks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/knowledge-corrupts/
20110316
Kissinger: Release Israeli spy Pollard
"...Saying he found the arguments of other top former U.S. national security officials “compelling,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on Monday called for President Obama to commute the remainder of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard’s life sentence.
"At first I felt I did not have enough information to render a reasoned and just opinion,” Kissinger said in his Mar. 3 letter, released today by a public relations firm that has been lobbying for the release of Pollard, sentenced to life in prison for espionage in 1987. “But having talked with [former Secretary of State] George Shultz and read the statements of former CIA Director [R. James] Woolsey, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman [Dennis] DeConcini, former Defense Secretary [Caspar] Weinberger, former Attorney General [Michael] Mukasey and others whose judgments and first-hand knowledge I respect, I find their unanimous support for clemency compelling...” http://voices.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2011/03/kissinger_release_israeli_s...
Iran-Contra Cover-ups, Iranian Republic, Ouster of Saddam, Iran Again the Target, & the Murders of Wheeler and Ali Reza - Part 2
Fortunately, with such a complicated conspiracy, there were all kinds of things that could go wrong - e. g., spies becoming turncoats, turncoats avoiding self-serving opportunities, key players refusing to go along, double agents being neutralized, and the like - and unsurprisingly they happened in great abundance. The Agency's Aldrich 'Rick' Ames, the Bureau's Robert Hanssen, and the Mossad's Jonathan Pollard supplied enough new information about what Washington was up to - thanks to what earlier spies like Ronald Pelton, the John Walker ring et al. had provided - so that Moscow was fully prepared not to be taken by surprise. The Soviet ambassador to Sweden was sure that Palme was going to be assassinated, rendering inoperative the telephone of the embassy's KGB resident so that convicted Swedish spy Stig Bergling could not attempt to flee while on compassionate leave that night to get married - what CIA and Sweden's Security Service aka Säpo bugging teams hoped to exploit by bugging the resident's house that very night. While Bergling decided against trying to flee, the plotters still had a fallguiy for being the assassin, the so-called "Mad Austrian" - someone sounding like the infamous Josef Fritzl whose sexual excesses, especially with his daughter Elisabeth and other young women who had been murdered, had led to his being blackmailed by the Mossad into being there. Unfortunately for the plotters, the 'Mad Austrian' turned out to have an alibi for being the assassin.(2)..." http://codshit.blogspot.com/2011/03/iran-contra-cover-ups-iranian-republic.html
20110313
NSA case: classified information could be introduced in code
Lawyers for 9/11 Truth
Lawyers are trained to value the Constitution and the rule of law.
We are trained to examine evidence and to spot cover-ups or inconsistencies in the evidence and bias in witnesses or decision-makers. Attorneys are also experts in weighing conflicting evidence. For all of the above reasons, many lawyers have concluded that the 9/11 Commission and other government examinations were wholly inadequate, and did not follow proper rules of evidence or procedure. We are demanding an end to the 9/11 cover-up, and a full investigation by unbiased people with subpoena power . . . and the courage to demand that the Constitution and rule of law are followed, and all guilty persons held accountable for their actions. http://www.l911t.com/Black 9/11: A Walk on the Dark Side
Obama's new Gitmo policy is a lot like Bush's old policy
It was another important moment in the education of Barack Obama.
He began his presidency with a pledge to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year. Within months, he realized that was impossible. And now he has essentially formalized George W. Bush's detention policy.
With Monday's announcement that the Obama administration will resume military tribunals at Gitmo, conservatives rushed out triumphant I-told-you-sos. Liberal supporters were again feeling betrayed. Administration officials had some 'splainin' to do.
And so they assembled some top-notch lawyers from across the executive branch and held a conference call Monday afternoon with reporters. The ground rules required that the officials not be identified, which is appropriate given their Orwellian assignment. They were to argue that Obama's new detention policy is perfectly consistent with his old detention policy.
Not only had he revoked his pledge to close Gitmo within a year, but he also had contradicted his claim that the policy "can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone." His executive order did exactly what he said must not be done, in a style pioneered by Obama's immediate predecessor in the Oval Office.
"This detention without trial - what's different from the Bush administration?" a French reporter from Le Monde asked during the call.
Good question. The answer, from the Anonymous Lawyers, was technical. "We have a much more thorough process here of representation. . . . There's an opportunity for an oral presentation to the board."
CBS's Jan Crawford was not impressed by this answer. "What specifically is different in this than what we were living under that was so bad in the Bush administration?" she asked.
The Anonymous Lawyers replied that cases would be reviewed every six months instead of every year. They also spoke about their "intent to comply with Article 75 of Additional Protocol One."
This still wasn't working for Yochi Dreazen of the National Journal. "It seems like what is happening now with this executive order is effectively ratifying the status quo," he said. "Is that a fair read?"
The Anonymous Lawyers did not think that was a fair read. Over and over again, they repeated their theme: "The basic message is the National Archives speech remains the framework under which Guantanamo closure is being done."
Oh? Let's review.
20110308
9/11 Omission Hearings - Mission Statement - 9/9/2004
On 9/9/2004, 9/11 Family Members, Citizen Researchers, and then Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney held what were called the "9/11 Omission Hearings" in New York City.
20110307
The Stargate Project
"The Stargate Project[1] was the umbrella code name of one of several sub-projects established by the U.S. Federal Government to investigate claims of psychic phenomena with potential military and domestic applications, particularly "remote viewing": the purported ability to psychically "see" events, sites, or information from a great distance.[2] These projects were active from the 1970s through 1995, and followed up early psychic researchdone at The Stanford Research Institute (SRI), The American Society for Psychical Research, and other psychical research labs.[3].."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Projecthttp://www.remoteviewing.com/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1234548/
While Texas Dismisses Torture Charges Against James Mitchell, Other Investigations Under Political Pressures
Danny Robbins at Associated Press reported last Friday that the Texas State Board of Examiners dismissed a licensing complaint filed by a Texas psychologist against former SERE psychologist James Mitchell. Mitchell was accused of “violating the standards demanded by the Psychologists‘ Licensing Act and the Board‘s Rules of Practice” (PDF). Specifically, the complaint cited Mitchell’s role in the design and implementation of a torture program, “ignoring the complete lack of a scientific basis for the regime‘s safety and—assuming its safety—its effectiveness,” as well as his actual participation in the torture of prisoners such as Abu Zubaydah.
The complaint against Mitchell was filed on June 16, 2010, and was signed by Texas psychologist Jim L.H. Cox. Attorneys Dicky Grigg and Joseph Margulies were also signatories to the complaint. Grigg and Margulies have also represented Guantanamo prisoners before the government.
According to the AP story, “The board said there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Mitchell violated its rules,” despite the fact that “thousands of pages of evidence, including sworn testimony, tying Mitchell to practices that violate professional ethics” were presented to the board. It is not known if Mitchell utilized in his board defense any of the $5 million “indemnity” defense fund set up by the CIA for use in legal defense for Michell and his CIA contractor partner, Bruce Jessen.
The hearing was held on February 10. Proceedings were held in secret session, and only Mitchell and his representative were present before the three board members. No complainants were at the hearing. Two days later, the board issued its finding of dismissal. Strangely, no reports of the Texas board decision surfaced for another two weeks.
As AP notes, the Mitchell decision follows the dismissal of other cases brought before boards in New York, Ohio, and Louisiana, concerning other military psychologists, Major John Leso and Colonel Larry James. Late last year, the Center for Justice and Accountability and the New York ACLU filed asked a New York court “to order the New York Office of Professional Discipline (OPD) to perform its duty to investigate a complaint of professional misconduct against Dr. John Francis Leso, who, as asserted in the complaint, violated professional standards when he designed and participated in the abusive interrogation program at Guantánamo.”
Worldwide Actions to Hold the Torturers Accountable
The decision of the Texas state board also comes in the context of a number of legal actions worldwide to bring the Bush-era torturers to justice. Lawyers and international human rights activists and organizations continue to press for investigations and prosecutions of the torture of Abu Zubaydah and other “high-value” detainees held in CIA black site prisons around the world, or sent to foreign countries for torture as part of the U.S. “extraordinary rendition” program.
Most recently, the Spanish National Court announced it had the competent standing to proceed with the investigations into the torture of former Guantanamo prisoner Lahcen Ikassrien, since he had been a Spanish resident for 13 years. Center for Constitutional Rights said in regards to the decision:
Since the U.S. government has not only failed to investigate the illegal actions of its own officials and, according to diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, also sought to interfere in the Spanish judicial process and stop the case from proceeding, this will be the first real investigation of the U.S. torture program. This is a victory for accountability and a blow against impunity.
Meanwhile, in Poland, where the U.S. constructed one of the CIA black site prisons, authorities were stymied in their efforts to secure U.S. cooperation into their country’s investigation into the CIA activities at the black site near the Szymany air base in northern Poland. The Obama administration cited an international Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, whereby “a country has the right to refuse to provide legal assistance if the execution of the request would encroach on this country’s security or another interest of this country.” Requests for an investigation were forwarded by legal represenatives of former CIA prisoners Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
In a direct rebuff to the United States, a Polish state prosecutor last January became “the first state official to accept Abu Zubaydah’s claims that he was a victim of extraordinary rendition and secret detention in Poland.” Zubaydah is being represented by Polish lawyer Bartlomiej Jankowski, who is working with the British human rights charities Interights and Reprieve, in addition to U.S. lawyers Joseph Margulies and Brent Mickum. Al-Nashiri was recognized as a “victim” of torture by Polish authorities last fall.
In Lithuania, where other black site prisons also operated, presumably near Vilnius, state authorities meanwhile have dropped investigations into torture, rendition and CIA activities. After initial support for an investigation of the prisons — one of them constructed at a former horse riding club — Prosecutor Darius Valys announced in January that the investigation was over. According to a report by Reprieve, Valys admitted “that three ex-security services agents had ‘abused their position’” but “oddly stopped short of addressing allegations of serious official crimes, including torture and illegal imprisonment.” In addition, the Lithuanian prosecutor made a pro forma nod to expired statutes of limitation, and also a bizarre charge that NGO “lack of transparency” had harmed the investigation.
Attorney Joseph Margulies replied, “The Prosecutor is trying to deflect blame for the failure of his investigation onto NGOs and the media. It’s ironic that an official investigation into a secret torture facility should claim to be thwarted because the media is insufficiently transparent.”
UK State Investigation Blasted by Human Rights Groups
A British government investigation into UK complicity with U.S. torture programs, announced last July after revelations in the UK court case on Binyam Mohamed, has met criticism from almost the beginning. In particular, the decision to have Sir Peter Gibson, the Intelligence Services Commissioner, responsible for monitoring secret bugging operations by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ (Britain’s version of the NSA), lead the investigation was questioned from the very start.
At this point, a number of British NGOs are so concerned that the inquiry, according to the UK Guardian, “will fail to meet the UK’s obligations under international and domestic law,” that they are considering boycotting the proceedings. Nine of the NGOs – Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, JUSTICE, Liberty, the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, Redress, Reprieve, the AIRE Centre and British Irish Rights Watch — have written a letter to Gibson expressing their concerns.
The letter is substantive and detailed, and includes discussion of whether the inquiry as currently constituted can meet Article 3 (prohibition against torture) requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR) regarding promptness, independence, and thoroughness. In addition, the NGO signatories note the insufficiency of public scrutiny and victim participation, the lack of effective remedy and redress for victims, secrecy invoked over the material to be presented, and “the lack of any current powers to compel the production of documents or the attendance of witnesses.”
Another outstanding issue facing the inquiry concerns the last British resident in Guantanamo, Shaker Aamer. As Andy Worthington pointed out in an article on the torture inquiry, due to begin this coming week, Aamer “is still held despite being cleared for release by a military review board in 2007, when President Bush was still in power.” Aamer is the only British torture prisoner to directly claim “that British agents were in the room when he was tortured by US operatives in the US prison in Kandahar prior to his transfer to Guantánamo in February 2002.” Worthington notes that the British inquiry “cannot legitimately begin while he is still held,” as Aamer is a crucial witness as to UK participation, “whose testimony Sir Peter Gibson will need to hear if the inquiry is to have any credibility.”
What Is to Be Done?
It is perhaps unavoidable that the efforts to establish investigations and promote accountability have been led by attorneys and human rights activists (most of them attorneys, too, by the way). As a result, the movement for accountability appears to rise and fall based on the legal decisions of governments, administrative boards, military commissions, and non-U.S. governmental prosecutors. While these legal actions are necessary, and the lawyers and NGO personnel involved deserve our thanks, at the same time the anti-torture movement suffers from an over-reliance on legalism at the expense of social struggle to end the use of torture.
On the other end of the spectrum, groups that promote local activism to bring justice to torture victims or accountability to war criminals like John Yoo, tend to get lost in overly parochial approaches, which when they fail, as in the case of the defeat of a Berkeley, California measure to endorse resettling cleared Guantanamo detainees in that city, promote demoralization and/or endless rounds of campaigning, with little or no progress. While such activists also deserve praise for their efforts, behind the scenes they too express frustration over what course of action might bring greater success.
The underlying problem is political, and lies in a refusal to take on the legitimacy of the so-called “war on terror,” which the U.S. uses as an excuse for the extension of its power abroad in support of corporations that seek to extend their economic influence and power, and which are interpenetrated with the U.S. military and intelligence establishment in that effort. It is apposite to notice, too, the efforts of the government to interdict and obstruct the work of anti-government critics, as the recent revelations surrounding FBI abuse and HBGary make abundantly clear.
In addition, effective action means taking on the misleadership and perfidy of both political parties, both Democratic and Republican. The Obama administration’s refusal to investigate war crimes, and its implication in ongoing war crimes (abuse of prisoners, assassination, use of drones) has not seriously been challenged by the liberal establishment.
The issue of U.S. or British torture is not really separable from issues of war abroad and domestic crackdown on civil liberties at home. Nor is it separable from the economic policies of the United States, which under both political parties has favored the enrichment of a privileged class over the immiseration of large portions of the population.
Nothing demonstrates the bankruptcy of the current ruling elites than the use of torture and assassination. The fight against torture must mean a full political assault against the legitimacy of a state apparatus and its defenders, who use such horrific means as torture as a bulwark against those who they fear challenge their rule and privileges. It must also involve the full use of the social power of civil society (unions, churches, professional organizations), which thus far have remained wedded to leaderships that will not challenge the electoral mastery of a morally and politically bankrupt two-party system.
Computer expert says US behind Stuxnet worm
Computer expert says US behind Stuxnet wormBy Glenn Chapman (AFP) – 3 days ago
LONG BEACH, California — A German computer security expert said Thursday he believes the United States and Israel's Mossad unleashed the malicious Stuxnet worm on Iran's nuclear program.
"My opinion is that the Mossad is involved," Ralph Langner said while discussing his in-depth Stuxnet analysis at a prestigious TED conference in the Southern California city of Long Beach.
"But, the leading source is not Israel... There is only one leading source, and that is the United States."
There has been widespread speculation Israel was behind the Stuxnet worm that has attacked computers in Iran, and Tehran has blamed the Jewish state and the United States for the killing of two nuclear scientists in November and January.
"The idea behind Stuxnet computer worm is really quite simple," Langner said. "We don't want Iran to get the bomb."
The malicious code was crafted to stealthily take control of valves and rotors at an Iranian nuclear plant, according to Langner.
"It was engineered by people who obviously had inside information," he explained. "They probably also knew the shoe size of the operator."
Stuxnet targets computer control systems made by German industrial giant Siemens and commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other critical infrastructure.
"The idea here is to circumvent digital data systems, so the human operator could not get there fast enough," Langner said.
"When digital safety systems are compromised, really bad things can happen -- your plant can blow up.
Most Stuxnet infections have been discovered in Iran, giving rise to speculation it was intended to sabotage nuclear facilities there. The worm was crafted to recognize the system it was to attack.
The New York Times reported in January that US and Israeli intelligence services collaborated to develop the computer worm to sabotage Iran's efforts to make a nuclear bomb.
Russia called on NATO in January to launch an investigation into the computer worm that targeted a Russian-built Iranian nuclear power plant, saying the incident could have triggered a new Chernobyl.
Russia's envoy to NATO in January said Stuxnet caused centrifuges producing enriched uranium at the Bushehr plant to spin out of control, which could have sparked a new "Chernobyl tragedy," the 1986 nuclear meltdown in Ukraine.
"The operators saw on their screens that the centrifuges were working normally when in fact they were out of control," Dmitry Rogozin told reporters after meeting with ambassadors from the 28-nation Western alliance.
Russia is helping Iran build a nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr for civilian use.
Langner said the Stuxnet code was designed to trick human operators by showing them recorded readings indicating machinery is running normally while behind the scenes they are heading for destruction.
"It's definitely hard-core sabotage," Langner said of Stuxnet. "It's like in the movies where during a heist the security camera is running pre-recorded video showing nothing is wrong."
Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency has denied that the Stuxnet attack effected the country's nuclear program, including Bushehr.
A terrifying aspect of Stuxnet, according to Langner, is that it is a generic attack that would work well in factories, power plants, or other operations plentiful in the United States.
"It's a cyber weapon of mass destruction," Langner said. "We'd better start preparing right now."
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
20110306
US Patent: Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors
Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors
Abstract
Physiological effects have been observed in a human subject in response to stimulation of the skin with weak electromagnetic fields that are pulsed with certain frequencies near 1/2 Hz or 2.4 Hz, such as to excite a sensory resonance. Many computer monitors and TV tubes, when displaying pulsed images, emit pulsed electromagnetic fields of sufficient amplitudes to cause such excitation. It is therefore possible to manipulate the nervous system of a subject by pulsing images displayed on a nearby computer monitor or TV set. For the latter, the image pulsing may be imbedded in the program material, or it may be overlaid by modulating a video stream, either as an RF signal or as a video signal. The image displayed on a computer monitor may be pulsed effectively by a simple computer program. For certain monitors, pulsed electromagnetic fields capable of exciting sensory resonances in nearby subjects may be generated even as the displayed images are pulsed with subliminal intensity.
Appl. No.: 09/872,528
Filed: June 1, 2001 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&...
20110304
20110303
TSA harassing and searching a 9 year old
TSA screening coming to a train station near you! Germany, 1933.