Muddy Waters
Long Distance Call
Long Distance Call
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
NY Daily News Poll on whether Fox News is Destructive to America
President Barack Obama in Rolling Stone: Rupert Murdoch's Fox News is 'destructive' to U.S. growth
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/09/29/2010-09-
The Coffee Party, the J Street of American Grassroots Movements
Am Thinker:NEWBUSTERS : Decaffeinated Coffee Party Convention Fizzles Out to Almost No Media Acclaim
By P.J. GladnickCreated 09/27/2010 - 09:14Remember all the media hoopla earlier this year surrounding the birth of the liberal alternative to the Tea Party called the Coffee Party which was founded by former Obama political operative, Annabel Park [0]? Well, despite all the promotion of the Coffee Party by the MSM, it has pretty much fizzled out. The extent of its slide into complete insignificance can be measured by the fact that its national convention in Louisville, KY this past weekend registered almost no media coverage. Perhaps even the MSM was embarrassed by the Coffee Party's current obscurity to the extent that its lasting legacy might well be the performance at their convention of the lamest rap song [1] in history.What little coverage the supposedly 350 people attending the Coffee Party convention received seems to have been pretty much limited to local media such as the Louisville Courier whose article [2] could do little to hide the navel-gazing aspects of this "movement" moving nowhere:
The Coffee Party USA -- which was founded on Facebook and is holding its first national convention in Louisville this weekend -- bills itself as a more thoughtful and reasoned alternative to the tea party.
Saturday night the organization held a panel discussion, part of its three-day "Restoring American Democracy" convention, that included bloggers, college professors and communications strategists talking about what they can do to make politics more inclusive. They also discussed how to draw more disenfranchised voters back into the democratic process.Essentially discussing the lint buildup in their own navels which is why the eternally self-analytical Coffee Party never went beyond the stage of a glorified political group therapy session. However, if you read the news coverage just a few months ago, you would have thought the Coffee Party was a huge dynamic movement that was sweeping the nation. Who were the perpetrators of this myth? There were many but let us focus on just one of them.
Steve Tuttle of Newsweek! Are you out there? Front and center so we can refresh your memory with the absurd report [2] you filed in April about the "200,000" members of the "dynamic" Coffee Party:
Is it ANY WONDER why the progressives are so sure the tea party is a construct of some hidden fascists with money who are duping the racists and yahoos to protect their money and power? It's only, after all, precisely what the progressives do.September 27, 2010The Soros-Axelrod Axis of Astroturf
In politics, things can be other than what they seem on the surface - especially when George Soros and David Axelrod are involvedLast year at about this time, I scripted a column suggesting that George Soros, billionaire sugar daddy of the Democrats, ardent ally of Barack Obama, and fierce anti-Israel critic and activist, was a founder and major funder of the anti-Israel group J Street . Recent revelations confirm that Soros and family members were major donors-despite J Street's previous denials.I also suggested that Soros may have worked with David Axelrod, Obama's campaign strategist and now Obama's domestic policy advisor, to create J Street.I thought that was a logical presumption: Axelrod has a lot of experience creating fake grassroots groups such as J Street (so-called Astroturf groups) and also probably would have had dealings with Soros, the emperor of such groups as MoveOn.Org (and now J Street). This speculation now may have its smoking gun. Axelrod has been the beneficiary of Soros's money in the recent past.Politico's Ben Smith reports that Axelrod's firm (he still has ties there and receives money from the relationship) has been on Soros's payroll-at least indirectly. The ties go back to at least 2004:That year, one of Axelrod's firms collected at least $229,000 from The Media Fund, Harold Ickes' 527 organization funded by Soros and other mega-donors, which ran some $53 million in ads aimed at supplementing John Kerry's campaign.Another Axelrod firm earned at least $46,500 making ads for a Democratic 527 backed by the Sandlers, Citizens for a Strong Senate, which poured $5.4 million into that year's Senate races.Those 527s were criticized for their woefully slow disclosure, with donors' names emerging long after ads had done their damage. The Media Fund also later paid a giant fine to the FEC for, allegedly, flouting federal election law by relying on huge contributions.Axelrod's old firm also specialized in running run high-stakes, expensive advocacy campaigns on the state and local level that -- as he deplores today -- did no disclosure at all of their corporate backers.The Sandlers are a husband and wife team of billionaires who made their fortune during the savingsand loan bubble that led to disaster. But they were experienced enough to know the type of risky loans they were peddling and sold out to Wachovia before the bombs started exploding on their S and L's balance sheet. They never paid a price for their shenanigans. Since then they have been partners with George Soros in many of his partisan ventures-including the founding of the Center for American Progress (Obama's Idea Factory and Hiring Hall).The evidence mounts that Soros and Axelrod have worked together to create and fund a variety of Astroturf groups, including J Street, and, at least indirectly, the Coffee Party.
White House says Obama thinks Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow 'provide an invaluable service.'
And it's even more obnoxious than you think -Politico (which is probably thought of as a reactionary/regressive rag by these yutzes):
"If you're on the left, if you're somebody like Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow or one of the folks who helps to keep our government honest and pushes and prods to make sure that folks are true to progressive values, then [the president] thinks that those folks provide an invaluable service," Burton told reporters.Noticeably absent from Burton's embrace was anyone from the blogosphere once courted so avidly by the White House. Peter Daou thinks he knows why:"With each passing day, I'm beginning to realize that the crux of the problem for Obama is a handful of prominent progressive bloggers, among them Glenn Greenwald, John Aravosis, Digby, Marcy Wheeler and Jane Hamsher."Daou, a progressive strategist and blogger himself, offered the explanation in a post provocatively titled "How a Handful of Liberal Bloggers Are Bringing Down the Obama Presidency," which put a face on Obama's critics and suggested why their criticism might be so irritating.The complaints these bloggers have launched against the Obama administration are, Daou notes, "exactly the same complaints they lodged against the Bush administration."
'We actually don't like these progressives either, just the shills, if you please.'
There are probably folks out out there ready to defend Obama on this basis as some sort of centrist.
OIC Breaks Out The Big Guns: Leaders of Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Malaysia, Maldives All Appear Before U.N. Urging Crackdown on “Islamophobia”…
And yet every one of these countries mercilessly persecutes their Christian citizens (it’s even illegal in the Maldives to simply practice Christianity while churches are forbidden in Qatar), but we’re supposed to flush out cherished freedom of speech down the toilet so they’re feeling aren’t hurt? Two words. F*ck off…
Click on the title to get the whole story.
WTF?
You've got to love the media and their Government sponsors, on any continent.
You would think, with something as urgent as a terror threat warning, they could get their stories straight.
But instead we get "it's in it's embryonic stage."
Drone strikes have thwarted
increased activity by a more diverse set of groups and a more diverse set of threats
There are some pretty notable threat streams
The Threat is/was advanced but not imminent
So what is it? Either it is or it isn't. It's been stopped or it hasn't. They need to get the goddamned story right and straight because anything less confuses and frightens people and kills what little credibility they have left, which causes so many others to ignore it and let their guard down at a time that it can't be afforded.
Which does nothing to allay my suspicions that the governments are doing it for politics and the networks for ratings.
And National Security be damned.
I say be alert, be ready, be safe, 24/7/365.
You would think, with something as urgent as a terror threat warning, they could get their stories straight.
But instead we get "it's in it's embryonic stage."
Drone strikes have thwarted
increased activity by a more diverse set of groups and a more diverse set of threats
There are some pretty notable threat streams
The Threat is/was advanced but not imminent
So what is it? Either it is or it isn't. It's been stopped or it hasn't. They need to get the goddamned story right and straight because anything less confuses and frightens people and kills what little credibility they have left, which causes so many others to ignore it and let their guard down at a time that it can't be afforded.
Which does nothing to allay my suspicions that the governments are doing it for politics and the networks for ratings.
And National Security be damned.
I say be alert, be ready, be safe, 24/7/365.
The Blaze:
Anti-Austerity Protests Sweep Across Europe
Posted on September 29, 2010 at 8:57am by Jonathon M. Seidl
BRUSSELS (AP) — Anti-austerity protests erupted across Europe on Wednesday — Greek doctors and railway employees walked off the job, Spanish workers shut down trains and buses, and one man even rammed a cement truck into the Irish parliament to protest the country’s enormous bank bailouts [see video below].
Tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into Brussels, hoping to swell into a 100,000-strong march on European Union institutions later in the day and reinforce the impact of Spain’s first nationwide strike in eight years.
All the actions sought to protest the budget-slashing, tax-hiking, pension-cutting austerity plans of European governments seeking to control their debt.
In an ironic twist, the march in Brussels accidentally comes just as the EU Commission is proposing to punish member states that have run up deficits. Most of those deficits funded social and employment programs in a time of high unemployment across the continent. The proposal, backed by Germany, is expected to run into strong opposition from France.
“It is a bizarre time for the European Commission to be proposing a regime of punishment,” said John Monks, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, which is organizing the Brussels march.
“How is that going to make the situation better? It is going to make it worse,” Monks said in an interview with Associated Press Television News.
Unions fear that workers will become the biggest victims of an economic crisis set off by bankers and traders, many of whom were rescued by massive government intervention.
Several governments, already living dangerously with high debt, were pushed to the brink of financial collapse and have been forced to impose punishing cuts in wages, pensions and employment — measures that have brought workers out by the tens of thousands over the past months.
“There is a great danger that the workers are going to be paying the price for the reckless speculation that took place in financial markets,” Monks said. “You really got to reschedule these debts so that they are not a huge burden on the next few years and cause Europe to plunge down into recession.”
In Spain, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero‘s Socialist government is under severe pressure because of the hugely unpopular measures put in place to save Europe’s fourth-largest economy from a bailout like one that saved Greece from bankruptcy.
The cuts have helped Spain trim its central government deficit by half through July but the unemployment rate stands at 20 percent, and many businesses are struggling to survive.
The strike Wednesday was Spain’s first general strike since 2002 and marked a break in the once-close relationship between unions and the Socialist government.
Whistle-blowing picketers blocked trucks from delivering produce at the main wholesale markets in Madrid and Barcelona. Strikers hurled eggs and screamed “scabs” at drivers trying to leave a city bus garage in Madrid.
The salary cuts for civil servants, pension reforms and new laws that make it easier for companies to fire workers were rushed into law quickly in Spain, without traditional negotiations between management and workers.
Greece, which had to be rescued by the euro-nations this spring to stave off bankruptcy, has also been forced to cut deep into workers’ allowances, with weeks of bitter strikes and actions as a result.
Bus and trolley drivers walked off the job for several hours while Athens’ metro system and tram were to shut down at noon. National railway workers were also walking off the job at noon, disrupting rail connections across the country, while doctors at state hospitals were on a 24-hour strike.
Greece has already been suffering from two weeks of protests by truck drivers who have made it difficult for businesses to get supplies. Many supermarkets are seeing shortages, while producers complaining they are unable to export their goods.
Truck drivers’ unions voted late Tuesday to continue their protests against plans to liberalize their tightly regulated profession, despite a government threat to force them back to work or cancel their licenses.
Greece’s government has imposed stringent austerity measures, including cutting civil servants’ salaries, trimming pensions and hiking consumer and income taxes. Several other EU nations are also planning actions.
In Dublin, a man rammed a cement mixer into the gates of the Irish parliament Wednesday in an apparent protest at the country’s catastrophically expensive bank bailout. Written across the truck’s barrel in red letters were the words: “Toxic Bank Anglo.”
Police said they had arrested a 41-year-old man but gave few other details.
The Anglo Irish Bank, which was nationalized last year to save it from collapse, owes some euro72 billion ($97 billion) to depositors worldwide, leaving Irish taxpayers with a mammoth bill at a time when people are suffering through high unemployment, tax hikes and heavy budget cuts.
Many experts say, that whatever unions try, the towering government debt across the continent will force drastic changes in Europe’s labor situation.
“The party is over,” said former EU Commissioner Frits Bolkestein at the financial Eurofi conference in Brussels. “We shall all have to work longer and harder, more hours in the week, more weeks in the year, and no state pension before the age of 67,” he said.
The unions say, however, that the party was only there for society’s upper crust, leaving the workers to pay the bills. The crisis has left 23 million people unemployed in Europe, Monks said.
Associated Press Writer Dan Woolls in Madrid and Elena Becatoros in Athens contributed to this story.
Anti-Austerity Protests Sweep Across Europe
Posted on September 29, 2010 at 8:57am by Jonathon M. Seidl
BRUSSELS (AP) — Anti-austerity protests erupted across Europe on Wednesday — Greek doctors and railway employees walked off the job, Spanish workers shut down trains and buses, and one man even rammed a cement truck into the Irish parliament to protest the country’s enormous bank bailouts [see video below].
Tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into Brussels, hoping to swell into a 100,000-strong march on European Union institutions later in the day and reinforce the impact of Spain’s first nationwide strike in eight years.
All the actions sought to protest the budget-slashing, tax-hiking, pension-cutting austerity plans of European governments seeking to control their debt.
In an ironic twist, the march in Brussels accidentally comes just as the EU Commission is proposing to punish member states that have run up deficits. Most of those deficits funded social and employment programs in a time of high unemployment across the continent. The proposal, backed by Germany, is expected to run into strong opposition from France.
“It is a bizarre time for the European Commission to be proposing a regime of punishment,” said John Monks, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, which is organizing the Brussels march.
“How is that going to make the situation better? It is going to make it worse,” Monks said in an interview with Associated Press Television News.
Unions fear that workers will become the biggest victims of an economic crisis set off by bankers and traders, many of whom were rescued by massive government intervention.
Several governments, already living dangerously with high debt, were pushed to the brink of financial collapse and have been forced to impose punishing cuts in wages, pensions and employment — measures that have brought workers out by the tens of thousands over the past months.
“There is a great danger that the workers are going to be paying the price for the reckless speculation that took place in financial markets,” Monks said. “You really got to reschedule these debts so that they are not a huge burden on the next few years and cause Europe to plunge down into recession.”
In Spain, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero‘s Socialist government is under severe pressure because of the hugely unpopular measures put in place to save Europe’s fourth-largest economy from a bailout like one that saved Greece from bankruptcy.
The cuts have helped Spain trim its central government deficit by half through July but the unemployment rate stands at 20 percent, and many businesses are struggling to survive.
The strike Wednesday was Spain’s first general strike since 2002 and marked a break in the once-close relationship between unions and the Socialist government.
Whistle-blowing picketers blocked trucks from delivering produce at the main wholesale markets in Madrid and Barcelona. Strikers hurled eggs and screamed “scabs” at drivers trying to leave a city bus garage in Madrid.
The salary cuts for civil servants, pension reforms and new laws that make it easier for companies to fire workers were rushed into law quickly in Spain, without traditional negotiations between management and workers.
Greece, which had to be rescued by the euro-nations this spring to stave off bankruptcy, has also been forced to cut deep into workers’ allowances, with weeks of bitter strikes and actions as a result.
Bus and trolley drivers walked off the job for several hours while Athens’ metro system and tram were to shut down at noon. National railway workers were also walking off the job at noon, disrupting rail connections across the country, while doctors at state hospitals were on a 24-hour strike.
Greece has already been suffering from two weeks of protests by truck drivers who have made it difficult for businesses to get supplies. Many supermarkets are seeing shortages, while producers complaining they are unable to export their goods.
Truck drivers’ unions voted late Tuesday to continue their protests against plans to liberalize their tightly regulated profession, despite a government threat to force them back to work or cancel their licenses.
Greece’s government has imposed stringent austerity measures, including cutting civil servants’ salaries, trimming pensions and hiking consumer and income taxes. Several other EU nations are also planning actions.
In Dublin, a man rammed a cement mixer into the gates of the Irish parliament Wednesday in an apparent protest at the country’s catastrophically expensive bank bailout. Written across the truck’s barrel in red letters were the words: “Toxic Bank Anglo.”
Police said they had arrested a 41-year-old man but gave few other details.
The Anglo Irish Bank, which was nationalized last year to save it from collapse, owes some euro72 billion ($97 billion) to depositors worldwide, leaving Irish taxpayers with a mammoth bill at a time when people are suffering through high unemployment, tax hikes and heavy budget cuts.
Many experts say, that whatever unions try, the towering government debt across the continent will force drastic changes in Europe’s labor situation.
“The party is over,” said former EU Commissioner Frits Bolkestein at the financial Eurofi conference in Brussels. “We shall all have to work longer and harder, more hours in the week, more weeks in the year, and no state pension before the age of 67,” he said.
The unions say, however, that the party was only there for society’s upper crust, leaving the workers to pay the bills. The crisis has left 23 million people unemployed in Europe, Monks said.
Associated Press Writer Dan Woolls in Madrid and Elena Becatoros in Athens contributed to this story.
Stuxnet in Iran: 2 from Debka
An alarmed Iran asks for outside help to stop rampaging Stuxnet malworm
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 29, 2010, 10:07 AM (GMT+02:00)
Tehran this week secretly appealed to a number of computer security experts in West and East Europe with offers of handsome fees for consultations on ways to exorcize the Stuxnet worm spreading havoc through the computer networks and administrative software of its most important industrial complexes and military command centers. debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report Iran turned for outside help after local computer experts failed to remove the destructive virus.
None of the foreign experts has so far come forward because Tehran refuses to provide precise information on the sensitive centers and systems under attack and give the visiting specialists the locations where they would need to work. They were not told whether they would be called on to work outside Tehran or given access to affected sites to study how they function and how the malworm managed to disable them. Iran also refuses to give out data on the changes its engineers have made to imported SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, mostly from Germany.
The impression debkafile sources gained Wednesday, Sept. 29 from talking to European computer experts approached for aid was that the Iranians are getting desperate. Not only have their own attempts to defeat the invading worm failed, but they made matters worse: The malworm became more aggressive and returned to the attack on parts of the systems damaged in the initial attack.
One expert said: "The Iranians have been forced to realize that they would be better off not 'irritating' the invader because it hits back with a bigger punch."
Looking beyond Iran's predicament, he wondered whether the people responsible for planting Stuxnet in Iran - and apparently continuing to offload information from its sensitive systems - have the technology for stopping its rampage. "My impression," he said, "is that somebody outside Iran has partial control at least on its spread. Can this body stop malworm in its tracks or kill it? We don't have that information at present, he said.
As it is, the Iranian officials who turned outside for help were described by another of the experts they approached as alarmed and frustrated. It has dawned on them that the trouble cannot be waved away overnight but is around for the long haul. Finding a credible specialist with the magic code for ridding them of the cyber enemy could take several months. After their own attempts to defeat Stuxnet backfired, all the Iranians can do now is to sit back and hope for the best, helpless to predict the worm's next target and which other of their strategic industries will go down or be robbed of its secrets next.
While Tehran has given out several conflicting figures on the systems and networks struck by the malworm - 30,000 to 45,000 industrial units - debkafile's sources cite security experts as putting the figure much higher, in the region of millions. If this is true, then this cyber weapon attack on Iran would be the greatest ever.
Cyber attack on Iran expands: Tehran threatens long-term war in reprisal
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 27, 2010, 6:13 PM (GMT+02:00)
Iran admitted Monday, Sept. 27 it was under full-scale cyber terror attack. The official IRNA news agency quoted Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's government Information Technology Company, as saying that the Stuxnet computer worm "is mutating and wreaking further havoc on computerized industrial equipment."
Stuxnet was no normal worm, he said: "The attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading."
Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Hossein Salami declared his force had all the defensive structures for fighting a long-term war against "the biggest and most powerful enemies" and was ready to defend the revolution with more advanced weapons than the past. He stressed that defense systems have been designed for all points of the country, and a special plan devised for the Bushehr nuclear power plant. debkafile's military sources report that this indicates that the plant - and probably other nuclear facilities too - had been infected, although Iranian officials have insisted it has not, only the personal computers of its staff.
The Stuxnet spy worm has been created in line with the West's electronic warfare against Iran," said Mahmoud Liayi, secretary of the information technology council of the Industries Minister.
As for the origin of the Stuxnet attack, Hamid Alipour said: The hackers who enjoy "huge investments" from a series of foreign countries or organizations, designed the worm, which has affected at least 30,000 Iranian addresses, to exploit five different security vulnerabilities. This confirmed the impressions of Western experts that Stuxnet invaded Iran's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems through "zero-day" access.
Alipour added the malware, the first known worm to target large-scale systems and industrial complexes control systems, is also a serious threat to personal computers.
debkafile's Iranian and intelligence sources report that these statements are preparing the ground for Tehran to go beyond condemning the states or intelligence bodies alleged to have sponsored the cyber attack on Iranian infrastructure and military industries and retaliate against them militarily. Iran is acting in the role of victim of unprovoked, full-scale, cyber terror aggression.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 29, 2010, 10:07 AM (GMT+02:00)
Tehran this week secretly appealed to a number of computer security experts in West and East Europe with offers of handsome fees for consultations on ways to exorcize the Stuxnet worm spreading havoc through the computer networks and administrative software of its most important industrial complexes and military command centers. debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report Iran turned for outside help after local computer experts failed to remove the destructive virus.
None of the foreign experts has so far come forward because Tehran refuses to provide precise information on the sensitive centers and systems under attack and give the visiting specialists the locations where they would need to work. They were not told whether they would be called on to work outside Tehran or given access to affected sites to study how they function and how the malworm managed to disable them. Iran also refuses to give out data on the changes its engineers have made to imported SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, mostly from Germany.
The impression debkafile sources gained Wednesday, Sept. 29 from talking to European computer experts approached for aid was that the Iranians are getting desperate. Not only have their own attempts to defeat the invading worm failed, but they made matters worse: The malworm became more aggressive and returned to the attack on parts of the systems damaged in the initial attack.
One expert said: "The Iranians have been forced to realize that they would be better off not 'irritating' the invader because it hits back with a bigger punch."
Looking beyond Iran's predicament, he wondered whether the people responsible for planting Stuxnet in Iran - and apparently continuing to offload information from its sensitive systems - have the technology for stopping its rampage. "My impression," he said, "is that somebody outside Iran has partial control at least on its spread. Can this body stop malworm in its tracks or kill it? We don't have that information at present, he said.
As it is, the Iranian officials who turned outside for help were described by another of the experts they approached as alarmed and frustrated. It has dawned on them that the trouble cannot be waved away overnight but is around for the long haul. Finding a credible specialist with the magic code for ridding them of the cyber enemy could take several months. After their own attempts to defeat Stuxnet backfired, all the Iranians can do now is to sit back and hope for the best, helpless to predict the worm's next target and which other of their strategic industries will go down or be robbed of its secrets next.
While Tehran has given out several conflicting figures on the systems and networks struck by the malworm - 30,000 to 45,000 industrial units - debkafile's sources cite security experts as putting the figure much higher, in the region of millions. If this is true, then this cyber weapon attack on Iran would be the greatest ever.
Cyber attack on Iran expands: Tehran threatens long-term war in reprisal
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 27, 2010, 6:13 PM (GMT+02:00)
Iran admitted Monday, Sept. 27 it was under full-scale cyber terror attack. The official IRNA news agency quoted Hamid Alipour, deputy head of Iran's government Information Technology Company, as saying that the Stuxnet computer worm "is mutating and wreaking further havoc on computerized industrial equipment."
Stuxnet was no normal worm, he said: "The attack is still ongoing and new versions of this virus are spreading."
Revolutionary Guards deputy commander Hossein Salami declared his force had all the defensive structures for fighting a long-term war against "the biggest and most powerful enemies" and was ready to defend the revolution with more advanced weapons than the past. He stressed that defense systems have been designed for all points of the country, and a special plan devised for the Bushehr nuclear power plant. debkafile's military sources report that this indicates that the plant - and probably other nuclear facilities too - had been infected, although Iranian officials have insisted it has not, only the personal computers of its staff.
The Stuxnet spy worm has been created in line with the West's electronic warfare against Iran," said Mahmoud Liayi, secretary of the information technology council of the Industries Minister.
As for the origin of the Stuxnet attack, Hamid Alipour said: The hackers who enjoy "huge investments" from a series of foreign countries or organizations, designed the worm, which has affected at least 30,000 Iranian addresses, to exploit five different security vulnerabilities. This confirmed the impressions of Western experts that Stuxnet invaded Iran's Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems through "zero-day" access.
Alipour added the malware, the first known worm to target large-scale systems and industrial complexes control systems, is also a serious threat to personal computers.
debkafile's Iranian and intelligence sources report that these statements are preparing the ground for Tehran to go beyond condemning the states or intelligence bodies alleged to have sponsored the cyber attack on Iranian infrastructure and military industries and retaliate against them militarily. Iran is acting in the role of victim of unprovoked, full-scale, cyber terror aggression.
Newsmax:
Drone Strikes Thwart European Terror Plot
Tuesday, 28 Sep 2010
WASHINGTON – Some missile strikes in a recent surge of attacks by unmanned U.S. drones in Pakistan were aimed at disrupting suspected terrorist plots aimed at Europe, a Western counterterrorism official said.
The official said the targeted strikes were aimed at al-Qaida and other militant groups arrayed in Pakistan's tribal region near the Afghanistan border. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the terror plot remain sensitive.
The Eiffel Tower in Paris was briefly evacuated Tuesday, the second time in the past week because of an unspecified threat.
The Obama administration has intensified the use of drone-fired missiles in Pakistan's border area but this month there have been at least 21 attacks, more than double the highest number fired in any other single month.
A suspected American missile strike killed four militants in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, intelligence officials said. There was no word on the identities of those killed in the attack in South Waziristan region, which lies just across the border from Afghanistan. The Pakistani army last year launched a major antimilitant offensive in the region, though insurgents remain.
The counterterrorism official, who is familiar with the drone strikes and the details of the Europe terror plots, said Tuesday that the missile strikes in Pakistan are "a product of precise intelligence and precise weapons. We've been hitting targets that pose a threat to our troops in Afghanistan and terrorists plotting attacks in South Asia and beyond."
The official acknowledged that "our operational tempo has been up for a while now," and added that "given the stakes involved, we hope to keep the pressure on as long as we can."
Drone Strikes Thwart European Terror Plot
Tuesday, 28 Sep 2010
WASHINGTON – Some missile strikes in a recent surge of attacks by unmanned U.S. drones in Pakistan were aimed at disrupting suspected terrorist plots aimed at Europe, a Western counterterrorism official said.
The official said the targeted strikes were aimed at al-Qaida and other militant groups arrayed in Pakistan's tribal region near the Afghanistan border. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the terror plot remain sensitive.
The Eiffel Tower in Paris was briefly evacuated Tuesday, the second time in the past week because of an unspecified threat.
The Obama administration has intensified the use of drone-fired missiles in Pakistan's border area but this month there have been at least 21 attacks, more than double the highest number fired in any other single month.
A suspected American missile strike killed four militants in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, intelligence officials said. There was no word on the identities of those killed in the attack in South Waziristan region, which lies just across the border from Afghanistan. The Pakistani army last year launched a major antimilitant offensive in the region, though insurgents remain.
The counterterrorism official, who is familiar with the drone strikes and the details of the Europe terror plots, said Tuesday that the missile strikes in Pakistan are "a product of precise intelligence and precise weapons. We've been hitting targets that pose a threat to our troops in Afghanistan and terrorists plotting attacks in South Asia and beyond."
The official acknowledged that "our operational tempo has been up for a while now," and added that "given the stakes involved, we hope to keep the pressure on as long as we can."
Attack Plotters Have "Operational Assets" in U.S.
Doug Hagmann at Northeast Intelligence Network has additional information on the suspected attacks.
Warning for Muslim terror attack – “Mumbai style”
By: Douglas J. Hagmann
29 September 2010:
The intelligence has been increasing since early this year: Islamic terrorists are preparing commando style assaults against soft targets in the U.S., France, Germany and the UK. Crowded areas including shopping centers, transit hubs, community and conference centers, hotels, and similar locations are the targets of young, well armed Islamic terrorists.
The Northeast Intelligence Network first reported on this threat on 14 June 2010 for the UK.
We also had specific information that a Mumbai style terror attack was being planned against Jewish Centers in the U.S., as we first reported on June 5, 2010.
What you won’t hear in the Western media, however, is that the perpetrators of these attacks, although many trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan, have “operational assets” here in the U.S. Many of the supporters of these urban commandos have support in U.S. mosques and Islamic centers. We reported extensively on the Muslim mosques serving as planning centers on 29 October 2009:
“We’re talking about professional Muslim men, mosque leaders, leaders within our communities who are actually helping young men train for the eventuality of urban combat. They know what they are doing, yet they lie right to our faces about these activities- and we’re told by our supervisors that we have to accept what they tell us at face value when they know damn well they are lying.” -Federal source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Read the rest here.
Warning for Muslim terror attack – “Mumbai style”
By: Douglas J. Hagmann
29 September 2010:
The intelligence has been increasing since early this year: Islamic terrorists are preparing commando style assaults against soft targets in the U.S., France, Germany and the UK. Crowded areas including shopping centers, transit hubs, community and conference centers, hotels, and similar locations are the targets of young, well armed Islamic terrorists.
The Northeast Intelligence Network first reported on this threat on 14 June 2010 for the UK.
We also had specific information that a Mumbai style terror attack was being planned against Jewish Centers in the U.S., as we first reported on June 5, 2010.
What you won’t hear in the Western media, however, is that the perpetrators of these attacks, although many trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan, have “operational assets” here in the U.S. Many of the supporters of these urban commandos have support in U.S. mosques and Islamic centers. We reported extensively on the Muslim mosques serving as planning centers on 29 October 2009:
“We’re talking about professional Muslim men, mosque leaders, leaders within our communities who are actually helping young men train for the eventuality of urban combat. They know what they are doing, yet they lie right to our faces about these activities- and we’re told by our supervisors that we have to accept what they tell us at face value when they know damn well they are lying.” -Federal source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Read the rest here.
Black Panther Leader King Smear ShaJizz Says, Fox Jews Doesn't Report It When Whites Use Black Babies As Alligator Bait
Damn, this guy is funnier than Dave Chappelle.
'Credible But Not Specific' Threat of New Terrorist Attack
From ABC News:
US and European officials said Tuesday they have detected a plot to carry out a major, coordinated series of commando-style terror attacks in Britain, France, Germany and possibly the United States.
Intelligence and law enforcement authorities in the US and Europe said the threat information is based on the interrogation of a suspected German terrorist allegedly captured on his way to Europe in late summer and now being held at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.
US law enforcement officials say they have been told the terrorists were planning a series of "Mumbai-style" commando raids on what were termed "economic or soft" targets in the countries. Pakistani militants killed 173 people with guns and grenades during the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India.
In testimony before Congress last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, "We are all seeing increased activity by a more diverse set of groups and a more diverse set of threats."
Culturist Man of the Week
Australia ex-PM Howard attacks multiculturalism
John Howard praises the traditions of what Churchill called the English Speaking people. Money quote:
John Howard praises the traditions of what Churchill called the English Speaking people. Money quote:
“This is a time not to apologize for our particular identity but rather to firmly and respectfully and robustly reassert it … I believe that societies are enriched if they draw, as my country has done, from all parts of the world on a non-discriminatory basis and contribute, as the United States has done, to the building of a great society … But when a nation draws people from other parts of the world, it draws them because of the magnetism of its own culture and its own way of life.”Culturist man-of-the-week?
He criticized those who would make cultural identity "mushy and unclear and undistinct," rejecting the "assumption that the way to win favor from extremism is to make yourself a little more attractive to that extremism." … Howard hailed what he called the values of political freedom and rule of law of five "Anglosphere" nations -- Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States.
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