Antifascist Calling...

Eyes Wide Shut: With EU Oil Ban U.S. Calls the Shots in Iran Escalation

2012-01-28T11:46:00.000-08:00

When the European Union declared on Monday that it will impose an oil embargo on the Islamic Republic, it set the stage for a new escalation of the Western-created crisis over claims that Iran has an active nuclear weapons program.

In Tuesday's State of the Union address, President Obama declared amid thunderous applause and a standing ovation from Congress, "Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal."

Similar to sanctions legislation signed into law by Obama on December 31, the EU-approved measures ban imports on future and existing contracts beginning July 1 of crude oil, petrochemical products; as well, the measures forbid the export of equipment and technology to Iran's energy sector.

The EU sanctions also hit Iran's Central Bank, freezing its assets. Also on Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced new sanctions on Iran's third-largest bank, Bank Tejarat; a sign that the administration intends to further isolate Iran from the global financial system.

The New York Times claimed that the EU's "phased" ban on oil purchases "was needed to help force a shift in policy and avert the risk of military strikes against Tehran."

France's Foreign Minister, Alain Juppé, told reporters that in order to "avoid any military solution, which could have irreparable consequences, we have decided to go further down the path of sanctions."

"It is a good decision that sends a strong message and which I hope will persuade Iran that it must change its position," Juppé said, "change its line and accept the dialogue that we propose."

Writing in Asia Times Online, Pepe Escobar rejected the foolish notion that the West is interested in defusing the crisis.

"The EU defends its strategy--or economic war--as the only way to avert 'chaos in the Middle East.' Yet the economic war may end up sparking the full-blown war it is theoretically trying to avert; talk about an array of unintended consequences waiting in the wings."

"The EU insists on spinning its so-called 'dual track' approach towards Iran," Escobar averred. "Stripped of spin, dual track essentially translates in practice as 'shut up, bow to our sanctions, stop enriching uranium and sit on the table to negotiate on our terms'."

"Senior EU officials," The Guardian disclosed, "concede that the move could be risky and send oil prices rocketing at a time of extreme economic difficulty in the west."

Reflecting the growing danger to the world economy by this stunt, "oil prices rose on Monday after the European Union agreed to ban imports of Iranian crude," Reuters reported.

"Brent March crude rose 72 cents to settle at $110.58 a barrel, having reached $111.36 intraday but unable to threaten front-month Brent's 200-day moving average of $112.19." One analyst warned, "heaven knows what will happen between now and the first of July" when the EU's date for full implementation of the embargo takes effect.

On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned "that global crude prices could rise as much as 30 percent if Iran halts oil exports as a result of U.S. and European Union sanctions," Reuters disclosed.

Accordingly, if the Islamic Republic stops exporting oil to the EU and other countries that join the "attack Iran" coalition of the feckless, "it would likely trigger an 'initial' oil price jump of 20 to 30 percent, or about $20 to $30 a barrel, the IMF said in its first public comment on a possible Iranian oil supply disruption."

"In addition the oil embargo, the EU also decided to freeze the assets of the Iranian central bank, arguing that the aim was to choke off funding for the nuclear programme," according to The Guardian. The EU's move against Iran's Central Bank follow policies put in place by the United States.

"The Iranian programmes are proceeding apace and represent a strategic threat," an unnamed "senior diplomat" The Guardian. "The aim is to have a big impact on the Iranian financial system, targeting the economic lifeline of the regime."

The Guardian also informed us that "David Cameron, the German chancellor Angela Merkel, and the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, issued a joint statement calling on Iran to suspend its nuclear activities."

"Our message is clear," the statement read. "We have no quarrel with the Iranian people"--a diplomatic cliché that generally means: do what we say or else--"but the Iranian leadership has failed to restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme. We will not accept Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon."

In a day filled with joint statements by imperial shills, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (Henry Kissinger's wunderkind in Obama's cabinet) and Secretary of State Hillary (bomb the Libyans back to the Stone Age) Clinton said that "the measures agreed to today by the EU Foreign Affairs Council are another strong step in the international effort to dramatically increase the pressure on Iran. This new, concerted pressure will sharpen the choice for Iran's leaders and increase their cost of defiance of basic international obligations."

Commenting on the slow-motion apocalypse in progress, Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent: "Bring on the sanctions. Send in the Clowns."

More Israeli Threats

How did America's "stationary aircraft carrier in the Middle East" react?

According to Debkafile, a right-wing publication privy to leaks from Israel's intelligence and military establishment, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that a "new round of sanctions will not stop Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon ... stressing that Israel's hand was always near the trigger."

Barak's comments were "aimed at cooling the optimistic notes emanating from Washington, Europe and some Israeli circles Monday after the European Union foreign ministers approved an oil embargo against Iran from July 1 and froze its central bank's assets."

The Defense Minister said "that because Iran had not stopped developing a nuclear weapon Israel had not removed any options from the table. We say this 'very seriously,' he stressed."

Barak's noxious statements were amplified in a lengthy piece published this week in The New York Times.

Titled "Will Israel Attack Iran?," Ronen Bergman, a political analyst with the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper who, like Debkafile, has cozy ties to Israeli defense mavens, wrote: "After speaking to many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012."

Speaking at the Davos economic summit on Friday, Barak warned "that a situation could be rapidly reached when even 'surgical' military action could not block the Tehran regime from getting the bomb. 'We will know early enough whether the Iranians are ready to give up their nuclear weapons'," The Independent reported.

"We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear," Barak said. "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."

Barak's message to Washington and the "international community": "We're ready to attack, now!"

'Europe Will Burn in the Fire of Iran's Oil Wells'

The new sanctions, coupled with escalating threats from Israel and the West are hardly "bridge builders" aimed at resuscitating stalled talks, but in fact are economic acts of war designed to force Iran into a corner.

Rejecting demands to "dialogue" with guns pointed at their heads, Iranian lawmaker Mohammad Kowsari, the deputy leader of the parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Committee told Press TV that "in the event of US 'military adventurism' in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran will respond in the shortest possible time by making the entire world unsafe for Americans."

Kowsari reiterated Iran's long-standing promise to "definitely" close the strategic Strait of Hormuz "if there is a disruption in the sales of the country's crude, stressing that the "US and its allies will not be able to reopen the strategic waterway."

Hardly fazed by Western threats, and apparently ready to take "preemptive" measures of their own, Seyyed Emad Hosseini, a spokesperson for Iran's parliamentary Energy Commission said on Friday that "Iran has the world's third biggest oil reserves and cannot be eliminated from global energy equations," Press TV reported.

Hosseini said that parliament "is considering a plan to completely stop oil exports to EU members which will initially paralyze the economies of Italy, Spain and Greece."

"Iran is powerful [as a country] and oil sanctions imposed by European countries will only harm the European Union." Hosseini added, "Europe will definitely lose its oil war with Iran because European countries are grappling with numerous domestic challenges and disruption of Iran oil flow will lead to the escalation of domestic pressure and crisis in EU member states."

On Saturday, Fars News Agency reported that "members of the Iranian parliament finalized a draft bill on cutting the country's oil exports to the European states in retaliation for the EU's oil ban against Tehran."

Nasser Soudani, the vice chairman of the parliamentary Energy Commission told Fars that "the bill has 4 articles, including one which states that the Islamic Republic of Iran will cut all oil exports to the European states until they end their oil sanctions against the country."

Soudani told Fars earlier this week when the oil cut-off bill was introduced, "Europe will burn in the fire of Iran's oil wells." Take that, Cameron, Merkel and Sarkozy!

Driving home the point, Bloomberg News reported Friday that "Fitch Ratings cut the credit ratings of Italy, Spain and three other euro-area countries, saying they lack financing flexibility in the face of the regional debt crisis."

In addition to Italy and Spain, the ratings agency also downgraded the credit worthiness of Belgium, Slovenia and Cyprus. And with Greece currently negotiating with creditors on how to avoid a default, soaring oil prices would severely impact the ability of EU countries to climb out of the economic ditch and is a further sign that the 2008 capitalist economic crisis is accelerating.

Commenting, Asia Times Online political analyst Pepe Escobar again warned: "According to the EU sanctions package, all existing contracts will be respected only until July 1--and no new contracts are allowed. Now imagine if this preemptive Iranian legislation is voted within the next few days. Crisis-hit Club Med countries such as Spain and especially Italy and Greece will be dealt a deathblow, having no time to find a possible alternative to Iran's light, high-quality crude."

"Not surprisingly," Escobar averred, "the losers lost in these Cold War tactics anachronistically applied to a global open market are the Europeans themselves."

"Greece," Asia Times pointed out, "already facing the abyss--has been buying heavily discounted oil from Iran. The strong possibility remains of the oil embargo precipitating a Greek government bond default--and even a catastrophic cascade effect in the eurozone (Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain--and beyond)."

Not that any of this matters to the Americans who are exacerbating the manufactured "Iran crisis," partially as a hammer to beat down their EU competitors--under the tattered flag of Western "unity"--while gambling that war and their delusional hope for "regime change" in Iran will bring them one step closer to energy hegemony in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Eyes Wide Shut

Which brings us back to Iran's "red line."

"Tehran has repeatedly said that it would close Hormuz only if--and we should repeat--only if Iran is blocked from exporting its oil," Asia Times warned.

"This would represent a deathblow to the Iranian economy--totally dependent on oil exports--not to mention the regime controlled by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Regime change is the real agenda of Washington and its European poodles-- but that cannot be spelled out to global public opinion," Pepe Escobar noted.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Press TV that "in the absence of Iranian supply, oil prices will go up and they (the Western states) know it. However, Iran will never allow itself to be in a situation in which it cannot sell oil but other regional states can."

And how did the global godfather react to Tehran's warning? Why with more bellicose rhetoric of course! The United States and their "partners" have pledged to "do what needs to done" to keep the strategic waterway open, U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder warned.

The ambassador added: "These situations, the choices are very, very difficult. I have not looked at the exact military contingency plannings that there are ... But of this I am certain: the international waterways that go through the strait of Hormuz are to be sailed by international navies including ours, the British and the French and any other navy that needs to go through the Gulf; and second, we will make sure that that happens under every circumstance."

The Defense Department announced last week that it will maintain a fleet of 11 nuclear-armed aircraft carriers despite budget constraints, as a threat to Iran but also to geopolitical rivals China and Russia.

Russia Today reported that "with Washington's decision to deploy a second carrier strike group in the Gulf, the EU's attempt to pressure Iran economically could greatly increase the likelihood of all-out war in the region."

Ramping things up even further, Interfax reported Thursday that the U.S. "plans to deploy a third convoy of warships led by USS Enterprise to the Gulf in March."

"The country's second aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and its battle group entered the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz last Sunday, accompanied by UK and French warships."

Last Saturday, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told sailors aboard the USS Enterprise, that "the ship is heading to the Persian Gulf and will steam through the Strait of Hormuz in a direct message to Tehran," the Associated Press reported.

While Iran reiterated its threat to close the narrow Strait, through which 20% of the world's oil passes, Tehran has done so as a defensive response to an aggressive military build-up along their borders, the assassination of scientists, terrorist bombings of defense facilities, surveillance overflights by U.S. and Israeli drones and economic sanctions by the West that could crater their economy.

"That's what this carrier is all about," Panetta blustered. "That's the reason we maintain a presence in the Middle East ... We want them to know that we are fully prepared to deal with any contingency and it's better for them to try to deal with us through diplomacy."

Yet despite Israeli threats to "go it alone," they do not possess the assets capable of mounting a decisive military offensive against the Islamic Republic.

On Thursday, Time Magazine reported that an unnamed "senior security official" told Netanyahu's cabinet last fall that the prospects for "success" were "not altogether encouraging."

"'I informed the cabinet we have no ability to hit the Iranian nuclear program in a meaningful way,' the official quoted a senior commander as saying. 'If I get the order I will do it, but we don't have the ability to hit in a meaningful way'."

Short of launching a preemptive nuclear first strike on Iran, the Israelis will heel when the master whistles. Only the United States has the requisite military assets capable of inflicting damage on the Islamic Republic, but they are well-aware of the risks an Iranian counterstrike would pose.

As Global Research analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya cautioned: "U.S. naval strength, which includes the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard, has primacy over all the other navies and maritime forces in the world. Its deep sea or oceanic capabilities are unparalleled and unmatched by any other naval power. Primacy does not mean invincibility. U.S. naval forces in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf are nonetheless vulnerable."

Noting the findings of a Pentagon war game, Millennium Challenge 2002, Nazemroaya wrote that "even the small Iranian patrol boats in the Persian Gulf, which appear pitiable and insignificant against a U.S. aircraft carrier or destroyer, threaten U.S. warships. Looks can be deceiving; these Iranian patrol boats can easily launch a barrage of missiles that could significantly damage and effectively sink large U.S. warships. Iranian small patrol boats are also hardly detectable and hard to target."

During that $250 million war game, the "scenario hypothetically pitted the Blue Team (representing US warships) against a Red Team that launched a coordinated assault using swarming boats and missiles--the kind of tactics Iran might employ," The Christian Science Monitor reported.

Red Team commander, Lt. General Paul K. Van Riper, told The New York Times back in 2008 that "the sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack."

"The whole thing was over in 5, maybe 10 minutes," Van Riper told the Times. "It is not a matter of size or of individual capability, but whether you have the numbers and come from multiple directions in a short period of time," the general cautioned.

"Iran's strategy of asymmetric warfare recognizes that, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has little chance of winning any face-to-face military contest with powerful enemies like the United States," the Monitor noted.

"Instead," journalist Scott Peterson averred, "Iran aims to 'exploit enemy vulnerabilities through the used of 'swarming' tactics by well-armed small boats and fast-attack craft, to mount surprise attacks at unexpected times and places' which will 'ultimately destroy technologically superior enemy forces,' writes Iranian military expert Fariborz Haghshenass in a 2008 study based on published doctrines of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)."

"Part of Iran's strategy includes decentralized decision-making."

A "former European diplomat" told the Monitor that "the entire [IRGC] structure--if you look at how air defense is organized, the land forces, the combination of the Basij [militia] and the [IRGC]--this is all geared toward what they call the Mosaic Strategy, where you have individual military units who have a great deal of independence to decide what they can do without referring back to the center."

"When the Red Team sank much of the Blue navy despite the Blue navy's firing of guns and missiles," the Times grimly observed, "it illustrated a cheap way to beat a very expensive fleet. After the Blue force was sunk, the game was ordered to begin again, with the Blue Team eventually declared the victor."

Nazemroaya warned, "Iran would react to U.S. aggression by launching a massive barrage of missiles that would overwhelm the U.S. and destroy sixteen U.S. naval vessels--an aircraft carrier, ten cruisers, and five amphibious ships. It is estimated that if this had happened in real war theater context, more than 20,000 U.S. servicemen would have been killed in the first day following the attack."

Undeterred by warnings from their own military experts, Washington and Tel Aviv are heading towards the edge of the cliff and seem eager to jump.

On Friday, Russia Today disclosed that the mysteriously "delayed" Austere Challenge 12 joint missile defense exercise with Israel "originally slated for this spring, will be scheduled for October 2012."

Amid conflicting reports that first had the Obama administration, and then the Israelis, postponing the exercise, allegedly because "a series of events," according to Inter Press Service, "impelled the Barack Obama administration to put more distance between the United States and aggressive Israeli policies toward Iran." On the other hand however, Debkafile averred that Netanyahu called it off "as a mark of Israel's disapproval for the administration's apparent hesitancy."

Well, it's on again.

As Russia Today reported, the drill will "signal a surge of American troops to Israel by the thousands" and Iranian authorities "fear that the exercise will try out more than just the missile capabilities of the allies. Also being put to the test is Iran's patience."

"Now after a brief delay," RT averred, "America will send thousands of troops and its anti-missile defense systems to Israel, albeit a few months later than planned."

"With the exercise back in the books, it could mean that an eventual war between the US and Iran is still in the works--and now the world has a timeline to see it through."

Indications are that Washington's timeline is shrinking as the Pentagon accelerates plans to rush new weapons into the deployment phase.

The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that "Pentagon war planners have concluded that their largest conventional bomb isn't yet capable of destroying Iran's most heavily fortified underground facilities, and are stepping up efforts to make it more powerful."

"The 30,000-pound 'bunker-buster' bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programs."

However, "initial tests indicated that the bomb, as currently configured, wouldn't be capable of destroying some of Iran's facilities, either because of their depth or because Tehran has added new fortifications to protect them."

"The push boost the power of the MOP is part of stepped-up contingency planning for a possible strike against Iran's nuclear program," the Journal disclosed.

Having already spent some $300 million for 20 bombs, designed by military-industrial-complex heavyweight Boeing, the Pentagon sought an additional $82 million this month in a secret request to Congress.

Warning of the "grave consequences" of a U.S.-led attack on Iran, last week Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described "the scenario Russia and the global community could face if things in the Middle East, especially in Iran, get out of hand," Russia Today informed us.

"As for the chances that this disaster (a military attack against Iran) could occur, this question would be better addressed to those who keep mentioning this as an option that remains on the table," Lavrov said in a comment apparently intended for Israel and the United States. "The consequences will be really grave, and we are seriously concerned about this."

Pointedly, the Foreign Minister said "this will not be an easy walk, and it's impossible to calculate all of the possible consequences."

Earlier this month, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister and former NATO envoy, Dmitry Rogozin, warned that "Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security."

Braggadocio aside, unlike the Millennium Challenge 2002 exercise, American forces will not have the luxury of a "do-over" if events really do spin out of control.

Terror Attacks, U.S.-Israeli War Games Raise the Prospects for War

2012-01-12T16:45:00.000-08:00

Amid rising tensions over bogus Western claims that Iran plans to build nuclear weapons, upcoming American war games with Israel have the potential of escalating into a deadly confrontation.

A miscalculation, or deliberate provocation by the West designed to maneuver the Iranians into "firing the first shot," could have disastrous consequences far beyond the confines of the Persian Gulf.

That provocation wasn't long in coming.

Despite an agreement reached by Iran with the P 5+1 group of nations (Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany), to restart talks in Turkey over the nuclear issue, the CIA-Mossad-MEK terror campaign took a dark turn this week; a sign that the imperialist powers, spearheaded by the United States, aim to scupper negotiations even before they start.

On Tuesday, an Iranian university professor, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, 32, a chemistry expert and director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was murdered after two assailants on a motorcycle attached magnetic bombs to his car.

Analyst Richard Silverstein wrote on the Tikun Olam web site Wednesday that "my own confidential Israeli source confirms today's murder was the work of the Mossad and MEK, as have been a number of previous operations I've reported here."

Silverstein averred that "the method recalls another series of assassinations that occurred of Fereidoun Abbassi Davani (who was seriously wounded) and his colleague Majid Shahriari (who was killed). Today's killing occurred two years to the day after the assassination of another scientist, Masoud Ali Mohammadi."

According to Fars News Agency, the blasts which killed Roshan "also wounded two other Iranian nationals in Seyed Khandan neighborhood in Northern Tehran."

The scientist''s driver, Reza Qashqavi, who was severely injured in the blast, "died of his wounds in Resalat Hospital a few hours later," Fars reported.

What makes Roshan's murder especially troubling is that according to political analyst Seyyed Mohamed Marandi, the "IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] officials had met him [Ahmadi Roshan] earlier."

Marandi charged that all of the Iranian scientists who had been targeted and then subsequently murdered in terrorist attacks "have had their names given by the IAEA to third parties," Press TV reported.

"It is obvious that Western intelligence agencies are carrying out these attacks, or if the Israelis are carrying them out, it is with the knowledge of the Europeans and Americans. Because these agencies are very closely aligned to one another, they cooperate extensively, they exchange information," Marandi said.

While no one has claimed authorship of the terrorist outrage, the Associated Press reported that IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz testified in closed session to the Israeli Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that America's proxy, Israel, was engaged in sabotaging Iran's nuclear program through a series of "unnatural acts."

"2012 is expected to be a critical year for Iran," Gantz told the committee, citing "the confluence of efforts to advance the nuclear program, internal leadership changes, continued international pressure and things that happen to it unnaturally."

Roshan was the fourth scientist killed in a series of assassinations since January 2010 and follows a series of attacks on defense and nuclear facilities.

In early November, a massive bomb blast at the sprawling Bid Ganeh missile base 25 miles west of Tehran killed upwards of 30 members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran's missile program.

Later that month, a huge explosion was reported at Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan. Though Iranian officials denied an attack took place, The Times reported that "satellite imagery ... clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction."

U.S. officials, as is their wont, responded in typical fashion--they blamed the victims.

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said she had "no information one way or the other" about the scientist's murder, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced Iran for their "provocative rhetoric" and issued a categorical denial that the U.S. was organizing terrorism inside the Islamic Republic.

However, in an interview with the Hebrew-language Ma'ariv daily, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said that "Washington is preparing to undertake any measure to thwart Iran's nuclear program," Xinhua reported.

"We've said and I say again that all options are open ... President (Barack) Obama clearly and consistently says that he will do everything and resort to all necessary means to prevent Iran from producing nuclear weapons, and he means every word," Shapiro said.

Shapiro's statement, if not quite an open admission, is a sign of Washington's boundless hypocrisy as it supposedly wages a so-called "War on Terror" while organizing terrorist attacks on governments it has targeted for regime change.

Iran, and China, Strike a Defiant Note

With a new round of economic sanctions targeting Iran's ability to sell its oil on international markets signed into law by President Obama last week, and with the European Union threatening to do the same, it was unlikely that the Iranian government, or their principle trading partner, would sit idly by and allow the West to damage their respective economies.

Although The Washington Post reported Tuesday that "a senior U.S. intelligence official" said that "the goal of U.S. and other sanctions against Iran is regime collapse," the quote was quickly yanked from their web site.

The Post claimed the earlier account was "incorrectly reported" and that "an updated version clarifies the official's remarks," a fallacious climb-down that revealed far more than Washington intended to say the least!

The European Union announced that a meeting of foreign ministers would be held January 23, a week earlier than originally planned, to finalize an agreement on a comprehensive oil embargo.

While the EU and some Asian oil-buying nations are caving-in to Washington's demands, America's geopolitical rival and largest creditor, China, has rejected calls to put the squeeze on Tehran.

With U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in Beijing this week, The Washington Post reported that the former Kissinger Associates henchman in Obama's cabinet "is expected to press China's leaders to reduce the country's oil imports from Iran."

He is unlikely to find a receptive ear, however.

China's vice foreign minister responsible for U.S. relations, Cui Tiankai, said on Monday that "the normal trade relations and energy cooperation between China and Iran have nothing to do with the nuclear issue. We should not mix issues of different natures, and China's legitimate concerns and demands should be respected."

Having blasted the new sanctions regime imposed last week, China, the third largest buyer of Iranian crude, said new restrictions would not affect business in the least.

The Associated Press reported that "about 11 percent of China's oil imports in 2011 came from Iran, or about 560,000 barrels per day, a flow that increased in the latter half of the year, according to oil industry analysts Argus Media."

"The daily average for November was 617,000 barrels," AP reported, "close to a third of Iran's total oil exports of 2.2 million barrels a day, Argus said," a sign that China is hardly intimidated by U.S. threats.

Rejecting U.S. and European claims that normal business relations with the Islamic Republic provided financial support for its nuclear program, Cui declared that "argument does not hold water."

"According to this logic," the vice minister said, "if the Iranians have enough money to feed their population, then they have the ability to develop nuclear programs," Cui told reporters. "If that is the case, should we also deny Iran the opportunity to feed its population?"

Cui's pointed remark was an obvious jab at the U.S. sanctions regime which targeted Iraq for more than a decade prior to the 2003 invasion. Sanctions, which former UN official Dennis Halliday called "genocide" back in 1999, were estimated to have caused the death of upwards of 1.7. million people, including some 500,000 children, a "price" which former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said was "worth it."

Undeterred by American threats, Press TV disclosed Sunday that "a senior Iranian lawmaker says the aim of the upcoming naval drills by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) is to prepare for the potential closure of the strategic Hormuz Strait."

Iranian naval officials announced January 5 that they "would be holding a major military maneuver in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz in February."

"IRGC's Naval Commander Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi said the drills, the seventh in a series of military exercises dubbed the Great Prophet, will be different compared to previous naval maneuvers held by the IRGC," Press TV reported.

Pointedly, the deputy head of the parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Esmail Kowsari, said that "the military maneuver has been designed to prepare the armed forces for receiving the order to shut down the strait within the shortest time possible."

The semiofficial Iranian news outlet also reported Sunday that the "Commander of Iran's Ground Forces Brigadier General Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan announces plans to hold a massive military maneuver in the near future."

"In line with the global developments and their own interests," Pourdastan told Press TV, "Western countries are, today, using soft war [tactics] as the core of their strategy and it is [only] natural for us to have a defense [tactic] when the enemy starts a war."

On Monday, Fars News Agency reported that IRGC Commander, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, reiterated his earlier warning that "any enemy move, even the slightest aggressions, against the Islamic Republic would be reciprocated with a destructive response and will endanger the interests of the aggressor all around the world."

Mounting U.S.-NATO Threats

Iran's announcement that they will hold new naval exercises, followed a report by The Daily Telegraph that the UK will deploy "the HMS Daring, a Type 45 destroyer," and this "will send a significant message to the Iranians because of the firepower and world-beating technology carried by the warship."

In November, The Guardian disclosed that "Britain's armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran."

In a controlled leak, Ministry of Defence officials told The Guardian that "military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air and sea campaign."

During the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, Diego Garcia was used by the the U.S. Air Force as a launch pad for B-2 stealth bombers during the initial phase of Washington's "shock and awe" campaign over Baghdad.

It now appears those contingency plans have moved off the drawing board with the deployment of the HMS Daring towards the Persian Gulf.

The Telegraph disclosed that the ship "has been fitted with new technology that will give it the ability to shoot down any missile in Iran's armoury. The £1 billion destroyer, which will leave Portsmouth next Wednesday, also carries the world's most sophisticated naval radar, capable of tracking multiple incoming threats from missiles to fighter jets."

Defense Secretary Philip Hammond warned Iran that "any blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would be 'illegal and unsuccessful'."

According to the Telegraph, naval sources have said that "more British ships could be sent to the Gulf if required. The second Type 45, HMS Dauntless, will also be available to sail at short notice."

As Global Research reported in December, the United States has significantly increased military aid to Israel in preparation for an all-out war with Iran and that "the Pentagon dispatched some 100 military personnel to Israel from US European Command (EUCOM) to assist Israel in setting up a new sophisticated X-band early warning radar system as part of a new and integrated air defense system."

Although "casually heralded as 'military aid,'" Michel Chossudovsky wrote, "the project consisted in strengthening the integration of Israel's air defense system into that of the US, with the Pentagon rather than Israel calling the shots."

In a new development, Russia Today reported last week that "thousands of American troops are being deployed to Israel, and Iranian officials believe that this is the latest and most blatant warning that the US will soon be attacking Tehran."

"Under the Austere Challenge 12 drill scheduled for an undisclosed time during the next few weeks," RT disclosed, "the Israeli military will together with America host the largest-ever joint missile drill by the two countries."

An anonymous Israeli official told the Associated Press "the drill would test multiple Israeli and U.S. air defense systems against incoming missiles and rockets. Israel has deployed the 'Arrow' system, jointly developed and funded with the U.S., designed to intercept Iranian missiles in the stratosphere, far from Israel."

While U.S. and Israeli officials have called the drills "routine," RT reported that "following the installation of American troops near Iran's neighboring Strait of Hormuz and the reinforcing of nearby nations with US weapons, Tehran authorities are considering this not a test but the start of something much bigger."

Iranian fears are fully justified.

With the United States and NATO ringing Iran with military bases and with the U.S. beefing-up arm sales to its regional allies, including recently announced plans to sell some $30 billion of advanced F-15SA war planes to Saudi Arabia and "bunker buster" bombs to the UAE, the stage is set for a confrontation.

In this context, the murder of an Iranian scientist just as a new round of talks were announced, is a clear sign that Washington is hell-bent on imposing its control over the Persian Gulf--through aggressive war--as part of long-standing plans to ensure imperial hegemony over the energy-rich regions of of Central Asia and the Middle East.

Tensions Rise as U.S. Imposes 'Nuclear Option' on Iran's Economy

2012-01-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

Reacting to American threats to crater their economy, Iran's first vice president Mohammad Reza Rahimi said last week that the Islamic Republic would retaliate by blocking all oil shipments through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Following a sustained covert terror campaign by the U.S. and Israel, Rahimi declared: "If they impose sanctions on Iran's oil exports, then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz."

On Saturday, President Obama took that step and signed crippling sanctions legislation as part of the Pentagon's massive $662 billion 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

It should be noted that the NDAA, which threatens war on Iran, also calls for the indefinite detention of so-called "terrorist" suspects by the military, including American citizens, who can now be held without charge or trial.

Dubbed the "nuclear option" by critics and supporters alike, the legislation passed with overwhelming support from "conservative" Republicans and "liberal" Democrats in Congress and targets foreign corporations that do business with Iran's Central Bank.

Under the guise of "punishing Iran" for an unproven nuclear weapons program the bill is designed to "collapse the Iranian economy" according to its chief sponsor, Illinois Republican Senator Mark Kirk.

As pointed out by numerous analysts and proliferation experts, Iran's research related to nuclear weapons ended more than a decade ago. Even the highly-politicized report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in November under pressure from Washington, was forced to concede that Iran has not diverted material into a covert weapons program.

Two days after becoming law, Iran's currency hit a record low against the U.S. dollar.

According to the Associated Press the riyal "hovered around 16,800 riyals to the dollar, marking a roughly 10 percent slide compared to Thursday's rate of 15,200 riyals to the dollar. The riyal was trading at around 10,500 riyals to the U.S. dollar in late December 2010."

"The sanctions target both private and government-controlled banks--including central banks--and would take hold after a two- to six-month warning period, depending on the transactions," Reuters reported.

"Foreign central banks which deal with the Iranian central bank on oil transactions could also face restrictions," AFP disclosed, "sparking fears of damage to US ties with key nations such as Russia and China which trade with Iran."

The new law would make it virtually impossible for Iran to collect payments for energy exports severely damaging its already-fragile economy while setting the stage for a military confrontation.

In the event hostilities break out, energy analysts have warned that the price of oil could spiral to $250 barrel and would have a devastating effect on the crisis-ridden global economy.

Reflecting the skittishness of global energy markets, "crude futures headed for a third yearly advance on speculation escalating tension in the Middle East may disrupt supplies," Bloomberg News reported, and "surged to $101.77 a barrel on Dec. 27, the highest intraday price since Dec. 7."

Hair-Trigger Alert

American threats have been taken seriously by the Tehran government.

Iran is currently conducting a 10-day naval exercise in the Persian Gulf and officials have said they would react forcefully should the United States threaten their ability to conduct operations in defense of their territorial sovereignty.

Last week, Iran's Naval Commander, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, reiterated that the country's naval forces "can can readily block the strategic Strait of Hormuz if need be," Press TV reported.

"Closing the Strait of Hormuz is very easy for Iranian naval forces," Sayyari said. "Iran has comprehensive control over the strategic water way."

In response, the Pentagon's chief spokesperson George Little said "that any interference by Iran in the strait would 'not be tolerated,' stressing that the region was 'an economic lifeline for countries in the gulf'," the Los Angeles Times reported.

Iranian officials fired back. Hossein Salami, a senior commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps said that "Americans are not in a position whether to allow Iran to close off the Strait of Hormuz."

"Any threat will be responded by threat," Reuters reported. "We will not relinquish our strategic moves if Iran's vital interests are undermined by any means."

Iran claimed Sunday that its naval forces had successfully test-fired a new medium-range surface-to-air missile during the exercises in the Strait of Hormuz.

Rear Admiral Mahmoud Mousavi, the spokesperson for the exercises, claimed that the missile was "designed and manufactured by Iranian experts, [and] is equipped with state-of-the-art technology and an intelligent system that enables it to target radio emission sources and thwart jammers," according to Press TV.

"On Friday," Xinhua disclosed, "Mousavi said that the country's naval units will fire different long- and short-range land-to-sea, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles during the power phase of the exercises in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, starting Saturday."

"He added that Iran's submarines will also hit the pre-determined targets," Xinhua reported, "using domestically-manufactured torpedoes, during the exercises."

On Monday, the last day of the maneuvers, Deutsche Welle reported that the Iranian navy "test-fired a cruise missile with stealth technology in a move sure to ratchet up tensions with the West."

While claims that new Iranian missiles are stealth-equipped cannot be independently verified, it should be noted that prior to the intact capture of an advanced RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone flown by the CIA in early December, Western security experts had downplayed Iran's technological capacity to employ sophisticated electronic warfare tactics.

According to reports, "Iran on Monday successfully tested a 'Ghader' surface-to-surface cruise missile on the last day of war games near the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

"The 'Ghader,' which means 'capable' in Farsi, is an upgraded version of an existing missile that had a range of 200 kilometers (125 miles) and could travel at low altitudes."

Deutsche Welle observed that the "war games and the missile firing are seen by political analysts as a practice run for closing the Strait of Hormuz if the West were to block Iran's oil sales."

Reiterating that message, a senior Iranian lawmaker, Kazem Jalali, told Press TV Monday that "if faced with a threat Iran will definitely use the defensive potential of the strategic Strait of Hormuz."

"Iran has warned," Press TV noted, "that in case Western threats of imposing an oil embargo on the Islamic Republic materialize, it reserves the right to respond by choking the oil flow through Hormuz, arguing that the free flow of oil must be for all or for none."

Robert Naiman, the policy director at the Just Foreign Policy think-tank, told Russia Today that "Tehran had to call navy maneuvers at this time as otherwise it would have been perceived as a country unable to defend itself. The embargo on Iran's oil exports proposed by the US necessitates an active response."

"It is understood in the international political discourse that an embargo is an act of war. If it really is the policy pursued by the US and Western Europe to try to cut off Iran's oil exports, then that is an act of war. It would not make sense for Iran to roll over," Naiman told RT.

As analyst Peter Symonds pointed out on the World Socialist Web Site, "Having waged wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq and backed the NATO bombing of Libya, the US is now deliberately and recklessly raising tensions in the Persian Gulf by threatening severe penalties against any foreign company doing business with Iran's central bank, thereby effectively blocking Iranian oil exports."

"The media is silent on Washington's rank hypocrisy in demanding an end to Iran's nuclear programs," the socialist critic noted, "while fully backing the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East--its ally Israel, which is notorious for its wars of aggression."

"The glaring double standard," Symonds observed, "only underscores the fact that Obama's belligerence towards Iran is no more about the 'nuclear threat' than the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were about 'terrorism' and WMDs."

U.S. Arms Sales

In the face of escalating Western threats, Tehran Times reported Friday that Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that "Iran is ready to resume negotiations with the 5+1 group (the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany)."

According to the paper, Salehi's remarks came during a meeting with China's Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun on Thursday.

"The Chinese vice foreign minister," Tehran Times averred, "emphasized that the dispute over Iran's nuclear issue should be resolved through negotiations, adding that Beijing is opposed to the adoption of new sanctions on Tehran."

Bloomberg News reported Monday that "the country's top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, plans to send a letter to European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, which may be followed by a new round of talks, Mehr reported on Dec. 31, citing Iran's ambassador to Germany, Alireza Sheikh Attar."

"The EU," Bloomberg reported, "continues to pursue a 'twin-track approach' and is 'open for meaningful discussions on confidence-building measures, without preconditions from the Iranian side'," EU spokesperson Michael Mann said last week.

Despite Iran's willingness to renew direct talks, the Obama administration announced a $30 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia and agreed to sell 84 advanced F-15SA fighter jets to the repressive House of Saud.

"Though the White House said the deal had not been accelerated to respond to threats by Iranian officials in recent days to shut off the Strait of Hormuz," The New York Times reported that "its timing is laden with significance, as tensions with Iran have deepened and the United States has withdrawn its last soldiers from Iraq."

Andrew J. Shapiro, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs told the Times that "this sale will send a strong message to countries in the region that the United States is committed to stability in the gulf and the broader Middle East."

However, when the global godfather speaks of "stability," what the U.S. means is the maintenance of a system of exploitation and resource extraction controlled by American multinationals, backed by the threat of covert and overt aggression by Washington.

Accelerating the encirclement of Iran by U.S. allies, Reuters reported that the "United States has signed a $3.5 billion sale of an advanced antimissile interception system to the United Arab Emirates, part of an accelerating military buildup of its friends and allies near Iran."

Pentagon press secretary George Little said that the deal "is an important step in improving the region's security through a regional missile defense architecture."

The sale of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD), manufactured by mega merchant of death Lockheed Martin, is described as "the only system designed to destroy short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles both inside and outside the Earth's atmosphere."

"The United States," Reuters disclosed, "under the government-to-government deal, will deliver two THAAD batteries, 96 missiles, two Raytheon Co AN/TPY-2 radars plus 30 years of spare parts, support and training with contractor logistics support to the UAE," the Pentagon spokesperson said.

In another pending arms sale, Reuters reported that the Obama regime "formally proposed in November to sell 600 'bunker buster' bombs and other munitions to UAE in an estimated $304 million package to counter what the Pentagon called current and future regional threats."

Sale of these munitions are widely believed to be essential should the U.S., Israel, NATO and their regional Gulf allies, including Saudi Arabia, decide to attack Iran, and would be deployed for targeting "hardened" command-and-control sites in the Islamic Republic.

As analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya pointed out on Global Research, Washington's long-standing plans for "regime change" in the Middle East and North Africa are part of an ongoing cold war between Tehran and Washington and that the "destabilization campaign being waged against Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon are also a critical front in this cold war."

"The Obama Administration has used 2011 to unleash Washington's so-called 'Coalition of the Moderate' against the Resistance Bloc," Nazemroaya wrote, "which pins together all the countries and forces united by their opposition to U.S. and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region."

"The two camps that are becoming more and more visible in the MENA region are falling along the lines of what Washington, Tel Aviv, and NATO planned on forming after the 2006 Israeli defeat in Lebanon as a means of tackling Iran and its allies," Nazemroaya observed.

"In 2007, the United States of America, represented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, held a meeting in Cairo under the 'GCC + 2' formula with the Gulf Cooperation Council--Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the U.A.E., Oman, and Qatar--plus Egypt and Jordan to form a strategic and all encompassing front against Iran, Syria, and their regional allies.

"This 'Coalition of the Moderate' formed by Washington was a direct extension of NATO that also included Israel and Turkey as important and central participants," Nazemroaya wrote.

In this context, stepped-up sales of advanced weapons systems to so-called "moderate" regimes are, contrary to American propaganda, not the result of a supposed "threat" from Iran but precisely are intended to hasten "regime change," either through National Endowment for Democracy (NED) sponsored "color revolutions" or overt military aggression.

Last week, Antifascist Calling disclosed, citing reports from the Israeli, Russian and Turkish press, that the U.S. has doubled the "special aid" it gives to Israel for long-range anti-ballistic air defense systems and associated radars.

The $235.7 million deal approved by Congress, Israel National News noted was "for the Arrow 3 anti-ballistic long-range air defense system, for the program to improve the basic capabilities of the Arrow systems, and for the David's Sling mid-range anti-missile system."

And as The Jerusalem Post reported, the arms sale comes on the heels of Israeli plans "to hold the largest-ever missile defense exercise in its history this spring amid Iranian efforts to obtain nuclear weapons."

Defense correspondent Yaakov Katz disclosed that "Lt.-Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the US's Third Air Force based in Germany, visited Israel to finalize plans for the upcoming drill, expected to see the deployment of several thousand American soldiers in Israel."

The Jerusalem Post noted that "the drill, which is unprecedented in its size, will include the establishment of US command posts in Israel and IDF command posts at EUCOM headquarters in Germany--with the ultimate goal of establishing joint task forces in the event of a large-scale conflict in the Middle East."

"The US," Katz reported, "will also bring its THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) and shipbased Aegis ballistic missile defense systems to Israel to simulate the interception of missile salvos against Israel," and that the "American system will work in conjunction with Israel's missile defense systems--the Arrow, Patriot and Iron Dome."

Although "casually heralded as 'military aid,'" Global Research analyst Michel Chossudovsky observed that "the project consisted in strengthening the integration of Israel's air defense system into that of the US, with the Pentagon rather than Israel calling the shots."

Advanced ballistic missile early warning radar systems have also been installed in Turkey and, as with the Israeli deployment, the U.S. is clearly in the driver's seat.

In late December, Hürriyet Daily News reported that "NATO's Malatya-based ballistic missile early warning radar system ... will become operational next week, before the end of this year," a "senior Turkish official" said.

"The agreement signed between Ankara and Washington calls for the deployment of a U.S. AN/TPY-2 (X-band) early warning radar system at a military installation at Kürecik in Malatya as part of NATO’s missile defense project," Hürriyet reported.

Similar to the Israeli agreement, Hürriyet disclosed that "a Turkish senior commander is to be posted at NATO's headquarters in Germany, where the intelligence gathered through the radar system will be processed."

Global Energy Hegemony

The precipitating factor propelling Washington's machinations against Tehran is the severe economic decline of the United States vis-à-vis their imperialist rivals, above all China and Russia.

American aggression in the context of the current global economic crisis, has nothing whatsoever to do with moves to stop nuclear proliferation, let alone advance the cause of "freedom and democracy" in the Middle East, or anywhere else for that matter.

Rather, belligerent threats and U.S. state-sponsored terrorism against the Islamic Republic are part and parcel of Washington's long-standing strategic goal of hegemonic control over the energy-rich regions of Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East.

Dialing-up tensions, the United States is gambling that a war with Iran, particularly during a critical election year with all major candidates from both capitalist parties (Ron Paul being a notable exception) outbidding one another in terms of their bellicose rhetoric, hope to divert attention from ongoing attacks on the standard of living and democratic rights of the working class by kleptocratic American elites.

Imperial military adventurism for control over the world's energy supplies however, raises the specter of an unintended conflict with rivals China and Russia, who also face renewed threats from Washington, a confrontation that could have unintended and potentially catastrophic consequences.

Red Lines and Ticking Clocks: U.S. War Plans Against Iran

2011-12-26T11:19:00.000-08:00

Wars don't just happen.

Before the first bomb falls disinformation specialists prepare the ground.

Leading media outlets, foreign policy journals and a plethora of think tanks funded by elite foundations, energy and weapons' conglomerates, "right," "left" or "center" take your pick, churn out war propaganda disguised as "analysis."

From the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) to the neoliberal Center for American Progress (CAP), rhetorical skirmishes aside, the line is remarkably similar.

Indeed, for "conservative" and "liberal" elite bloviators alike, Iran poses an "existential threat" to Israel and America's regional "allies," a disparate crew of land-grabbing colonizers, murderous princes and profligate potentates.

Only U.S. intervention, in the form of an overt military attack now or crippling economic sanctions followed by military action later, can save the day and bring "democracy" to the benighted Iranian people.

If we're to believe neocon acolyte Thomas Donnelly, "The rapid ticking of the Iran nuclear clock also marks an increasingly dark hour for the United States and its closest allies and partners, because it coincides with a third clock ... the timetable of retreat set in motion by Barack Obama."

Meanwhile, liberal interventionists Rudy deLeon and Brian Katulis over at CAP tell us that "President Barack Obama and his administration are ratcheting up the pressure on the Iranian regime, building an international coalition that is increasingly isolating and weakening Iran--making it pay a price for not living up to its international responsibilities."

While AEI and their fellow-travelers claim that "in the after-midnight hour when the Obama retreat is complete, the United States would find itself with few options at the chiming of the nuclear clock," CAP's liberal hawks loudly proclaim that the "Obama administration has adopted a tough approach to Iran, centered on three main components: Unprecedented defense cooperation with regional allies that enhances their security and independence; An international coalition that holds Iran accountable for its actions; Smart, targeted economic sanctions."

In other words, while elite Washington factions may disagree over tactical issues, they are in full agreement on the wider strategic goals: undisputed American hegemony over energy corridors in Central Asia and the Middle East.

From the darkest days of the Cold War to the present moment, American policy is designed with one goal in mind: smash the competition, firstly China and Russia, but also the crisis-ridden European Union, whose main task is to keep quiet and fall in line.

Red Lines

Last week in an interview with the CBS Evening News, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that "despite the efforts to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program, the Iranians have reached a point where they can assemble a bomb in a year or potentially less."

"So are you saying that Iran can have a nuclear weapon in 2012?," reporter Scott Pelley asked. Panetta replied, "It would probably be about a year before they can do it. Perhaps a little less. But one proviso, Scott, is if they have a hidden facility somewhere in Iran that may be enriching fuel."

Never mind that the U.S.-controlled International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has not discovered a so-called "secret facility," or that two National Intelligence Estimates produced by all 16 U.S. secret state agencies, the latest one this year, reported there is not a shred of credible evidence supporting claims that Iran has diverted uranium towards the development of a bomb.

No matter; as we learned in the aftermath of the disastrous invasion of Iraq, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" and therefore, the march to war with Iran will continue, indeed accelerate in the near term.

"If the Israelis decide to launch a military strike to prevent that weapon from being built," Pelley asked, "what sort of complications does that raise for you?"

Panetta replied, "Well, we share the same common concern. The United States does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That's a red line for us and that's a red line, obviously, for the Israelis. If we have to do it we will deal with it."

When Pelley asked what "it?" is, Panetta said: "If they proceed and we get intelligence that they are proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon then we will take whatever steps necessary to stop it."

Pelley: "Including military steps?"

Panetta: "There are no options off the table."

Ticking Clocks

While the media have gone to great lengths to portray the Israelis as proverbial loose cannons who just might launch an Iran attack without first consulting their American partners, this is a smokescreen providing political cover for the Obama administration during an election year.

As analyst Michel Chossudovsky pointed out on Global Research, "In late December 2008, coinciding with the onslaught of Israel's 'Operation Cast Lead' directed against Gaza, the Pentagon dispatched some 100 military personnel to Israel from US European Command (EUCOM) to assist Israel in setting up a new sophisticated X-band early warning radar system as part of a new and integrated air defense system."

Chossudovsky observed this development indicates that there has been "a fundamental turning point in the structure of Israel's Air Defense system and its relationship to the US global missile detection system."

Although "casually heralded as 'military aid,'" Chossudovsky wrote, "the project consisted in strengthening the integration of Israel's air defense system into that of the US, with the Pentagon rather than Israel calling the shots." (emphasis added)

Since the Obama regime came to power, Chossudovsky noted there has "been a significant hike in US military aid to Israel," and "in fact much of this so-called military aid constitutes a veiled increase in the U.S. Defense budget."

This has been borne out by several reports in the Israeli press.

Last week, Israel National News disclosed that the "United States will double the special aid it gives Israel for the development and implementation of anti-missile systems, the Globes financial newspaper reported on Thursday."

Indeed, "the House and Senate's Committees on Appropriations approved the aid following a request by the U.S. Administration to approve aid totaling $106.1 million for the Arrow 3 anti-ballistic long-range air defense system, for the program to improve the basic capabilities of the Arrow systems, and for the David's Sling mid-range anti-missile system."

Significantly, both "Appropriations Committees went far beyond the request, the report noted, and raised the amount of aid from $129 million to $235.7 million in 2012," Israel National News reported.

These developments were underlined in a report last week by the right-wing Jerusalem Post.

According to the Post's defense correspondent Yaakov Katz, "Israel is moving forward with plans to hold the largest-ever missile defense exercise in its history this spring amid Iranian efforts to obtain nuclear weapons."

"Last week," Katz wrote, "Lt.-Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the US's Third Air Force based in Germany, visited Israel to finalize plans for the upcoming drill, expected to see the deployment of several thousand American soldiers in Israel."

The Jerusalem Post disclosed that "the drill, which is unprecedented in its size, will include the establishment of US command posts in Israel and IDF command posts at EUCOM headquarters in Germany--with the ultimate goal of establishing joint task forces in the event of a large-scale conflict in the Middle East."

"The US," Katz noted, "will also bring its THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) and shipbased Aegis ballistic missile defense systems to Israel to simulate the interception of missile salvos against Israel," and that the "American system will work in conjunction with Israel's missile defense systems--the Arrow, Patriot and Iron Dome."

Similar deployments are also underway in Turkey, the staging area for terrorist attacks targeting the Syrian government for "regime change" à la Libya.

As analyst Sibel Edmonds pointed out for Boiling Frogs Post, a "joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, began operations in April-May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria."

Edmonds noted that "weekly weapons smuggling operations have been carried out with full NATO-US participation since last May."

According to Edmonds' Turkish and Pentagon sources, "the HQ also includes an information warfare division where US-NATO crafted communications are directed to dissidents in Syria via the core group of Syrian military and Intelligence defectors."

It now appears that U.S.-NATO war plans against Iran will also rely heavily on Turkish participation.

The PanArmenian News Agency reported Saturday (h/t Stop NATO) "NATO's Malatya-based ballistic missile early warning radar system will begin functioning next week, a senior Turkish official said Dec 23, reiterating that the device 'is defensive and not directed at any particular country, especially Iran'."

However, with U.S.-NATO plans already underway to install so-called Ballistic Missile Defense systems in Eastern Europe which threaten Russia with a nuclear first-strike, the deployment of these systems in Turkey can only be viewed as a shot across the bow by both Iran and Russia.

After all, as The New York Times reported earlier this month, "the American commitment to work with NATO allies and deploy the missile shield is founded on a belief that Iran is accelerating its program to field missiles capable of reaching across NATO territory in Europe."

The American ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daadler, told the Times, "our estimate of the threat has gone up, not down. It is accelerating--this is the Iranian ballistic missile threat--and becoming more severe than even we thought two years ago."

Dismissing Russian concerns that "the alliance's system of radars and interceptors could blunt Moscow's own arsenal of missiles, and thus undermine Russia's strategic deterrent," Daadler proclaimed: "Whether Russia likes it or not, we are about defending NATO-European territory against a growing ballistic missile threat."

Despite claims by Turkey that the radar deployment is strictly "defensive" and not aimed at Iran, the PanArmenian News Agency informed us that "the agreement signed between Ankara and Washington calls for the deployment of a U.S. AN/TPY-2 (X-band) early warning radar system at a military installation at Kürecik in Malatya as part of NATO's missile defense project."

Remarkably similar to the accord signed with Tel Aviv, the Turkish agreement calls for the deployment of "around 50 U.S. soldiers" at the installations, "accompanied by a number of Turkish troops."

"In addition," the news agency disclosed, "a Turkish senior commander is to be posted at NATO's headquarters in Germany, where the intelligence gathered through the radar system will be processed, Hurriyet Daily News reported."

These reports indicate that the United States, with Israel and NATO as junior partners, are coordinating strategic deployments which the Iranians will undoubtedly view as preparations for a large scale attack.

Coming on the heels of a report earlier this month by Haaretz that the "Israel Defense Forces is forming a command to supervise 'depth' operations, actions undertaken by the military far from Israel's borders," military action by the U.S., Israeli and NATO forces are perhaps only a provocation away.

The New York Times reported last week that "Iran put neighbors on notice Thursday that it was about to conduct vast naval exercises in the Arabian Sea, including war games near the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for international oil traffic."

"The exercises," the Times reported, "to start Saturday and last 10 days, are Iran's first since May 2010 and were described by the official news media as the largest the country ever planned."

"The scale of the maneuvers, the Times disclosed, "appeared intended to demonstrate Iran's military capabilities as it faces increased isolation over its suspect nuclear energy program."

These exercises "are bound to put Iranian warships close to vessels of the United States Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, which patrols some of the same waters, including the Strait of Hormuz."

War threats are being taken seriously far beyond the Persian Gulf.

Earlier this month Russia Today disclosed that the "geopolitical situation unfolding around Syria and Iran is prompting Russia to make its military structures in the South Caucasus, on the Caspian, Mediterranean and Black Sea regions more efficient."

RT's correspondent Sergey Konovalov wrote that "Defense Ministry sources are saying that the Kremlin has been informed about an upcoming US-supported Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. The strike will be sudden and take place on 'day X' in the near future. One could assume Iran's reaction will not be delayed. A full-scale war is possible, and its consequences could be unpredictable."

"Recently," RT reported, "the Northern Fleet's aircraft carrier group with the heavy aircraft carrier 'Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Kuznetsov', headed towards the Mediterranean with plans to ultimately enter the Syrian port of Tartus."

Russian Defense Ministry sources would neither confirm nor deny "that the surface warships are being accompanied by the Northern Fleet's nuclear submarines."

"The tasks that will be carried out by the army and the navy in the event of a war against Iran are, of course, not being disclosed," Konovalov wrote.

That an attack on Iran might set-off a global conflict with far-reaching, and deadly, consequences was underscored by Russia Today.

Analyst Col. Vladimir Popov said that "if in the midst [of an attack on Iran] Azerbaijan supported by Turkey, attacks Armenia, then, of course, all of the adversary's attacks against Armenia will be repelled by Russia in conjunction with Armenian anti-missile defense forces."

"The analyst does not exclude the possibility of Russia's military involvement in the Iranian conflict."

"'In the worst-case scenario'," Popov told RT, "'if Tehran is facing complete military defeat after a land invasion of the US and NATO troops, Russia will provide its military support--at least on a military-technical level."

As the United States, Israel and NATO prepare the ground for war against Iran, and with operations already underway by the U.S. and NATO to effect "regime change" in Syria, Iran's close regional ally, the pieces of a slow-motion global catastrophe are falling into place.

Empires Don't Apologize: Iran in the Imperial Crosshairs

2011-12-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

After first denying that the Iranian military had captured the CIA's RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone, and then reluctantly acknowledging the fact only after PressTV aired footage of the killer bot, the Associated Press reported that "the Obama administration said Monday it has delivered a formal request to Iran" that they return it.

"We have asked for it back," Obama said. "We'll see how the Iranians respond."

A huge embarrassment to the CIA and the Pentagon, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters during a State Department briefing: "We submitted a formal request for the return of our lost equipment as we would in any situation to any government around the world."

Cheekily, Clinton said although the U.S. government has little prospect of getting their $6 million toy back because of "recent Iranian behavior," she then threatened the Islamic Republic saying, "the path that Iran seems to be going down is a dangerous one for themselves and the region."

In Washington's bizarro world where war is peace the United States, which has Iran surrounded with a string of military bases and where nuclear-armed aircraft carrier battle groups and submarines ply the waters of the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, the aggressor is magically transformed into the aggrieved party.

The Secretary said, "given Iran's behavior to date we do not expect them to comply but we are dealing with all of these provocations and concerning actions taken by Iran in close concert with our closest allies and partners." (emphasis added)

Talk about chutzpah!

Firing back, the head of Iran's Judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani told PressTV that "the US has violated our country's territory and has waged an intelligence war, and now expects us to return the aircraft."

Noting the absurdity of U.S. demands Larijani said, "Iran has the right to deal with this blatant crime in any way [it deems necessary] and the US should forget about getting the spy aircraft back."

By all accounts, the "intelligence war" is heating heating up. On Thursday, Haaretz reported that the "Israel Defense Forces is forming a command to supervise 'depth' operations, actions undertaken by the military far from Israel's borders."

In a follow-up piece published Sunday, Haaretz informed us that the new corps, "has already earned the somewhat overstated sobriquet 'the Iran Command'."

The newspaper's chief military correspondent, Amos Harel, wrote that the new unit "could, in the future, assist in mobilizing special forces in the Iranian context."

"More important," Harel averred, "it will have the job of planning and leading operations in areas far beyond the borders, operations that are connected to the covert war against terror organizations (and, indirectly, against Iran)."

Whether the IDF's newly-launched "Iran Command," will prove any more effective than the CIA or Mossad, which suffered major set-backs when their intelligence nets were rolled-up in Iran and Lebanon as Asia Times Online recently reported, is an open question.

War "by other means" however, will continue.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed by a vote of 283-136 the Iran Threat Reductions Act (H.R. 1905), a draconian piece of legislative detritus which hopes to crater Iran's Central Bank.

The following day, the U.S. Senate followed suit, approving the legislation by an 86-13 vote. President Obama has said he would sign the bill, cobbled-together by war hawks as part of the massive $670 billion 2012 Defense Authorization Act.

Spinning the Story

U.S. military and CIA operations today involve far more than simply "putting steel on the target." Increasingly, covert actions and clandestine operations rely on what the Pentagon has described as "information operations."

With few exceptions, corporate media in Europe and the U.S. have played accessory roles in ginning-up the so-called "Iranian threat," a decades' long program to secure hegemony over the energy-rich regions of Central Asia and the Middle East.

When initial reports surfaced that the drone had gone missing deep inside Iran, "CIA press officials declined to comment on the downed drone and reporters were directed toward a statement from the military," The Washington Post reported.

Indeed, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the NATO-led alliance currently occupying Afghanistan, dismissed Iran's claims that the drone was operating over their territory. "The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week," the ISAF statement read.

Deep inside the media echo chamber, CNN informed us earlier this month that the drone had been "tasked to fly over western Afghanistan and look for insurgent activity, with no directive to either fly into Iran or spy on Iran from Afghan airspace."

"A U.S. satellite quickly pinpointed the downed drone, which apparently sustained significant damage," the "senior official" told the network.

CNN quoted the unnamed "senior official" as saying, "the Iranians have a pile of rubble and are trying to figure what they have and what to do with it." According to this reading, "the drone crashed solely because its guidance system failed, the official said."

While first claiming that the CIA drone had strayed off-course, CNN reported after the Sentinel was publicly displayed, that unnamed "U.S. military officials" re-calibrated their tale and now said that the drone "was on a surveillance mission of suspected nuclear sites" in Iran.

Anonymous officials told CNN that "the CIA had not informed the Defense Department of the drone's mission when reports first emerged that it had crashed," and that the U.S. military "'did not have a good understanding of what was going on because it was a CIA mission'."

As with their earlier reporting, CNN's latest explanation was a fabrication.

The Los Angeles Times reported two days after the incident, "though the drone flight was a CIA operation, U.S. military personnel were involved in flying the aircraft, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the secrecy involved."

In fact, as The Washington Post disclosed in September, the CIA and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are thick as thieves.

"Their commingling at remote bases is so complete, the Post informed us, "that U.S. officials ranging from congressional staffers to high-ranking CIA officers said they often find it difficult to distinguish agency from military personnel."

"'You couldn't tell the difference between CIA officers, Special Forces guys and contractors'," an unnamed "senior U.S. official" told the Post. "'They're all three blended together. All under the command of the CIA."

"Their activities occupy an expanding netherworld between intelligence and military operations." One can presume that these "blended" units have been tasked by Washington with the "Iranian brief."

"Sometimes their missions are considered military 'preparation of the battlefield'," the Post reported, "and others fall under covert findings obtained by the CIA. As a result, congressional intelligence and armed services committees rarely get a comprehensive view," which of course is precisely what the Agency and Pentagon fully intend.

In light of recent statements by U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to The New York Times, that "surveillance flights over Iran would continue despite the loss of the drone," reporting by U.S. media stenographers, are blatant misrepresentations of the basic facts surrounding the entire affair. (emphasis added)

Now sensing the jig was up and that a face-saving meme had to be injected into the news cycle, a "former intelligence official" continued to discount Iranian assertions that their armed forces had brought the drone down.

"It simply fell into their laps," he told CNN.

However, much to the consternation of American officials, Iranian spin doctors were running their own info op, one which cast U.S. claims in a most unflattering light.

The Associated Press reported that "Iran deliberately delayed its announcement that it had captured an American surveillance drone to test U.S. reaction, the country's foreign minister said Saturday."

"Ali Akbar Salehi said Tehran finally went public with its possession of the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drone to disprove contradictory statements from U.S. officials," AP reported.

"When our armed forces nicely brought down the stealth American surveillance drone, we didn't announce it for several days to see what the other party (U.S.) says and to test their reaction," Salehi told the official IRNA news agency. "Days after Americans made contradictory statements, our friends at the armed forces put this drone on display."

Unlike American and Israeli assertions that Iran is taking steps to "go nuclear," Iranian officials at least had hard evidence on their side that the United States was violating their territorial integrity--the captured U.S. drone.

Electronic Countermeasures

Although Western "defense experts" have ridiculed claims that Iran's electronic warfare specialists have captured the Sentinel rather than recovering the downed craft from a crash site, a report by The Christian Science Monitor shed new light on Iran's apparent capabilities.

Investigative journalists Scott Peterson and Payam Faramarzi disclosed that an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone, said that the military "exploited a known vulnerability and tricked the US drone into landing in Iran."

According to the Monitor, "Iran guided the CIA's 'lost' stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military."

Earlier reports suggested that Iran, which had recently been supplied with the Russian-built Kvant 1L222 Avtobaza Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) systems, may have been a factor in the drone's capture.

The Israeli defense industry publication, Defense Update, informed us that the Avtobaza is "capable of intercepting weapon datalink communications operating on similar wavebands. The new gear may have helped the Iranians employ active deception/jamming to intercept and 'hijack' the Sentinel's control link."

The Monitor investigation however, suggests that the Iranians had accomplished this feat on their own.

Regardless of the means employed, statements by U.S. officials that all the Iranians had was "a pile of rubble" were blatant falsehoods.

According to the Monitor, Iran's military experts were able to do so by cutting off "communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone's stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety."

Armed with knowledge "gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, Peterson and Faramarzi disclosed that "the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan."

It would seem then, if this account is accurate, that Iranian defense experts had already "figure[d] out what they have and what to do with it" from earlier captures.

"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian engineer said. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."

Once military engineers had "spoofed" the American drone, "which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data," they were able to make "the drone 'land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications' from the US control center."

Peterson and Faramarzi reported that the techniques employed "were developed from reverse-engineering several less sophisticated American drones captured or shot down in recent years," as well as by taking advantage "of weak, easily manipulated GPS signals, which calculate location and speed from multiple satellites."

Former U.S. Navy electronic warfare specialist Robert Densmore told the Monitor that "'modern combat-grade GPS [is] very susceptible' to manipulation," saying it is "certainly possible" to "'recalibrate the GPS on a drone so that it flies on a different course'."

As Antifascist Calling reported in 2009, Iraqi insurgents battling the U.S. occupation had deployed $26 off-the-shelf spy kit which enabled them to intercept live video feeds from Predator drones.

What the Iranians claim to have done, according to defense experts, are orders of magnitude greater than simply capturing a video feed. Indeed, if this report is credible, it would have wide-reaching implications for other U.S., Israeli and NATO aircraft and missiles which similarly rely on GPS to guide them towards their targets.

Why is this the case? As WikiLeaks revealed in a 2009 report on the earlier Iraqi revelations that "it is theoretically possible to read off this [drone] mission control data both in the intercepted video feed and saved video data on harddisks."

In plain English, this means that the "control and command link to communicate from a control station to the drone" and the "data link that sends mission control data and video feeds back to the ground control station," for both "line-of-sight communication paths and beyond line-of-sight communication paths" are hackable by whomever might be listening.

Leaked Pentagon Document

On December 13, the secret-shredding web site Public Intelligence, published a leaked U.S. Air Force document, USAF Operating Next-Generation Remotely Piloted Aircraft for Irregular Warfare, SAB-TR-10-03, dated April 2011.

Classified "For Official Use Only," the 110-page report issued by the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), revealed that drones or "remotely piloted aircraft" (RPA) are subject to a number of vulnerabilities.

Air Force analysts averred that "in spite of current low RPA losses, inexpensive physical threats (e.g., MANPADS, low-end SAMs, air-to-air missiles) and electronic threats (e.g., acoustic detectors, low cost acquisition radars, jammers) threaten future operations."

Relevantly, "sensor/data downlinks for some RPAs have not been encrypted or obfuscated."

However, the RQ-170 Sentinel, which can operate at 50,000 feet would not have been vulnerable to "MANPADS" or "low-end SAMs," and was certainly not brought down by an Iranian air-to-air missile; therefore, a valid explanation of its capture would be the one offered by Iran: electronic countermeasures developed by the Islamic Republic.

Amongst the more salient findings of the Air Force report are the following:

Section 2.4.3 Threat to Communication Links

1. Jamming of commercial satellite communications (SATCOM) links is a widely available technology. It can provide an effective tool for adversaries against data links or as a way for command and control (C2) denial.
2. Operational needs may require the use of unencrypted data links to provide broadcast services to ground troops without security clearances. Eavesdropping on these links is a known exploit that is available to adversaries for extremely low cost.
3. Spoofing or hijacking links can lead to damaging missions, or even to platform loss.

Section 2.4.4 Threat to Position, Navigation, and Guidance

1. Small, simple GPS noise jammers can be easily constructed and employed by an unsophisticated adversary and would be effective over a limited RPA operating area.
2. GPS repeaters are also available for corrupting navigation capabilities of RPAs.
3. Cyber threats represent a major challenge for future RPA operations. Cyber attacks can affect both on-board and ground systems, and exploits may range from asymmetric CNO [computer network operation] attacks to highly sophisticated electronic systems and software attacks.

Jeffrey Carr, a U.S. cybersecurity expert who maintains the Digital Dao web site wrote that the timing of document's release to Public Intelligence was "very interesting."

"Clearly," Carr wrote, "someone with FOUO access wanted this information to be made public to inform the controversy surrounding the incident."

Commenting on the Air Force report, Carr averred that "the capture of the RQ-170 by Iranian forces needs to be evaluated fairly and not dismissed as some kind of Iranian scam for reasons that have more to do with embarrassment than a rational assessment of the facts."

"Theft of this technology via cyber attacks against the companies doing R&D and manufacture of the aircraft is ongoing," Carr noted.

"Whether or not the Iranians got lucky or have acquired the ability to attack the C2 of the drone in question, there's obviously some serious errors in judgment being made at very high levels and secrecy about it is only serving the ones guilty of making those bad decisions."

While Carr's observations are true as far as it goes, the "serious errors in judgement" begin with chest-thumping U.S. and Israeli politicians who believe they have a monopoly when it comes to dictating policies or invading other countries, killing people on an industrial scale, stealing their resources and reducing their cities to smoking ruins as was done in both Gaza and Fallujah.

To make matters worse for technophilic Western militaries hell-bent on attacking Iran, Tehran Times reported Thursday that "Iran plans to put foreign spy drones it has in its possession on display in the near future."

According to unnamed sources quoted by the newspaper, which reflects the views of the Iranian government, "the foreign unmanned aircraft that Iran has are four Israeli and three U.S. drones."

Back in September, The Christian Science Monitor disclosed, "Gen. Moharam Gholizadeh, the deputy for electronic warfare at the air defense headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), described to Fars News how Iran could alter the path of a GPS-guided missile--a tactic more easily applied to a slower-moving drone."

According to Peterson and Faramarzi, Gholizadeh told the news agency that "we have a project on hand that is one step ahead of jamming, meaning 'deception' of the aggressive systems," ... such that "we can define our own desired information for it so the path of the missile would change to our desired destination."

While it is not possible to verify these claims, indeed they may be nothing more than propaganda offerings from Iranian spinmeisters, if their assertions are accurate, a technological leap such as this would pose a serious threat to any attacking force.

As I wrote back in 2009, since cheap and readily-obtainable software packages were now part of the spy-kit of Iraqi insurgent forces, I wondered whether it was "only a matter of time before militant groups figure out how to hijack a drone and crash it, or even launch a Hellfire missile or two at a U.S. ground station?"

We were told by military experts this was not possible; however, who would have dreamed that the Achilles' heel of Pentagon robo-warriors, blinded by their own arrogance and racist presumptions about the "Arab" or "Persian mind" was something as simple as their own imperial hubris.

Slouching Towards Disaster: America's Covert War Against Iran

2011-12-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

Legendary investigative journalist I.F. Stone famously observed: "All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out."

Amongst Washington elites and the courtier press, it appears that more than a pipe or two has been passed around of late as the political and psychological ground is prepared for a military attack on Iran.

Do 'All Options' Mean Nukes?

During a White House press briefing Thursday, President Barack Obama said that "No options off the table means I am considering all options."

Many of those "options" are already in play. Ranging from a covert program of assassination and industrial sabotage to planting computer malware as "beacons" for future attacks on civilian and defense infrastructure, the United States, NATO and Israel are already engaged in a campaign of violent destabilization inside the Islamic Republic.

As former CIA officer Philip Giraldi pointed out on Antiwar.com, "the White House has issued several findings to the intelligence community authorizing stepped-up covert action against both Damascus and Tehran."

"A 'finding,'" Giraldi noted, "is top-level approval for secret operations considered to be particularly politically sensitive. Taken together, the recent findings, combined with the evidence of major intelligence operations being run in Lebanon, amount to a secret war against Iran and its allies in the Mideast."

In 2007, President Bush "authorized attacks against Iranian nuclear scientists and other facilities in Tehran and elsewhere as well as coordination with the Israelis to develop computer viruses to disrupt the Iranian computer network, a program that led to the production of the Stuxnet worm."

"While the media credits 'the Israelis' in the assassination of Iranian scientists," Giraldi noted "the reality is that no Israeli (or American) intelligence officer could possibly operate effectively inside Iran to carry out a killing."

"The assassinations, which are acts of war, have actually been carried out by followers of the dissident Iranian Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), the separatist Baluch Jundallah, and the Kurdish PJAK, all acting under direction from American and Israeli intelligence officers," Giraldi grimly observed.

More ominously however, five years ago The New Yorker revealed that "One of the military's initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites," such as the one at Nantaz.

At the time, a "senior intelligence official" familiar with the plans told Seymour Hersh: "'Nuclear planners go through extensive training and learn the technical details of damage and fallout--we're talking about mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years. This is not an underground nuclear test, where all you see is the earth raised a little bit. These politicians don't have a clue, and whenever anybody tries to get it out'--remove the nuclear option--'they're shouted down'."

As Global Research analyst Michel Chossudovsky warned in Towards a World War III Scenario: "Code named by US military planners as TIRANNT, 'Theater Iran Near Term', simulations of an attack on Iran were initiated in May 2003 'when modelers and intelligence specialists pulled together the data needed for theater-level (meaning large-scale) scenario analysis for Iran'."

"In 2004," Chossudovsky wrote, "drawing upon the initial war scenarios under TIRANNT, Vice President Dick Cheney instructed USSTRATCOM to draw up a 'contingency plan' of a large-scale military operation directed against Iran 'to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States' on the presumption that the government in Tehran would be behind the terrorist plot. The plan included the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state."

Writing on Iran war plans back in 2005, Philip Giraldi disclosed in The American Conservative magazine, "The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option."

"As in the case of Iraq," Giraldi wrote, "the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing--that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack--but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."

While Israel is portrayed as an irrational actor which the United States is powerless to control, this manufactured reality is a smokescreen meant to conceal America's hidden hand.

According to Chossudovsky, "What we are dealing with is a joint US-NATO-Israel military operation to bomb Iran, which has been in the active planning stage since 2004. Officials in the Defense Department, under Bush and Obama, have been working assiduously with their Israeli military and intelligence counterparts, carefully identifying targets inside Iran."

"In practical military terms," Chossudovsky averred, "any action by Israel would have to be planned and coordinated at the highest levels of the US-led coalition."

With these disturbing facts in hand, and the chilling implications of policies which have been concealed from the American people, one can reasonably inquire: Is this what President Obama means when he says "no options off the table means I am considering all options"?

Given the heated rhetoric employed by the president and his national security team, moves towards economic- and other forms of warfare by Congress, as well as even-more bellicose threats by Republican presidential contenders angling for the Oval Office, the use of a nuclear weapon in any attack upon Iran cannot be ruled out.

'Sentinel Down'

Much to their consternation, Iran may not be the pushover claimed by the war hawks and their media acolytes.

After decades of regaling the public with lurid tales of U.S. technological prowess, replete with grandiose plans for "full-spectrum dominance," the Aerospace Division of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released video Thursday of the captured RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone brought down last Sunday some 140 miles from the Afghan border, well into Iranian territory.

The incident has become a huge embarrassment to the Pentagon and chest-thumping American politicians who have oversold their oft-repeated claim that the United States is the world's "sole superpower."

According to PressTV, a Tehran-based English language media outlet which reflects the views of the Iranian government, Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh said: "After the aircraft's entry into the country's eastern [air]space, it fell in the electronic ambush of the Iranian Armed Forces and was brought to the ground with minimum damage [caused to it]."

Also on Thursday, DebkaFile, a Jerusalem-based military intelligence web site with close ties to ultra-rightists in Israel and the United States, reported that the RQ-170 captured December 4 in "almost perfect condition confirmed Tehran's claim that the UAV was downed by a cyber attack, meaning it was not shot down but brought in undamaged by an electronic warfare ambush."

How did the Iranians bring the Sentinel down? While speculation is rife amongst aviation experts, a plausible theory has emerged.

According to the Israeli defense industry publication, Defense Update, "Russia has transferred a number of Kvant 1L222 Avtobaza Electronic Intelligence (ELINT) systems to Iran in October." Each "system includes an passive ELINT signals interception system and a jamming module capable of disrupting airborne radars including fire control radars, terrain following radars and ground mapping radars as well as weapon (missile) data links."

The Russian-supplied system, Defense Update analysts report, is also "capable of intercepting weapon datalink communications operating on similar wavebands. The new gear may have helped the Iranians employ active deception/jamming to intercept and 'hijack' the Sentinel's control link."

On Saturday, the AviationIntel web site, citing photographic documentation released by Iran that the "evidence is unbelievably conclusive" that Iranian cyberwarriors captured the U.S. spy craft.

In other words, AviationIntel analysts averred, "there is no reason why [that] system [Avtobaza] could not have detected the Sentinel's electronic trail and either jammed it and/or have alerted fighter aircraft and SAM [surface-to-air missile] installations as to its whereabouts."

While the RQ-170 "could have operated with limited electronic connectivity, making it less visible," AviationIntel reported that a "more likely scenario" would be that the Sentinel actively transmitted "live video, detailed radar maps, or electronic intelligence, in real-time," making detection all-the-more easier when "pinged" by the Russian-designed system.

However you care to spin this story, the Iranian military are no slouches; an attack on the Islamic Republic would hardly be the proverbial "cake-walk" touted by the neocons and other armchair warriors.

In a further sign that the Tehran government take ongoing terror attacks by London, Tel Aviv and Washington very seriously, The Daily Telegraph reported that IRGC commander, General Mohammed Ali Jaafari, "raised the operational readiness status of the country's forces, initiating preparations for potential external strikes and covert attacks."

The Telegraph disclosed, citing unnamed "Western intelligence officials," that Iran's armed forces "had initiated plans to disperse long-range missiles, high explosives, artillery and guards units to key defensive positions."

"The Iranian leadership fears the country is being subjected to a carefully co-ordinated attack by Western intelligence and security agencies to destroy key elements of its nuclear infrastructure," The Telegraph reported.

In response to bellicose threats emanating from Western capitals, a new round of crippling sanctions meant to crater the economy and attacks by intelligence agencies and terrorist assets operating inside Iran, orders were issued "to redistribute Iran's arsenal of long-range Shahab missiles to secret sites around the country where they would be safe from enemy attack and could be used to launch retaliatory attacks."

On Friday, The Christian Science Monitor reported that conservative lawmaker Mohammad Kossari warned that "'Iran will target all US military bases around the world,' in case of further violations ... [and that] Iran's response would be 'terrifying'."

Investigative journalist Scott Peterson, who has done yeoman's work exposing the propaganda blitz by current and former U.S. intelligence officials and lawmakers to delist the bizarre Iranian political cult, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, disclosed that "the drone flights have apparently not yielded new evidence that would change conclusions by the United States and the United Nations that Iran stopped systematic nuclear weapons-related work in 2003."

This of course, confirm Iranian assertions that efforts by Western imperialists over Iran's alleged "nuclear weapons programs" is a pretext for "regime change."

Defense journalist Robert Densmore, a former Navy electronic countermeasures officer told Peterson that the capture of the RQ-170 drone is "very significant."

"Strategically," Densmore told the Monitor, "the US will suffer from the loss of this because ... it has radar, a fuselage, and coating that makes it low-observable, and the electronics inside are also very high-tech."

But perhaps the biggest loss to the Pentagon is not the drone's bat-wing design nor coatings which render the craft less visible to detection by radar--long known to America's capitalist rivals China and Russis--but the "cutting-edge cameras and sensors that can 'listen in' on cellphone conversations as it soars miles above the ground or 'smell' the air and sniff out chemical plumes emanating from a potential underground nuclear laboratory," as the Los Angeles Times disclosed.

Built by defense giant Lockheed Martin at a cost to taxpayers of some $6 million dollars per unit, the secret state's drone program, greatly expanded by the Obama regime, may be a boon to Washington's opaque Military-Industrial-Surveillance Complex but it is also something of an Achilles' heel.

"Ever since it was developed at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s famed Skunk Works facility in Palmdale," the Los Angeles Times averred, "the Sentinel drone has been cloaked in tight secrecy by the U.S. government. But now the drone that the Iranian military claims to have brought down for invading its airspace might be made far more public than the Pentagon or Lockheed ever intended."

On this count, along with many other assumptions underpinning the doctrinal constructs of Washington's technophilic military, they have no one to blame but themselves.

As Antifascist Calling reported back in 2009, Iraqi insurgents deployed $26 off-the-shelf spy kit that enabled them to intercept live video feeds from Predator drones.

According to The Wall Street Journal the Pentagon's "potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control." Although this flaw was known to the Pentagon since the 1990s during imperialism's campaign to dismember socialist Yugoslavia, nothing was done since it might prove too costly to the drone's prime contractor, General Atomics Inc.

The Journal noted "the stolen video feeds also indicate that U.S. adversaries continue to find simple ways of counteracting sophisticated American military technologies."

In fact, as the Journal disclosed in a subsequent report, the video feed wasn't encrypted "because military officials have long assumed no one would make the effort to try to intercept it."

Talk about imperial hubris!

"'It's bad--they'll have everything,' in terms of the secret technology in the aircraft," an unnamed U.S. official told the Los Angeles Times. "'And the Chinese or the Russians will have it too'."

The Associated Press reported that "Iran will not return a U.S. surveillance drone captured by its armed forces, a senior commander of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard said Sunday."

"Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy head of the Guard, said in remarks broadcast on state television that the violation of Iran's airspace by the U.S. drone was a 'hostile act' and warned of a 'bigger' response. He did not elaborate on what Tehran might do."

"'No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country'," Salami said.

On the diplomatic front, the drone's capture was a tactical boost for Tehran.

On Thursday, Iran's UN Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee complained in a letter to the UN Security Council that the "blatant and unprovoked air violation by the United States Government is tantamount to an act of hostility against the Islamic Republic of Iran in clear contravention of international law, in particular, the basic tenets of the United Nations." Khazaee demanded "condemnation of such aggressive acts." Needless to say, none will be forthcoming.

A One-Two Punch: Iran and China

As Washington seeks to impose a stranglehold over vital petrochemical resources in Central Asian and Middle Eastern energy corridors, efforts to overthrow the Tehran government, as with U.S. machinations against Libya and now Syria, are daggers aimed directly at Washington's largest creditor and geopolitical rival, China.

Writing in Asia Times Online, analyst Kaveh L. Afrasiabi warned that the "United States government is on the verge of taking its problems with the Islamic Republic of Iran to a whole new and ominous level that portends clashing interests with China and a number of other countries, including in Europe, which receives some half a million barrels of oil from Iran on a daily basis."

As previously reported, the 2012 Defense Authorization Act, wending its way through Congress will impose new crippling economic sanctions on Iran, and threaten any corporation or financial institution that does business with Iran's Central Bank with stiff punitive measures.

"Unwilling to compromise, hawkish lawmakers sponsoring the bill and their impressive army of pro-Israel lobbyists have mounted a counter-attack," Afrasiabi averred, "arguing that the bill is sound and does not require any 'watering down' that would weaken its impact on Iran--the hope being that this will bring Tehran to its knees over the nuclear issue."

Last week, pro-Israel lobby groups, including the the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the American Jewish Committee, "began a loud campaign in favor of the latest US sanctions bill, pressuring Obama to go along and reminding him of his 'waiver authority'" under terms of the draconian legislation.

"This argument traps the White House into difficult choices, for example, exempting China, which receives 13% of its imported oil from Iran, would ignite a bush fire of political criticism, and not doing so on the other hand would inevitably harm US-China relations," Afrasiabi wrote.

Indeed, the current legislation is a double-edged sword aimed at both Iran and China because "the bill in effect asks Beijing to forego its energy ties with Iran and look elsewhere, clearly not something the Chinese are prepared to do in today's age of energy insecurity."

"That insecurity," Asia Times reports, "would be exacerbated as a result of an oil embargo on Iran, which relies on its oil exports for some 80% of its foreign income. Oil prices would jack up, perhaps to about US$250 a barrel as warned by Tehran," and would have a deleterious effect on countries "such as Spain and Greece, which receive 14% of their oil from Iran, some on Iran credit," directly impacting their already troubled economies.

Reframing Western Propaganda

Underscoring Western unity regarding the terrorist campaign targeting Iran, the director of "Germany's Institute for Security and International Affairs (SWP), Volker Perthes, and their Iran expert Walter Posch" argued in a secret 2010 diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks that "a policy of covert sabotage (unexplained explosions, accidents, computer hacking etc) would be more effective than a military strike whose effects in the region could be devastating."

As German Foreign Policy reported last month, the "German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) recently recalled the cause for the renewed escalation of tensions. 'Since the demise of British colonial rule and the announcement of the 1957 Eisenhower Doctrine,' according to the think tank's recent analysis, the USA has been pursuing the objective of thwarting the rise of any Middle East country to become a regional predominating power--'if necessary by military means'."

"'The growth of power and influence of a regional player' would 'automatically be equated with loss of US power and influence in that region.' Washington has always sought, through 'alliances and inter-alliance policies, to create a regional balance of power' that guarantees western hegemony in this resource-rich region."

"Therefore," GFP's analyst concludes, "the conflict between the West and Iran--regardless of ideological wrappings--is simply a hegemonic conflict."

This has been borne out by recent statements by neoconservatives in the United States. Shifting gears, neocons in leading U.S. think tanks are busily manufacturing new reasons why the United States, Israel, or both, need to attack Iran--now.

As journalist MJ Rosenberg pointed out for Media Matters, "suddenly the struggle to stop Iran is not about saving Israel from nuclear annihilation."

Rosenberg reported that "after a decade of scare-mongering about the second coming of Nazi Germany, the Iran hawks are admitting that they have other reasons for wanting to take out Iran, and saving Israeli lives may not be one of them."

"Suddenly," Rosenberg wrote, "the neoconservatives have discovered the concept of truth-telling, although, no doubt, the shift will be ephemeral."

In late November Danielle Pletka, the head of the American Enterprise Institute's "foreign policy shop" explained: "The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it's Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don't do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, 'See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn't getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.' ... And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem."

Never mind the inconvenient fact that Iran has repeatedly stated their nuclear program is exclusively for civilian purposes, a point clearly established by two National Intelligence Estimates by American secret state agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Indeed, no evidence exists that Iran has diverted enriched uranium towards a secret military program to develop a weapon, despite howls of protest to the contrary by powerful pro-Israel lobby groups and their pets in Congress.

"Earlier this week," Rosenberg reported, "one of Pletka's colleagues at AEI said pretty much the same thing. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Thomas Donnelly explained that we've got the Iran problem all wrong and that we need to 'understand the nature of the conflict.'"

Donnelly continued: "'We're fixated on the Iranian nuclear program while the Tehran regime has its eyes on the real prize: the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East'."

In other words, warmongers on both sides of the rather narrow Washington "divide" view Iran not as a so-called "existential threat" to America's "stationary aircraft carrier in the Middle East," Israel, which possesses upwards of 200 nukes, but as a direct competitor for hegemony over the control of the vast petrochemical resources of Central Asia and the Middle East.

As Seumas Milne wrote last week in The Guardian, "a US or Israeli attack on Iran would turn that regional maelstrom into a global firestorm."

"Iran would certainly retaliate directly and through allies against Israel, the US and US Gulf client states, and block the 20% of global oil supplies shipped through the Strait of Hormuz. Quite apart from death and destruction, the global economic impact would be incalculable."

As Reuters reported, "the chance of a military strike on Iran has roughly tripled in the past year, the senior geopolitical risk analyst at Barclays Capital said on Thursday."

"New York-based analyst Helina Croft, writing in a note titled 'Blowback: Assessing the fallout from the Iranian sanctions', said even increased sanctions without an all-out military strike was increasing the risk of a spike in oil prices."

"We still contend that the risk of either an Israeli or US strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities remains low, but it has risen, in our view, from 5-10 percent last year to 25-30% now," Croft said.

Despite, or possibly because the severe economic fallout an attack on Iran would threaten their global competitors, the crisis-ridden U.S. Empire just might view the risks as "manageable."

But as the World Socialist Web Site warned, "what is being attempted is no less than redrawing the political map of the entire Middle East. It threatens not only region-wide conflict, but to involve those major powers Washington is trying to exclude from this area of vital geostrategic concern: Russia and China."

This dangerous and deadly game is fraught with peril. As Michel Chossudovsky warned on Global Research: "If such a war were to be launched, the entire Middle East-Central Asia region would flare up. Humanity would be precipitated into a World War III Scenario."

Such a scenario, as readers undoubtedly surmise, would be anything but "manageable."

In this light, it is hardly an accident that the same 2012 Defense Authorization Act which threatens to collapse Iran's economy also targets dissident Americans with loss of their constitutional rights and indefinite detention under a creeping martial law regime.

One crime begets another.

War With Iran: A Provocation Away?

2011-12-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

Amid conflicting reports that a huge explosion at Iran's uranium conversion facility in Isfahan occurred last week, speculation was rife that Israel and the United States were stepping-up covert attacks against defense and nuclear installations.

The Isfahan complex transforms mined uranium into uranium fluoride gas which is then "spun" by centrifuges that enrich it into usable products for medical research and for Iran's civilian nuclear energy program.

While Iranian officials sought to distance themselves from initial reporting by the semi-official Fars news agency that a "loud explosion" was heard across the city, but that "the sound of the explosion was from [a] military exercise," has been contradicted by several sources.

Indeed, some Iranian officials have denied that an explosion even took place.

On Tuesday however, The Times reported that "satellite imagery ... confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran."

"The images," Times reporter Sheera Frenkel averred, "clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was 'no doubt' that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was 'no accident'."

Despite clear evidence that Israel and the United States have stepped-up their shadow war against the Islamic Republic, Defense Minister Ehud Barak "played down speculation on Saturday that Israel and U.S.-led allies were waging clandestine war on Iran, saying sanctions and the threat of military strikes were still the way to curb its nuclear program," Reuters reported.

Proverbial "facts on the ground" however, tell a different tale.

The latest attack on Iran's civilian nuclear program followed a blast two weeks ago at the sprawling Bid Ganeh missile base 25 miles west of Tehran.

That blast killed upwards of 30 members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran's missile program.

Satellite imagery shows much of the base in ruins. The attack was described by Time Magazine as the work "of Israel's external intelligence service, Mossad."

In a backhanded confirmation that Monday's blast was the handiwork of Mossad and their terrorist proxies, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), Frenkel wrote that "Dan Meridor, the Israeli Intelligence Minister, said: 'There are countries who impose economic sanctions and there are countries who act in other ways in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat'."

Frenkel reported that "Major-General Giora Eiland, Israel's former director of national security told Israel's army radio that the Isfahan blast was no accident. 'There aren't many coincidences, and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it's the hand of God'," Eiland said.

The Isfahan blast, as with other recent attacks, were allegedly in response to allegations made last month in a report filed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

However, while the "Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities," the ginned-up report relied on information provided by "Member states," presumably Israel and United States in the form of forged computer laptop documents and other "intelligence sources."

The Agency claims they were "unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities."

Black operations targeting the Islamic Republic aren't solely the province of America's "stationary aircraft carrier in the Middle East," Israel. As Seymour Hersh reported last spring in The New Yorker: "In the past six years, soldiers from the Joint Special Operations Force, working with Iranian intelligence assets, put in place cutting-edge surveillance techniques, according to two former intelligence officers."

In 2007, ABC News disclosed that "the CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert 'black' operation to destabilize the Iranian government."

Unnamed sources told ABC News that President Bush signed a presidential finding "that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions."

Congress has appropriated some $300 million for the CIA and the Pentagon's covert war.

In the intervening years, those programs have turned lethal. Widely applauded by "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans alike, these programs have continued, indeed expanded under Barack Obama's "progressive" Democratic administration.

Despite the fact that there "is also constant satellite coverage of major suspect areas in Iran," The New Yorker reported "that nothing significantly new had been learned to suggest that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon."

'Shadow War' Heating Up

Iran's intelligence services haven't been sitting idly by watching American, British, and Israeli terror operations.

On Sunday, Al Jazeera reported that the Iranian armed forces "brought down an unmanned US spy plane."

"Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran," Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted an unnamed source as saying on Sunday."

"The semiofficial Fars news agency," Al Jazeera averred, said "that the plane is now in the possession of Iran's armed forces. The Fars news agency is close to the powerful Revolutionary Guard."

"Fars reported that the drone had been brought down through a combined effort by Iran's armed forces, air defence forces and its electronic warfare unit after the plane briefly violated the country's airspace at its eastern border."

An unnamed source, according to AFP, warned that Iran's armed response would "not be limited to our country's borders" for the "blatant territorial violation."

AFP also reported that in June, "Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Guards' aerospace unit, said Iran had shown Russian experts the US drones in its possession.

"'Russian experts requested to see these drones and they looked at both the downed drones and the models made by the Guards through reverse engineering,' he said."

In a further sign that the "shadow war" is heating up, last week's occupation of the British embassy in Tehran may have been a warning to the U.K. over sanctioned leaks by the British defense establishment to The Guardian which suggested that "Britain's armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran."

"In anticipation of a potential attack," The Guardian disclosed that "British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air and sea campaign.

The embassy occupation and subsequent downgrade of diplomatic relations between Britain and Iran mean these threats are being taken very seriously indeed.

Asia Times Online reported that Iran's claim "to have arrested 12 spies working for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is potentially a major blow to American intelligence-gathering efforts in Iran and to American intelligence generally."

Following closely on the heels of last month's arrest in Lebanon of some 30 CIA operatives by Hezbollah "is suggestive of a major American intelligence defeat, if not a full-blown disaster," Asia Times analyst Mahan Abedin wrote.

Far from being a high-quality intelligence operation, Abedin averred that the "CIA is operating a lower threshold of quality control in terms of agent recruitment and management" and that this reflects "a scatter-gun approach by the CIA inasmuch as the agency is targeting virtually any Iranian citizen it believes could potentially provide useful information on the CIA's target set."

According to Abedin's Iranian sources, the CIA's team of "operatives and analysts" appears to have been "embedded within numerous official and unofficial American organizations, including US embassies, multinational corporations, medium-sized commercial organizations, recruitment consultancies, immigration and wider legal services, academic and quasi-academic institutions and reputable (i.e. longstanding) as well as newly set up think tanks."

In other words, as many researchers have amply documented, efforts by the U.S. secret state to subvert a target nation's internal defenses prior to full-on "regime change" either through direct warfare (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, now Syria) or via an American-brokered "color revolution" (Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Ukraine, Georgia) are not about "freedom and democracy" but to achieve Washington's geopolitical goals: total economic and political domination.

"But despite clear improvements in counter-espionage capabilities and protective security measures," Abedin writes, "Iran is still some way away from making it prohibitively costly for Western agencies to operate inside the country. Indeed, all the major West European, North American and Israeli intelligence services are either active inside Iran or work closely with some elements of the Iranian diaspora."

Describing the "psychological warfare" dimensions of a looming confrontation, Abedin wrote in a subsequent Asia Times Online piece that the covert war operates on two fronts, "one visible and rhetorical and conducted through official and unofficial media and the other secret and centered on sabotage."

"In so far as the former is concerned Iran has risen to the challenge by superseding tough American and Israeli rhetoric with even tougher rhetoric."

"However," Abedin averred, "it is on the sabotage front--where Iran appears to be under attack from several directions--that the Islamic Republic is raising eyebrows even amongst its hardcore supporters by displaying remarkable tolerance in the face of intolerable provocations."

"More broadly, the Iranians are not paying sufficient attention to the long-term consequences of military confrontation with the United States and her allies."

That the "long-term consequences" of a Western-led attack will be an unmitigated disaster for the Iranian people, indeed for people across the entire region and for world peace and stability as a whole, doesn't mean that Washington won't gamble that a "limited war" could be "contained."

As analyst William Blum wrote in his Anti-Empire Report: "The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington's policies fades away."

"Examine a map," Blum observed. "Iran sits directly between two of the United States' great obsessions--Iraq and Afghanistan ... directly between two of the world's greatest oil regions--the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea areas ... it's part of the encirclement of the two leading potential threats to American world domination--Russia and China ... Tehran will never be a client state or obedient poodle to Washington. How could any good, self-respecting Washington imperialist resist such a target? Bombs Away!"

Commenting on the Isfahan attack which described Israeli "black ops" as a "route to war," left-wing analyst Richard Silverstein wrote on the Tikun Olam web site, that "the tragedy of this black ops program is that it will not rattle or deter Iran, as Israeli intelligence believes."

"Contrary to what Israeli generals believe," Silverstein wrote, "the Iranians are not pushovers, they can't be intimidated. They're willing to die for their country even more than Israelis. They've fought defensive wars going back decades and lost millions in conflict. A few explosions, assassinations, and computer viruses will not spook them."

The drift towards war, which include moves to strangle Iran's economy prior to a strike, has gained traction on multiple fronts.

On Friday, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed legislation as part of the $644. 3 billion 2012 Defense Authorization Act that "would give the president the power starting July 1 to bar foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran's central bank from having correspondent bank accounts in the U.S.," Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported.

Coupled with reports that Germany and other EU member states will "considerably strengthen" sanctions against Iran, the leftist publication German Foreign Policy disclosed that "Berlin is participating in the intensification of western pressure on Teheran."

Rejecting NATO rhetoric that new punitive economic measures are over "the so-called nuclear dispute," GFP's analyst correctly states that the "conflict is, in fact, over hegemony, with the West seeking to defend at all costs its predominance in the Middle Eastern resource-rich regions."

While "Berlin's politicians are still divided over Iran ... Transatlantic oriented forces are preparing the public for possible military strikes."

Regarding the strengthening of the West's sanctions regime, the World Socialist Web Site reported that the EU has "agreed to sanction some 200 Iranian companies, individuals and organisations. European Council President Herman Van Rompuy met with Obama on Monday and issued a joint statement expressing 'deep concern' over Iran's nuclear program, raising the possibility of 'additional measures' against the Iranian regime."

"France," left-wing critic Oliver Campbell noted, "which is not a major importer of Iranian oil, issued a statement calling for 'new sanctions on an unprecedented scale,' including freezing the assets of the Iranian central bank and putting an embargo on Iranian oil."

"Russia, which has acquiesced in imposing previous sanctions on Iran, has bluntly opposed further punitive measures. Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich denounced the latest sanctions as 'unacceptable' and 'contradictory to international law.' China and Turkey have also opposed additional UN penalties."

There are new signs that this sharply escalating crisis is fraught with peril.

Last week, Russia Today reported that "Moscow is deploying warships at its base in the Syrian port of Tartus. The long-planned mission comes, providentially, at the very moment when it could help prevent a potential conflict in the strategically important Middle Eastern country.

"The Russian battle group will consist of three vessels led by the heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser, Admiral Kuznetsov."

"Of course, the Russian naval forces in the Mediterranean will be incommensurate with those of the US 6th Fleet, which includes one or two aircraft carriers and several escort ships," former Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Viktor Kravchenko told Russia Today.

Pointedly, Kravchenko warned, "today, no one talks about possible military clashes, since an attack on any Russian ship would be regarded as a declaration of war with all the consequences."

Richard Silverstein grimly observed "that Israel knows that black ops will turn Iran more intransigent. It welcomes such Iranian rigidity because it means the day is closer when it will be set loose on the Iranians. Israel's policy toward Iran is scorched earth."

The clock is ticking...

Target Iran: Washington's Countdown to War

2011-11-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

The Iranian people know what it means to earn the enmity of the global godfather.

As William Blum documented in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 1953's CIA-organized coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, guilty of the "crime" of nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, may have "saved" Iran from a nonexistent "Red Menace," but it left that oil-rich nation in proverbial "safe hands"--those of the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

Similarly today, a nonexistent "nuclear threat" is the pretext being used by Washington to install a "friendly" regime in Tehran and undercut geopolitical rivals China and Russia in the process, thereby "securing" the country's vast petrochemical wealth for American multinationals.

As the U.S. and Israel ramp-up covert operations against Iran, the Pentagon "has laid out its most explicit cyberwarfare policy to date, stating that if directed by the president, it will launch 'offensive cyber operations' in response to hostile acts," according to The Washington Post.

Citing "a long-overdue report to Congress released late Monday," we're informed that "hostile acts may include 'significant cyber attacks directed against the U.S. economy, government or military'," unnamed Defense Department officials stated.

However, Air Force General Robert Kehler, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) told Reuters, "I do not believe that we need new explicit authorities to conduct offensive operations of any kind."

The Pentagon report, which is still not publicly available, asserts: "We reserve the right to use all necessary means--diplomatic, informational, military and economic--to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests."

Washington's "interests," which first and foremost include "securing its hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia" as the World Socialist Web Site observed, may lead the crisis-ridden U.S. Empire "to take another irresponsible gamble to shore up its interests in the Middle East ... as a means of diverting attention from the social devastation produced by its austerity agenda."

Recent media reports suggest however, that offensive cyber operations are only part of Washington's multipronged strategy to soften-up the Islamic Republic's defenses as a prelude to "regime change."

Terrorist Proxies

For the better part of six decades, terrorist proxies have done America's dirty work. Hardly relics of the Cold War past, U.S. and allied secret state agencies are using such forces to carry out attacks inside Iran today.

Asia Times Online reported that "deadly explosions at a military base about 60 kilometers southwest of Tehran, coinciding with the suspicious death of the son of a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, have triggered speculation in Iran on whether or not these are connected to recent United States threats to resort to extrajudicial executions of IRGC leaders."

And Time Magazine, a frequent outlet for sanctioned leaks from the Pentagon, reported that the blast at the Iranian missile base west of Tehran, which killed upwards of 40 people according to the latest estimates, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran's missile program, was described as the work "of Israel's external intelligence service, Mossad."

An unnamed "Western intelligence source" told reporter Karl Vick: "'Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident,' adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. 'There are more bullets in the magazine,' the official says."

While Iranian officials insist that the huge blast was an "accident," multiple accounts in the corporate press and among independent analysts provide strong evidence for the claim that Israel and their terrorist cat's paw, the bizarre political cult, Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) were responsible for the attack.

Richard Silverstein, a left-wing analyst who writes for the Tikun Olam web site, said that the blast was a sign that "the face of the Israeli terror machine may have reared its ugly head in the world."

Citing "an Israeli source with extensive senior political and military experience," Silverstein's correspondent provided "an exclusive report that it was the work of the Mossad in collaboration with the MEK."

Hardly a stranger to controversial reporting, Silverstein published excerpts of secret FBI transcripts leaked to him by the heroic whistleblower Shamai Leibowitz. Those wiretapped conversations of Israeli diplomats caught spying on the U.S., "described an Israeli diplomatic campaign in this country to create a hostile environment for relations with Iran."

In a Truthout piece, Silverstein wrote that Leibowitz, a former IDF soldier who refused to serve in the Occupied Territories, "explained that he was convinced from his work on these recordings that the Israel foreign ministry and its officials in this country were responsible for a perception management campaign directed against Iran. He worried that such an effort might end with either Israel or the US attacking Iran and that this would be a disaster for both countries."

Unfortunately, while Leibowitz sits in a U.S. prison his warnings are all but ignored.

According to Silverstein's latest account, "it is widely known within intelligence circles that the Israelis use the MEK for varied acts of espionage and terror ranging from fraudulent Iranian memos alleging work on nuclear trigger devices to assassinations of nuclear scientists and bombings of sensitive military installations."

Silverstein noted that "a similar act of sabotage happened a little more than a year ago at another IRG missile base which killed nearly 20."

Terrorist attacks targeting defense installations coupled with the murder of Iranian scientist, five "targeted killings" have occurred since 2010, aren't the only aggressive actions underway.

On Friday, The Washington Post reported that "a series of mysterious incidents involving explosions at natural gas transport facilities, oil refineries and military bases ... have caused dozens of deaths and damage to key infrastructure in the past two years."

According to the Post, "suspicions have been raised in Iran by what industry experts say is a fivefold increase in explosions at refineries and gas pipelines since 2010."

With Iran's oil industry under a strict sanctions regime by the West, maintenance of this critical industrial sector has undoubtedly suffered neglect due to the lack of spare parts.

However, "suspicions that covert action might already be underway were raised when four key gas pipelines exploded simultaneously in different locations in Qom Province in April," the Post disclosed.

"Lawmaker Parviz Sorouri told the semiofficial Mehr News Agency that the blasts were the work of 'terrorists' and were 'organized by the enemies of the Islamic Republic'," hardly an exaggerated charge given present tensions.

Whether or not these attacks were the handiwork of Mossad, their MEK proxies or even CIA paramilitary officers and Pentagon Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) commandos, as Seymour Hersh revealed more than three years ago in The New Yorker, it is clear that Washington and Tel Aviv are "preparing the battlespace" on multiple fronts.

'Collapse the Iranian Economy'

Along with covert operations and terrorist attacks inside the Islamic Republic, on the political front, a bipartisan consensus has clearly emerged in Washington in favor of strangling the Iranian economy.

Indeed, congressional grifters are threatening to crater Iran's Central Bank, an unvarnished act of war. IPS reported that neocon Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), "a key pro-Israel senator," has offered legislation "that would effectively ban international financial companies that do business with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) from participating in the U.S. economy."

"Dubbed the 'nuclear option' by its critics," Jim Lobe reported that "the measure, which was introduced Thursday in the form of an amendment to the 2012 defence authorisation bill, is designed to 'collapse the Iranian economy'... by making it virtually impossible for Tehran to sell its oil."

However, "independent experts," Lobe wrote, "including some officials in the administration of President Barack Obama, say the impact of such legislation, if it became law, could spark a major spike in global oil prices that would push Washington's allies in Europe even deeper into recession and destroy the dwindling chances for economic recovery here."

That amendment was introduced as tensions were brought to a boil over allegations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its latest report that Iran may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano claims the Agency has "identified outstanding issues related to possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme and actions required of Iran to resolve these."

"Since 2002," Amano averred, "the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile, about which the Agency has regularly received new information."

However, despite the fact that the "Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities," to whit, that such materials have not been covertly channeled towards military programs, Amano, reprising former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's famous gaff that "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence," the IAEA "is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities."

Far from being an independent "nuclear watchdog," the IAEA under Amano's stewardship has been transformed into highly-politicized and pliable organization eager to do Washington's bidding.

As a 2009 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks revealed, U.S. Ambassador Glyn Davies cheerily reported: "Yukiya Amano thanked the U.S. for having supported his candidacy and took pains to emphasize his support for U.S. strategic objectives for the Agency. Amano reminded Ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77, which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program." (emphasis added)

Although the new report "offered little that was not already known by experts about Iran's nuclear programme" IPS averred, "it cited what it alleged was new evidence that 'Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device' since 2003--the date when most analysts believe it abandoned a centralised effort to build a nuclear bomb'."

But as the United States, with the connivance of corporate media, bury the conclusions of not one, but two National Intelligence Estimates issued by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, it is clear to any objective observer that "nonproliferation" is a cover for aggressive geopolitical machinations by Washington.

Both estimates, roundly denounced by U.S. neoconservatives and media commentators when they were published, insisted that "in fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," a finding intelligence analysts judged with "high confidence."

In contrast, the highly-politicized IAEA report is a provocative document whose timing neatly corresponds with the imposition of a new round of economic sanctions meant to crater the Iranian economy. Never mind that even according to the IAEA's own biased reporting, they could find no evidence that Iran had diverted nuclear materials from civilian programs (power generation, medical isotopes) to alleged military initiatives.

Indeed, with sinister allusions that hint darkly at "undeclared nuclear materials," the agency fails to provide a single scrap of evidence that diverted stockpiles even exist.

Another key allegation made by the Agency that Iran had constructed an "explosives chamber to test components of a nuclear weapon and carry out a simulated nuclear explosion," was denounced by former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley as "highly misleading," according to an IPS report filed by investigative journalist Gareth Porter.

With "information provided by Member States," presumably Israel and the United States, the IAEA said it "had 'confirmed' that a 'large cylindrical object' housed at the same complex had been 'designed to contain the detonation of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives'. That amount of explosives, it said, would be 'appropriate' for testing a detonation system to trigger a nuclear weapon."

"Kelley rejected the IAEA claim that the alleged cylindrical chamber was new evidence of an Iranian weapons programme," Porter wrote. "We've been led by the nose to believe that this container is important, when in fact it's not important at all," the former nuclear inspector said.

But as Mark Twain famously wrote, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." This is certainly proving to be the case with the IAEA under Yukiya Amano.

Another player "solidly in the U.S. court" is David Albright, the director of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington, D.C. "think tank" funded by the elitist Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.

In an earlier piece for IPS, Porter demolished Albright's "sensational claim previously reported by news media all over the world that a former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist had helped Iran construct a detonation system that could be used for a nuclear weapon."

"But it turns out that the foreign expert, who is not named in the IAEA report but was identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko, is not a nuclear weapons scientist but one of the top specialists in the world in the production of nanodiamonds by explosives," Porter wrote.

"In fact," Porter averred, "Danilenko, a Ukrainian, has worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career and is considered one of the pioneers in the development of nanodiamond technology, as published scientific papers confirm."

"It now appears that the IAEA and David Albright ... who was the source of the news reports about Danilenko, never bothered to check the accuracy of the original claim by an unnamed 'Member State' on which the IAEA based its assertion about his nuclear weapons background."

It is no small irony, that Albright, corporate media's go-to guy on all things nuclear, penned an alarmist screed in 2002 entitled, "Is the Activity at Al Qaim Related to Nuclear Efforts?", an article which lent "scientific" credence to false claims made by the Bush White House against Iraq.

As investigative journalist Robert Parry pointed out on the Consortium News web site, "Albright's nuclear warning about Iraq coincided with the start of the Bush administration's propaganda campaign to rally Congress and the American people to war with talk about 'the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud'."

"Yet," Parry noted, "when the Washington Post cited Albright on Monday, as the key source of a front-page article about Iran's supposed progress toward reaching 'nuclear capability,' all the history of Albright's role in the Iraq fiasco disappeared."

History be damned. Congressional warmongers and corporate media who cite these fraudulent claims, are "spurred by Israel's whisper campaign to create a sense of urgency on Capitol Hill where the Israel lobby, acting mainly through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, exerts its greatest influence," as IPS noted, and punish Iran for the "crime" of opening its nuclear facilities to international inspection!

That "whisper campaign" has now bloomed into a full court press for war by "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans alike, even as public approval of Congress's work by the American people tracks only slightly higher than the popularity enjoyed by child molesters or serial killers.

As tensions are dialed up, the United States is spearheading a relentless drive to throttle Iran's economy. The New York Times reported that "major Western powers took significant steps on Monday to cut Iran off from the international financial system, announcing coordinated sanctions aimed at its central bank and commercial banks."

A strict sanctions regime was also imposed on Iran's "petrochemical and oil industries, adding to existing measures that seek to weaken the Iranian government by depriving it of its ability to refine gasoline or invest in its petroleum industry," the Times reported.

In a move which signals that even-more stringent sanctions are on the horizon, the U.S. Treasury Department "named the Central Bank of Iran and the entire Iranian banking system as a 'primary money laundering concern'."

That's rather rich coming from an administration which slapped Wachovia Bank on the wrist after that corrupt financial institution, now owned by Wells Fargo Bank, pleaded guilty to laundering as much as $378 billion for Mexico's notorious drug cartels as Bloomberg Markets Magazine reported last year!

Going a step further, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy called on the major imperialist powers "to freeze the assets of the central bank and suspend purchases of Iranian oil."

The Guardian reported that Britain "went the furthest by, for the first time, cutting an entire country's banking system off from London's financial sector."

Playing catch-up with war-hungry Democrats and Republicans, President Obama stated that the "new sanctions target for the first time Iran's petrochemical sector, prohibiting the provision of goods, services and technology to this sector and authorizing penalties against any person or entity that engages in such activity."

"They expand energy sanctions, making it more difficult for Iran to operate, maintain, and modernize its oil and gas sector," Obama said.

"As long as Iran continues down this dangerous path, the United States will continue to find ways, both in concert with our partners and through our own actions, to isolate and increase the pressure upon the Iranian regime."

Last summer, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a strong backer of punishing sanctions, echoed Richard Nixon's vow to "make the economy scream" prior to the CIA's overthrow of Chile's democratically-elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, and wrote in The Hill that "critics ... argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that."

With a new round of crippling economic sanctions on tap from the West, "liberal" Democrat Sherman might just get his wish.

Targeting Civilian Infrastructure

While the Obama administration claims that their aggressive stance towards Iran is meant to promote "peace" and "help" the Iranian people achieve a "democratic transformation," ubiquitous facts on the ground betray a far different, and uglier, reality.

Anonymous U.S. "intelligence officials" told The Daily Beast "that any Israeli attack on hardened nuclear sites in Iran would go far beyond airstrikes from F-15 and F-16 fighter planes and likely include electronic warfare against Iran's electric grid, Internet, cellphone network, and emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers."

According to Newsweek national security correspondent Eli Lake, "Israel has developed a weapon capable of mimicking a maintenance cellphone signal that commands a cell network to 'sleep,' effectively stopping transmissions, officials confirmed. The Israelis also have jammers capable of creating interference within Iran's emergency frequencies for first responders."

But Israel isn't the only nation capable of launching high-tech attacks or, borrowing the Pentagon's euphemistic language, conduct "Information Operations" (IO).

The U.S. Air Force Cyberspace & Information Operations Study Center (CIOSC) describe IO as "The integrated employment of the core capabilities of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own."

In this light, The Daily Beast disclosed that "Israel also likely would exploit a vulnerability that U.S. officials detected two years ago in Iran's big-city electric grids, which are not 'air-gapped'--meaning they are connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to a Stuxnet-style cyberattack--officials say."

The anonymous officials cited by Lake informed us that "a highly secretive research lab attached to the U.S. joint staff and combatant commands, known as the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC), discovered the weakness in Iran's electrical grid in 2009," the same period when Stuxnet was launched, and that Israeli and Pentagon cyberwarriors "have the capability to bring a denial-of-service attack to nodes of Iran's command and control system that rely on the Internet."

But as Ralph Langer, the industrial controls systems expert who first identified the Stuxnet virus warned in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, the deployment of military-grade malicious code is a "game changer" that has "opened Pandora's box."

Among a host of troubling questions posed by Stuxnet, Langer said: "It raises, for one, the question of how to apply cyberwar as a political decision. Is the US really willing to take down the power grid of another nation when that might mainly affect civilians?"

But as we have seen, most recently during the punishing air campaign that helped "liberate" Libya--from their petrochemical resources--the U.S. and their partners are capable of doing that and more.

Future targeting of Iran's civilian infrastructure may in fact have been one of the tasks of the recently-discovered Duqu Trojan, which Israeli and U.S. "boutique arms dealers" are suspected of designing for their respective governments.

And whom, pray tell, has the means, motives and expertise to design weaponized computer code?

As BusinessWeek disclosed in July, when one of America's cyber merchants of death, Endgame Systems, pitch their products they "bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings, and corporate offices. The executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems."

According to BusinessWeek, "Endgame weaponry comes customized by region--the Middle East, Russia, Latin America, and China--with manuals, testing software, and 'demo instructions'."

"A government or other entity," journalists Michael Riley and Ashlee Vance revealed, "could launch sophisticated attacks against just about any adversary anywhere in the world for a grand total of $6 million. Ease of use is a premium. It's cyber warfare in a box."

Kaspersky Lab analyst Ryan Naraine, writing on the Duqu FAQ blog averred that Duqu's "main purpose is to act as a backdoor into the system and facilitate the theft of private information. This is the main difference when compared to Stuxnet, which was created to conduct industrial sabotage."

In other words, unlike Stuxnet, Duqu is an espionage tool which can smooth the way for future attacks such as those described by The Daily Beast.

As The Washington Post disclosed last May, while the military "needs presidential authorization to penetrate a foreign computer network and leave a cyber-virus that can be activated later," it does not need such authorization "to penetrate foreign networks for a variety of other activities."

According to the Post, these activities include "studying the cyber-capabilities of adversaries or examining how power plants or other networks operate," and can "leave beacons to mark spots for later targeting by viruses."

Or more likely given escalating tensions, Iranian air defenses and that nation's power and electronic communications grid which include "emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers" who would respond to devastating air and missile attacks.

Countdown to War

We can conclude that Israel, NATO and the United States are doing far more than placing "all options on the table" with respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Along with ratcheting-up bellicose rhetoric, moves to collapse the economy, an assassination and sabotage campaign targeting Iranian scientists and military installations, cyberwarriors are infecting computer networks with viruses and "beacons" that will be used to attack air defense systems and civilian infrastructure.

After all, as Dave Aitel, the founder of the computer security firm Immunity told BusinessWeek, "nothing says you've lost like a starving city."

As Global Research analyst Michel Chossudovsky warned last year, now confirmed by CIA and Pentagon leaks to corporate media: "It is highly unlikely that the bombings, if they were to be implemented, would be circumscribed to Iran's nuclear facilities as claimed by US-NATO official statements. What is more probable is an all out air attack on both military and civilian infrastructure, transport systems, factories, public buildings."

With the global economy in deep crisis as a result of capitalism's economic meltdown, and as the first, but certainly not the last political actions by the working class threaten the financial elite's stranglehold on power, the ruling class may very well gamble that a war with Iran is a risk worth taking.

As Chossudovsky warned in a subsequent Global Research report, "there are indications that Washington might envisage the option of an initial (US backed) attack by Israel rather than an outright US-led military operation directed against Iran."

"The Israeli attack--although led in close liaison with the Pentagon and NATO--would be presented to public opinion as a unilateral decision by Tel Aviv. It would then be used by Washington to justify, in the eyes of world opinion," Chossudovsky wrote, "a military intervention of the US and NATO with a view to 'defending Israel', rather than attacking Iran. Under existing military cooperation agreements, both the US and NATO would be 'obligated' to 'defend Israel' against Iran and Syria."

This prescient analysis has been borne out by events. As regional tensions escalate, the USS George H.W. Bush, "the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, has reportedly parked off the Syrian coast," The Daily Caller reported.

Earlier this week, the financial news service Zero Hedge disclosed that "the Arab League (with European and US support) are preparing to institute a no fly zone over Syria."

"But probably the most damning evidence that the 'western world' is about to do the unthinkable and invade Syria," analyst Tyler Durden wrote, "and in the process force Iran to retaliate, is the weekly naval update from Stratfor."

According to Zero Hedge, "CVN 77 George H.W. Bush has left its traditional theater of operations just off the Straits of Hormuz, a critical choke point, where it traditionally accompanies the Stennis, and has parked... right next to Syria."

In an earlier report, citing Kuwait's Al Rai daily, Zero Hedge warned that "Arab jet fighters, and possibly Turkish warplanes, backed by American logistic support will implement a no fly zone in Syria's skies, after the Arab League will issue a decision, under its Charter, calling for the protection of Syrian civilians."

The BBC reports that the Arab League "has warned Syria it has one day to sign a deal allowing the deployment of observers or it will face economic sanctions."

"Meanwhile," BBC averred, "France has suggested that some sort of humanitarian protection zones," à la Libya, "be created inside Syria."

American moves towards Syria are fraught with dangerous implications for international peace and stability. As analyst Pepe Escobar disclosed in Asia Times Online the Arab League, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabia and repressive Gulf emirates, dances to Washington's tune.

"Syria is Iran's undisputed key ally in the Arab world--while Russia, alongside China, are the key geopolitical allies. China, for the moment, is making it clear that any solution for Syria must be negotiated," Escobar wrote.

"Russia's one and only naval base in the Mediterranean is at the Syrian port of Tartus. Not by accident," Escobar notes, "Russia has installed its S-300 air defense system--one of the best all-altitude surface-to-air missile systems in the world, comparable to the American Patriot--in Tartus. The update to the even more sophisticated S-400 system is imminent."

"From Moscow's--as well as Tehran's--perspective, regime change in Damascus is a no-no. It will mean virtual expulsion of the Russian and Iranian navies from the Mediterranean."

"In other words," Zero Hedge warned, "if indeed Europe and the Western world is dead set upon an aerial campaign above Syria, then all eyes turn to the East, and specifically Russia and China, which have made it very clear they will not tolerate any intervention. And naturally the biggest unknown of all is Iran, which has said than any invasion of Syria will be dealt with swiftly and severely."

Despite, or possibly because no credible evidence exists that Iran is building a nuclear bomb as a hedge against "regime change," belligerent rhetoric and regional military moves targeting Syria and Iran simultaneously are danger signs that imperialism's manufactured "nuclear crisis" is a cynical pretext for war.

Twitter Ordered to Hand Over WikiLeaks Info to Justice Department

2011-11-13T10:13:00.000-08:00

In a further blow to online privacy rights and press freedom, the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va. ordered the microblogging site Twitter to hand over account information on three activists under investigation by the Justice Department for their links to the whistleblowing web site WikiLeaks.

Under "transparency president" Barack Obama, the U.S. government initiated a criminal probe of the organization after the site began releasing a virtual tsunami of confidential military and State Department files.

In the last two years alone, WikiLeaks revealed that the United States had committed grave war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and other global hot-spots of interest to America's resource-grabbing corporate masters.

This year's release of 779 classified dossiers on prisoners housed at the Guantánamo Bay prison gulag fleshed out the public's knowledge of ongoing torture programs run by the military and the CIA under cover of it's murderous "War on Terror."

But it was their publication of some 250,000 secret State Department cables which sparked a new round of hysterical denunciations in Washington culminating in the witchhunt against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks supporters, a demonization campaign aided and abetted by U.S. financial institutions such as Bank of America and Pentagon cyberwar contractors.

Cable after cable revealed "the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in 'client states'; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them."

Leading politicians, including Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell have called the web site's founder a "high-tech terrorist," and commentators such as right-wing Washington Times columnist Jeffery Kuhner and others have demanded that Assange and his co-workers be treated "the same way as other high-value terrorist targets."

The Obama administration, loathe to pursue criminal probes of the previous regime's lawbreaking, the better to immunize themselves over their own contemporary lawless acts, including the torture of prisoners at Bagram Airbase, clandestine CIA drone killings and the due process-free assassination of an American citizen who was never charged, let alone convicted of a crime, was up to the challenge and empaneled a grand jury in Alexandria, Va.

And when Justice Department inquisitors first sought to seize the activist's information, in keeping with the new "Washington consensus" that constitutional rights are nothing more than empty platitudes duly trotted out on national holidays, they demanded that Twitter turn over the files without benefit of a warrant.

American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Aden Fine denounced the ruling. "Internet users don't automatically give up their rights to privacy and free speech when they use services like Twitter," Fine said.

"The government shouldn't be able to get this kind of private information without a warrant, and they certainly shouldn't be able to do so in secret. An open court system is a fundamental part of our democracy, and the very existence of court documents should not be hidden from the public."

According to the ACLU, it wasn't only Twitter that was served with record demands by the Justice Department. "Based on the file numbers that have been created, it appears likely that there are additional orders whose existence remains secret."

The public first became aware of the government's fishing expedition only because Twitter informed the three activists, Jacob Appelbaum, a founding member of the online anonymity network, Tor Project, Rop Gonggrijp, a founder of the Dutch web portal XS4ALL and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a left-wing member of Iceland's Parliament.

As Antifascist Calling reported in March, Jónsdóttir was specifically targeted for her role in helping WikiLeaks release the Collateral Murder video last year.

That scandalous video exposed the wanton slaughter of a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad, including two Reuters photojournalists, by a U.S. military Apache helicopter crew. Two children were also seriously wounded in the unprovoked attack.

The Army's thrill-kill gun camera video wasn't concealed from the public because of any alleged threat to "national security" or to protect intelligence "sources and methods," standard boilerplate used to hide war crimes by the U.S. Empire, but precisely to cover-up imperialism's murderous rampage that helped "liberate" Iraqis of their lives.

Commenting on the ruling, Jónsdóttir told The Guardian, "This is a huge blow for everybody that uses social media. We have to have the same civil rights online as we have offline. Imagine if the US authorities wanted to do a house search at my home, go through my private papers. There would be a hell of a fight. It's absolutely unacceptable."

Unfortunately, under Section 213 of the oxymoronic USA Patriot Act, which was not subject to a "sunset" provision of the constitution-shredding legislation, FBI agents can do precisely that and obtain so-called "delayed notification" warrants for the search and seizure of evidence of any federal crime, not only those related to "terrorism" investigations.

Called "sneak and peek" searches, federal snoops are permitted to clandestinely seize property or conduct electronic searches on a home computer if a court deems such seizures "reasonably necessary." Indeed, notification of a covert FBI home invasion "may thereafter be extended by the court for good cause shown."

The sweeping ruling by Judge Liam O'Grady upheld demands by U.S. investigators that they should have virtual free-reign to pillage private records related to the users' IP address, the unique identifier used by a computer or hand-held device to log onto the internet.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who represent Jónsdóttir along with American Civil Liberties Union attorneys, O'Grady "also blocked the users' attempt to discover whether other Internet companies have been ordered to turn their data over to the government."

"When you use the Internet, you entrust your online conversations, thoughts, experiences, locations, photos, and more to dozens of companies who host or transfer your data," EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn said.

"In light of that technological reality, we are gravely worried by the court's conclusion that records about you that are collected by Internet services like Twitter, Facebook, Skype and Google are fair game for warrantless searches by the government."

Among other things, O'Grady wrote in his 60-page decision that "the information sought was clearly material to establishing key facts related to an ongoing investigation and would have assisted a grand jury in conducting an inquiry into the particular matters under investigation."

O'Grady, appointed to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in 2007 by President George W. Bush, argued that because Twitter users "voluntarily" turned over their IP addresses when they signed up for an account, they lost any expectation of privacy.

In other words, simply because users click through opaque "Terms of Service" agreements with Twitter, Google, Facebook or any other internet vendor, "petitioners knew or should have known that their I.P. information was subject to examination by Twitter, so they had a lessened expectation of privacy in that information, particularly in light of their apparent consent to the Twitter terms of service and privacy policy."

However, as security researcher Christopher Soghoian pointed out in Slight Paranoia, "The federal judge in the Wikileaks case cited in his order a version of Twitter's privacy policy from 2010, rather than the very different policy that existed when Appelbaum, Gonggrijp and Jonsdottir created their Twitter accounts back in 2008."

"That older policy," Soghoian wrote, "actually promised users that Twitter would keep their data private unless they violated the company's terms of service. It is unclear how the judge managed to miss this important detail."

"There is a slight problem with relying on a privacy policy created on November 16, 2010 to decide the reasonable expectation of privacy of these three individuals: They created their Twitter accounts several years before the document was written."

Indeed, as Soghoian observes, "not only is a federal judge ruling that 3 individuals have no reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to the government getting some of their Internet transaction data, but the judge isn't even citing the right version of a widely ignored privacy policy to do so."

"If the judge were to examine the privacy policy that existed when these three targets signed up for a Twitter account," Soghoian concludes, "he might decide that they do in fact have a reasonable expectation of privacy and that the government needs a warrant to get the data."

While true as far as it goes, and Soghoian should be commended for pointing out this glaring contradiction in the government's case, readers are well aware that the WikiLeaks Twitter case is about politics not process, that is, moves by the secret state to clamp-down on dissent and dissenters, and not whether someone has read and "voluntarily" signed-off on a vendor's "Terms of Service" agreement.

Among other things, O'Grady's ruling revealed that the government was seeking not only IP addresses but "1. subscriber names, user names, screen names, or other identities; 2. mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, e-mail addresses and other contact information; 3. connection records, or records of session times and durations; 4. length of service (including start date) and types of service utilized; 5. telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, including any temporarily assigned network address; and 6. means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number) and billing records."

It doesn't take a computer forensics expert to conclude that the government, in obtaining "connection records," will also get their hands on information about anyone else who corresponded or "followed" the activists on Twitter.

Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney with EFF told CNET News that the ruling means that "essentially any data about you collected by an Internet service is fair game for warrantless searches by the government."

The District Court's ruling can be situated within the wider context of the Obama administration's unprecedented drive to criminalize whistleblowing.

The persecution of Julian Assange and other WikiLeaks supporters is a shot across the bow not only against those who leak sensitive information to the public that expose egregious acts by the well-connected, but at investigative journalists and researchers who in their course of their work uncover high crimes and misdemeanors by powerful corporations and governments.

As the World Socialist Web Site pointed out, "Assange's real 'crime' is that, through its publication of a mass of secret US military documents, diplomatic cables and video footage, WikiLeaks has exposed the criminal character of the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and numerous other conspiracies carried out against the world's people by Washington and its allies."

Make no mistake, this ruling is a warning of further draconian moves to come.

A Precursor to War? As Washington Renews Military Threats Against Iran, Cyber Attacks Escalate

2011-11-06T08:51:00.000-08:00

As evidence mounts that the U.S. secret state is launching cyber weapons against official enemies, while carrying out wide-ranging spy ops against their "friends," Gen. Keith Alexander, the dual-hatted overlord of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, says that the Obama administration is "working on a system" that will "help" ISPs thwart malicious attacks.

Speaking at the Security Innovation Network (SINET) "Showcase 2011" shindig at the National Press Club in Washington, Alexander told security grifters eager to gouge taxpayers for another piece of lucrative "cybersecurity" pie: "What I'm concerned about are the destructive attacks. Those are the things yet to come that cause us a lot of concern."

That's rather rich coming from the head of a secretive Pentagon satrapy suspected of designing and launching the destructive Stuxnet virus which targeted Iran's civilian nuclear program.

According to fresh evidence provided by IT security experts it now appears that the same constellation of shadowy forces which unleashed Stuxnet are at it again with the newly discovered Duqu spy Trojan.

In a follow-up analysis, Kaspersky Lab researcher Alex Gostev wrote that "the highest number of Duqu incidents have been recorded in Iran. This fact brings us back to the Stuxnet story and raises a number of issues."

Not least of which is the continuing demonization of the Islamic Republic by an unholy alliance of U.S. militarists, their Israeli pit bulls and congressional shills hyping the "Iran threat."

War Drums Beating

With the United States and the other capitalist powers incapable of digging the world economy out from under the slow-motion meltdown sparked by 2008's market collapse, and with tens of millions of enraged citizens rejecting austerity measures that will further enrich financial elites at their expense, will the Obama administration "go for broke" and set-off a new conflagration in the Middle East?

Ratcheting up bellicose rhetoric, John Keane, a retired four-star general, former Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army now currently perched on the board of General Dynamics, a major purveyor of cyber attack tools for the government, told the House Homeland Security Committee October 26, "We've got to put our hand around their throat now. Why don't we kill them? We kill other people who are running terrorist operations against the United States."

AFP reported that "Iran made a formal protest" over Keane's remarks which urged "the targeted assassination of members of its elite Quds Force military special operations unit," over a fairy-tale plot allegedly cooked-up by Tehran, which employed a failed used-car salesman, a DEA snitch and members of the Zetas drug gang in a scheme to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.

While the plot lines are as preposterous as allegations prior to the 2003 Iraq invasion that Saddam Hussein's regime was involved in the 9/11 attacks, one cannot so easily dismiss the propaganda value of such reports by administration "information warriors." The same can be said of the series of controlled leaks emanating from London, Tel Aviv and Washington urging immediate air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.

The Guardian reported that "Britain's armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran amid mounting concern about Tehran's nuclear enrichment programme."

Chillingly, the "Ministry of Defence believes the US may decide to fast-forward plans for targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities. British officials say that if Washington presses ahead it will seek, and receive, UK military help for any mission, despite some deep reservations within the coalition government."

On the same day that MoD's sanctioned leak appeared in the British press, Haaretz disclosed that "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are trying to muster a majority in the cabinet in favor of military action against Iran, a senior Israeli official has said. According to the official, there is a 'small advantage' in the cabinet for the opponents of such an attack."

"Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon said he preferred an American military attack on Iran to an Israeli one. 'A military move is the last resort,' he said."

The Associated Press reported that as Netanyahu moved to persuade his cabinet to "authorize a military strike against Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program," Israel successfully test-fired "a missile believed capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to Iran."

Adding to the disinformational witch's brew, The Washington Post reported that "a new spike in anti-Iran rhetoric and military threats by Western powers is being fueled by fears that Iran is edging closer to the nuclear 'breakout' point, when it acquires all the skills and parts needed to quickly build an atomic bomb if it chooses to," anonymous "Western diplomats and nuclear experts said Friday."

Post stenographer Joby Warrick informed us that a "Western diplomat who had seen drafts of the report" told him "it will elaborate on secret intelligence collected since 2004 showing Iranian scientists struggling to overcome technical hurdles in designing and building nuclear warheads."

And late last week Reuters disclosed that "a senior U.S. military official said on Friday Iran had become the biggest threat to the United States and Israel's president said the military option to stop the Islamic republic from obtaining nuclear weapons was nearer."

"'The biggest threat to the United States and to our interests and to our friends ... has come into focus and it's Iran,' said the U.S. military official, addressing a forum in Washington." Conveniently, "reporters were allowed to cover the event on condition the official not be identified."

While some critics argue that Israel does not presently have the capacity to launch such an attack, and that "the volume of the war hysteria is being turned up with one purpose in mind: the Israelis want the US to do their dirty work for them," such reasoning is hardly reassuring.

Indeed, as the World Socialist Web Site points out, "the Israeli government has already made advanced preparations for an attack on Iran."

"On the military front," analyst Peter Symonds warned that "Israeli warplanes last week conducted a long-range exercise--of the type required to reach Iran--using a NATO airbase on the Italian island of Sardinia." In other words, the IDF drill was not a "rogue" exercise unilaterally conducted by Israel, but further evidence of Washington's "desperate bid to offset its economic decline by securing its hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia."

In the context of escalating tensions over Iran's nuclear enrichment program, seeded by manufactured "terror" plots, the imperialist powers may choose the "cyber" route prior to launching devastating missile and bomber strikes against Iranian military installations and civilian infrastructure.

Pentagon planners now believe that attack tools have reached the point where blinding Iran's air defenses while sowing chaos across population centers with power outages and the shutdown of financial services may now be a viable option.

This is not idle speculation. During the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, the National Journal disclosed that Central Command "considered a computerized attack to disable the networks that controlled Iraq's banking system, but they backed off when they realized that those networks were global and connected to banks in France."

Facing growing opposition at home and abroad to endless wars and imperial adventures, would the Obama administration have such qualms today?

Attack Tools Already in Play

As Antifascist Calling previously reported, when the Duqu virus was discovered last month, analysts at Symantec believed that the remote access Trojan (RAT) "is essentially the precursor to a future Stuxnet-like attack."

"The threat was written by the same authors (or those who have access to the Stuxnet source code) and appears to have been created since the last Stuxnet file was recovered," researchers averred.

Since their initial reporting, Symantec, drawing on research from CrySyS lab at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary, the organization which discovered the malware, reported they located an installer file in the form of a Microsoft Word document which exploits a previously unknown zero-day vulnerability.

Like Stuxnet, Duqu's stealthiness is directly proportional to its uncanny ability to capitalize on what are called zero-day exploits hardwired into it's digital DNA; security holes that are unknown to everyone until the instant they're used in an attack.

Similar to other dubious commodities traded on our dystopian "free markets," zero-days are bits of tainted code sought by criminal hackers, financial and industrial spies and enterprising security agencies that can sell for up to $250,000 a pop on the black market.

When Stuxnet appeared in dozens of countries last year, targeting what are called programmable logic controllers (PLCs) on industrial computers manufactured by Siemens that control everything from water purification and food processing to oil refining and potentially deadly chemical processes, researchers found it was designed to harm only one specific target: PLCs processing uranium fuel at a nuclear facility in Iran.

As Wired Magazine reported, when Symantec analysts who had been picking Stuxnet apart convinced internet service providers who controlled "servers in Malaysia and Denmark" where the virus "phoned home" each time it infected a new machine, to reroute the virus to a secure "sinkhole," they were in for a shock.

"Out of the initial 38,000 infections," journalist Kim Zetter wrote, "about 22,000 were in Iran. Indonesia was a distant second, with about 6,700 infections, followed by India with about 3,700 infections. The United States had fewer than 400. Only a small number of machines had Siemens Step 7 software installed--just 217 machines reporting in from Iran and 16 in the United States."

"The sophistication of the code," Wired averred, "plus the fraudulent certificates, and now Iran at the center of the fallout made it look like Stuxnet could be the work of a government cyberarmy--maybe even a United States cyberarmy.

"This made Symantec's sinkhole an audacious move," Zetter wrote. "In intercepting data the attackers were expecting to receive, the researchers risked tampering with a covert U.S. government operation."

Writing in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Thomas Rid, a former RAND Corporation employee and "Reader in War Studies at Kings College in London," who has close ties to the Western military establishment, observed in relation to Stuxnet that network "sabotage, first, is a deliberate attempt to weaken or destroy an economic or military system. All sabotage is predominantly technical in nature, but of course may use social enablers."

"The resources and investment that went into Stuxnet could only be mustered by a 'cyber superpower', argued Ralph Langner, a German control system security consultant who first extracted and decompiled the attack code."

In an interview with National Public Radio, Langer said that the "level of expertise" behind Stuxnet "seemed almost alien. But that would be science fiction, and Stuxnet was a reality."

"Thinking about it for another minute, if it's not aliens, it's got to be the United States."

"For the time being it remains unclear how successful the Stuxnet attack against Iran's nuclear program actually was" Rid noted. "But it is clear that the operation has taken computer sabotage to an entirely new level."

Researcher Vikram Thakur, commenting on the latest Duqu discoveries reported: "The Word document was crafted in such a way as to definitively target the intended receiving organization." And whom, pray tell, was being targeted by Duqu? Why Iran, of course.

"Once Duqu is able to get a foothold in an organization through the zero-day exploit, the attackers can command it to spread to other computers."

Thakur wrote, "the Duqu configuration files on these computers," which did not have the ability to connect to the internet and the author's command and control (C&C) server, "were instead configured not to communicate directly with the C&C server, but to use a file-sharing C&C protocol with another compromised computer that had the ability to connect to the C&C server."

"Consequently," Thakur concluded, "Duqu creates a bridge between the network's internal servers and the C&C server. This allowed the attackers to access Duqu infections in secure zones with the help of computers outside the secure zone being used as proxies."

As Kaspersky Lab researchers pointed out, "in each of the four instances of Duqu infection a unique modification of the driver necessary for infection was used."

"More importantly," analysts averred, "regarding one of the Iranian infections there were also found to have been two network attack attempts exploiting the MS08-067 [MS Word] vulnerability. This vulnerability was used by Stuxnet too."

"If there had been just one such attempt, it could have been written off as typical Kido activity--but there were two consecutive attack attempts: this detail would suggest a targeted attack on an object in Iran." (emphasis added)

Simply put, before the Pentagon decides to "kill them" as Gen. Keane indelicately put it, battlefield preparations via directed cyber attacks and other forms of sabotage may be part of a preemptive strategy to decapitate Iranian defenses prior to more "kinetic" attacks.

'Boutique Arms Dealers'

Despite media hype about future cuts in the so-called "defense" budget, Defense Industry Daily disclosed that "the US military has announced plans to spend billions on technology to secure its networks."

According to the Defense Department's FY 2012 budget proposal, "the Pentagon said it plans to spend $2.3 billion on cybersecurity capabilities."

However, when NextGov "questioned why the Air Force's $4.6 billion 2012 budget request for cybersecurity was $2.3 billion more than Defense's servicewide spending proposal, Pentagon officials upped their total figure from $2.3 billion to $3.2 billion."

Why the discrepancy? A "Pentagon spokesperson explained that the service's estimate differed dramatically because the Air Force included 'things' that are not typically considered information assurance or cybersecurity."

What kind of "things" are we talking about here?

As BusinessWeek reported in July, firms such as Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Dynamics, "the stalwarts of the traditional defense industry," are "helping the U.S. government develop a capacity to snoop on or disable other countries' computer networks."

Capitalizing on the Defense Department's desire to develop "hacker tools specifically as a means of conducting warfare," this "shift in defense policy gave rise to a flood of boutique arms dealers that trade in offensive cyber weapons."

Investigative journalists Mike Riley and Ashlee Vance averred that "most of these are 'black' companies that camouflage their government funding and work on classified projects."

As last winter's hack of HBGary Federal by Anonymous revealed, "black" firms, including those like Palantir which received millions of dollars in start-up funding from the CIA's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, hacker tools, such as sophisticated Trojans and stealthy rootkits, believed to be the route used to introduce the Stuxnet virus, have also been used to target political activists and journalists in the United States at the behest of financial institutions such as the Bank of America and the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

As researcher Barrett Brown revealed, "Team Themis was a consortium made up of HBGary, Palantir, and Berico (with Endgame Systems serving as a 'silent partner' and providing assistance from the sidelines) that was set up in order to provide offensive intelligence capabilities to private clients."

Although Endgame Systems "went dark" after Anonymous released thousands of HBGary files, The Register disclosed that the firm "helps US intelligence identify and hack into vulnerable networks, and is targeting a similar role in Britain's nascent national cyber security operations."

The Register noted that the "limited publicly information currently available on the firm hints at its further role assisting clandestine government cyber operations by identifying targets and developing exploits."

As BusinessWeek revealed, the firm is "a major supplier of digital weaponry for the Pentagon. It offers a smorgasbord of wares, from vulnerability assessments to customized attack technology, for a dizzying array of targets in any region of the world."

Unsurprisingly, this was a major draw for venture capital firms "Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers," who collectively fronted Endgame some $30 million. According to Riley and Vance, "what really whet the VCs' appetites, though, according to people close to the investors, is Endgame's shot at becoming the premier cyber-arms dealer."

While a client list has yet to emerge, it's safe to assume that secret state agencies on both sides of the Atlantic are lining up to purchase Endgame's toxic products.

Although no definitive answer has emerged as to whom might targeting Iran with Duqu, as BusinessWeek revealed Endgame "deals in zero-day exploits. Some of Endgame’s technology is developed in-house; some of it is acquired from the hacker underground. Either way, these zero days are militarized--they've undergone extensive testing and are nearly fail-safe."

"People who have seen the company pitch its technology--and who asked not to be named because the presentations were private--say Endgame executives will bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings, and corporate offices."

According to Riley and Vance, "the executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems."

Indeed, "Endgame weaponry comes customized by region--the Middle East, Russia, Latin America, and China--with manuals, testing software, and 'demo instructions.' There are even target packs for democratic countries in Europe and other U.S. allies."

"The quest in Washington, Silicon Valley, and around the globe is to develop digital tools both for spying and destroying," BusinessWeek observed. "The most enticing targets in this war are civilian--electrical grids, food distribution systems, any essential infrastructure that runs on computers."

"This stuff is more kinetic than nuclear weapons," Dave Aitel, the founder of a computer security company in Miami Beach called Immunity told Riley and Vance. "Nothing says you've lost like a starving city."

While Aitel and a host of other "little Eichmanns" who enrich themselves servicing the American secret state refused to discuss his firm's work for the government, a source told the publication that Immunity "makes weaponized 'rootkits': military-grade hacking systems used to bore into other countries' networks," and that Aitel's clients "include the U.S. military and intelligence agencies."

We do not know if, or when, the United States, NATO and Israel will opt for a military "solution" to the so-called "Iranian problem."

We do know however, as the World Socialist Web Site warned, "as global capitalism lurches from one economic and political crisis to the next, rivalry between the major powers for markets, resources and strategic advantage is plunging humanity towards a catastrophic conflict that would devastate the planet."

Boomerang! Is the Pentagon Field-Testing 'Son of Stuxnet'?

2011-10-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

When the cybersecurity firm Symantec announced they had discovered a sophisticated Trojan which shared many of the characteristics of the Stuxnet virus, I wondered: was the Pentagon and/or their Israeli partners in crime field-testing insidious new spyware?

According to researchers, the malicious program was dubbed "Duqu" because it creates files with the prefix "~DQ." It is a remote access Trojan (RAT) that "is essentially the precursor to a future Stuxnet-like attack." Mark that carefully.

In simple terms, a Trojan is malicious software that appears to perform a desirable function prior to its installation but in fact, steals information from users spoofed into installing it, oftentimes via viral email attachments.

In the hands of enterprising security agencies, or criminals (the two are functionally synonymous), Trojans are primarily deployed for data theft, industrial or financial espionage, keystroke logging (surveillance) or the capture of screenshots which may reveal proprietary information.

"The threat" Symantec averred, "was written by the same authors (or those that have access to the Stuxnet source code) and appears to have been created since the last Stuxnet file was recovered."

The malware, which began popping-up on the networks of several European firms, captured lists of running processes, account and domain information, network drives, user keystrokes and screenshots from active sessions and did so by using a valid, not a forged certificate, stolen from the Taipei-based firm, C-Media.

Whereas Stuxnet, believed to be a co-production of U.S. and Israeli cyber-saboteurs, was a weaponized virus programmed to destroy Iran's civilian nuclear power infrastructure by targeting centrifuges that enrich uranium, Duqu is a stealthy bit of spy kit that filches data from manufacturers who produce systems that control oil pipelines, water systems and other critical infrastructure.

Sergey Golovanov, a malware expert at Kaspersky Labs told Forbes that Duqu is "is likely the brainchild of a government security apparatus. And it's that government's best work yet."

Speaking from Moscow, Golovanov told Forbes in a telephone interview that "right now were are pretty sure that it is the next generation of Stuxnet."

"We are pretty sure that Duqu is a government cyber tool and are 70% sure it is coming from the same source as Stuxnet," Golovanov said.

"The victims' computer systems were infected several days ago. Whatever it is," Golovanov noted, "it is still in those systems, and still scanning for information. But what exactly it is scanning for, we don't know. It could be gathering internal information for encryption devices. We only know that it is data mining right now, but we don't know what kind of data and to what end it is collecting it."

Whom, pray tell, would have "access to Stuxnet source code"?

While no government has claimed ownership of Stuxnet, IT experts told Forbes "with 100% certainty it was a government agency who created it."

Suspects include cryptologists at the National Security Agency, or as is more likely given the outsourcing of intelligence work by the secret state, a combination of designers drawn from NSA, "black world" privateers from large defense firms along with specialists from Israel's cryptologic division, Unit 8200, operating from the Israeli nuclear weapons lab at the Dimona complex, as The New York Times disclosed.

Analyst George Smith noted: "Stuxnet was widely distributed to many computer security experts. Many of them do contract work for government agencies, labor that would perhaps require a variety of security clearances and which would involve doing what would be seen by others to be black hat in nature. When that happened all bets were off."

Smith averred, "once a thing is in world circulation it is not protected or proprietary property."

While one cannot demonstrably prove that Duqu is the product of one or another secret state satrapy, one can reasonably inquire: who has the means, motive and opportunity for launching this particular bit of nastiness into the wild?

"Duqu's purpose," Symantec researchers inform us, "is to gather intelligence data and assets from entities, such as industrial control system manufacturers, in order to more easily conduct a future attack against another third party."

In other words, while Stuxnet was programmed to destroy industrial systems, Duqu is an espionage tool that will enable attackers "looking for information such as design documents that could help them mount a future attack on an industrial control facility."

Although it can be argued, as Smith does, that "source code for malware has never been secure," and "always becomes something coveted by many, often in direct proportion to its fame," it also can't be ruled out that military-intelligence agencies or corporate clones with more than a dog or two in the "cyberwar" hunt wouldn't be very interested in obtaining a Trojan that clips "industrial design" information from friend and foe alike.

Black Programs

The circulation of malicious code such as Duqu's is highly destabilizing. Considering that the U.S. Defense Department now considers computer sabotage originating in another country the equivalent to an act of war for which a military response is appropriate, the world is on dangerous new ground.

Speaking with MIT's Technology Review, Ronald Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto think tank that researches cyberwarfare, censorship and espionage, told the publication that "in the context of the militarization of cyberspace, policymakers around the world should be concerned."

Indeed, given the fact that it is the United States that is now the biggest proliferator in the so-called cyber "arms race," and that billions of dollars are being spent by Washington to secure such weapons, recent history is not encouraging.

With shades of 9/11, the anthrax mailings and the Iraq invasion as a backdrop, one cannot rule out that a provocative act assigned to an "official enemy" by ruling elites just might originate from inside the U.S. security complex itself and serve as a convenient pretext for some future war.

A hint of what the Pentagon is up to came in the form of a controlled leak to The Washington Post.

Last spring, we were informed that "the Pentagon has developed a list of cyber-weapons and -tools, including viruses that can sabotage an adversary's critical networks, to streamline how the United States engages in computer warfare."

The list of "approved weapons" or "fires" are indicative of the military's intention to integrate "cyberwar" capabilities into its overall military doctrine.

According to Ellen Nakashima, the "classified list of capabilities has been in use for several months and has been approved by other agencies, including the CIA."

The Post reported that the new "framework clarifies, for instance, that the military needs presidential authorization to penetrate a foreign computer network and leave a cyber-virus that can be activated later."

On the other hand, and here's where Duqu may enter the frame, the "military does not need such approval, however, to penetrate foreign networks for a variety of other activities. These include studying the cyber-capabilities of adversaries or examining how power plants or other networks operate."

Additionally, Nakashima wrote, Pentagon cyberwarriors "can also, without presidential authorization, leave beacons to mark spots for later targeting by viruses, the official said."

As part of Washington's on-going commitment to the rule of law and human rights, as the recent due process-free drone assassination of American citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki, followed by that of his teenage son and the revenge killing of former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi by--surprise!--Al Qaeda-linked militias funded by the CIA clearly demonstrate, the "use of any cyber-weapon would have to be proportional to the threat, not inflict undue collateral damage and avoid civilian casualties."

Try selling that to the more than 3,600 people killed or injured by CIA drone strikes, as Pakistan Body Count reported, since our Nobel laureate ascended to his Oval Office throne.

As George Mason University researchers Jerry Brito and Tate Watkins described in their recent paper, Loving the Cyber Bomb? The Dangers of Threat Inflation in Cybersecurity Policy, despite overheated "rhetoric of 'cyber doom' employed by proponents of increased federal intervention," there is a lack of "clear evidence of a serious threat that can be verified by the public."

However, as Brito and Watkins warned, "the United States may be witnessing a bout of threat inflation similar to that seen in the run-up to the Iraq War," one where "a cyber-industrial complex is emerging, much like the military-industrial complex of the Cold War. This complex may serve to not only supply cybersecurity solutions to the federal government, but to drum up demand for them as well."

A "demand" which will inevitably feed the production, proliferation and deployment of a host of viral attack tools (Stuxnet) and assorted spybots (Duqu) that can and will be used by America's shadow warriors and well-connected corporate spies seeking to get a leg-up on the competition.

While evidence of "a serious threat" may be lacking, and while proponents of increased "cybersecurity" spending advanced "no evidence ... that opponents have 'mapped vulnerabilities' and 'planned attacks'," Brito and Watkins noted there is growing evidence these are precisely the policies being pursued by Washington.

Why might that be the case?

As a declining imperialist Empire possessing formidable military and technological capabilities, researcher Stephen Graham has pointed out in Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism, the United States has embarked on a multibillion dollar program "to militarize the world's global electronic infrastructures" with a stated aim to "gain access to, and control over, any and all networked computers, anywhere on Earth."

Graham writes that "the sorts of on-the-ground realities that result from attacks on ordinary civilian infrastructure are far from the abstract niceties portrayed in military theory."

Indeed, as "the experiences of Iraq and Gaza forcefully remind us," robotized drone attacks and already-existent cyberwar capabilities buried in CIA and Pentagon black programs demonstrate that "the euphemisms of theory distract from the hard fact that targeting essential infrastructure in highly urbanized societies kills the weak, the old and the ill just as surely as carpet bombing."

A Glimpse Inside the Complex

In the wake of the HBGary hack by Anonymous earlier this year, the secrecy-shredding web site Public Intelligence released a 2009 Defense Department contract proposal from the firm.

Among other things, it revealed that the Pentagon is standing-up offensive programs that "examine the architecture, engineering, functionality, interface and interoperability of Cyber Warfare systems, services and capabilities at the tactical, operational and strategic levels, to include all enabling technologies."

HBGary, and one can assume other juiced defense contractors, are planning "operations and requirements analysis, concept formulation and development, feasibility demonstrations and operational support."

"This will include," according to the leaked proposal, "efforts to analyze and engineer operational, functional and system requirements in order to establish national, theater and force level architecture and engineering plans, interface and systems specifications and definitions, implementation, including hardware acquisition for turnkey systems."

Indeed, the company will "perform analyses of existing and emerging Operational and Functional Requirements at the force, theater, Combatant Commands (COCOM) and national levels to support the formulation, development and assessment of doctrine, strategy, plans, concepts of operations, and tactics, techniques and procedures in order to provide the full spectrum of Cyber Warfare and enabling capabilities to the warfighter."

During the course of their analysis Symantec learned that Duqu "uses HTTP and HTTPS to communicate with a command-and-control (C&C) server that at the time of writing is still operational."

"The attackers were able to download additional executables through the C&C server, including an infostealer that can perform actions such as enumerating the network, recording keystrokes, and gathering system information. The information is logged to a lightly encrypted and compressed local file, which then must be exfiltrated out."

To where, and more importantly by whom was that information "exfiltrated" is of course, the $64,000 question.

A working hypothesis may be provided by additional documents published by Public Intelligence.

According to a cyberwar proposal to the Pentagon by General Dynamics and HBGary, "Project C" is described as a program for the development "of a software application targeting the Windows XP Operating System that, when executed, loads and enables a covert kernel-mode implant that will exfiltrate a file from disk (or other remotely called commands) over a connected serial port to a remote device."

We're informed that Project C's "primary objectives" was the design of an implant "that is clearly able to exfiltrate an on-disk file, opening of the CD tray, blinking of the keyboard lights, opening and deleting a file, and a memory buffer exfiltration over a connected serial line to a collection station."

"As part of the exploit delivery package," HBGary and General Dynamics told their prospective customers, presumably the NSA, that "a usermode trojan will assist in the loading of the implant, which will clearly demonstrate the full capability of the implant."

Duqu, according to Symantec researchers, "uses a custom C&C protocol, primarily downloading or uploading what appear to be JPG files. However, in addition to transferring dummy JPG files, additional data for exfiltration is encrypted and sent, and likewise received."

While we don't know which firms were involved in the design of Stuxnet and now, Duqu, we do know thanks to Anonymous that HBGary had a Stuxnet copy, shared it amongst themselves and quite plausibly, given what we've learned about Duqu, Stuxnet source code may have been related to the above-mentioned "Project C."

Kevin Haley, Symantec's director of product management told The Register that "the people behind Stuxnet are not done. They've continued to do different things. This was not a one-shot deal."

Amid Calls for 'Less Democracy,' German Security Agencies Caught Planting Spyware on Private Computers

2011-10-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

Revelations by the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) that German secret state agencies are installing spyware on personal computers capable of transforming a PC's webcam and microphone into a listening device, sparked outrage across the political spectrum.

It has since emerged that despite legal requirements that police do so only with a warrant and only if surveillance intercepts are used to prevent threats to "life, limb or liberty," authorities are not complying with strict limits laid down by Germany's Supreme Court.

And while these disclosures may have ignited a political firestorm in Berlin, they will come as no surprise to readers of Antifascist Calling.

Three years ago, I reported that Germany's foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND, was caught up in a major scandal after the whistleblowing web site WikiLeaks, published documents which revealed that the agency had extensively spied on, and even recruited, journalists for use in illicit intelligence operations.

Recalling the CIA's long-running Operation Mockingbird program that enrolled journalists as spies in what are now euphemistically called "influence operations," the covert manipulation of the domestic and foreign press according to WikiLeaks, showed "the extent to which the collaboration of journalists with intelligence agencies has become common and to what dimensions consent is manufactured in the interests of those involved."

BBC News reported that "Bavaria has admitted using the spyware, but claimed it had acted within the law." And Deutsche Welle disclosed that "several additional German states have admitted to deploying spyware," including "Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony," but like their counterparts in Bavaria, those officials also claimed they had operated "within the parameters of the law."

As I have written many times, the secret state is bound by their own set of "laws." Normal rules and procedures which are supposed to protect citizens from unwarranted government intrusions are deemed inoperative for reasons of "national security."

In the United States, constitutional protections designed to guarantee the right of citizens to protest, enjoy a modicum of privacy in their daily lives or, at the most basic level, have their day in court before being executed, have been overthrown by two successive administrations who assert the right to conduct the affairs of state in secret, according to a set of legal guidelines which are unreviewable by any court.

It would appear that similar moves are underway in Germany.

'Backdoor Functionality'

The Chaos Computer Club revealed in their analysis that when they reverse engineered the program, variously dubbed "0zapftis", "Bundestrojaner" or "R2D2," they discovered that the spyware "found in the wild" and "submitted to the CCC anonymously," can "not only siphon away intimate data but also offers a remote control or backdoor functionality for uploading and executing arbitrary other programs. Significant design and implementation flaws make all of the functionality available to anyone on the internet."

Club researchers learned that "the trojan's developers never even tried to put in technical safeguards to make sure the malware can exclusively be used for wiretapping internet telephony, as set forth by the constitution court. On the contrary, the design included functionality to clandestinely add more components over the network right from the start, making it a bridge-head to further infiltrate the computer."

"The government malware can," analysts noted, "unchecked by a judge, load extensions by remote control, to use the trojan for other functions, including but not limited to eavesdropping."

"This complete control over the infected PC, is open not just to the agency that put it there, but to everyone. It could even be used to upload falsified 'evidence' against the PC's owner, or to delete files, which puts the whole rationale for this method of investigation into question."

Their study also "revealed serious security holes that the trojan is tearing into infected systems. The screenshots and audio files it sends out are encrypted in an incompetent way, the commands from the control software to the trojan are even completely unencrypted. Neither the commands to the trojan nor its replies are authenticated or have their integrity protected."

"We were surprised and shocked by the lack of even elementary security in the code. Any attacker could assume control of a computer infiltrated by the German law enforcement authorities," a CCC spokesperson commented. "The security level this trojan leaves the infected systems in is comparable to it setting all passwords to '1234'."

Nothing 'Magical' about this 'Lantern'

There are glaring similarities between the "R2D2" package deployed by German police and "Magic Lantern" software used by the FBI. As with Bureau spyware, the German program is a keystroke logging virus installed via a malicious email attachment or by exploiting operating system vulnerabilities.

When news of the FBI program first broke back in 2000, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) obtained documents under a Freedom of Information Act request relating to the system, which were part of a suite of surveillance tools then called Carnivore.

At the time, EPIC revealed that the FBI "had developed an Internet monitoring system that would be installed at the facilities of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and would monitor all traffic moving through that ISP."

Once a user is spoofed into installing the malicious Trojan, it is activated when PGP encryption is used to enhance email security. When switched on, the Trojan will log the PGP password which will then allow the agents to read the encrypted communications unbeknownst to the sender. Since its first iteration in the 1990s, such programs are exponentially more sophisticated and are now capable of scooping-up virtually everything a user stores on a computer or handset.

A 2007 exposé by Wired Magazine revealed that Magic Lantern's "computer and internet protocol address verifier" or CIPAV, "gathers a wide range of information, including the computer's IP address; MAC address; open ports; a list of running programs; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer's registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL."

And once that data was obtained, it was siphoned-off to the Bureau's technology laboratory in Quantico, Virginia via fiber optic splitter cables.

As whistleblower Babak Pasdar revealed in 2008, following earlier disclosures by AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, Verizon, and other giant telecommunications firms, including AT&T, maintained a high-speed DS-3 digital line that handed the Bureau and other security agencies "unfettered" access to the carrier's wireless network, including billing records and customer data "transmitted wirelessly."

Just after the scandal broke, Wired Magazine disclosed that "two years before the Bavarian state in Germany began using a controversial spy tool to gather evidence from suspect computers, German authorities approached the Federal Bureau of Investigation to discuss a similar tool the U.S. law enforcement agency was using."

"Bavarian authorities," Wired reported, "began using their spyware in 2009. It's not known if that spyware is based on the FBI's, but in July 2007, German authorities contacted the FBI seeking information about its tool."

The FBI's assistant legal attache in Frankfurt "sent an email to Bureau colleagues on July 24, 2007, writing, 'I am embarrassed to be approaching you again with a request from the Germans ... but they now have asked us about CIPAV (Computer Internet Protocol Address Verifier) software, allegedly used by the Bu[reau]'."

The email uncovered by Wired was part of a huge cache of files obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in response to their 2007 Freedom of Information Act request for data on CIPAV.

In the years since those disclosures, secret state surveillance is more pervasive than ever and and now includes the "lawful interception" of GPS locational data streamed automatically to their manufacturers or hosting services by smart phones.

It appears that German secret state officials are playing a similar game. According to Der Spiegel, at least two agencies, the Bundeskriminalamt, or BKA, the federal crime investigation agency equivalent to the FBI, and some 16 Landeskriminalamt or LKAs, regional investigative bureaus, may have deployed the malware during wide-ranging investigations unrelated to terrorism.

Following Chaos Computer Club revelations, it is clear that German authorities have been caught red-handed violating a landmark decision by the Supreme Court. "The court," Der Spiegel noted, "specified that online spying was only permissible if there was concrete evidence of danger to individuals or society."

In a follow-up piece, Der Spiegel disclosed that the firm DigiTask was the spyware's developer. Along with hundreds of similar firms, DigiTask is a niche security outfit that develops applications for the so-called "lawful interception" market.

In 2008, WikiLeaks released two documents concerning "interception technology for Skype and SSL in Bavaria, Germany. The first document is a communication by the Bavarian Ministry of Justice to the prosecutors office, relating to cost distribution for the interception licenses between police and prosecution. The second document allegedly presents the offer made by Digitask, the German company developing the technology, and holds information on pricing and license model, high-level technology descriptions and other detail."

According to the WikiLeaks analysis, the DigiTask offer "introduces a basic description of the cryptographic workings of Skype, and concludes that new systems are needed to spy on Skype calls."

We were informed in that letter that German police were interested in standing-up a "Skype Capture Unit."

"In a nutshell: malware is installed onto a target machine, to intercept Skype Voice and Chat. Another feature introduced is a recording proxy, that is not part of the offer, yet would allow for anonymous proxying of recorded information to a target recording station. Access to the recording station is possible via a multimedia streaming client, supposedly offering real-time interception."

"Another part of the offer," WikiLeaks noted, was related to "an interception method for SSL based communication, working on the same principle of establishing a man-in-the-middle attack on the key material on the client machine. According to the offer, this method works for Internet Explorer and Firefox web browsers. Digitask also recommends using overseas proxy servers, to cover the tracks of all activities."

As it turns out those proxy servers were conveniently located in the United States. This raises the distinct possibility that information captured by German secret state officials is also being shared with "partner agencies" of their close NATO ally, the CIA, FBI and NSA.

This was confirmed by CCC's analysis of R2D2's code. "To avoid the location of the command and control server, all data is redirected through a rented dedicated server in a data center in the USA. The control of this malware is only partially within the borders of its jurisdiction."

"Considering the incompetent encryption and the missing digital signatures on the command channel, this poses an unacceptable and incalculable risk. It also poses the question how a citizen is supposed to get their right of legal redress in the case the wiretapping data get lost outside Germany, or the command channel is misused."

The short answer is, they can't.

Aside from lining the pockets of DigiTask shareholders, there are more sinister uses for the malware. As the World Socialist Web Site noted "the remote-control function could be used to load and execute malicious software, and to plant bogus digital evidence on the computer, which can then be detected if the computer was seized. A suspect would have no way of proving that this had happened."

This would certainly be a convenient way to "neutralize" a troublesome politician, journalist or over-eager anticorporate campaigner.

'Less Democracy'

Following similar efforts in the United States, evidence that police are illegally spying on German citizens using sophisticated malware developed for the government are neither benign nor accidental events.

As a recent article in German Foreign Policy disclosed, leading voices in Europe's largest state are "pleading for a transition toward 'less democracy'." A recent book, published under the title, Dare Less Democracy, claims that the "voice of the people" and the "'emancipatory Zeitgeist, putting everything into question,' has a too 'paralyzing influence" on current governance'."

"The author," the critical online leftist magazine observes, "demands to 'correct the system' for 'more efficient policy making.' These 'corrections' must include the dismantlement of democratic participation."

Author Laszlo Trankovits, the bureau chief of the Deutsche Presse Agentur in South Africa, who had previously worked for the agency in Washington "as its White House correspondent," explained "it should never be suggested that a 'democratic society can do away with inequality and establish social justice'."

"Trankovits," German Foreign Policy notes, is "a member of the elitist Rotary-Club." He demands that "the elite clearly 'commits itself to capitalism and profit,' and that 'intelligent forms of public relations' be used to communicate policy measures to the population. However, the demand for more 'transparency' is 'counterproductive and paralyzing' for any 'governance efficiency' and must be rejected."

That drivel such as this was penned by a journalist for Germany's leading news agency, to whit, that the media should serve as a propaganda mouthpiece for casino capitalist interests, is one more sign that democratic norms, already seriously eroded in the West, are now being rapidly jettisoned by our political masters.

With the global capitalist system on the verge of a repeat performance of the 2008 meltdown, and with a worldwide resurgence of opposition to the one-sided costs of saving a system of financial plunder borne by the working class, elite calls for "less democracy" are warning signs that stern measures, including blanket surveillance and naked police violence, are in the offing.

Dead Men Tell No Tales: The CIA, 9/11 and the Awlaki Assassination

2011-10-09T11:20:00.000-07:00

On September 30, the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) assets under the Agency's control, assassinated the alleged "external operations" chief of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, also known as Al-Qaeda, Anwar al-Awlaki, and a second American citizen, Samir Khan, the 25-year-old editor of Inspire magazine, in a drone strike in Yemen.

As The Washington Post reported last month, the "commingling" of CIA officers, JSOC paramilitary troops and contractors "occupy an expanding netherworld between intelligence and military operations" where "congressional intelligence and armed services committees rarely get a comprehensive view."

Or any "view" at all, which is precisely what the CIA and Pentagon have long desired; an oversight-free zone where American policymakers operate, as Dick Cheney infamously put it, on the "dark side," a position fully-embraced by the "hope and change" administration of Barack Obama.

Awlaki's state-sponsored killing, like the May 2 murder of Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, resurface many unanswered questions concerning the 9/11 attacks, the so-called trigger for America's global "War on Terror."

But before turning to those issues, it is necessary to take a detour and examine administration actions; specifically the deliberations undertaken by Obama's national security team which culminated in Awlaki's death.

White House "Death Panel"

Unlike the fantasies of the corporate-controlled Tea Party who charged during the run-up to the White House sell-out of health care reform that the administration would create "death panels" to deny care to the elderly, it has since emerged that Team Obama has stood-up the authentic article.

According to The Washington Post, President Obama's Justice Department "wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting" of Awlaki. The Post reports that the memorandum "was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi."

That memorandum, according to The New York Times, was drafted in June 2010, some six months after Awlaki had been placed on the White House hit list, by Office of Legal Counsel attorneys "David Barron and Martin Lederman."

Both former OLC lawyers are prominent "liberals" from prestigious universities; Barron at Harvard and Lederman at Georgetown University.

Ironically enough, in several scholarly articles they had railed against the previous administration's adaptation of the "Unitary Executive Theory" promulgated by "torture memo" authors Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

Under Bush, OLC opinions were used to justify everything from warrantless wiretapping, the domestic deployment of the military to arrest Americans, to the torture and indefinite detention of "terrorist" suspects at the Guantánamo Bay prison gulag and CIA "black sites."

This of course begs the question: if Awlaki's murder was "legal," why then was the authorization to do so reached in camera by officials following a deliberative process which can't be shared with the public because of "national security"?

The answer should be chilling and shocking to all Americans: because the nucleus of a death squad state recalling those stood-up in Chile and Argentina during the "dirty war" period of the 1970s may now exist.

Reuters disclosed that Americans "are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions, according to officials."

"There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel," reporter Mark Hosenball wrote, "which is a subset of the White House's National Security Council. ... Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate."

According to Reuters, "targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC 'principals,' meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval."

A "former official" told Hosenball that "one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to 'protect' the president," i.e., provide Obama legal cover under the thin veneer afforded by "plausible deniability."

McClatchy News reported that "broadly speaking" White House orders to kill Awlaki were based on claims that "the nation's inherent right of self-defense [is] recognized under international law." However, "international law also imposes limits: Targeted killing is banned except to protect against 'concrete, specific and imminent' danger."

And although the administration now claims that Awlaki was targeted for death because "his role in AQAP had gone 'from inspirational to operational'," Reuters disclosed that "officials acknowledge that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki's hands-on role in plotting attacks was patchy."

In fact, the White House has failed to provide any proof whatsoever that Awlaki posed an "imminent danger" to the United States, although there is considerable evidence that he was on the radar of U.S. and allied secret state intelligence agencies for more than a decade, had close ties to several of the 9/11 hijackers and could have been picked up and indicted at any time.

Instead, federal law enforcement officials gave Awlaki a green light to leave the United States, unlike thousands of innocent Muslim-Americans swept-up and detained by the FBI in the post-9/11 hysteria that followed the attacks.

A "former military intelligence officer who worked with special operations troops to hunt down high-value terrorism targets," told the right-wing Washington Times: "I think it's pretty easy to understand why they didn't take him alive. Would you want to deal with the hassle of trying to put him on trial, an American citizen that has gotten so much press for being the target of a CIA kill order? That would be a nightmare. The ACLU would be crawling all over the Justice Department for due process in an American court."

That about sums up the dominant mindset of an Empire in sharp decline: the rule of law and due process for criminal suspects reduced to a "hassle."

Slouching Towards Dictatorship

Obama's national security team justified whacking Awlaki, as with their earlier hit on Osama Bin Laden, by referencing the Bush-era Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), hastily passed by Congress in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

"A decade later," McClatchy reported, "the Obama administration contends that this wartime authority remains even if it's evolved for reasons the administration won't fully elucidate."

The relevant section of AUFM reads: "IN GENERAL -- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons." (emphasis added)

Readers will undoubtedly note that in passing the resolution, Congress not only ceded its authority to declare war to the Executive Branch but also planted the seeds of the administration's preemptive war doctrines along with an unprecedented expansion of its domestic surveillance powers.

More pertinently, is the reason why the administration "won't fully elucidate" how the Bush-era AUMF "evolved" chiefly due to the fact that secret annexes now exist which authorize the killing of Americans, not only in Yemen or other "War on Terror" fronts, but right here in the United States itself?

After all, it's not beyond the Obama administration to play fast and loose with the truth or hide repressive policies under layers of top secret presidential "findings" or a multitude of CIA and Pentagon black programs, as did the previous Bush government.

Recall that during the run-up to the reauthorization of three expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, civil libertarians decried the use of secret legal memos justifying everything from unchecked access to internet and telephone records to the deployment of government-sanctioned malware on private computers during "national security" investigations.

Recall too, that the Obama administration, as The New York Times disclosed in June, handed the FBI "significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention."

These "news rules," the Times averred, will give agents "more latitude" to investigate citizens even when there is no evidence they have exhibited "signs of criminal or terrorist activity."

It gets worse.

Last month, The New York Times revealed that the FBI "is permitted to include people on the government's terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped."

Under these new standards, the Bureau may deem someone a "known or suspected terrorist," not based on evidence gathered through a criminal investigation, but solely if officials have "particularized derogatory information," including that derived from First Amendment protected activities, to support to support an individuals' watch listing or placement on a "no-fly" list.

One administration wag, speaking on condition of anonymity because to do otherwise would reveal "closely held deliberations within the administration," but did so anyway because this was clearly a sanctioned leak to stenographer Peter Finn, told The Washington Post that "what constitutes due process in [the Awlaki case] is a due process in war."

"The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Aulaqi," Finn wrote, "or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process."

We now know, thanks to Reuters, that authorization came from a White House death panel, an extra-constitutional committee of anonymous officials operating outside the rule of law.

As we have seen since Barack Obama took office, as under the previous Bush government, the Constitution is a meaningless scrap of paper with some words on it, duly trotted out on national holidays only to be cast aside in practice; that is, when it isn't used as a rhetorical hammer against assorted "new Hitlers" or geopolitical rivals whose resources corporate America seek to "liberate."

Dead Men Tell No Tales

As toxic to democratic norms and the rule of law as the Awlaki affair clearly is, there are underlying parapolitical themes surrounding his murder which strengthen suspicions that what took place in Yemen on September 30 is more than just another story about an overt power grab by the Executive Branch.

While the government and media continue to cover-up the role played by the CIA and other secret state agencies in alleged intelligence "failures" leading up to the 9/11 attacks, evidence suggests that the Awlaki killing, as with last May's murder of former bête noire and on-again, off-again ally, Osama Bin Laden, may have been a "clean-up" operation designed to remove inconvenient witnesses with knowledge of Agency involvement in the plot.

As Antifascist Calling reported nearly two years ago in the wake of the aborted 2009 bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day over Detroit, a plot for which Awlaki was accused of orchestrating, though evidence can't be supplied because it's "secret," The Washington Post disclosed that Awlaki had extensive contacts with 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar and Hani Hanjour who "had spent time at his mosques in California and Falls Church."

In a series of 2010 articles (here, here, here and here), I reported on the stark parallels between September 11 and the Flight 253 affair.

And as with the 2001 attacks we were told "changed everything," far from being a failure to "connect the dots," intelligence and law enforcement officials possessed sufficient information that should have prevented accused bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, from boarding that plane and placing the lives of nearly 300 air passengers at risk.

And wile Awlaki wasn't given a free pass by the administration in that botched attack, earlier government failures to apprehend him certainly set the stage.

According to History Commons, "shortly before the [FBI] investigation [into Awlaki's alleged ties to the now-shuttered Holy Land Foundation] is closed," in 2000, Awlaki "is beginning to associate with hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar shortly before the investigation ends."

"For instance," History Commons avers, "on February 4, one month before the FBI investigation is closed, al-Awlaki talks on the telephone four times with hijacker associate [and suspected Saudi intelligence agent] Omar al-Bayoumi."

"The 9/11 Commission will later speculate that these calls are related to Alhazmi and Almihdhar, since al-Bayoumi is helping them that day, and that Alhazmi or Almihdhar may even have been using al-Bayoumi's phone at the time. Al-Bayoumi had also been the subject of an FBI counterterrorism investigation in 1999."

Keep in mind that at least two of the hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, figure prominently in recent revelations by researcher Kevin Fenton, the author of Disconnecting the Dots.

In a recent conversation with Boiling Frogs Post's Sibel Edmonds and Peter B. Collins, Fenton said that during the course of his investigation, drawn from the Congressional 9/11 Joint Inquiry, the 9/11 Commission, the Justice Department's Inspector General's report, and the CIA's still-redacted Inspector General's report, he discovered that the CIA had deliberately withheld information from the FBI that the future hijackers had entered the United States with multiple entry visas issued in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Even though the Agency had identified the pair as international terrorists who attended a 2000 Al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia where they and others, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Khallad Bin Attash, one of the principle architects of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, planned the assault on the USS Cole and the 9/11 attacks, they kept this from the FBI, information that could have led straight to the heart of Al-Qaeda's "planes operation."

Fenton provides substantial evidence that the CIA's Alec Station Director Richard Blee and deputy, Tom Wilshire, concealed intelligence from investigators, concluding this "information was intentionally omitted in order to allow an al-Qaeda attack to go forward against the United States."

As part of this continuing cover-up, Awlaki's ties to the 9/11 hijackers were far more extensive than secret state officials have led us to believe.

In fact, although the Obama administration has justified killing Awlaki with false claims that he was AQAP's "external operations" chief, his role before 9/11 was substantially more significant from an investigatory perspective: that of a "fixer," first in San Diego where he assisted Saudi spook Omar al-Bayoumi in "settling" Alhazmi and Almihdhar, and later in Falls Church, Virginia, where he did the same for Hani Hanjour.

In 2002, Newsweek revealed that "some federal investigators suspect that al-Bayoumi could have been an advance man for the 9-11 hijackers, sent by Al Qaeda to assist the plot that ultimately claimed 3,000 lives."

"Two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar," Newsweek disclosed, "al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars.

Payments arrived "in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family."

With startling similarities to the Awlaki case, ten days after the attacks, al-Bayoumi is picked up by British authorities in London, where he had relocated in July 2001, at the request of the FBI. Although his phone calls, bank accounts and associations are scrutinized, the Bureau claim they found no connections to terrorism.

The Washington Post will report that by 2002 the FBI had concluded, the same year Awlaki leaves the U.S., "that no evidence could be found of any organized domestic effort to aid the hijackers."

Recall that new information linking some members of the Saudi royal family and its intelligence apparatus to the attacks has recently surfaced. Last month, The Miami Herald revealed that two weeks before the kamikaze assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a Saudi family "abruptly vacated their luxury home near Sarasota, leaving a brand new car in the driveway, a refrigerator full of food, fruit on the counter--and an open safe in a master bedroom."

Investigative reporters Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen learned that "law enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights--including leader Mohamed Atta--in discoveries never before revealed to the public."

"Ten years after the deadliest attack of terrorism on U.S. soil," Summers and Christensen wrote, "new information has emerged that shows the FBI found troubling ties between the hijackers and residents in the upscale community in southwest Florida, but the investigation wasn't reported to Congress or mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report."

In a follow-up piece that significantly advanced the story, researcher Russ Baker reported on the WhoWhatWhy web site "that those alleged confederates were closely tied to influential members of the Saudi ruling elite."

Building on information first disclosed by the Herald, Baker, the author of Family of Secrets, reports that this "now-revealed link" between those who consorted with the hijackers in Florida "and the highest ranks of the Saudi establishment, reopens questions about the White House's controversial approval for multiple charter flights allowing Saudi nationals to depart the U.S., beginning about 48 hours after the attacks, without the passengers being interviewed by law enforcement--despite the identification of the majority of the hijackers as Saudis."

Is there a pattern between the hands-off treatment afforded well-connected Saudis and Anwar al-Awlaki's casual, and inexplicable, flight from the United States?

"After 9/11" History Commons points out, "the FBI will question al-Awlaki, and he will admit to meeting with Alhazmi several times, but say he does not remember what they discussed. He will not claim to remember Almihdhar at all." Other accounts suggest that the relationship was much closer.

"The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry," History Commons avers, "claim that Alhazmi and Almihdhar 'were closely affiliated with [al-Awlaki] who reportedly served as their spiritual adviser during their time in San Diego. ... Several persons informed the FBI after September 11 that this imam had closed-door meetings in San Diego with Almihdhar, Alhazmi, and another individual, whom al-Bayoumi had asked to help the hijackers'."

"Around August 2000," History Commons reports, "al-Awlaki resigns as imam and travels to unknown 'various countries.' In early 2001, he will be appointed the imam to a much larger mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. During this time frame, Alhazmi, Almihdhar, and fellow hijacker Hani Hanjour will move to Virginia and attend al-Awlaki's mosque there."

Anecdotally, in 2003 Newsweek reports: "Lincoln Higgie, an antiques dealer who lived across the street from the mosque where Aulaqi used to lead prayer, told Newsweek that he distinctly recalls the imam knocking on his door in the first week of August 2001 to tell him he was leaving for Kuwait. 'He came over before he left and told me that something very big was going to happen, and that he had to be out of the country when it happened,' recalls Higgie."

The antiques dealer later told The New York Times, that when he learned that Awlaki would be permanently leaving San Diego, "he told the imam to stop by if he was ever in the area--and got a strange response." Higgie said, "'I don't think you'll be seeing me. I won't be coming back to San Diego again. Later on you'll find out why'."

Although the FBI suspected Awlaki "had some connection with the 9/11 plot," authorities claim there wasn't enough evidence to charge him, nor can he be deported because he's an American citizen. And when the Bureau hatched an ill-conceived plan to arrest him on an obscure charge of "transporting prostitutes across state lines," that plan collapsed when Awlaki left the U.S. in March 2002.

"But on October 10, 2002," History Commons reports, "he makes a surprise return to the U.S." Although his name is on a terrorist watch list and he is detained by Customs' officials when he lands in New York, they are informed by the FBI that "his name was taken off the watch list just the day before. He is released after only three hours."

"Throughout 2002," History Commons informs us, Awlaki is the "subject of an active Customs investigation into money laundering called Operation Greenquest, but he is not arrested for this either, or for the earlier contemplated prostitution charges. At the time, the FBI is fighting Greenquest, and Customs officials will later accuse the FBI of sabotaging Greenquest investigations."

Awlaki again leaves the U.S., this time for good. Although the FBI admits they were "very interested" in Awlaki, they fail to stop him leaving the country. One FBI source told U.S. News and World Report, "We don't know how he got out."

Inexplicably however, it was not until 2008 that secret state officials concluded that Awlaki was an Al-Qaeda operative! This beggars belief, and raises the question as to why he was allowed to leave in the first place. It certainly can't be for lack of evidence or that when Awlaki set-up shop, first in London and finally in Yemen, he is continually under surveillance by British, Yemeni and American intelligence agencies.

Although interviewed four times by the FBI after September 11, the Bureau concluded, according to The New York Times, that Awlaki's "contacts with the hijackers and other radicals were random."

Other investigators however, disagreed. "One detective," the Times reported, whose name has been scrubbed from 9/11 Commission files, told staff that he believed Awlaki "was at the center of the 9/11 story." At the time of the Flight 253 affair, I wrote that "despite, or possibly because of these dubious connections he was allowed to leave the country."

In fact, the curious disinterest exhibited by authorities in bringing Awlaki to ground following September 11, were neither "errors in judgement" nor "mistakes" by overtaxed investigators but are rather, a modus operandi which suggests that Awlaki and others were part of a CIA domestic operation which allowed the 9/11 plot to go forward.

• • •

Nothing in what I have written above should be construed as justification for the extrajudicial assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki. In fact, the opposite conclusion can be drawn. The available evidence indicates that Awlaki could have been arrested multiple times. At the least serious end of the criminal justice spectrum he could have been charged with providing "material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization," to whit, Al-Qaeda, and legally taken out of circulation.

That he wasn't and continued to operate freely as a propagandist, despite substantial corroboration from multiple law enforcement sources that he was a key figure in the pre-9/11 domestic support network, suggests that Awlaki may have been a double agent, albeit one who had decidedly gone "off the reservation."

Awlaki's handling by authorities raise serious questions about just how extensive U.S. support for Al-Qaeda was prior to, and possibly even after the September 11 attacks, particularly in resource-rich global hot-spots.

As numerous journalists and researchers have painstakingly documented, Al-Qaeda, allied terrorist outfits and international narco-trafficking networks have a long, sordid history of supporting U.S. covert operations that targeted America's geopolitical rivals even as Bin Laden's far-flung organization plotted to attack the United States itself.

In this light, Awlaki's "targeted killing" as with the earlier hit on Osama Bin Laden, may be part of a larger CIA/Pentagon operation to remove inconvenient participants and witnesses from the scene who might have a thing or two to say about the crimes and intrigues hatched by the imperialist Empire.

After all, dead men tell no tales...

Cronyism, Corruption and the 'War on Terror'

2011-09-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

The partisan furor surrounding the collapse of solar equipment manufacturer Solyndra, a Fremont, Calif. firm which secured a $535 million government loan from the Energy Department, underscores congressional hypocrisy when it comes to widespread cronyism and corruption.

The Washington Post reported that "The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company's factory, newly obtained e-mails show."

According to Post stenographers Joe Stephens and Carol D. Leonnig, those "August 2009 e-mails released exclusively to The Washington Post," shorthand for a controlled leak by Republican staffers, "show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal."

In response to White House pressure, "OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company's project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators."

Solyndra, a poster-child for the administration's PR campaign to expand "green jobs" was part of Obama's lifeless "stimulus package" which White House flacks argued would ameliorate unemployment through tax cuts and other perks to corporations in the wake of the on-going economic meltdown.

"It was alarming," Frank Rusco, a program director at the Government Accountability Office, told The New York Times.

GAO auditors found "Energy Department preliminary loan approvals--including the one for Solyndra--were granted at times before officials had completed mandatory evaluations of the financial and engineering viability of the projects."

"They can't really evaluate the risks without following the rules," Rusco said.

But in Washington, the well-connected follow their own rules so it was hardly surprising that Solyndra executives hired Washington lobbyists in early 2009, retaining McBee Strategic Consulting.

"Five lobbyists employed by the McBee group eventually worked on Solyndra's behalf," the Times disclosed, "including Michael Sheehy, a former top aide to Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader. Solyndra has paid McBee Consulting $340,000 since 2009."

However, despite intense pressure to approve the loan the firm's business model in the highly-competitive solar energy market was flawed from the get-go.

Although the unique design of their solar panels may not have relied on silicon, and executives assumed their "competitors would continue to pay a relatively high price for silicon, allowing Solyndra to charge the premium required to turn a profit," industry experts "outside the federal government, going back to 2008, were predicting silicon prices were headed for a steep fall."

Between 2008 and 2009 when the loan was approved, sinking demand for solar energy as a result of the economic crisis, drove down the price of silicon from more than a $1000 a pound to less than $100 in the twinkling of an eye.

Despite high-profile investors, loan guarantees, a new factory, and frankly a better made, more efficient product, Solyndra was forced to sell its panels well-below production costs, seriously wounding the company.

Taxpayers and laid-off workers were left holding the bag.

Factor in the collapse of the commercial and home real estate markets, the dearth of new factory construction, and allegations of "unfair-trade complaints against China for out-sized subsidies to its clean-energy companies," Bloomberg News averred, and the entire renewable-energy sector was in deep trouble.

"China provided $30 billion in credit to its biggest solar manufacturers last year, about 20 times the U.S. effort, Jonathan Silver, executive director of the Energy Department's loan program, told a congressional panel Sept. 14," Bloomberg reported.

The former socialist republic, which learned a lesson or two from other Asian "tigers" and the United States for that matter when it came to development, "frequently provides both zero-cost financing, occasionally free land and other kinds of incentives and subsidies" to its wind and solar companies, Silver told Congress.

The problem is not that the Chinese state subsidizes manufacturing but that the United States refuses to do so. Witness the near hysteria by rightist troglodytes over modest efforts by the federal government to construct a network of high-speed bullet trains across the United States.

Grifters in Congress, academia and the business press however, in thrall to Reaganite fantasies of "free trade" and "free markets" are willfully blind to the historical role played by the American state, and it was hardly an "invisible" one, in directing national priorities and resources during the period of rapid industrialization.

As readers are well aware, Antifascist Calling does not carry water for the Obama administration, a government as duplicitous as the previous Bush regime. However, there is more than a hint of a manufactured scandal by congressional Republicans over the Solyndra affair. While political blood sport may titillate Washington pundits, something far more sinister than a questionable loan is going on here.

In fact, the targets of the Republican attack machine are two-fold: discredit any government efforts to boost the industrial sector while disparaging renewable energy entirely as a potential, albeit weak threat, to the multinational energy conglomerates who provided 77% of their $18.8 million in campaign contributions to the GOP, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Contrast congressional market fundamentalist zeal here with their deafening silence when it comes to the heavily-subsidized U.S. "defense" industry, where mammoth cost overruns and mega-profits for the Military-Industrial Complex are factored in to the acquisition of weapons systems which have cost the American people trillions of dollars in investments elsewhere.

Deepening Crisis

That Solyndra went belly-up and filed for bankruptcy protection last month, laying off nearly 1,100 workers, is another sign that the global crisis which eviscerated productive sectors of the economy, continues to have disastrous effects for the vast majority of Americans.

As the World Socialist Web Site reported, "census bureau figures that came out Tuesday, showing the largest number of Americans living in poverty since records began in 1959, are a damning indictment of American capitalism and the entire political system."

The manufacturing sector, long the staple of a healthy economy, has undergone a major transformation since the 1970s. As U.S. firms, challenged by stiff competition from their capitalist rivals, sought to lower costs and increase shrinking profit margins, jobs were offloaded to low-wage platforms.

Yankee corporations however, that fled offshore to hide their assets and dodge taxes in so-called "free trade" and other "special" industrial zones where high productivity and low labor costs were guaranteed by repressive, U.S.-allied comprador regimes, made out like proverbial bandits.

As a result, entire industries withered and died, and large swathes of America's industrial heartland were transformed into economic dead zones.

Those corporatist chickens, demented stepchildren of neoliberal globalization, have now come home to roost.

"In 2010 there were 46.2 million people--almost one out of every six residents--living below the official poverty line, including 16.4 million children," socialist critic Jerry White wrote. "Of these nearly half, or 20 million, were described as living in deep poverty, subsisting on less than half the income the US government says is needed for basic food, shelter, clothing and utilities."

Contrast deepening levels of poverty with administration moves to secure a "settlement" with financial elites who profited on both ends of the 2007-2008 crisis. Their reckless, and fraudulent, credit default swaps and brisk trade in worthless mortgage-backed securities have cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars with no end in sight.

But as New York Federal Reserve board member Kathryn Wylde told The New York Times, "Wall Street is our Main Street--love 'em or hate 'em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible."

As the World Socialist Web Site noted, "In the name of the free market, they slashed taxes on the corporations and the rich, deregulated industry and the banks and backed a corporate offensive against the jobs and living standards of the working class."

And despite the fact that "corporations and the banks are now sitting on a cash hoard of $2 trillion," said economic gangsters are "refusing to hire any workers," thus exacerbating the crisis for average workers through unemployment, wage deflation and the loss of basic social benefits while boosting profits.

In his latest iteration as a "fighter" for "ordinary Americans," Obama's budget director told The New York Times that the president's new "deficit-reduction plan" would impose "a lot of pain," cutting some $320 billion from Medicare and Medicaid.

That proposal would impose higher premiums and deductibles for beneficiaries while slashing payments to "teaching hospitals and rural hospitals" as well as charging "co-payments to frail homebound older people who receive home health services," the Times reported.

Under the plan the federal government would also "reduce the growth of federal payments to states for treating low-income people under Medicaid," effectively telling older citizens and the poor, "hurry-up and die," the mantra of "libertarian" Tea Party loons who view the lack of affordable health care as "the price of freedom."

Meanwhile, Obama's Air Force Secretary Michael Donley "signaled the service is ready for a fight and vowed to 'protect' most big-ticket hardware programs from steep budget cuts," including the cost-overrun-plagued F-35 fighter program, The Hill reported.

As well, Donley "placed the multibillion-dollar effort to develop a new bomber aircraft on his don't-cut list" saying, "developing the 'long-range strike family of systems,' including the new bomber, is essential."

According to the Secretary, accepting cosmetic reductions in the bloated "defense" budget will mean "we will need to accept greater risk," if by "risk" Donley means shaving a penny or two off the share price of the largest defense corps.

Grifter's Ball

The Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) enacted by the Bush regime in 2008, and supported by then-candidate Obama and the Democrats, followed by 2009's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the so-called "stimulus package," were rushed through Congress under crisis conditions allegedly to "save the economy."

In practice however, both legislative edicts were fantastic boondoggles that rewarded "too-big-to-fail" investment banks that brought on the crisis in the first place while shortchanging foreclosed homeowners and tens of millions of laid-off workers.

A so-called "stimulus" that disavowed any direct creation of jobs by government action, such as massive spending on public works and infrastructure repair as was done during the Great Depression, was doomed to fail.

This failure is borne out by an official unemployment rate of 9.1% with some 14 million people looking for work. However, the government's broader, and more accurate index of the jobs crisis, which measures those who either stopped looking for work or are involuntary part-time workers rose to 16.2% in August, a staggering 25.3 million people.

As economist Michael Hudson observed: "From the outset in 2009, the Obama Plan has been to re-inflate the Bubble Economy by providing yet more credit (that is, debt) to bid housing and commercial real estate prices back up to pre-crash levels, not to bring debts down to the economy's ability to pay. The result is debt deflation for the economy at large and rising unemployment--but enrichment of the wealthiest 1% of the population as economies have become even more financialized."

How has this played out in the real world?

Marxist economist Richard Wolff wrote scant weeks before Solyndra's collapse: "As demand for goods and services shrank fast, businesses and the rich stopped investing in production. Their investible funds were idled, and that only aggravated the crisis. The self-regulating, efficient capitalist market system proved to be the myth its critics had mocked. However, the market system did spread the US crisis quickly to Europe and beyond."

"The bailout of casino capitalists vested a new ruling class with $13 trillion of public IOUs (including the $5.3 trillion rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) added to the national debt," Hudson noted. "The recipients have paid out much of this gift in salaries and bonuses, and to 'make themselves whole' on their bad risks in default to pay off."

"An alternative," Hudson wrote, "would have been to prosecute them and recover what they had paid themselves as commissions for loading the economy with debt."

The result of these reckless policies are plain as day: from rising unemployment to collapsing infrastructure, and from a steady rise in home foreclosures to increased levels of immiseration, Bush-Obama policies have benefited those who wield real power in the capitalist world: the financial oligarchs and militarists who prospered from the bailouts and "War on Terror" military spending.

But the "government could have used its equity ownership and control of the banks to provide credit and credit card services as the 'public option'," Hudson noted. In other words, rather than bailing-out the fraudsters, the state could have invested public funds in programs that actually benefit the public, a novel idea rejected out of hand as "socialist tinkering."

However, Hudson averred, "this is not the agenda that the Bush-Obama administrations chose. Only Wall Street had a plan in place to unwrap when the crisis opportunity erupted."

"Stockholders were bailed out, counterparties were saved from loss, and managers today are paying themselves bonuses as usual," Hudson wrote. "The 'crisis' was turned into an opportunity to panic politicians into helping their Wall Street patrons."

But the bailouts did far more than merely enrich the thieves, it actually exacerbated the global meltdown.

"As the crisis flared in 2008," Wolff observed, "governments unfroze credit markets by pouring money into tottering banks and insurance companies. Governments printed and created new money to pay for part of these policies; to cover the other part governments borrowed."

And whom, pray tell, were the American people's new creditors? Why "the banks and insurance companies they had bailed out" of course! "Governments," Wolff wrote, "also borrowed from the companies and rich individuals who had withheld investing in the production of goods and services and had thereby worsened the crisis."

Is this a great system, or what!

Ponzi Republic

Not a single top executive of any Wall Street firm has been prosecuted by the federal government for their crimes. Take Goldman Sachs as a prime example, a firm which journalist Matt Taibbi memorably described as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

As McClatchy News investigative reporter Greg Gordon revealed, on the cusp of the housing bubble's collapse, "Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting."

Those fraudulent deals "enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies."

"Only later," Gordon wrote, "did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk" and that "pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses."

Taibbi recounted last spring for Rolling Stone that the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations mammoth 650-page report, Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, supplied "a panoramic portrait of a bubble era that produced the most destructive crime spree in our history--'a million fraud cases a year' is how one former regulator puts it."

"But the mountain of evidence," Taibbi wrote, "collected against Goldman by [Senator Carl] Levin's small, 15-desk office of investigators--details of gross, baldfaced fraud delivered up in such quantities as to almost serve as a kind of sarcastic challenge to the curiously impassive Justice Department--stands as the most important symbol of Wall Street's aristocratic impunity and prosecutorial immunity produced since the crash of 2008."

Contrast Justice Department inaction regarding Goldman Sachs, including ignoring potential perjury by Goldman's CEO Lloyd Blankfein as Taibbi and other investigators revealed, with their zeal to lower the boom on Solyndra.

In connection with the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, the FBI "executed a search warrant" on the firm September 8, the Los Angeles Times reported, "but declined to discuss what they were investigating. FBI spokesman Peter D. Lee said documents related to the search had been sealed."

This is the same secret state agency that is curiously indifferent to far-larger grifts run by the big money boys. Keep in mind, this is the Justice Department satrapy waging covert war against the antiwar movement, illegally spying on Muslim-Americans, ginning-up phony "terror" plots through their employment of paid informants and provocateurs while allowing real terrorists, such as the network which assisted the 9/11 plotters as The Miami Herald recently disclosed, run wild in Florida. Yes, that FBI!

"Republicans," the Los Angeles Times observed, "have seized on Solyndra's downfall as a sign that President Obama's stimulus and 'green jobs' campaign were failures."

"They have also noted that key Obama backer George Kaiser was a major investor in Solyndra, the first company to receive a Department of Energy loan guarantee to boost alternative energy companies." But then again, so was Madrone Capitol, a private equity fund affiliated with the powerfully-connected Walton family of Wal-Mart fame, long-time GOP supporters.

Kaiser, a Tulsa, Okla. billionaire and head of The George Kaiser Family Foundation, "holds about 35.7 percent of Solyndra, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Kaiser made 16 visits to the president's aides since 2009, according to White House visitor logs," Bloomberg News reported.

A "bundler" for Obama's 2008 presidential bid, Kaiser raised somewhere between $50,000 to $100,000 for the campaign and contributed some $2,300 personally, according to the Federal Election Commission. What Bloomberg fails to report however, is the more than $7.5 million in campaign contributions made over the last decade by the Walton family to the Republican party and assorted right-wing causes.

While evidence of irregularities may suggest that Solyndra executives were less than forthcoming in their application for federal loans, and that well-connected billionaire donors to the president's campaign may have helped tip the scales in their favor, their behavior, and potential losses to taxpayers, pale in comparison to the far larger, and more damaging, crimes of Wall Street con artists who continue to thumb their noses at the public and evade justice.

Crony Capitalism Gone Wild: The 'War on Terror'

While Republican bag men for the superrich point to the Solyndra scandal, and there is something fishy going on here, as evidence of corruption in the White House, the fact is, Obama, like every president who occupied the Oval Office before him, is a wholly-owned creature of the ruling class.

Never mind that Team Obama recently abandoned plans to beef-up national air quality rules to reduce the emission of cancer-causing chemicals in smog. That move followed an intense lobbying campaign by polluters in the chemical, mining and petroleum sectors and their bipartisan congressional pets who alleged that the $90 billion price tag would "kill American jobs." Or that the "environmental president," in a course reversal sure to have oil industry executives jumping for joy, will soon approve plans to build the Keystone XL pipeline that will carry mega-polluting Canadian tar sands oil to Gulf Coast refineries.

And never mind that the White House, the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate are conspiring against the American people to gut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid through a congressional Supercommittee whilst continuing to bailout financial jackals to the tune of some $13 trillion, even as the Securities and Exchange Commission blithely shredded thousands of incriminating documents that let the gangsters off the hook as Rolling Stone revealed in August.

And of course, pay no attention to the expansion of the imperialist Empire's endless wars and occupations, its extension of outsourced "War on Terror" CIA torture programs into Somalia, or that the Obama administration, as The Washington Post recently reported "is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula," the on-going assault on civil liberties here in the heimat or mounting evidence that the provocateurs who murdered nearly 3,000 people on 9/11 may have been given a leg up by U.S. secret state agencies as they prepared to slam hijacked passenger airliners into buildings.

What partisan hacks in both corporatist political parties will never acknowledge, let alone investigate or prosecute, are orders of magnitude greater, "War on Terror" boondoggles. Two examples:

• The National Security Agency's multibillion dollar fiasco, Trailblazer. As The Baltimore Sun revealed, the firm that NSA chose to head the project, Science Applications International Corporation, "forged close ties to several key defense and intelligence agencies, including the NSA. Among those who have served on SAIC's board of directors are former NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman; former CIA Directors John M. Deutch and Robert M. Gates; and former Defense Secretaries Melvin R. Laird and William J. Perry." As investigative journalist Tim Shorrock pointed out for CorpWatch, "SAIC is deeply involved in the operations of all the major collection agencies, particularly the NSA, NGA and CIA. SAIC, for example, managed one of the NSA's largest efforts in recent years, the $3 billion Project Trailblazer, which attempted (and failed) to create actionable intelligence from the cacophony of telephone calls, fax messages, and emails that the NSA picks up every day. Launched in 2001, Trailblazer experienced hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns and NSA cancelled it in 2005." Indeed, the Sun's exposure of SAIC's shoddy work on the project, as journalist Jane Mayer disclosed in The New Yorker, led Obama's Justice Department to prosecute whistleblower Thomas Drake, not those responsible for ripping off taxpayers or standing-up illegal driftnet spying programs. Congressional action? Zero, but SAIC walked away with the money and continues to be rewarded by the secret state and now ranks No. 6 on Washington Technology's "Top 100" list of largest government contractors with some $5.1 billion in Defense Department contracts.

• The Department of Homeland Security's Secure Borders Initiative or SBInet, a failed project to construct a "virtual electronic fence" along the border with Mexico. When DHS finally pulled the plug earlier this year, SBInet's lead contractor, Boeing Corporation, held contracts valued between $2 and $8 billion according to estimates by the Government Accountability Office. Boeing is a major "War on Terror" beneficiary, clocking-in at No. 3 on Washington Technology's "Top 100" list, with some $8.4 billion in revenue largely from the Defense Department. As the CIA's torture flight "booking agent," Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. profited handsomely from illegal Agency programs that secretly kidnapped and transferred "terrorist" suspects to foreign prisons and CIA "black sites." Victims who tried to litigate their claims against Jeppesen in the federal courts were rebuffed by Obama's Justice Department which asserted bogus "state secrets privilege" claims, alleging that litigating cases involving CIA kidnapping and torture would endanger "national security." In 2008, the GAO determined that there were "significant problems" with deployed technologies. Designed to detect a "target" with radar and then use video cameras to locate illegal entries, GAO investigators found that the radars were "too slow" and were often triggered by rain and "other weather phenomena." Information derived from sensors were to be forwarded to "command centers" where a "common operating picture" would be compiled by Customs and Border Patrol analysts and shared with other agencies. The so-called "common operating picture" would appear on computer screens as a geospatial map where "border entries" could be tracked in "real time." Despite congressional criticism, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said in January 2011, that the agency would be redirecting funding originally intended for SBInet "to a new border security technology effort." At the time of this writing, Boeing gets to keep the boodle already doled out and will soon rake-in even more. Last month, Defense Systems reported that Boeing's Phantom Ray, a jet-powered drone that can cruise at more than 600 miles per hour at 40,000 feet, is in the running to secure multibillion contracts for the Pentagon's next generation fleet of killer robots. "Key to its intended role," Defense Systems informed us, "the Phantom Ray can carry up to 4,500 pounds of ordinance, extra fuel and/or sensors in its payload bays. The bays are large enough to accommodate two 2,000 pound Joint Direct Attack Munition satellite guided bombs." There's no word yet from the Phantom Ray's intended targets--Somali herders and Afghan and Pakistani villagers--what they might think about Boeing's latest technological marvel.

What lessons can we learn from the examples cited above? Not many, if we rely on corporate media.

As part of capitalism's manufactured "debt crisis," the Associated Press reported that the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), a Washington, D.C. lobby shop which represents America's Military-Industrial-Security Complex, claimed that cuts to the bloated "defense" budget "would have a devastating impact on a defense industry."

To meet the challenge, AIA has launched their "Second to None" campaign and a related web site. According to industry flacks, which include usual suspects BAE Systems, Boeing, General Dynamics, L-3 Communications, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and dozens more, "American leadership in aerospace and defense is being threatened by forces in Congress and the administration. The security of our troops, our technological future and our economic stability are all at risk. We must preserve jobs across the nation that keep our nation strong. Join us and act now before it is too late."

Though there's little chance AIA's dire predictions will come to pass, alarmism sells particularly when the target audience are members of Congress.

As the bipartisan congressional Supercommittee prepares to gut the social safety net while leaving imperialism's war budget virtually untouched, an investigation by Alternet and Salon revealed that "when it comes to the military budget," Democrats "have received far more money from Pentagon contractors than [Arizona Senator Jon] Kyl or any of their Republican colleagues on the panel."

"Since 2007," investigative journalist Nick Turse wrote, "Democrats on the supercommittee have received more than $1 million in defense industry donations, while contributions to the Republicans added up to only $321,000."

Indeed, "panel co-chair Sen. Patty Murray ... has received more defense industry dollars over that period than the combined total of the top four Republican recipients on the supercommittee. Even so, her haul from the Pentagon's weapons-makers isn't the largest by a panel Democrat, a distinction held by her colleague from South Carolina, James Clyburn."

"An analysis of official government data paints a disturbing picture of big money, cozy relationships and potential influence that, alongside a concerted lobbying effort by the Pentagon and its powerful defense contractors, makes substantial reductions to the Department of Defense's budget improbable and steeper cuts to entitlement programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, more likely."

"Before Thanksgiving," Turse notes, "Clyburn and his supercommittee colleagues will be forced to make a clear decision for cuts to programs like Medicare and Medicaid or the type of budgets that have resulted in nearly $8 trillion in national security spending since 2001."

Any bets on which way the axe will fall?

By the way, what was that $500 million loan flap to Solyndra about?

Secret Diplomatic Cables Reveal Microsoft's 'Win-Win' Deal with Tunisian Police State

2011-09-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

Following revelations by Bloomberg Markets Magazine that a spun-off intelligence unit of German electronics giant Siemens, Trovicor, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP, a shadowy investment firm headquartered in Guernsey, had sold surveillance gear to Bahrain deployed against the pro-democracy movement, it has since emerged that Microsoft established an IT training program for Ministry of Justice and Interior officials in Tunisia.

A secret State Department cable published by the whistleblowing web site WikiLeaks, 06TUNIS2424, "Microsoft Inks Agreement with GOT," 22 September 2006, noted that "during the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in South Africa July 11-12, the GOT and the Microsoft Corporation signed a partnership agreement that provides for Microsoft investment in training, research, and development, but also commits the GOT to using licensed Microsoft software."

The export of high-tech products, included software suites employed for spying on political dissidents, are said to be closely regulated under U.S. law to prevent abuse by repressive governments.

However, as Amnesty International disclosed nearly a decade ago, "There are almost no legal or regulatory requirements amongst the G8 states for the inclusion of international human rights or humanitarian law content in the various military, security, and police force training services that they provide to states in all world regions."

According to investigators, "Even where human rights criteria are referred to in laws governing arms export and foreign military and security aid, they are often loosely interpreted."

"Instead," analysts averred, "it is short term profit making and political advantage that guide the bulk of the international arms trade," and as noted above in the Bahraini example, the transfer of dual-use surveillance kit figured prominently in the suppression of of pro-democracy protests. (emphasis added)

Not much has changed since 2003 when that report was issued. Indeed, sweetheart deals which hand over source code in exclusive arrangements with human rights abusers are the norm, not the exception, especially where it concerns America's "War on Terror" allies.

• • •

In January, during the opening round of the Arab Spring, a pro-democracy uprising by Tunisian citizens overturned the U.S.-allied dictatorship of President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali who was forced to flee to Saudi Arabia.

With high unemployment, staggering state corruption, repression and police violence, the long-simmering revolt was kick-started when an unemployed university graduate, Mohammed Bouazizi, an itinerant vegetable seller, set himself on fire in front of a government office to protest the confiscation of his stock by local police. Bouazizi died January 4. Authorities later claimed he did not have a "permit" to sell vegetables.

Initially caught off guard by events, the U.S. government had been fully apprised of this state of affairs by diplomats. A 17 July 2009 cable, 09TUNIS492, "Troubled Tunisia: What Should We Do?," informed us that "many Tunisians are frustrated by the lack of political freedom and angered by First Family corruption, high unemployment and regional inequities."

An autocratic though nominally "secular" regime, "the GOT brooks no advice or criticism, whether domestic or international. Instead, it seeks to impose ever greater control, often using the police."

"Despite Tunisia's economic and social progress," the State Department cheekily observed, "its record on political freedoms is poor. Tunisia is a police state, with little freedom of expression or association, and serious human rights problems."

A "police state" tailor made for CIA "War on Terror" operations.

As Amnesty International pointed out in 2008, "Abdellah al-Hajji and Lotfi Lagha, two of 12 Tunisians held by the US authorities in Guantánamo Bay, were returned to Tunisia in June. They were arrested on arrival and detained at the State Security Department of the Interior Ministry, where they alleged they were ill-treated and forced to sign statements" claiming they belonged to a "terrorist organization."

Al-Hajji told human rights' investigators that "he was deprived of sleep, slapped in the face and threatened that his wife and daughters would be raped." This of course, is standard operating procedure for close U.S. allies.

While claiming the Tunisian government "can point to some progress ... for every step forward there has been another back, for example the recent takeover of important private media outlets by individuals close to President Ben Ali."

Despite misgivings, the Obama administration, like the Bush government before it, recommended "a more pragmatic approach ... whereby we would speak to the Tunisians very clearly and at a very high level about our concerns regarding Tunisia's democracy and human rights practices, but dial back the public criticism."

Noting the set-up in Tunis and the dim prospects for democratic transformation, "of greatest interest to the GOT would be increased engagement on economic issues, i.e., on increasing bilateral trade and investment, as well as the provision of technical assistance, especially involving technology transfer."

Bingo! Nothing like advancing U.S. interests by fattening the bottom line of American corporations eager to sell high-tech spy gear, and provide the requisite training to spooks--just as they do here in the heimat.

And if said U.S. corps, like their European counterparts (can you say BAE) need to sweeten the deal with generous dollops of cash to officials from special, i.e., untraceable accounts on Gibraltar, Latvia or Malta, well, there's an app for that too!

A 06 June 2008 cable, 08TUNIS679, "Corruption in Tunisia: What's Yours Is Mine," informed us: "According to Transparency International's annual survey and Embassy contacts' observations, corruption in Tunisia is getting worse. Whether it's cash, services, land, property, or yes, even your yacht, President Ben Ali's family is rumored to covet it and reportedly gets what it wants. Beyond the stories of the First Family's shady dealings, Tunisians report encountering low-level corruption as well in interactions with the police, customs, and a variety of government ministries."

Continuing, the secret cable averred that "President Ben Ali's extended family is often cited as the nexus of Tunisian corruption." As with other close U.S. regional allies, including rulers of the former president's new "home," Saudi Arabia, the Ben Ali entourage was "often referred to as a quasi-mafia."

"An oblique mention of 'the Family' is enough to indicate which family you mean. Seemingly half of the Tunisian business community can claim a Ben Ali connection through marriage, and many of these relations are reported to have made the most of their lineage."

• • •

Apparently, so too did Microsoft; the 2006 cable noted that "the agreement is a win-win for Microsoft."

As part of the deal, "Microsoft will help the GOT to upgrade and modernize its computers and networking capabilities. In turn, the GOT agreed to purchase twelve thousand licenses to update government computers with official Microsoft software, rather than the pirated versions that have been commonly used, according to one Microsoft employee."

But the agreement did far more than "normalize" business relations between the Redmond, Washington software giant and the Tunisian government.

"The agreement also touches on internet security. Through a program on cyber criminality, Microsoft will train government officials in the Ministries of Justice and Interior on how to use computers and the internet to fight crime."

But as Bloomberg Markets Magazine revealed in their Bahrain investigation, overt references to "cyber criminality" more often than not mean delivering political dissidents straight into the clutches of state security thought police.

"As part of this program," the cable reads, "Microsoft will provide the GOT with original source codes for its programs."

"When asked by EconOff whether Microsoft had any concerns about releasing its source codes, [Microsoft Tunisia Director General Salwa] Smaoui replied that the source codes would only be available to a small number of officials."

Which ones? Why "Justice" and "Interior" ministry officials of course, securocrats charged with spying upon Tunisian citizens. Those deemed insufficiently "loyal" would face the grim prospect of detention and torture for having the temerity to cross swords with the country's "quasi-mafia."

• • •

Agreements such as those struck by Microsoft however, were neither "mistakes" nor a misguided strategy stitched together by an over-eager sales department. Rather, insider deals between giant corporations and authoritarian regimes are part and parcel of a business model which strives to increase all-important market share come hell or high water.

Examples abound. While Bloomberg Markets lifted the sheet on Siemens dirty deals with Bahrain, Narus (an Israeli firm founded by veterans of Israel's secretive signals intelligence Unit 8200, and later bought by Boeing), sold highly-intrusive deep packet inspection tools to the state-owned Telecom Egypt.

Back in January, Free Press Campaign Director Timothy Carr disclosed that when the Mubarak regime pulled the plug on internet and cell phone service earlier this year, Egypt's security services also had "the ability to spy on Internet and cell phone users, by opening their communication packets and reading their contents."

"Narus," Carr wrote, provided "Egypt Telecom with Deep Packet Inspection equipment (DPI), a content-filtering technology that allows network managers to inspect, track and target content from users of the Internet and mobile phones, as it passes through routers on the information superhighway."

As civil liberties watchdogs, researchers and whistleblowers revealed, Narus is the same shadowy firm that sold it's internet "Semantic Traffic Analyzer," the Narus STA 6400, to the National Security Agency.

AT&T whistleblower Mark Kline first revealed in documents he handed over to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), that Narus equipment was installed in "secret rooms" co-managed by AT&T and the NSA across the United States and powered illegal driftnet spying programs by both the Bush and Obama administrations.

As James Bamford pointed out in The Shadow Factory, "at the heart of the Intercept Suite is the NarusInsight computer, an enormously powerful machine capable of scanning the fastest transmission lines of the Internet, OC-192 cables that carry 10 gigabytes per second--10 billion bits of information per second."

"It can also carry," Bamford wrote, almost 130,000 simultaneous telephone conversations."

According to a sales pitch by the firm, "NarusInsight is the leading traffic intelligence system for capturing, analyzing and correlating IP traffic in real time."

"In all cases and for all solutions," we're told that "Narus employs a four-phase approach to traffic intelligence: 1. Monitor traffic from the network through the application layer. 2. Create actionable knowledge. 3. Analyze at macro or micro level. 4. Take informed action based on business and operational policies."

Indeed, "any number of links, at any speed, with any routing architecture, can be simultaneously monitored."

• • •

Undeterred by charges of widespread corruption and police violence, Cablegate file 10TUNIS104, "Tunisia: Communication Technologies Minister," penned 09 February 2010 by U.S. Ambassador Gordon Gray, tells us that "In a February 5 courtesy call by the Ambassador, Minister of Communication Technologies Mohamed Naceur Ammar explained the central role of information and communications technology (ICT) in Tunisia's development strategy."

"The Minister made a pitch," Gray averred, "for greater U.S. investment in Tunisia's ICT sector and was pleased to learn details of the imminent visit of a U.S. trade delegation to Tunisia that will include major U.S. ICT firm Motorola."

"Tunisia intends to become an ICT platform for the Mediterranean region by attracting investment, boosting education, and liberalizing the sector," Gray wrote. Critically, "Tunisia's investment code, he said, provides incentives to potential investors, while its education system is linked to a growing number of techno-parks that match research to market needs."

As readers are well aware, market "liberalization" is code for the sell-off of public assets, often at fire sale prices that enrich corrupt officials whilst gouging the public as prices for basic commodities, including telecommunication products, skyrocket.

"In response to the Ambassador's question on how the United States and Tunisia could deepen ICT cooperation, Ammar highlighted the need for business investment in Tunisia's ICT sector."

Gray replied "that in addition to the U.S. companies already active in the sector, including Microsoft, Cisco, HP, and IBM, a U.S. trade delegation scheduled for February 15 would include representatives from Motorola."

"On the internet," the Ambassador wrote, "his appointment was greeted with some irony among Tunisian dissident bloggers: 'Ammar' is the nickname, analogous to 'Big Brother,' long used by bloggers in referring the Government of Tunisia's wide-ranging internet censorship apparatus, headed by the Ministry of Communications Technologies."

Nonetheless, Ambassador Gray said that "university exchanges and training programs for Tunisian officials ... could fall under the 2004 U.S.-Tunisia Science and Technology Agreement."

Similar exchanges and training programs at the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (rebranded the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001), led to widespread human rights abuses across Latin America.

As SOA Watch points out, amongst those targeted by graduates schooled in the dark arts of "military intelligence and interrogation tactics" are the usual suspects: "educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor."

In the Middle East, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) disclosed that the International Military Education and Training (IMET) and the Joint Combined Exercises and Training (JCET) programs "may be improving the ability of a government or army to repress its own civilian population."

Indeed, "training foreign militaries in lethal tactics in order to gain access to these countries, sometimes called buying influence, is presumably thought to be in the realm of 'national security interests'."

• • •

Today, such training entails the use of highly-intrusive technologies sold to repressive states by Western companies for the maintenance of the capitalist status quo, tasks eagerly sought by technology giants such as Microsoft.

Between 2000-2010, the Government Contracts Won web portal reported that Microsoft pulled down some 284 contracts worth a total of $230,656,233 from the Defense Department.

While small potatoes in comparison to Narus's parent company, Boeing Corporation's $8,400,115,000 in government contracts according to Washington Technology, the firm's commercial products figure prominently in National Security State depredations.

As CNET News reported earlier this month, "Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 software can transmit your location without your explicit permission."

"An analysis by Samy Kamkar says that the Camera application sends the device's location--complete with latitude and longitude, a unique ID, and nearby Wi-Fi access points--to Microsoft even when the user has not given the app permission to do so."

In July, CNET News disclosed that "Microsoft has collected the locations of millions of laptops, cell phones, and other Wi-Fi devices around the world and makes them available on the Web."

According to researchers, "the vast database available through Live.com publishes the precise geographical location, which can point to a street address and sometimes even a corner of a building, of Android phones, Apple devices, and other Wi-Fi enabled gadgets."

Moves by the secret state to compile geolocational directories of cell phone users, ready made databases perfect for hauling in political dissidents as was done in Bahrain, are not solely the province of repressive, Middle Eastern governments.

Is any wonder then, that Western high-tech firms do their part to "keep us safe" by throttling our privacy or fail to notice the screams of those victimized by the brutal efficiency of their products?

Torture Island: Where Offshore Meets the National Surveillance State

2011-09-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

From shady Wall Street banks and investment firms that rob people blind, to Western governments that prattle on about "democracy" and "human rights" while their favorite butchers torture and kill their own citizens, it's a sick, sad world growing sicker and sadder by the hour.

It certainly can't hurt when the U.S. Fifth Fleet has the back of those doing the killing, or when the killers are pampered ne'er-do-wells, a fabulously wealthy clique of hereditary princes for whom the word "medieval" was invented, who just so happen to lord over one of the planet's financial bolt holes.

Last month, Bloomberg Markets Magazine revealed that when "Bahraini jailers armed with stiff rubber hoses" beat 39-year-old school administrator and human rights activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar in a windowless dungeon in Manama, his jailers were armed "with another kind of weapon: transcripts of his text messages and details from personal mobile phone conversations."

"It was amazing," Al Khanjar told investigative journalists Vernon Silver and Ben Elgin. "How did they know about these?"

The answer is simple: from computers loaded with spy kit sold to Bahraini royals "by Siemens AG (SIE), and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks and NSN's divested unit, Trovicor GmbH, according to two people whose positions at the companies gave them direct knowledge of the installations."

Back in February, political floodgates opened across the Middle East as American-allied dictators were toppled by enraged citizens in Tunisia and Egypt, and threatened to do the same in Bahrain when pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets across the island nation.

The Al Khalifa clan responded as royals are wont to do: with brute force and considerable help from U.S. and Saudi "friends." Scores were killed and many hundreds of others, including medical personnel, were seized and "disappeared" into regime black holes.

As The Guardian reported, while "Bahrain's security forces are the backbone of the Al Khalifa regime," in recent years "large numbers of their personnel are recruited from other countries, including Jordan, Pakistan and Yemen" and "are reviled as mercenaries by Bahrainis."

But what of the gaggle of Western firms who hit the "sweet spot" selling despotic potentates everything from high-tech spy gear to machine guns and lethal gases: will they be "reviled as mercenaries" by media in the "democratic" West?

'Institutionalized Corruption'

It's hardly surprising that one of Siemens offloaded intelligence units, Trovicor, did a brisk business with Bahrain's secret state. After all, considering the firm's dubious track record and a corporate culture where "bribery was just a line item" according to The New York Times, why wouldn't they?

More than two years ago when a spate of corruption prosecutions were settled, Siemens wound up paying some $1.6 billion to the U.S. government under provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, "the largest fine for bribery in modern corporate history."

Former mid-level executive, Reinhard Siekaczek, told reporters Siri Schubert and T. Christian Miller that "he was one of several people who arranged a torrent of payments that eventually streamed to well-placed officials around the globe, from Vietnam to Venezuela and from Italy to Israel."

"What is striking about Mr. Siekaczek's and prosecutors' accounts of those dealings," the Times averred, "which flowed through a web of secret bank accounts and shadowy consultants, is how entrenched corruption had become at a sprawling, sophisticated corporation that externally embraced the nostrums of a transparent global marketplace built on legitimate transactions."

The former executive said that between "2002 to 2006 he oversaw an annual bribery budget of about $40 million to $50 million at Siemens. Company managers and sales staff used the slush fund to cozy up to corrupt government officials worldwide."

"Bribery was Siemens's business model," Uwe Dolata, the spokesman for the association of federal criminal investigators in Germany told the Times. "Siemens had institutionalized corruption."

Such lucrative inducements to officials were meant to maintain the firm's "competitive edge" overseas in the branch Siekaczek oversaw, "which sold telecommunications equipment."

High-tech accouterments which ended up in the hands of Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar's torturers.

Ahmed Aldoseri, the director of information and communications technologies at Bahrain's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority told Bloomberg Markets, "If they have a transcript of an SMS message, it's because the security organ was monitoring the user at their monitoring center."

Inquiring minds can't help but wonder: did black euros flowing through one of Siemens slush funds grease the palms of corrupt interior ministry officials and then quietly vanish into an offshore bank controlled by cronies of Bahrain's hereditary royals?

A Global Hidey-Hole

Faced with depleting oil and gas reserves, Bahrain's industrial base has expanded rapidly over the past two decades and includes petrochemical, aluminum, oil refining, ship repairing and light manufacturing; it's share of GDP from these sectors, compared to other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), is the highest in the region.

However, "liberal" banking regulations, secrecy laws and a sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure have attracted major Asian and Western institutional investors and investment banks. Drawn by the country's reputation as a no tax zone for foreigners and a freewheeling "no questions asked" regulatory climate, Bahrain is a haven for hot money.

A secret embassy cable published by WikiLeaks, 06MANAMA2003, informs us that "Bahrain has one of the most diversified economies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)."

Accordingly, "Bahrain has promoted itself as an international financial center in the Gulf region. It hosts a mix of: 375 diverse financial institutions, including 187 banks, of which 51 are wholesale banks (formerly referred to as off-shore banks or OBUs); 39 investment banks; and 25 commercial banks, of which 17 are foreign-owned. There are 31 representative offices of international banks."

Situated in the heart of the Middle East where the global oil trade recycles regional wealth into liquidity for financial markets, Bahrain and the other Gulf monarchies as they diversify into offshore finance, intersect and capture enormous outflows of cash hemorrhaging out of Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas, steering hot money into hidey-holes for those in the know. Therefore, mass mobilizations in favor of messy things like democracy would hardly inspire confidence in the global owning class.

Nicholas Shaxson, the author of Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens, tells us that offshore tax havens such as Bahrain's "are not exotic, murky sideshows at the fringes of the world economy: they lie at its centre. Half of world trade flows, at least on paper, through tax havens. Every multinational corporation uses them routinely. The biggest users of tax havens by far are not terrorists, spivs [black marketeers], celebrities or Mafiosi--but banks."

"Tax havens aren't just about tax," Shaxson writes. "They are about escape--escape from criminal laws, escape from creditors, escape from tax, escape from prudent financial regulation--above all, escape from democratic scrutiny and accountability. Tax havens get rich by taking fees for providing these escape routes. This is their core line of business. It is what they do."

"The vast network of Bahrain's banking system," the State Department informs us, "along with its geographical location in the Middle East as a transit point along the Gulf and into Southwest Asia, may attract money laundering activities. It is thought that the greatest risk of money laundering stems from questionable foreign proceeds that transit Bahrain."

And, like Siemens, which "had joined the international convention banning foreign bribery" in 1999, according to the State Department, "in 2001, the Government of Bahrain (GOB) enacted an anti-money laundering law that criminalizes the laundering of proceeds derived from any predicate offense."

Presumably that law, and a 2006 amendment which criminalized "the undeclared transfer of money across international borders for the purpose of money laundering or in support of terrorism," would also cover bribing state officials for purposes, let's say, of sweetening the pot for purchases of "telecommunications equipment," including surveillance suites targeting dissident Bahrainis.

Also in 2006, Bahrain implemented a Free Trade Agreement with the United States to go along with its status as a global offshore financial center. As a result, the organized workers' movement has been targeted by the government.

According to the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), "authorities in Bahrain are stepping up repression of the country's trade union movement, with further suspensions and sackings of workers due to their actual or suspected participation in trade union and political actions earlier this year."

Since the pro-democracy uprising began, BCHR informs us that "some 2,600 workers" affiliated with the General Federation of Bahraini Trade Unions (GFBTU), "in both the public and private sector have been fired, with an additional 361 workers suspended. Despite numerous promises to the contrary, the government has largely failed to reinstate workers illegally dismissed."

It's a sure bet that the same surveillance gear used in wholesale raids against human rights' campaigners have also been trained upon Bahraini workers' organizations, proving once again that "free trade" means "freedom" to smash trade unions.

U.S. and Bahraini Intelligence: Thick as Thieves

Bahrain is home to the U.S. Fifth Fleet, the proverbial tip of imperialism's nautical spear responsible for naval operations in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea and the east coast of Africa as far south as Kenya.

And should the Obama administration, their Israeli pit bulls, or both, decide to up the ante with Iran, the Fifth Fleet would be called upon, as they were at the start of Bush's "shock and awe" campaign which destroyed Iraq, to launch air strikes and impose a naval blockade against that oil-rich nation.

Given Bahrain's strategic importance to Washington, and the regime's close links to the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, Madame Clinton's expression of "deep concern" when security forces attacked unarmed protesters was the emptiest of gestures meant to divert the public's gaze from the criminal role played by the U.S. government during Bahrain's targeting of the pro-democracy movement.

This is borne out by secret embassy cables published by WikiLeaks. A December 2, 2009 communiqué from the American Embassy in Manama to former CIA Director Leon Panetta and then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, 09MANAMA681, informs us that "Director of BNSA [Bahrain National Security Agency] Sheikh Khalifa bin Abdallah Al Khalifa figures prominently into the King's efforts on reform and stability."

According to U.S. Ambassador J. Adam Ereli, "charged by the King to 'Bahrainize' and professionalize BNSA, Sheikh Khalifa is determined to rid BNSA of the last vestiges of British influence and grow BNSA into a world-class intelligence and security service with global reach."

"The secret police--the Bahrain national security agency, known in Arabic as the Mukhabarat--has undergone a process of 'Bahrainisation' in recent years after being dominated by the British until long after independence in 1971," The Guardian disclosed.

"Ian Henderson, who retired as its director in 1998, is still remembered as the 'Butcher of Bahrain' because of his alleged use of torture. A Jordanian official is currently described as the organisation's 'master torturer'."

"Sheikh Khalifa" according to the State Department, "understands well that if he is to fulfill his mandate of protecting Bahrain, he must 'go deep' and develop robust intelligence liaison relationships with partners around the world."

"To that end," Ereli writes, "he has embarked on a program to establish and strengthen intelligence ties abroad, with a central focus on counterterrorism. Against this backdrop, Sheikh Khalifa unabashedly positions his relationship with the U.S. Intelligence Community above all others, insisting that his key lieutenants communicate openly with their U.S. liaison partners and actively seek new avenues for cooperation."

Would an imperative to "communicate openly" and jointly pursue "new areas for cooperation" extend to U.S. training of Bahraini spooks in myriad aspects of electronic and signals intelligence, the better to more fully exploit technologies supplied by America's NATO partner, Germany?

Exporting Repression

Three years ago, I reported on a highly-intrusive communications intelligence system which New Scientist drolly dubbed "surveillance in a box." (See: "New Spy Software Coming On-Line: 'Surveillance in a Box' Makes its Debut," Antifascist Calling, August 28, 2008)

According to reporter Laura Margottini, Siemens had developed software capable of integrating "tasks typically done by separate surveillance teams or machines, pooling data from sources such as telephone calls, email and internet activity, bank transactions and insurance records. It then sorts through this mountain of information using software that Siemens dubs "intelligence modules".

"In Bahrain," Bloomberg Markets reported, "officials routinely use surveillance in the arrest and torture of political opponents, according to Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights."

Rajab told Silver and Elgin that "he has evidence of this from former detainees, including Al Khanjar, and their lawyers and family members."

"Everyone was interrogated based on telephone calls that were checked--and not only us, the activists," Rajab said. "Even our children, our wives, our sisters are being monitored."

We learned that Siemens had already sold the devilish system to more than 60 Asian, European and Middle Eastern nations, including world-class human rights abusers. Which countries? Well, Siemens won't say.

As Antifascist Calling previously reported, the European privacy watchdog group Quintessenz, published a series of leaked internal documents and presentations made by Siemens for prospective customers.

And while those documents and are startling, in the three years since they were first published, these products have become far more invasive.

Specifically designed for "fusion centers" or their Asian, European and Middle Eastern equivalents, the Intelligence Platform claims it can deliver "real time" intelligence for the hot "lawful interception" market.

As Bloomberg Markets reported, the use of the system by Bahraini police "illustrates how Western-produced surveillance technology sold to one authoritarian government became an investigative tool of choice to gather information about political dissidents--and silence them."

"Some industry insiders," Silver and Elgin wrote, "now say their own products have become dangerous in the hands of regimes where law enforcement crosses the line to repression."

One such insider, Nikhil Gyamlani, told reporters that when he worked as a consultant for Trovicor and Nokia Siemens, the firm "had developed monitoring systems and sold them to some of the countries" on the cutting edge of the Arab Spring.

"Besides Bahrain," Bloomberg Markets reports, "several other Middle Eastern nations that cracked down on uprisings this year--including Egypt, Syria and Yemen--also purchased monitoring centers from the chain of businesses now known as Trovicor."

And "Trovicor equipment," Silver and Elgin averred, "plays a surveillance role in at least 12 Middle Eastern and North African nations, according to the two people familiar with the installations."

During the Bahraini uprising, "authorities jammed or restricted communications to stymie gatherings and knew where to send riot police before a protest could even start, according to eyewitness reports."

"For that to happen," Gyamlani told Bloomberg, "government officials had to have some means of figuring out where to go or whom to target to nip protests in the bud."

"Across the Middle East in recent years," Silver and Elgin averred, "sales teams at Siemens, Nokia Siemens, Munich-based Trovicor and other companies have worked their connections among spy masters, police chiefs and military officers to provide country after country with monitoring gear."

Since Nokia Siemens first unveiled the system, updates "allow more than the interception of phone calls, e-mails, text messages and Voice Over Internet Protocol calls such as those made using Skype."

"The monitoring systems," Silver and Elgin wrote, "can scan communications for key words or recognize voices and then feed the data and recordings to operators at government agencies."

According to Bloomberg Markets, "some products can also secretly activate laptop webcams or microphones on mobile devices. They can change the contents of written communications in mid-transmission, use voice recognition to scan phone networks, and pinpoint people's locations through their mobile phones."

In other words, not only can Trovicor's Intelligence Platform spy on political dissidents, it can also fabricate communications thereby setting-up activists for more serious charges, particularly when authorities (falsely) accuse protest organizers of "fomenting violence" through messages they've artfully invented themselves.

One no longer need insert agents provocateurs into proscribed groups. With the Intelligence Platform one can spread disinformation or incite violence from the safety and security of a monitoring center. Think of the savings to security budgets in these deficit conscious times!

"Offshoring" the Security World

As Bloomberg Markets revealed, when Siemens and Nokia unloaded their spy unit, they turned to the offshore world and found an eager buyer in "the Guernsey-based Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP" who "renamed the business Trovicor, coined from the Latin and Esperanto words for find and heart."

Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP is an odd duck to say the least. Their web site informs us that "the fund we counsel is not listed on the stock exchange and is thus able to act independently from quarterly reports and analyses." Founded in 2007 with headquarters in St. Peter Port, Guernsey, Perusa tells us that "we think globally and act locally."

The Fund does not list the identities of key investors since disclosure is "regulated by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission under the Protection of Investors (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 1987 (as amended)."

However, Christian Hollenberg, a founder of Perusa GmbH, says that Trovicor's owners "only invest in ethical businesses" including Trovicor "which the fund owns in its entirety."

Hollenberg told Silver and Elgin that Trovicor is "a legal business, and it's part of every communications network in the civilized world."

But as author Nicholas Shaxson told New Left Project in a wide-ranging interview, "Crown Dependencies" such as "Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man ... have old histories as tax havens and have played an offshore role for decades, even centuries. They also got in on this game of attracting money by offering secrecy, zero taxes, and escape from laws."

And with "partners and investors ... based in the most important financial centers worldwide," the Fund is inclined to invest "in smaller companies, in companies with faint profitability or with operative problems. We are flexible and always prepared for various situations."

Perusa's investment portfolio is a diverse, if strange mix. With interests ranging from the Swedish-based Dynasafe International, which offers "a comprehensive range of explosion containment and munitions destruction equipment as well as off gas treatment systems to customers all over the world," to the medical implant firm GB Implantat-Technologie GmbH in Essen, Germany, and from Belgian-based Flamingo N.V., described as "a leading international company in the domestic pet sector" (!) to Trovicor, Guernsey-based Perusa certainly covers a wide range of investment opportunities.

Accordingly, "the fund we advise invests in companies that are confronted with dramatic change." Trovicor, the firm which snapped-up Siemens Intelligence Platform fits the bill. "Do you want to spin off a business division from a larger organization and become independent?" Well, according to Perusa, "via the fund we advise, we can provide you with fresh capital and new and additional management respectively."

But why would a multibillion euro firm such as Siemens find it necessary, or even desirable, to "spin-off" a profitable unit, one with unlimited growth potential in the über-lucrative "lawful interception" niche market"?

After all, this sector is worth some $3 billion annually, Jerry Lucas, the president of the McLean, Virginia-based TeleStrategies Inc., the organizers of ISS World trade shows for spooky companies servicing the secret state told Bloomberg Markets.

If we're to believe statements from Nokia Siemens Networks spokesperson Ben Roome, "the elevated risk of human rights abuses was a major reason for NSN's exiting the monitoring-center business."

Quick to absolve the firm of any liability for designing and selling products to autocratic regimes that torture their citizens, Roome told Silver and Elgin that "ultimately people who use this technology to infringe human rights are responsible for their actions."

And with ISS World Americas conference in Washington, D.C., right around the corner, enterprising security officials will learn "methodologies and tools to bridge the chasms of lawful intercept data gathering to information creation to investigator knowledge to actionable intelligence."

One shudders to think what "knowledge" was shared last year amongst Middle Eastern spooks who attended ISS World MEA conclave in Dubai or what tips of the dirty trade Trovicor's head of consulting, Jesper Mathiesen, gave his eager hosts.

Amongst the "tools" which Trovicor supplies, at a steep price rest assured, are spy kit for "intelligence mining;" "pattern recognition;" "behaviour profiling;" "indexing-text search," that performs "in the background" on "contents of emails, web pages, Word documents, SMS, database records etc.;" "mobile location tracking" suites equipped with a "geographical information system," an "ideal solution to track, record, extrapolate, and anticipate the movements of mobile devices;" "speaker recognition" and of course, "link analysis" tools which can be used "to find and graphically display correlating data of intercepted targets."

And should current spy toys prove insufficient, additional "add-on applications are being developed to allow for maximum use of the information contained in the database of the Monitoring Center."

Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar is in hiding today. He told Bloomberg Markets that "he took up the anti-torture cause after being detained and interrogated for six days in 2000. His jailers handcuffed him, hung him from a stick 'like a goat' and beat the soles of his feet."

And when the activist returned from London in August 2010, after testifying about Bahraini human rights abuses before a committee at the House of Lords, plainclothes police took him away.

"For his first 85 days or so in custody," Bloomberg Markets reported, "Al Khanjar saw no one from the outside."

"For one agonizing stretch," Silver and Elgin averred, "his jailers forced him to stand without sleeping for five days. At other times they beat him with hoses and their hands and threatened him with sexual abuse."

"I'm hidden somewhere," he says. "I'm unfortunately in Bahrain. They're going to kill me. What to do? What to do?"

This raises an inevitable question: what will we do to bring down repressive, authoritarian governments, beginning with those in the West, which profit handsomely from screams dying in soundproof rooms?

(Image courtesy of Metronaut)

New Leaks Reveal Insider Tips on S&P's U.S. Credit Downgrade to Killer-Drone Firm

2011-08-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

We live in an age where insider deals, conflicts of interest, revolving doors between "regulators" and the "regulated" (lubricated with oceans of cash) accompanies the generalized looting of social wealth by deviant capitalist elites.

That such behavior by our corporate masters no longer raise an eyebrow, let alone elicit action by authorities charged with stopping criminal miscreants destroying other people's lives, is an unmistakable sign that the much-vaunted "free market" system, staring into an abyss of its own creation, has entered a terminal phase.

It now appears that insiders at Standard and Poor's or the Treasury Department, take your pick, may have leaked information to privileged clients on the recent U.S. credit downgrade, with confirmation coming from a surprising source.

Last week, AntiSec cyber-guerrillas (a loose alliance amongst individuals affiliated with LulzSec and Anonymous) released a 1GB cache of emails filched from security contractor Vanguard Defense Industries (VDI).

Previously Anonymous and LulzSec have wrapped their keyboards around defense grifters Booz Allen Hamilton, ManTech International, NATO, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, InfraGard (a "public-private" security alliance amongst corporate heavy-hitters and the Bureau), the CIA, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (a so-called "fusion center" staffed by cops, federal agents, private contractors and the U.S. military), the Bay Area Rapid Transit agency (BART), Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency, PBS, Fox News, and repressive governments such as Egypt, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.

Their latest campaign targeted VDI, a Texas-based firm, which specializes in the "development and deployment" of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS, killer drones). VDI "draws on specialized experience of senior aerospace engineers, former military special operations officers, military instructor pilots as well as retired Senior Executive Service Federal Agents," claiming their "background and operational knowledge has afforded us the unique vision to provide a platform that will extend the security and response capabilities of any organization," according to a blurb on their web site.

While VDI touts their ability to offer "support" to the "military, local, state and federal law enforcement as well as the private sector," the firm also offers "a full scope of consulting services independent of our aerial technology."

That "unique vision" however, didn't prevent AntiSec from spiriting away thousands of emails from VDI's Senior Vice President Richard T. Garcia, a former FBI Assistant Director in Los Angeles who recently left a well-paid position as Global Security Manager for the environment-killing Shell Oil Corporation (can you say Niger Delta?) for "greener" pastures.

A press statement from AntiSec announced that the leak "contains internal meeting notes and contracts, schematics, non-disclosure agreements, personal information about other VDI employees, and several dozen 'counter-terrorism' documents classified as 'law enforcement sensitive' and 'for official use only'."

"Vanguard Defense Industries," AntiSec writes, "manufactures unmanned 'ShadowHawk' drones which cost $640,000 and are equipped with grenade launchers and shotguns. ShadowHawks are currently in use by law enforcement, military, and private corporations deploying them in the US, the Horn of Africa, Panama, Columbia [sic], and US-Mexico border patrol operations. These emails contain contracts, schematics, non-disclosure agreements, and more. Additionally we found evidence of a Merrill Lynch wealth management advisor giving private advance notice to Garcia about upcoming S&P US credit rating downgrades."

Improper Disclosures

In an April 25, 2011 email from Garcia to Gloria Newport, Cindy Cook, a Wealth Management Advisor with Bank of America-owned Merrill Lynch "advised that Standard and Poors, may lower the credit rating of the US Government which could cause a run on US Banks that will affect the Federal Reserve. They give the US Govt. 2 years to correct the current situation, which they believe both the Republican and Democratic solutions do not do enough and both parties may make this a political situation for the 2012 Presidential election and never come up with a answer to correct the situation within the two years set by Standard and Poors. She did not see any real Cyber issue that could change the situation."

Investigative journalist Steve Ragan, writing at The Tech Herald (the publication that broke the story on Anonymous's HBGary hack) informs us that "the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating whether there was any sort of insider trading done by S&P employees before the downgrade was official. The story hinged on comments made to the paper by sources close to the investigation itself."

"On the day S&P cut the U.S.'s credit rating" Ragan writes, "Wall Street was flooded with downgrade rumors. These rumors started earlier in the day while trading was active. It turned out they were true."

According to Bloomberg News the SEC "is scrutinizing the method Standard & Poor's used to cut the U.S.'s credit rating and whether the firm properly protected the confidential decision, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter."

Reporter Joshua Gallu wrote August 14 that SEC staff are "looking into whether certain market participants learned of the downgrade before its announcement."

Downplaying speculation that S&P employees may have breached SEC rules by leaking sensitive information to privileged clients, The New York Times, as is their wont, claimed "it is arguable whether S.&P.'s announcement on Aug. 5 of the rating change was all that confidential, given the speculation about it."

"Assuming information about the downgrade was confidential," the Times pontificates, "it must also be material, which means a reasonable investor would consider it important. This seems to be an easy element to establish because the wild gyrations in the market on the first trading day after the downgrade shows how investors viewed it."

But Cook's email to Garcia didn't arrive in his in-box "on the first trading day after the downgrade" but nearly four months earlier, long before July's political shenanigans over raising the federal debt ceiling, the ostensible reason why S&P downgraded America's credit worthiness.

Maxine Waters (D-CA), wrote to SEC chairwoman, cover-up specialist Mary Schapiro, demanding that the commission "conduct an investigation into whether S.&P. selectively disclosed information related to the U.S. government debt downgrade to any financial institutions, and whether any institutions that had that nonpublic information traded on that information prior to the official announcement."

It appears that Cook's email to Garcia would confirm that S&P insiders did just that, providing information to Merrill Lynch and one can assume other financial firms.

Throwing cold water on charges that the rating's agency acted improperly, the Times argues that "even if if the S.E.C. finds that the information was improperly disclosed, proving insider trading will be difficult."

Why might that be?

According to the Times, "while S.&P. and other credit rating agencies are required to adopt policies to prevent such disclosure, it is questionable whether just leaking information violates any federal regulations, even if it breaches a corporate confidentiality policy."

Lest readers believe however, that the SEC will mount a comprehensive investigation of leaks by S&P insiders, they would do well to read Matt Taibbi's latest piece for Rolling Stone.

According to congressional testimony by an SEC whistleblower, which sparked an investigation by that agency's Inspector General, the commission's enforcement division, under orders from higher-ups, who went on to secure well-paid positions with the firms they were charged to regulate, shredded a mountain of incriminating evidence detailing wrongdoing by some of the world's top financial firms.

How many files, called "Matters Under Investigation" or MUI were destroyed? According to whistleblower Darcy Flynn, the SEC's enforcement division "disappeared" some 18,000 files, including those of convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff, accused swindler, suspected CIA banker and drug money launderer R. Allen Stanford, as well as accusations that top-tier Wall Street investment banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase had engaged in insider trading.

Taibbi writes that "under a deal the SEC worked out with the National Archives and Records Administration, all of the agency's records--'including case files relating to preliminary investigations'--are supposed to be maintained for at least 25 years. But the SEC, using history-altering practices that for once actually deserve the overused and usually hysterical term 'Orwellian,' devised an elaborate and possibly illegal system under which staffers were directed to dispose of the documents from any preliminary inquiry that did not receive approval from senior staff to become a full-blown, formal investigation."

It's a nice deal if you can get it, which of course firms like Goldman Sachs, J. P. Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, AIG and Lehman Brothers (before their 2008 collapse) managed to get in spades.

"We'll never know," Taibbi avers, "what the impact of those destroyed cases might have been; we'll never know if those cases were closed for good reasons or bad. We'll never know exactly who got away with what, because federal regulators have weighted down a huge sack of Wall Street's dirty laundry and dumped it in a lake, never to be seen again."

In this light, AntiSec's hack of VDI is instructive. If for nothing else, it demonstrates that well-connected insiders reap billions from the collapse of the global economy, divvying-up the spoils amongst privileged friends and clients, including those inhabiting the nethermost regions of the secret state.

Cyberwar: Bringing it All Back Home, and Waging War on the Global Economy

As global elites scramble to seize as much advantage as possible over their rivals as the economy craters, intelligence methods deployed as part of imperialism's endless "War on Terror" have migrated with a vengeance onto Wall Street.

Revelations by Anonymous earlier this year that a passel of Pentagon-linked security contractors had joined forces to run covert ops on whistleblowers and journalists set alarm bells ringing.

February's release of some 75,000 emails filched from servers controlled by security grifters HBGary Federal and HBGary, uncovered a sordid scheme by the Bank of American and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to target supporters of WikiLeaks and left-wing corporate critics.

That hack, in addition to exposing BofA's illicit "Team Themis" gambit, a co-production of white shoe law firm Hunton & Williams, HBGary Federal, HBGary, Palantir Technologies (a recipient of CIA slush funds from its venture capital arm In-Q-Tel) and Berico Technologies, also revealed that the Pentagon and giant defense contractors such as General Dynamics had teamed up with HBGary to develop undetectable malware or "rootkits" for America's emerging Cyberwar-Intelligence Complex, according to a series of documents published by the secrecy-shredding web site Public Intelligence.

Additional files revealed that HBGary and ManTech International had partnered-up with the National Security State for what they described as "Internet Based Reconnaissance Operations" that use "non-attributable internet access" methodologies (approved hacking by the secret state) for "operating system and network application identification," "identification of possible perimeter defense" for "intelligence gap fill" and "counterintelligence research." In other words, broad based internet spying on an array of "adversaries" (e.g., political dissidents, antiwar activists, anticorporate campaigners and other enemies of the state).

Further research by Project PM's OpMetalGear revealed that defense giant Northrop Grumman and other firms such as HBGary Federal, TASC and ManTech International were engaged in a bidding war to spear the Pentagon's Romas/COIN program (since renamed Odyssey).

That program, researcher Barrett Brown writes, is "a secretive and immensely sophisticated campaign of mass surveillance and data mining against the Arab world, allowing the intelligence community to monitor the habits, conversations, and activity of millions of individuals at once." (For additional background see: "Security Grifters Partner-Up on Sinister Cyber-Surveillance Project," Antifascist Calling, July 3, 2011)

We can assume that once intelligence sources and methods intended to target external enemies are turned inward and attack the American people, financial insiders too, would find such tools an exemplary means to crush their competitors and adversaries, the global working class.

Bankrupting and Criminalizing the State

"Economic warfare," economist and researcher Michel Chossudovsky, writing in The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century, "consists in destabilizing countries and impoverishing their respective populations."

Chossudovsky argues that "the manipulation of market forces through the imposition of strong 'economic medicine' under the helm of the IMF supports U.S.-NATO strategic and geopolitical objectives."

Similarly," Chossudovsky observes, "the speculative attacks waged by powerful banking conglomerates in the currency, commodity and stock markets are acts of financial warfare," one in which the "financing of an oversized U.S. war economy triggers imbalances in the U.S. monetary system, destabilizes the U.S. fiscal structure and creates imbalances in the allocation of human and material resources."

This tragedy is playing out today. The on-going market meltdown in the wake of the U.S. credit downgrade and the crisis in the Eurozone has affected tens of millions of workers who saw their retirement funds gobbled up by speculators. Additionally, states and municipalities "carrying debt tied to federal creditworthiness," The Tech Herald avers, "each took a hit."

Hard hit cities and states struggling under an enormous debt burden due to falling revenues, are held hostage by the credit rating agencies. As economist Michael Hudson points out in Global Research credit rating agencies such as Standard and Poor's, Moody's and Fitch "are playing the political role of 'enforcer' as the gatekeepers to credit, to put pressure on Iceland, Greece and even the United States to pursue creditor-oriented policies that lead inevitably to financial crises."

Hudson writes that these "crises in turn force debtor governments to sell off their assets under distress conditions. In pursuing this guard-dog service to the world's bankers, the ratings agencies are escalating a political strategy they have long been refined over a generation in the corrupt arena of local U.S. politics."

As the World Socialist Web Site observes, "the crisis of the world's stock exchanges and financial markets is increasingly spiraling out of control. Governments are being driven by developments which they are unable to influence."

Socialist critic Peter Schwarz notes that "the panic on the stock markets shows that traders are expecting a deep recession, already heralded by stagnating growth and rising unemployment rates," and that "corporations will respond with new waves of layoffs, governments with further budget cuts."

In a climate stoked by fear, war and those all-purpose boogeymen, "debt," "terror" and now, "cyberwar," the cost of bailing-out a looted capitalist economy are shouldered by the working class. These pressures in turn increase the downward spiral as employment, wages, manufacturing and consumer spending go into a tail-spin, a self-destructive feed-back loop that further exacerbates levels of unemployment, home foreclosures and generalized misery. The tentacles of this manufactured "debt crisis" reach everywhere--from the smallest town to the largest city.

Hudson avers that "localities are pressured when their rising debt levels lead to a financial stringency. Banks pull back their credit lines, and urge cities and states to pay down their debts by selling off their most viable public enterprises."

And waiting in the wings are a new class of corporate vultures and rentier vampires who swoop down to reap the rewards gleaned by gobbling-up (looting) public assets at fire sale prices.

The rating agencies who profit at both ends of any transaction according to Hudson, "offer opinions" that have become a "big business" for the agencies. "So it is understandable why their business model opposes policies--and political candidates--that support the idea of basing public financing on taxation rather than by borrowing. This self-interest colors their 'opinions'."

Accordingly, "to acquiescence in such economically destructive financial behavior is the opposite of fiscal responsibility. Cutting federal taxes and Social Security payments to obtain a more positive S&P 'opinion," Hudson writes, "would give banks an ability to 'pull the plug' and force privatization and anti-labor austerity plans by refraining from rolling over the U.S. debt--and cutting taxes Tea-Party style rather than funding spending by taxation on a pay-as-you-go-basis."

In this light, one can certainly understand why a Merrill Lynch "wealth management advisor" would offer her "knowledgeable judgement" (clubby insider info) to a dodgy security outfit such as VDI.

Working classes across Europe have not "gone gently into the night" of impoverishment; the great fear here in the heimat amongst corporatists and militarists alike, is that once working people realize the game is up they just might impose some "shock therapy" of their own!

As Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald (a target of "Team Themis's" dirty tricks campaign) avers, speaking out about "the sprawling Surveillance State and the attempted criminalization of WikiLeaks and whistleblowing are so vital" to the defense of democracy.

"The free flow of information and communications enabled by new technologies--as protest movements in the Middle East and a wave of serious leaks over the last year have demonstrated--is a uniquely potent weapon in challenging entrenched government power and other powerful factions," Greenwald writes.

"And that is precisely why those in power--those devoted to preservation of the prevailing social order--are so increasingly fixated on seizing control of it and snuffing out its potential for subverting that order: they are well aware of, and are petrified by, its power, and want to ensure that the ability to dictate how it is used, and toward what ends, remains exclusively in their hands."

This is why actions by disparate groups such as AntiSec, Anonymous and WikiLeaks are informational beacons in an otherwise homogenized media landscape, one characterized by celebrity gossip, sex scandals and "crimes" carried out by poor and marginalized populations--never the filthy rich or the warmongers who murder millions as they launch resource wars that steal other people's social property.

While firms such as VDI, Boeing, General Atomics and Lockheed Martin hawk drone technologies that transform human beings into red mist, and do so as their "patriotic" (and highly-profitable) duty as the Pentagon wholeheartedly embraces hypermodern forms of robotized mass murder, the bill for American hubris, long past due, is coming faster than most people think.

As Economy Tanks, "New Normal" Police State Takes Shape

2011-08-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

Forget your rights.

As corporate overlords position themselves to seize what little remains of a tattered social net (adieu Medicare and Medicaid! Social Security? Au revoir!), the Obama administration is moving at break-neck speed to expand police state programs first stood-up by the Bush government.

After all, with world share prices gyrating wildly, employment and wages in a death spiral, and retirement funds and publicly-owned assets swallowed whole by speculators and rentier scum, the state better dust-off contingency plans lest the Greek, Spanish or British "contagion" spread beyond the fabled shores of "old Europe" and infect God-fearin' folk here in the heimat.

Fear not, they have and the lyrically-titled Civil Disturbances: Emergency Employment of Army and Other Resources, otherwise known as Army Regulation 500-50, spells out the "responsibilities, policy, and guidance for the Department of the Army in planning and operations involving the use of Army resources in the control of actual or anticipated civil disturbances." (emphasis added)

With British politicians demanding a clampdown on social media in the wake of London riots, and with the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) agency having done so last week in San Francisco, switching off underground cell phone service to help squelch a protest against police violence, authoritarian control tactics, aping those deployed in Egypt and Tunisia (that worked out well!) are becoming the norm in so-called "Western democracies."

Secret Law, Secret Programs

Meanwhile up on Capitol Hill, Congress did their part to defend us from that pesky Bill of Rights; that is, before 81 of them--nearly a fifth of "our" elected representatives--checked-out for AIPAC-funded junkets to Israel.

Secrecy News reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee "rejected an amendment that would have required the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to confront the problem of 'secret law,' by which government agencies rely on legal authorities that are unknown or misunderstood by the public."

That amendment, proposed by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) was rejected by voice vote, further entrenching unprecedented surveillance powers of Executive Branch agencies such as the FBI and NSA.

As Antifascist Calling previously reported, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department "demanding the release of a secret legal memo used to justify FBI access to Americans' telephone records without any legal process or oversight."

The DOJ refused and it now appears that the Senate has affirmed that "secret law" should be guiding principles of our former republic.

Secrecy News also disclosed that the Committee rejected a second amendment to the authorization bill, one that would have required the Justice Department's Inspector General "to estimate the number of Americans who have had the contents of their communications reviewed in violation of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 [FAA]."

As pointed out here many times, FAA is a pernicious piece of Bushist legislative detritus that legalized the previous administration's secret spy programs since embellished by our current "hope and change" president.

During the run-up to FAA's passage, congressional Democrats, including then-Senator Barack Obama and his Republican colleagues across the aisle, claimed that the law would "strike a balance" between Americans' privacy rights and the needs of security agencies to "stop terrorists" attacking the country.

If that's the case, then why can't the American people learn whether their rights have been compromised?

Perhaps, as recent reports in Truthout and other publications suggest, former U.S. counterterrorism "czar" Richard Clarke leveled "explosive allegations against three former top CIA officials--George Tenet, Cofer Black and Richard Blee--accusing them of knowingly withholding intelligence ... about two of the 9/11 hijackers who had entered the United States more than a year before the attacks."

Clarke's allegations follow closely on the heels of an investigation by Truthout journalists Jeffrey Kaye and Jason Leopold.

"Based on on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and an interview with a former high-ranking counterterrorism official," Kaye and Leopold learned that "a little-known military intelligence unit, unbeknownst to the various investigative bodies probing the terrorist attacks, was ordered by senior government officials to stop tracking Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's movements prior to 9/11."

As readers are well aware, the 9/11 provocation was the pretext used by the capitalist state to wage aggressive resource wars abroad while ramming through repressive legislation like the USA Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act that targeted the democratic rights of the American people here at home.

But FAA did more then legitimate illegal programs. It also handed retroactive immunity and economic cover to giant telecoms like AT&T and Verizon who profited handily from government surveillance, shielding them from monetary damages which may have resulted from a spate of lawsuits such as Hepting v. AT&T.

This raises the question: are other U.S. firms similarly shielded from scrutiny by secret annexes in FAA or the privacy-killing USA Patriot Act?

Echelon Cubed

Last week, Softpedia revealed that "Google has admitted complying with requests from US intelligence agencies for data stored in its European data centers, most likely in violation of European Union data protection laws."

"At the center of this problem," reporter Lucian Constantin wrote, "is the USA PATRIOT ACT, which states that companies incorporated in the United States must hand over data administered by their foreign subsidiaries if requested."

"Not only that," the publication averred, "they can be forced to keep quiet about it in order to avoid exposing active investigations and alert those targeted by the probes."

In other words, despite strict privacy laws that require companies operating within the EU to protect the personal data of their citizens, reports suggest that U.S. firms, operating under an entirely different legal framework, U.S. spy laws with built-in secrecy clauses and gag orders, trump the laws and legal norms of other nations.

Given the widespread corporate espionage carried out by the National Security Agency's decades-long Echelon communications' intercept program, American firms such as Google, Microsoft, Apple or Amazon may very well have become witting accomplices of U.S. secret state agencies rummaging about for "actionable intelligence" on EU, or U.S., citizens.

Indeed, a decade ago the European Union issued its final report on the Echelon spying machine and concluded that the program was being used for corporate and industrial espionage and that data filched from EU firms was being turned over to American corporations.

In 2000, the BBC reported that according to European investigators "U.S. Department of Commerce 'success stories' could be attributed to the filtering powers of Echelon."

Duncan Campbell, a British journalist and intelligence expert, who along with New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager, helped blow the lid off Echelon, offered two instances of U.S. corporate spying in the 1990s when the newly-elected Clinton administration followed-up on promises of "aggressive advocacy" on behalf of U.S. firms "bidding for foreign contracts."

According to Campbell, NSA "lifted all the faxes and phone-calls between Airbus, the Saudi national airline and the Saudi Government" to gain this information. In a second case which came to light, Campbell documented how "Raytheon used information picked up from NSA snooping to secure a $1.4bn contract to supply a radar system to Brazil instead of France's Thomson-CSF."

As Softpedia reported, U.S.-based cloud computing services operating overseas have placed "European companies and government agencies that are using their services ... in a tough position."

With the advent of fiber optic communication platforms, programs like Echelon have a far greater, and more insidious, reach. AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein noted on the widespread deployment by NSA of fiber optic splitters and secret rooms at American telecommunications' firms:

What screams out at you when examining this physical arrangement is that the NSA was vacuuming up everything flowing in the Internet stream: e-mail, web browsing, Voice-Over-Internet phone calls, pictures, streaming video, you name it. The splitter has no intelligence at all, it just makes a blind copy. There could not possibly be a legal warrant for this, since according to the 4th Amendment warrants have to be specific, "particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." ...

This was a massive blind copying of the communications of millions of people, foreign and domestic, randomly mixed together. From a legal standpoint, it does not matter what they claim to throw away later in their secret rooms, the violation has already occurred at the splitter. (Mark Klein, Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine... And Fighting It, Charleston, South Carolina: BookSurge, 2009, pp. 38-39.)

What was Google's response?

In a statement to the German publication WirtschaftsWoche a Google corporate spokesperson said: "As a law abiding company, we comply with valid legal process, and that--as for any U.S. based company--means the data stored outside of the U.S. may be subject to lawful access by the U.S. government. That said, we are committed to protecting user privacy when faced with law enforcement requests. We have a long track record of advocating on behalf of user privacy in the face of such requests and we scrutinize requests carefully to ensure that they adhere to both the letter and the spirit of the law before complying." (translation courtesy of Public Intelligence)

Is the Senate Intelligence Committee's steadfast refusal to release documents and secret legal memos that most certainly target American citizens also another blatant example of American exceptionalism meant to protect U.S. firms operating abroad from exposure as corporate spies for the government?

It isn't as if NSA hasn't been busy doing just that here at home.

As The New York Times reported back in 2009, the "National Security Agency intercepted private e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans in recent months on a scale that went beyond the broad legal limits established by Congress last year."

Chalking up the problem to "overcollection" and "technical difficulties," unnamed intelligence officials and administration lawyers told journalists Eric Lichtblau and James Risen that although the practice was "significant and systemic ... it was believed to have been unintentional."

As "unintentional" as ginned-up intelligence that made the case for waging aggressive war against oil-rich Iraq!

In a follow-up piece, the Times revealed that NSA "appears to have tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants."

A former NSA analyst "read into" the illegal program told Lichtblau and Risen that he "and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages."

Email readily handed over by Google, Microsoft or other firms "subject to lawful access" by the Pentagon spy satrapy?

The Times' anonymous source said "Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits--no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told--and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches."

Nor, were they excluded from such illicit practices.

As Jane Mayer revealed in The New Yorker, "privacy controls" and "anonymizing features" of a program called ThinThread, which would have complied with the law if Americans' communications were swept into NSA's giant eavesdropping nets, were rejected in favor of the "$1.2 billion flop" called Trailblazer.

And, as previously reported, when Wyden and Udall sought information from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on just how many Americans had their communications monitored, the DNI stonewalled claiming "it is not reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed under the authority."

Why? Precisely because such programs act like a giant electronic sponge and soak-up and data mine huge volumes of our communications.

As former NSA manager and ThinThread creator Bill Binney told The New Yorker, that "little program ... got twisted" and was "used to eavesdrop on the whole world."

Three years after Barack Obama promised to curb Bush administration "excesses," illegal surveillance programs continue to expand under his watch.

A Permanent "State of Exception"

Under our current political set-up, "states of exception" and national security "emergencies" have become permanent features of social life.

Entire classes of citizens and non-citizens alike are now suspect; anarchists, communists, immigrants, Muslims, union activists and political dissidents in general are all subject to unprecedented levels of scrutiny and surveillance.

From "enhanced security screenings" at airports to the massive expansion of private and state databases that archive our spending habits, whom we talk to and where we go, increasingly, as the capitalist system implodes and millions face the prospect of economic ruin, the former American republic takes on the characteristics of a corporate police state.

Security researcher and analyst Christopher Soghoian reported on his Slight Paranoia blog, that according to "an official DOJ report, the use of 'emergency', warrantless requests to ISPs for customer communications content has skyrocketed over 400% in a single year."

This is no trifling matter.

As CNET News disclosed last month, "Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers' activities for one year--in case police want to review them in the future--under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today."

Declan McCullagh reported that "the 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall's elections."

Significantly, CNET noted that this is also a "victory" for Democratic appointees of Barack Obama's Justice Department "who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements."

According to CNET, a "last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses."

However, by "a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored."

Consider the troubling implications of this sweeping bill. While ultra-rightist "Tea Party" Republicans vowed to get "the government off our backs," when it comes to illicit snooping by securocrats whose only loyalty is to a self-perpetuating security bureaucracy and the defense grifters they serve (and whom they rely upon for plum positions after government "retirement"), all our private data is now up for grabs.

The bill, according to Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who spearheaded opposition to the measure said that if passed, it would create "a data bank of every digital act by every American" that would "let us find out where every single American visited Web sites."

To make the poison pill legislation difficult to oppose, proponents have dubbed it, wait, the "Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011" even though, as CNET noted, "the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well."

Soghoian relates that the 2009 two-page Justice Department report to Congress took 11 months (!) to release under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Why the Justice Department stonewall?

Perhaps, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation disclosed last year, political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security and presumably other secret state satrapies, ordered "an extra layer of review on its FOIA requests."

EFF revealed that a 2009 policy memo from the Department's Chief FOIA Officer and Chief Privacy Officer, Mary Ellen Callahan, that DHS components "were required to report 'significant FOIA activities' in weekly reports to the Privacy Office, which the Privacy Office then integrated into its weekly report to the White House Liaison."

Included amongst designated "significant FOIA activities" were requests "from any members of 'an activist group, watchdog organization, special interest group, etc.' and 'requested documents [that] will garner media attention or [are] receiving media attention'."

Despite the appearance of reporting "emergency" spying requests to congressional committees presumably overseeing secret state activities (a generous assumption at best), "it is quite clear" Soghoian avers, "that the Department of Justice statistics are not adequately reporting the scale of this form of surveillance" and "underreport these disclosures by several orders of magnitude."

As such, "the current law is largely useless." It does not apply to "state and local law enforcement agencies, who make tens of thousands of warrantless requests to ISPs each year," and is inapplicable to "to federal law enforcement agencies outside DOJ."

"Finally," Soghoian relates, "it does not apply to emergency disclosures of non-content information, such as geo-location data, subscriber information (such as name and address), or IP addresses used."

And with Congress poised to pass sweeping data retention legislation, it should be clear that such "requirements" are mere fig leaves covering-up state-sanctioned lawlessness.

War On Terror 2.0.1: Looting the Global Economy

Criminal behavior by domestic security agencies connect America's illegal wars of aggression to capitalism's economic warfare against the working class, who now take their place alongside "Islamic terrorists" as a threat to "national security."

Despite efforts by the Obama administration and Republican congressional leaders to "balance the books" on the backs of the American people through massive budget cuts, as economist Michael Hudson pointed out in Global Research, the manufactured "debt ceiling" crisis is a massive fraud.

The World Socialist Web Site averred that "as concerns over a double-dip recession in the US and the European debt crisis sent global markets plunging--including a 512-point sell-off on the Dow Jones Industrial Average Thursday--financial analysts and media pundits developed a new narrative. Concern that Washington lacked the 'political will' to slash long-standing entitlement programs was exacerbating 'market uncertainty'."

Leftist critic Jerry White noted that "in fact, the new cuts will only intensify the economic crisis, while the slashing of food stamps, unemployment compensation, health care and education will eliminate programs that are more essential for survival than ever."

Indeed, as Marxist economist Richard Wolff pointed out in The Guardian, while the "crisis of the capitalist system in the US that began in 2007," may have "plunged millions into acute economic pain and suffering," the "recovery" that began in 2009 "benefited only the minority that was most responsible for the crisis: banks, large corporations and the rich who own the bulk of stocks. That so-called recovery never 'trickled down' to the US majority: working people dependent on jobs and wages'."

And despite mendacious claims by political officials and the media alike, the Pentagon will be sitting pretty even as Americans are forced to shoulder the financial burden of U.S. imperial adventures long into an increasingly bleak future.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta "warned Thursday of dire consequences if the Pentagon is forced to make cuts to its budget beyond the $400 billion in savings planned for the next decade," The Washington Post reported.

The Post noted that "senior Pentagon officials have launched an offensive over the past two days to convince lawmakers that further reductions in Pentagon spending would imperil the country's security."

"Instead of slashing defense," Panetta urged lawmakers to "rely on tax increases and cuts to nondiscretionary spending, such as Medicare and Social Security, to provide the necessary savings."

But as Hudson points out, "war has been the major cause of a rising national debt." After all, it was none other than bourgeois icon Adam Smith who argued that "parliamentary checks on government spending were designed to prevent ambitious rulers from waging war."

Hudson writes that "if people felt the economic impact of war immediately--rather than postponing it by borrowing--they would be less likely to support military adventurism."

But therein lies the rub. Since "military adventurism" is the only "growth sector" of an imploding capitalist economy, the public spigot which finances everything from cost-overrun-plagued stealth fighter jets to multibillion dollar spy satellites, along with an out-of-control National Surveillance State, will be kept open indefinitely.

On this score, the hypocrisy of our rulers abound, especially when it comes to the mantra that "we" must "live within our means."

As Wolff avers, "where was that phrase heard when Washington decided to spend on an immense military (even after becoming the world's only nuclear superpower) or to spend on very expensive wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya (now all going on at the same time)? No, then the talk was only about national security needed to save us from attacks."

"Attacks," it should be duly noted, that may very well have been allowed to happen as the World Socialist Web Site recently reported.

Driving home the point that war, and not social- and infrastructure investment fuel deficits, Hudson averred that "the present rise in in U.S. Treasury debt results from two forms of warfare. First is the overtly military Oil War in the Near East, from Iraq to Afghanistan (Pipelinistan) to oil-rich Libya. These adventures will end up costing between $3 and $5 trillion."

"Second and even more expensive," the economist observed, "is the more covert yet more costly economic war of Wall Street against the rest of the economy, demanding that losses by banks and financial institutions be passed onto the government balance sheet ('taxpayers'). The bailouts and 'free lunch' for Wall Street--by no coincidence, Congress's number one political campaign contributor--cost $13 trillion."

"Now that finance is the new form of warfare," Hudson wrote, "where is the power to constrain Treasury and Federal Reserve power to commit taxpayers to bail out financial interests at the top of the economic pyramid?"

And since "cutbacks in federal revenue sharing will hit cities and states hard, forcing them to sell off yet more land, roads and other assets in the public domain to cover their budget deficit as the U.S. economy sinks further into depression," Hudson wrote that "Congress has just added fiscal deflation to debt deflation, slowing employment even further."

While the global economy circles the drain, with ever more painful cuts in so-called "entitlement" programs meant to cushion the crash now on the chopping block, the corporate and political masters who rule the roost are sharpening their knives, fashioning administrative and bureaucratic surveillance tools, the better to conceal the "invisible hand" of that bitch-slaps us all.

And they call it "freedom."