DANBURY, Conn. (AP) — For more than a decade they toiled in the strange, boxy-looking building on the hill above the municipal airport, the building with no windows (except in the cafeteria), the building filled with secrets.
They wore protective white jumpsuits, and had to walk through air-shower chambers before entering the sanitized "cleanroom" where the equipment was stored.
They spoke in code.
Few knew the true identity of "the customer" they met in a smoke-filled, wood-paneled conference room where the phone lines were scrambled. When they traveled, they sometimes used false names.
At one point in the 1970s there were more than 1,000 people in the Danbury area working on The Secret. And though they worked long hours under intense deadlines, sometimes missing family holidays and anniversaries, they could tell no one — not even their wives and children — what they did.
They were engineers, scientists, draftsmen and inventors — "real cloak-and-dagger guys," says Fred Marra, 78, with a hearty laugh.
He is sitting in the food court at the Danbury Fair mall, where a group of retired co-workers from the former Perkin-Elmer Corp. gather for a weekly coffee. Gray-haired now and hard of hearing, they have been meeting here for 18 years. They while away a few hours nattering about golf and politics, ailments and grandchildren. But until recently, they were forbidden to speak about the greatest achievement of their professional lives.
"Ah, Hexagon," Ed Newton says, gleefully exhaling the word that stills feels almost treasonous to utter in public.
It was dubbed "Big Bird" and it was considered the most successful space spy satellite program of the Cold War era. From 1971 to 1986 a total of 20 satellites were launched, each containing 60 miles of film and sophisticated cameras that orbited the earth snapping vast, panoramic photographs of the Soviet Union, China and other potential foes. The film was shot back through the earth's atmosphere in buckets that parachuted over the Pacific Ocean, where C-130 Air Force planes snagged them with grappling hooks.
The scale, ambition and sheer ingenuity of Hexagon KH-9 was breathtaking. The fact that 19 out of 20 launches were successful (the final mission blew up because the booster rockets failed) is astonishing.
So too is the human tale of the 45-year-old secret that many took to their graves.
Hexagon was declassified in September. Finally Marra, Newton and others can tell the world what they worked on all those years at "the office."
"My name is Al Gayhart and I built spy satellites for a living," announced the 64-year-old retired engineer to the stunned bartender in his local tavern as soon as he learned of the declassification. He proudly repeats the line any chance he gets.
"It was intensely demanding, thrilling and the greatest experience of my life," says Gayhart, who was hired straight from college and was one of the youngest members of the Hexagon "brotherhood".
He describes the white-hot excitement as teams pored over hand-drawings and worked on endless technical problems, using "slide-rules and advanced degrees" (there were no computers), knowing they were part of such a complicated space project. The intensity would increase as launch deadlines loomed and on the days when "the customer" — the CIA and later the Air Force — came for briefings. On at least one occasion, former President George H.W. Bush, who was then CIA director, flew into Danbury for a tour of the plant.
Though other companies were part of the project — Eastman Kodak made the film and Lockheed Corp. built the satellite — the cameras and optics systems were all made at Perkin-Elmer, then the biggest employer in Danbury.
"There were many days we arrived in the dark and left in the dark," says retired engineer Paul Brickmeier, 70.
He recalls the very first briefing on Hexagon after Perkin-Elmer was awarded the top secret contract in 1966. Looking around the room at his 30 or so colleagues, Brickmeier thought, "How on Earth is this going to be possible?"
One thing that made it possible was a hiring frenzy that attracted the attention of top engineers from around the Northeast. Perkin-Elmer also commissioned a new 270,000-square-foot building for Hexagon — the boxy one on the hill.
Waiting for clearance was a surreal experience as family members, neighbors and former employers were grilled by the FBI, and potential hires were questioned about everything from their gambling habits to their sexuality.
"They wanted to make sure we couldn't be bribed," Marra says.
Clearance could take up to a year. During that time, employees worked on relatively minor tasks in a building dubbed "the mushroom tank" — so named because everyone was in the dark about what they had actually been hired for.
Joseph Prusak, 76, spent six months in the tank. When he was finally briefed on Hexagon, Prusak, who had worked as an engineer on earlier civil space projects, wondered if he had made the biggest mistake of his life.
"I thought they were crazy," he says. "They envisaged a satellite that was 60-foot long and 30,000 pounds and supplying film at speeds of 200 inches per second. The precision and complexity blew my mind."
Several years later, after numerous successful launches, he was shown what Hexagon was capable of — an image of his own house in suburban Fairfield.
"This was light years before Google Earth," Prusak said. "And we could clearly see the pool in my backyard."
There had been earlier space spy satellites — Corona and Gambit. But neither had the resolution or sophistication of Hexagon, which took close-range pictures of Soviet missiles, submarine pens and air bases, even entire battalions on war exercises.
According to the National Reconnaissance Office, a single Hexagon frame covered a ground distance of 370 nautical miles, about the distance from Washington to Cincinnati. Early Hexagons averaged 124 days in space, but as the satellites became more sophisticated, later missions lasted twice as long.
"At the height of the Cold War, our ability to receive this kind of technical intelligence was incredible," says space historian Dwayne Day. "We needed to know what they were doing and where they were doing it, and in particular if they were preparing to invade Western Europe. Hexagon created a tremendous amount of stability because it meant American decision makers were not operating in the dark."
Among other successes, Hexagon is credited with providing crucial information for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
From the outset, secrecy was a huge concern, especially in Danbury, where the intense activity of a relatively small company that had just been awarded a massive contract (the amount was not declassified) made it obvious that something big was going on. Inside the plant, it was impossible to disguise the gigantic vacuum thermal chamber where cameras were tested in extreme conditions that simulated space. There was also a "shake, rattle and roll room" to simulate conditions during launch.
"The question became, how do you hide an elephant?" a National Reconnaissance Office report stated at the time. It decided on a simple response: "What elephant?" Employees were told to ignore any questions from the media, and never confirm the slightest detail about what they worked on.
But it was impossible to conceal the launches at Vandenberg Air Force base in California, and aviation magazines made several references to "Big Bird." In 1975, a "60 Minutes" television piece on space reconnaissance described an "Alice in Wonderland" world, where American and Soviet intelligence officials knew of each other's "eyes in the sky" — and other nations did, too — but no one confirmed the programs or spoke about them publicly.
For employees at Perkin-Elmer, the vow of secrecy was considered a mark of honor.
"We were like the guys who worked on the first atom bomb," said Oscar Berendsohn, 87, who helped design the optics system. "It was more than a sworn oath. We had been entrusted with the security of the country. What greater trust is there?"
Even wives — who couldn't contact their husbands or know of their whereabouts when they were traveling — for the most part accepted the secrecy. They knew the jobs were highly classified. They knew not to ask questions.
"We were born into the World War II generation," says Linda Bronico, whose husband, Al, told her only that he was building test consoles and cables. "We all knew the slogan 'loose lips sink ships.'"
And Perkin-Elmer was considered a prized place to work, with good salaries and benefits, golf and softball leagues, lavish summer picnics (the company would hire an entire amusement park for employees and their families) and dazzling children's Christmas parties.
"We loved it," Marra says. "It was our life."
For Marra and his former co-workers, sharing that life and their long-held secret has unleashed a jumble of emotions, from pride to nostalgia to relief — and in some cases, grief.
The city's mayor, Mark Boughton, only discovered that his father had worked on Hexagon when he was invited to speak at an October reunion ceremony on the grounds of the former plant. His father, Donald Boughton, also a former mayor, was too ill to attend and died a few days later.
Boughton said for years he and his siblings would pester his father — a draftsman — about what he did. Eventually they realized that the topic was off limits.
"Learning about Hexagon makes me view him completely differently," Boughton says. "He was more than just my Dad with the hair-trigger temper and passionate opinions about everything. He was a Cold War warrior doing something incredibly important for our nation."
For Betty Osterweis the ceremony was bittersweet, too. Not only did she learn about the mystery of her late husband's professional life. She also learned about his final moments.
"All these years," she said, "I had wondered what exactly had happened" on that terrible day in 1987 when she received a phone call saying her 53-year-old husband, Henry Osterweis, a contract negotiator, had suffered a heart attack on the job. At the reunion she met former co-workers who could offer some comfort that the end had been quick.
Standing in the grounds of her late husband's workplace, listening to the tributes, her son and daughter and grandchildren by her side, Osterweis was overwhelmed by the enormity of it all — the sacrifice, the secrecy, the pride.
"To know that this was more than just a company selling widgets ... that he was negotiating contracts for our country's freedom and security," she said.
"What a secret. And what a legacy."
Monday, December 26, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Hezbollah chief makes rare public appearance
Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah group, has made his first public appearance for several years at a rally in Beirut.
In Depth
What is Ashoura?
In Pictures: Nasrallah addresses Ashoura crowds
The leader has rarely been seen in public since his group helped battle Israel in a month-long war in 2006, fearing Israeli assassination.
Since then, he normally communicates with his followers and gives news conferences via satellite link-up.
Nasrallah was seen walking through a throng of people in a southern Shia stronghold in Beirut on Tuesday before he addressed a crowd marking the religious festival of Ashoura - a major religious festival which commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
He said his public appearance in the suburb of Dahiya was a message to those who believed they could "threaten us".
'Here to stay'
"I wanted to be with you for a few minutes ... to renew our pledge and for the world to hear us," Nasrallah said.
He said Hezbollah was "here to stay" and would never give up its weapons.
"We are increasing in numbers and in weapons ... and for those who are betting that our weapons are rusting, we say that our weapons are being renewed," he said.
Nasrallah has rarely been seen in public since Hezbollah helped fight against Israel in 2006
A smiling Nasrallah then left the podium, telling tens of thousands of supporters he would reappear in few minutes on a giant screen for a longer speech.
"See you in few minutes," he joked to his followers before he left.
His appearance is meant to portray confidence at a time of upheaval in the Middle East, and particularly in Syria, which along with Iran is Hezbollah's main backer.
Many Syrians and Arabs around the region have in recent years elevated Nasrallah to the status of a nationalist hero after the success of Hezbollah fighters against Israel in 2006.
Since the Syrian uprising, however, many Syrians have unleashed their anger at Hezbollah over its support for President Bashar al-Assad's rule.
Some protesters in Syria have set fire to the yellow flag of Hezbollah and pictures of Nasrallah.
'Ready to die'
In the speech broadcast on large screens shortly after his departure, Nasrallah vowed his group would continue to arm in the face of possible "regional change," hinting at neighbouring Syria.
"A message to all those who are conspiring against the resistance and banking on change [in the Arab world] ... We will never let go of our arms," he said.
"We are tens of thousands of trained fighters, who are all ready to die," he said.
"Day after day, the resistance gains more fighters, trains better fighters and arms even more heavily.
"These charlatans and hypocrites are known for their support of all dictatorships that collapse and for disowning these dictatorships immediately after they collapse"
- Hassan Nasrallah,
Head of Lebanon's Hezbollah group
"Every weapon that rusts is replaced."
Many observers say the Syria crisis, which is threatening to topple Assad, has dealt a severe blow to the Lebanese group.
He also lashed out at the US for seeking to destroy Syria in order to "make up for its defeat in Iraq".
"The United States has tried to portray itself as the defender of human rights and democracy in the Arab world.
"These charlatans and hypocrites are known for their support of all dictatorships that collapse and for disowning these dictatorships immediately after they collapse.
"This is the character of Satan."
Nasrallah renewed his vow to stand by Assad and lashed out at the Syrian National Council, the main anti-Assad opposition group, for aiming to "destroy Syria" while moving closer to Washington and Israel.
"The so-called Syrian National Council, formed in Istanbul, and its leader Burhan Ghalyoun ... are trying to present their credentials to the United States and Israel," Nasrallah said.
His comments came after Ghalyoun was quoted as saying a Syria run by the country's main opposition group would cut military ties to Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinian movement Hamas.
"There will be no special relationship with Iran," Ghalyoun, a 66-year-old university professor, told the Wall Street Journal, a News Corp title, in an interview published on Friday.
"Breaking the exceptional relationship means breaking the strategic, military alliance," he was quoted as saying. "After the fall of the Syrian regime, [Hezbollah] won't be the same."
In Depth
What is Ashoura?
In Pictures: Nasrallah addresses Ashoura crowds
The leader has rarely been seen in public since his group helped battle Israel in a month-long war in 2006, fearing Israeli assassination.
Since then, he normally communicates with his followers and gives news conferences via satellite link-up.
Nasrallah was seen walking through a throng of people in a southern Shia stronghold in Beirut on Tuesday before he addressed a crowd marking the religious festival of Ashoura - a major religious festival which commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein, a grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.
He said his public appearance in the suburb of Dahiya was a message to those who believed they could "threaten us".
'Here to stay'
"I wanted to be with you for a few minutes ... to renew our pledge and for the world to hear us," Nasrallah said.
He said Hezbollah was "here to stay" and would never give up its weapons.
"We are increasing in numbers and in weapons ... and for those who are betting that our weapons are rusting, we say that our weapons are being renewed," he said.
Nasrallah has rarely been seen in public since Hezbollah helped fight against Israel in 2006
A smiling Nasrallah then left the podium, telling tens of thousands of supporters he would reappear in few minutes on a giant screen for a longer speech.
"See you in few minutes," he joked to his followers before he left.
His appearance is meant to portray confidence at a time of upheaval in the Middle East, and particularly in Syria, which along with Iran is Hezbollah's main backer.
Many Syrians and Arabs around the region have in recent years elevated Nasrallah to the status of a nationalist hero after the success of Hezbollah fighters against Israel in 2006.
Since the Syrian uprising, however, many Syrians have unleashed their anger at Hezbollah over its support for President Bashar al-Assad's rule.
Some protesters in Syria have set fire to the yellow flag of Hezbollah and pictures of Nasrallah.
'Ready to die'
In the speech broadcast on large screens shortly after his departure, Nasrallah vowed his group would continue to arm in the face of possible "regional change," hinting at neighbouring Syria.
"A message to all those who are conspiring against the resistance and banking on change [in the Arab world] ... We will never let go of our arms," he said.
"We are tens of thousands of trained fighters, who are all ready to die," he said.
"Day after day, the resistance gains more fighters, trains better fighters and arms even more heavily.
"These charlatans and hypocrites are known for their support of all dictatorships that collapse and for disowning these dictatorships immediately after they collapse"
- Hassan Nasrallah,
Head of Lebanon's Hezbollah group
"Every weapon that rusts is replaced."
Many observers say the Syria crisis, which is threatening to topple Assad, has dealt a severe blow to the Lebanese group.
He also lashed out at the US for seeking to destroy Syria in order to "make up for its defeat in Iraq".
"The United States has tried to portray itself as the defender of human rights and democracy in the Arab world.
"These charlatans and hypocrites are known for their support of all dictatorships that collapse and for disowning these dictatorships immediately after they collapse.
"This is the character of Satan."
Nasrallah renewed his vow to stand by Assad and lashed out at the Syrian National Council, the main anti-Assad opposition group, for aiming to "destroy Syria" while moving closer to Washington and Israel.
"The so-called Syrian National Council, formed in Istanbul, and its leader Burhan Ghalyoun ... are trying to present their credentials to the United States and Israel," Nasrallah said.
His comments came after Ghalyoun was quoted as saying a Syria run by the country's main opposition group would cut military ties to Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinian movement Hamas.
"There will be no special relationship with Iran," Ghalyoun, a 66-year-old university professor, told the Wall Street Journal, a News Corp title, in an interview published on Friday.
"Breaking the exceptional relationship means breaking the strategic, military alliance," he was quoted as saying. "After the fall of the Syrian regime, [Hezbollah] won't be the same."
Monday, December 5, 2011
US: Edging closer towards war with Iran?
The biggest problem for the US is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, but getting it and not using it.
Suddenly the struggle to stop Iran is not about saving Israel from nuclear annihilation. 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 the neo-conservatives have discovered the concept of truth-telling, although, no doubt, the shift will be ephemeral.
The shift in the rationale for war was kicked off this week when Danielle Pletka, head of the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) foreign policy shop and one of the most prominent neo-conservatives in Washington, explained what the current obsession with Iran's nuclear programme is all about:
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.
Watch here.
Hold on. The "biggest problem" with Iran getting a nuclear weapon is not that Iranians will use it, but that they won't use it and that they might behave like a "responsible power"? But what about the hysteria about a second Holocaust? What about Prime Minister Netanyahu's assertion that this is 1938 and Hitler is on the march? What about all of these pronouncements that Iran must be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon because the apocalyptic mullahs would happily commit national suicide in order to destroy Israel? And what about AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and its satellites, which produce one sanctions bill after another (all dutifully passed by Congress) because of the "existential threat" that Iran poses to Israel? Did Pletka lose her talking points?
Apparently not.
Pletka's "never mind" about the imminent danger of an Iranian bomb seems to be the new line from the bastion of neo-conservativism.
Earlier this week, 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." He continued:
We're fixated on the Iranian nuclear programme while the Tehran regime has its eyes on the real prize: the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East.
This admission that the problem with a nuclear Iran is not that it would attack Israel, but that it would alter the regional balance of power is incredibly significant. The American Enterprise Institute is not Commentary, the Republican Jewish Coalition, or the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, which are not exactly known for their intellectual heft.
It is, along with the Heritage Foundation, the most influential conservative think-tank. That is why it was able to play such an influential role in promoting the invasion of Iraq. Take a look at this page from the AEI website from January 2002 (featuring, no surprise, a head shot of Richard Perle). It is announcing one of an almost endless series of events designed to instigate war with Iraq, a war that did not begin for another 14 months. (Perle himself famously began promoting a war with Iraq within days of 9/11, according to former CIA director George Tenet.) AEI's drumbeat for war was incessant, finally meeting with success in March 2003.
And now they are doing it again. On Monday, Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois - AIPAC's favourite senator - will keynote an event at AEI, with Pletka and Donnelly offering responses. It will be moderated by Fred Kagan, another AEI fellow and Iraq (now Iran) war hawk. The event is built on the premise that "ongoing efforts to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons have failed".
We all know what that means. AEI will, no doubt, continue to host these "it's time for war" events through 2012 and beyond, or until President Obama or his successor announces either that the US has attacked Iran or that Israel has attacked and we are at her side.
If you didn't know any better, you might ask why - given that Pletka and Donnelly are downgrading the Iranian nuclear threat - AEI is still hell-bent on war. If its determination to stop Iran is not about defending Israel from an "existential threat", what is it truly about?
Fortunately, Pletka and Donnelly don't leave us guessing. It is about preserving the regional balance of power, which means ensuring that Israel remains the region's military powerhouse, with Saudi Arabia playing a supporting role. That requires overthrowing the Iranian regime and replacing it with one that will do our bidding (like the Shah) and will not, in any way, prevent Israel from operating with a free reign throughout the region.
This goal can only be achieved through outside intervention (war), because virtually, the entire Iranian population - from the hardliners in the reactionary regime to reformists in the Green Movement working for a more open society - are united in support of Iran's right to develop its nuclear potential and to be free of outside interference. What the neo-conservatives want is a pliant government in Tehran, just like we used to have, and the only way to achieve this, they believe, is through war.
At this point, it appears that they may get their wish. The only alternative to war is diplomacy, and diplomacy, unlike war, seems to be no longer on the table.
At a fascinating Israel Policy Forum (IPF) this week, Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a longtime journalist and author who specialises on Iran, noted that the Obama administration has spent a grand total of 45 minutes in direct engagement with the Iranians. Forty-five minutes! Just as bad, the administration no longer makes any effort to engage.
This is crazy. Of course, there is no way of knowing if the Iranian regime wants to talk, but what is the harm of trying? If they say no, they say no. If we talk and the talks go nowhere, then at least we tried. But we won't try out of fear of antagonising campaign donors who have been told that the alternative to war is the destruction of Israel. (Thanks to those same donors, Congress is utterly hopeless on this issue.)
So, instead of pursuing diplomacy, we are inching closer toward war.
At IPF, Slavin predicted what the collateral results of an attack on Iran would be:
What's the collateral damage? Oh my lord. Well, you destroy the reform movement in Iran for another generation because people will rally around the government; inevitably they do when country is attacked.
People always talk about the Iranians being so irrational and wanting martyrdom. That's bull. They're perfectly happy to fight to the last Arab suicide bomber. But they don't put their own lives on the line unless their country is attacked.
So, you know, they would rally around the government and that would destroy the reform movement. And of course the price of oil would spike. The Iranians will find ways to retaliate through their partners like Hezbollah and Hamas. I think the Israelis would have to attack Lebanon first, to take out Hezbollah's 40,000 rockets. It's not just a matter of a quick few hops over Saudi Arabia and you hit Natanz, you know, and a few other places.
That's why the Israelis want the United States to do it, because they can't do it, frankly. The US does it? Okay, the remaining US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are sitting ducks. Iran is already playing footsie with the Taliban in Afghanistan. That will become much more pronounced. They will perhaps attack the Saudi oil fields.
Slavin continues, but the point is clear. An Iran war would make the Iraq war look like the "cakewalk" neo-conservatives promised it would be.
And for what? To preserve the regional balance of power? How many American lives is that worth? Or Israeli lives? Or Iranian? (It is worth noting that this week, Max Boot, the Council on Foreign Relations' main neo-con, wrote that an attack on Iran, which he advocates, would only delay development of an Iranian bomb.)
Nonetheless, at this point war looks likely. Under our political system, the side that can pay for election campaigns invariably gets what it wants. There is, simply put, no group of donors who are supporting candidates for president and Congress based on their opposition to war, while millions of organised dollars are available to those who support the neo-con agenda. Pundits used to say: As Maine goes, so goes the country. It's just as simple today: As the money goes, so goes our policy.
Suddenly the struggle to stop Iran is not about saving Israel from nuclear annihilation. 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 the neo-conservatives have discovered the concept of truth-telling, although, no doubt, the shift will be ephemeral.
The shift in the rationale for war was kicked off this week when Danielle Pletka, head of the American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) foreign policy shop and one of the most prominent neo-conservatives in Washington, explained what the current obsession with Iran's nuclear programme is all about:
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.
Watch here.
Hold on. The "biggest problem" with Iran getting a nuclear weapon is not that Iranians will use it, but that they won't use it and that they might behave like a "responsible power"? But what about the hysteria about a second Holocaust? What about Prime Minister Netanyahu's assertion that this is 1938 and Hitler is on the march? What about all of these pronouncements that Iran must be prevented from developing a nuclear weapon because the apocalyptic mullahs would happily commit national suicide in order to destroy Israel? And what about AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and its satellites, which produce one sanctions bill after another (all dutifully passed by Congress) because of the "existential threat" that Iran poses to Israel? Did Pletka lose her talking points?
Apparently not.
Pletka's "never mind" about the imminent danger of an Iranian bomb seems to be the new line from the bastion of neo-conservativism.
Earlier this week, 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." He continued:
We're fixated on the Iranian nuclear programme while the Tehran regime has its eyes on the real prize: the balance of power in the Persian Gulf and the greater Middle East.
This admission that the problem with a nuclear Iran is not that it would attack Israel, but that it would alter the regional balance of power is incredibly significant. The American Enterprise Institute is not Commentary, the Republican Jewish Coalition, or the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, which are not exactly known for their intellectual heft.
It is, along with the Heritage Foundation, the most influential conservative think-tank. That is why it was able to play such an influential role in promoting the invasion of Iraq. Take a look at this page from the AEI website from January 2002 (featuring, no surprise, a head shot of Richard Perle). It is announcing one of an almost endless series of events designed to instigate war with Iraq, a war that did not begin for another 14 months. (Perle himself famously began promoting a war with Iraq within days of 9/11, according to former CIA director George Tenet.) AEI's drumbeat for war was incessant, finally meeting with success in March 2003.
And now they are doing it again. On Monday, Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois - AIPAC's favourite senator - will keynote an event at AEI, with Pletka and Donnelly offering responses. It will be moderated by Fred Kagan, another AEI fellow and Iraq (now Iran) war hawk. The event is built on the premise that "ongoing efforts to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons have failed".
We all know what that means. AEI will, no doubt, continue to host these "it's time for war" events through 2012 and beyond, or until President Obama or his successor announces either that the US has attacked Iran or that Israel has attacked and we are at her side.
If you didn't know any better, you might ask why - given that Pletka and Donnelly are downgrading the Iranian nuclear threat - AEI is still hell-bent on war. If its determination to stop Iran is not about defending Israel from an "existential threat", what is it truly about?
Fortunately, Pletka and Donnelly don't leave us guessing. It is about preserving the regional balance of power, which means ensuring that Israel remains the region's military powerhouse, with Saudi Arabia playing a supporting role. That requires overthrowing the Iranian regime and replacing it with one that will do our bidding (like the Shah) and will not, in any way, prevent Israel from operating with a free reign throughout the region.
This goal can only be achieved through outside intervention (war), because virtually, the entire Iranian population - from the hardliners in the reactionary regime to reformists in the Green Movement working for a more open society - are united in support of Iran's right to develop its nuclear potential and to be free of outside interference. What the neo-conservatives want is a pliant government in Tehran, just like we used to have, and the only way to achieve this, they believe, is through war.
At this point, it appears that they may get their wish. The only alternative to war is diplomacy, and diplomacy, unlike war, seems to be no longer on the table.
At a fascinating Israel Policy Forum (IPF) this week, Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a longtime journalist and author who specialises on Iran, noted that the Obama administration has spent a grand total of 45 minutes in direct engagement with the Iranians. Forty-five minutes! Just as bad, the administration no longer makes any effort to engage.
This is crazy. Of course, there is no way of knowing if the Iranian regime wants to talk, but what is the harm of trying? If they say no, they say no. If we talk and the talks go nowhere, then at least we tried. But we won't try out of fear of antagonising campaign donors who have been told that the alternative to war is the destruction of Israel. (Thanks to those same donors, Congress is utterly hopeless on this issue.)
So, instead of pursuing diplomacy, we are inching closer toward war.
At IPF, Slavin predicted what the collateral results of an attack on Iran would be:
What's the collateral damage? Oh my lord. Well, you destroy the reform movement in Iran for another generation because people will rally around the government; inevitably they do when country is attacked.
People always talk about the Iranians being so irrational and wanting martyrdom. That's bull. They're perfectly happy to fight to the last Arab suicide bomber. But they don't put their own lives on the line unless their country is attacked.
So, you know, they would rally around the government and that would destroy the reform movement. And of course the price of oil would spike. The Iranians will find ways to retaliate through their partners like Hezbollah and Hamas. I think the Israelis would have to attack Lebanon first, to take out Hezbollah's 40,000 rockets. It's not just a matter of a quick few hops over Saudi Arabia and you hit Natanz, you know, and a few other places.
That's why the Israelis want the United States to do it, because they can't do it, frankly. The US does it? Okay, the remaining US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are sitting ducks. Iran is already playing footsie with the Taliban in Afghanistan. That will become much more pronounced. They will perhaps attack the Saudi oil fields.
Slavin continues, but the point is clear. An Iran war would make the Iraq war look like the "cakewalk" neo-conservatives promised it would be.
And for what? To preserve the regional balance of power? How many American lives is that worth? Or Israeli lives? Or Iranian? (It is worth noting that this week, Max Boot, the Council on Foreign Relations' main neo-con, wrote that an attack on Iran, which he advocates, would only delay development of an Iranian bomb.)
Nonetheless, at this point war looks likely. Under our political system, the side that can pay for election campaigns invariably gets what it wants. There is, simply put, no group of donors who are supporting candidates for president and Congress based on their opposition to war, while millions of organised dollars are available to those who support the neo-con agenda. Pundits used to say: As Maine goes, so goes the country. It's just as simple today: As the money goes, so goes our policy.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Turkey suspends Israel defence and trade ties
Erdogan halts trade, military and defence ties after Israel's refusal to apologise over Gaza flotilla attack.
Turkey downgraded diplomatic relations after Israel refused to apologise for a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla [GALLO/GETTY]
Turkey is "totally suspending" all trade, military and defence industry ties with Israel, the Turkish prime minister said.
"Trade ties, military ties, regarding defence industry ties, we are completely suspending them," Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in Ankara on Tuesday.
"This process will be followed by different measures," said Erdogan, who referred to Israel as "a spoiled child".
Turkey has not frozen military ties with Israel, Amos Gilad, the head of the Israeli defence ministry's diplomatic-security bureau, told Israel's Army Radio, saying that the Israeli military attache in Turkey is still serving as usual.
"Turkey has a lot to lose from making this kind of extreme decision," Gilad said.
The call to suspend the ties comes a day after the Turkish minister of economy had said that bilateral commercial ties would continue as usual, Al Jazeera's Serpil Karacan reported from Istanbul.
Suspension of "the miiltary ties is very significant between the two countries to the degree that it'll have some impact on Turkey as well, especially for the Heron planes and especially for military intelligence," she said.
Turkey downgraded diplomatic relations with its former ally to the level of second secretary last week after Israel refused to apologise for the deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish-flagged protest flotilla that killed nine pro-Palestinian activists last year.
On Friday, Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador in Ankara, suspended military deals and vowed a greater naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Erdogan said the Israeli diplomats who had been ordered out of Turkey must leave by Wednesday.
'Excessive' force
Last week, a United Nations-mandated inquiry into the deadly Israeli attack on the flotilla said Israel's action were "excessive".
"Israel's decision to board the vessels with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable," the inquiry says.
The UN investigation into the events on the Turkish-flagged ship known as the Mavi Marmara, the largest of six vessels that were commandeered by Israeli commandos on May 31, 2010, was headed by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, a former prime minister of New Zealand, aided by Alvaro Uribe, the former Colombian president, along with a representative each from Israel and Turkey.
It said, however, that the flotilla "acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade" set up by Israel around Gaza.
The inquiry called for Israel to make "an appropriate statement of regret" for the raid and pay compensation to the families of the dead as well as to injured victims.
Turkey and Israel should resume full diplomatic relations "repairing their relationship in the interests of stability in the Middle East," the report said.
Gaza trip hinted
Erdogan hinted on Tuesday that he might make a visit to Gaza, though adding that no final decision had been made yet.
"We are talking with the Egyptians on this matter ... A trip to Gaza is not finalised yet," Erdogan, who is due to visit Egypt next week.
Israel has expressed regret for the loss of lives in the 2010 flotilla raid but refused to issue an apology for what they say was their soldiers' act of "self-defence".
Karacan said the tension between Israel and Turkey was deeply rooted and had escalated as Ankara displayed an active interest in the Palestinian question.
"Israel was never happy that Turkey had a more Islamist-inclined government that shows more interest in the Palestinian question and takes it to heart and supports it in all international platforms," she said.
Turkey downgraded diplomatic relations after Israel refused to apologise for a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla [GALLO/GETTY]
Turkey is "totally suspending" all trade, military and defence industry ties with Israel, the Turkish prime minister said.
"Trade ties, military ties, regarding defence industry ties, we are completely suspending them," Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in Ankara on Tuesday.
"This process will be followed by different measures," said Erdogan, who referred to Israel as "a spoiled child".
Turkey has not frozen military ties with Israel, Amos Gilad, the head of the Israeli defence ministry's diplomatic-security bureau, told Israel's Army Radio, saying that the Israeli military attache in Turkey is still serving as usual.
"Turkey has a lot to lose from making this kind of extreme decision," Gilad said.
The call to suspend the ties comes a day after the Turkish minister of economy had said that bilateral commercial ties would continue as usual, Al Jazeera's Serpil Karacan reported from Istanbul.
Suspension of "the miiltary ties is very significant between the two countries to the degree that it'll have some impact on Turkey as well, especially for the Heron planes and especially for military intelligence," she said.
Turkey downgraded diplomatic relations with its former ally to the level of second secretary last week after Israel refused to apologise for the deadly Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound Turkish-flagged protest flotilla that killed nine pro-Palestinian activists last year.
On Friday, Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador in Ankara, suspended military deals and vowed a greater naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Erdogan said the Israeli diplomats who had been ordered out of Turkey must leave by Wednesday.
'Excessive' force
Last week, a United Nations-mandated inquiry into the deadly Israeli attack on the flotilla said Israel's action were "excessive".
"Israel's decision to board the vessels with such substantial force at a great distance from the blockade zone and with no final warning immediately prior to the boarding was excessive and unreasonable," the inquiry says.
The UN investigation into the events on the Turkish-flagged ship known as the Mavi Marmara, the largest of six vessels that were commandeered by Israeli commandos on May 31, 2010, was headed by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, a former prime minister of New Zealand, aided by Alvaro Uribe, the former Colombian president, along with a representative each from Israel and Turkey.
It said, however, that the flotilla "acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade" set up by Israel around Gaza.
The inquiry called for Israel to make "an appropriate statement of regret" for the raid and pay compensation to the families of the dead as well as to injured victims.
Turkey and Israel should resume full diplomatic relations "repairing their relationship in the interests of stability in the Middle East," the report said.
Gaza trip hinted
Erdogan hinted on Tuesday that he might make a visit to Gaza, though adding that no final decision had been made yet.
"We are talking with the Egyptians on this matter ... A trip to Gaza is not finalised yet," Erdogan, who is due to visit Egypt next week.
Israel has expressed regret for the loss of lives in the 2010 flotilla raid but refused to issue an apology for what they say was their soldiers' act of "self-defence".
Karacan said the tension between Israel and Turkey was deeply rooted and had escalated as Ankara displayed an active interest in the Palestinian question.
"Israel was never happy that Turkey had a more Islamist-inclined government that shows more interest in the Palestinian question and takes it to heart and supports it in all international platforms," she said.
Friday, June 24, 2011
Is the inter-Korean conflict going cyber?
South Korea blames the North for cyber attacks while questions remain over how such an IT powerhouse was left vulnerable
South Korea has one of the most advanced IT infrastructures on the planet, offering the world's cheapest access to the fastest internet connection anywhere. Approximately 95 per cent of its near 50 million citizens surf the web - a statistic virtually unmatched by any other country.
Despite being so technologically advanced, however, the country continues to suffer from ongoing cyberattacks, which authorities say are from North Korea.
Seoul has identified the assaults as part of the North's plans to strategically nurture its cyberwarfare unit, and responded with pledges to bolster its own cyberdefence programme by doubling its number of hackers. It is also establishing 24-hour cybersecurity centres under the auspices of key government agencies such as the unification ministry and the central bank.
South Korean authorities and experts, alongside defectors from the North say the country's communist neighbour may be taking its war with the South from the trenches to the cybersphere - seeing it as a more effective way to topple its capitalist enemy.
The two Koreas remain technically at war, since they never signed a formal peace treaty to mark the end of the Korean War, which began on 25 June, 1950.
But critics say the elusive nature of such hacking incidents makes it impossible to know for certain that the North was behind these assaults - especially considering the reclusive country's perceived lag in technological advances as a result both of its self-isolation and from years of sanctions imposed to pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
Fielding attacks
Over the past several months, some 60 cadets and officers of South Korea's prestigious military academy have received emails with the subject line: "It's me, a fellow alum", and "I miss you, buddy!".
The body of the emails contained information that was specific to the academy, such as jargon often used by cadets and references to specific campus locations, making it hard to believe that the emails were written by anyone who was not affiliated with the academy, a cadet told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, citing military policy.
This month, South Korea's defence ministry announced that North Korea had been distributing emails to cadets and officers of the Korean Military Academy designed to hack into the institution's computer system.
A ministry spokesman refused to give additional details as to how it verified that the North was responsible or how such a massive security breach was attemped, only proffering information on how the ministry had since taken appropriate measures "to handle the situation".
In March, 40 South Korean websites, including those of the presidential office, the National Intelligence Service and the defence ministry, were targeted for three days in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, where malicious codes flooded the networks with fake access requests, causing them to crash. In April, more than 20 million South Koreans lost access to their accounts at the National Agricultural Cooperative Cooperation, more commonly known in Korean as Nonghyup Bank. Global positioning system (GPS) signals have also been periodically jammed, affecting cellular phone service for civilians and troops in Seoul.
Authorities in the South have blamed North Korea for each of the assaults.
Prosecutors and the National Police Agency (NPA) concluded in May that the method of the March and Nonghyup cyberattacks was exactly the same as in 2009: a malicious code was distributed through peer-to-peer file sharing sites, transforming personal computers that downloaded the files into "zombie computers" that performed the DDoS attacks.
In October 2009, Won Sei-hoon, head of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, testified to lawmakers that the top spy agency had identified the culprit of the July attacks as North Korea's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, after tracking the source of the attacks to a location in China occupied by the ministry.
"There are over 4.2 billion internet protocol (IP) addresses in the world, and it would be impossible for the latest attack to be initiated by a different hacker because it used the same IP address as in the 2009 DDoS attack," the Cyber Terror Response Center said.
DDoS: simple but complicated?
Pyongyang has denied all charges and accused Seoul of inventing a conspiracy to fuel confrontation.
Much criticism has risen in South Korea questioning how a leading information technology powerhouse was left vulnerable to cyberattacks by an impoverished nation in serious economic and food crises.
Some South Korean computer experts have voiced doubts over the government pinpointing Pyongyang as the culprit, saying that evidence was too "weak" and only based on "circumstantial assumptions".
Haroon Meer, a cybersecurity expert and founder of Thinkst Applied Research, says DDoS attacks aren't a result of sophisticated technology, but rather "a [matter of] brute force".
Meer also calls DDoS attacks a "minor" and "quantifiable problem", likening it to an annoying "road block on a busy road", and warned of more serious cyber "weapons" like Stuxnet, a worm that is reported to have set back the Iran's nuclear programme by more than two years.
"A DDoS attack kind of exists for as long as [the attacker] is existing ... but once an attack like Stuxnet happens, it compromises your core and internal for so long, so it compromises what you can trust of your machines," Meer said.
"[DDoS] is a road block on a busy road, which is not as bad as someone destroying the road forever or shaking confidence in people to ever use the road again, or someone affecting our computer and planning, and build insecurity [within us] in going forward."
"In the [range] of weapons, for me, [DDoS] is really a primitive one that I won't be spending my time worried about," he added.
But one South Korean computer engineer operating in Silicon Valley says the very simple and primitive nature of DDoS attacks is what makes it so threatening.
"There lies a big challenge in distinguishing between regular increase in traffic to the targeted website with the flooding of DDoS requests aimed at crashing the target's server," the engineer told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity due to sensitivity of the issue.
'Internet black hole'
North Korea ranked last in a 2011 survey of threats to independent media in 196 countries and territories carried out by Freedom House, an independent watchdog organisation that supports the expansion of freedom around the world.
The North has been aptly called the world's "worst internet black hole" as the country's 24 million do not have access to the World Wide Web.
North Koreans can only publicly access Kwangmyong, the nationwide intranet established around 2000 by the Pyongyang-based Korea Computer Center, which connects universities, libraries, cybercafes and other institutions with websites and email.
"It's like broadcasting material from a centralised source, which people can download, and that is the only source of communication for the North Korean public," Kim Heung-kwang, a defector who was a computer science professor in North Korea, told Al Jazeera.
Full access to the web is limited to a few thousand North Koreans - an estimate given by academics Cheng Chen, Kyungmin Ko and Ji-yong Lee in a December 2010 report for the Pacific Review.
Culpable or capable?
How is a country that lacks general infrastructure and public access to the internet able to carry out cyberattacks on IT powerhouses such as South Korea and the US?
"Contrary to popular belief, there was a time when North Korea was once a global leader in information technology," Kim Heung-kwang, the former North Korean professor who defected to the South in 2004, told Al Jazeera.
Kim says Kim Il-sung, founder of North Korea and father of current leader Kim Jong-il, began investing in information technology in the 1960s.
Until the late 1970s, the North had benchmarked the technology to develop hand-made "minicomputers", the first generation of computers which were, ironically, huge machines that filled rooms. After Intel developed the microchip in 1978, which essentially minituarised such computers' functions into a chip the size of a finger nail, North Korea lost standing in hardware development, lacking the funds to stay ahead in the game.
But, in the realm of software development, the North has managed to be somewhat competitive, as the technology is based on excellence in application of mathematics and basic science.
"So when you ask how can a lagging country like North Korea be so good at hacking, I want to say that you're looking at a technology that they've been honing for the past 50 years," Kim told Al Jazeera.
However, in addition to its lack of untrammeled access to the internet, North Korea does not have routine access either to advanced technologies, or to reliable electricity supplies. It is also reliant on China and Japan for internet hosting services and would be not be able to "use the proxy strategy followed by both China and Russia, where private hackers carry out state instructions, operating as irregular forces or mercenaries", said Kim.
Marcus Noland, deputy director and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says these motives are consistent with the country's governing Juche ["self reliance"] ideology and its control over the economy.
"It is a common theme in North Korean economic discourse to emphasise scientific breakthroughs and technological developments. The reason is that it is a way of offering some hope or rationale for prosperity, without confronting the systematic deficiencies of the economic system of the regime," Noland told Al Jazeera.
"The North Koreans are regularly going on about science and breakthroughs because it allows them to not talk about the fact that the effort to centrally orchestrate their economy has been a failure."
While reports about the isolated North grooming computer prodigies to become hackers for its bolstered cyber warfare programme cannot be independently verified and thus "must be taken with a grain of salt", Noland believes there is "some truth" to the North being capable of cyberattacks such as those that have recently hit South Korea.
"Cyber responses to the South Korean conventional forces' superiority is consistent with basic discussions and tendencies in economic sphere for decades," Noland told Al Jazeera.
"In order to provide, in their minds, for the political security of the regime, they have to have other non-military capabilities to threaten South Korea. It costs a lot of money to procure weapons of mass destruction and [their] delivery systems. It's a country that cannot compete in terms of putting tanks on the field and are trying to maintain some kind of capacity to deter an adversary," he said.
Repercussions for the internet
Haroon Meer, the cyber and information security expert, says governments must be careful when attempting to enforce regulations that infringe upon online freedoms, and should first look into technological approaches to achieve better security solutions.
"One of the fundamental problems that you're going to get to is that our technology is immature. You're seeing a fundamental problem with the internet: such attacks are technically possible right now and [for the moment] it's easier to be a offender than a defender," Meer said.
"All the talk of cyber war is going to get people to usher in regulation that can start to affect our freedoms on the internet because that will become a way to protect, for which we haven't had ways to protect technologically."
The Silicon Valley engineer also pointed to a more fundamental problem with the lack of better cybersecurity: the fact that cybersecurity experts don't see the need to invest in defence mechanisms - unless a need for them arises.
"It seems that the industry puts emphasis on finding ways to securely send and receive information, rather than network security," the engineer said.
"For now the only way to prevent DDoS attacks and hacking incidents at large is to stop hackers from accessing the internet, but there is no actual way of doing that," he said.
"Even if that were possible, that would undermine the very raison d'etre of the internet - an egalitarian tool for communicating and exchanging information."
South Korea has one of the most advanced IT infrastructures on the planet, offering the world's cheapest access to the fastest internet connection anywhere. Approximately 95 per cent of its near 50 million citizens surf the web - a statistic virtually unmatched by any other country.
Despite being so technologically advanced, however, the country continues to suffer from ongoing cyberattacks, which authorities say are from North Korea.
Seoul has identified the assaults as part of the North's plans to strategically nurture its cyberwarfare unit, and responded with pledges to bolster its own cyberdefence programme by doubling its number of hackers. It is also establishing 24-hour cybersecurity centres under the auspices of key government agencies such as the unification ministry and the central bank.
South Korean authorities and experts, alongside defectors from the North say the country's communist neighbour may be taking its war with the South from the trenches to the cybersphere - seeing it as a more effective way to topple its capitalist enemy.
The two Koreas remain technically at war, since they never signed a formal peace treaty to mark the end of the Korean War, which began on 25 June, 1950.
But critics say the elusive nature of such hacking incidents makes it impossible to know for certain that the North was behind these assaults - especially considering the reclusive country's perceived lag in technological advances as a result both of its self-isolation and from years of sanctions imposed to pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.
Fielding attacks
Over the past several months, some 60 cadets and officers of South Korea's prestigious military academy have received emails with the subject line: "It's me, a fellow alum", and "I miss you, buddy!".
The body of the emails contained information that was specific to the academy, such as jargon often used by cadets and references to specific campus locations, making it hard to believe that the emails were written by anyone who was not affiliated with the academy, a cadet told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, citing military policy.
This month, South Korea's defence ministry announced that North Korea had been distributing emails to cadets and officers of the Korean Military Academy designed to hack into the institution's computer system.
A ministry spokesman refused to give additional details as to how it verified that the North was responsible or how such a massive security breach was attemped, only proffering information on how the ministry had since taken appropriate measures "to handle the situation".
In March, 40 South Korean websites, including those of the presidential office, the National Intelligence Service and the defence ministry, were targeted for three days in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks, where malicious codes flooded the networks with fake access requests, causing them to crash. In April, more than 20 million South Koreans lost access to their accounts at the National Agricultural Cooperative Cooperation, more commonly known in Korean as Nonghyup Bank. Global positioning system (GPS) signals have also been periodically jammed, affecting cellular phone service for civilians and troops in Seoul.
Authorities in the South have blamed North Korea for each of the assaults.
Prosecutors and the National Police Agency (NPA) concluded in May that the method of the March and Nonghyup cyberattacks was exactly the same as in 2009: a malicious code was distributed through peer-to-peer file sharing sites, transforming personal computers that downloaded the files into "zombie computers" that performed the DDoS attacks.
In October 2009, Won Sei-hoon, head of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, testified to lawmakers that the top spy agency had identified the culprit of the July attacks as North Korea's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, after tracking the source of the attacks to a location in China occupied by the ministry.
"There are over 4.2 billion internet protocol (IP) addresses in the world, and it would be impossible for the latest attack to be initiated by a different hacker because it used the same IP address as in the 2009 DDoS attack," the Cyber Terror Response Center said.
DDoS: simple but complicated?
Pyongyang has denied all charges and accused Seoul of inventing a conspiracy to fuel confrontation.
Much criticism has risen in South Korea questioning how a leading information technology powerhouse was left vulnerable to cyberattacks by an impoverished nation in serious economic and food crises.
Some South Korean computer experts have voiced doubts over the government pinpointing Pyongyang as the culprit, saying that evidence was too "weak" and only based on "circumstantial assumptions".
Haroon Meer, a cybersecurity expert and founder of Thinkst Applied Research, says DDoS attacks aren't a result of sophisticated technology, but rather "a [matter of] brute force".
Meer also calls DDoS attacks a "minor" and "quantifiable problem", likening it to an annoying "road block on a busy road", and warned of more serious cyber "weapons" like Stuxnet, a worm that is reported to have set back the Iran's nuclear programme by more than two years.
"A DDoS attack kind of exists for as long as [the attacker] is existing ... but once an attack like Stuxnet happens, it compromises your core and internal for so long, so it compromises what you can trust of your machines," Meer said.
"[DDoS] is a road block on a busy road, which is not as bad as someone destroying the road forever or shaking confidence in people to ever use the road again, or someone affecting our computer and planning, and build insecurity [within us] in going forward."
"In the [range] of weapons, for me, [DDoS] is really a primitive one that I won't be spending my time worried about," he added.
But one South Korean computer engineer operating in Silicon Valley says the very simple and primitive nature of DDoS attacks is what makes it so threatening.
"There lies a big challenge in distinguishing between regular increase in traffic to the targeted website with the flooding of DDoS requests aimed at crashing the target's server," the engineer told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity due to sensitivity of the issue.
'Internet black hole'
North Korea ranked last in a 2011 survey of threats to independent media in 196 countries and territories carried out by Freedom House, an independent watchdog organisation that supports the expansion of freedom around the world.
The North has been aptly called the world's "worst internet black hole" as the country's 24 million do not have access to the World Wide Web.
North Koreans can only publicly access Kwangmyong, the nationwide intranet established around 2000 by the Pyongyang-based Korea Computer Center, which connects universities, libraries, cybercafes and other institutions with websites and email.
"It's like broadcasting material from a centralised source, which people can download, and that is the only source of communication for the North Korean public," Kim Heung-kwang, a defector who was a computer science professor in North Korea, told Al Jazeera.
Full access to the web is limited to a few thousand North Koreans - an estimate given by academics Cheng Chen, Kyungmin Ko and Ji-yong Lee in a December 2010 report for the Pacific Review.
Culpable or capable?
How is a country that lacks general infrastructure and public access to the internet able to carry out cyberattacks on IT powerhouses such as South Korea and the US?
"Contrary to popular belief, there was a time when North Korea was once a global leader in information technology," Kim Heung-kwang, the former North Korean professor who defected to the South in 2004, told Al Jazeera.
Kim says Kim Il-sung, founder of North Korea and father of current leader Kim Jong-il, began investing in information technology in the 1960s.
Until the late 1970s, the North had benchmarked the technology to develop hand-made "minicomputers", the first generation of computers which were, ironically, huge machines that filled rooms. After Intel developed the microchip in 1978, which essentially minituarised such computers' functions into a chip the size of a finger nail, North Korea lost standing in hardware development, lacking the funds to stay ahead in the game.
But, in the realm of software development, the North has managed to be somewhat competitive, as the technology is based on excellence in application of mathematics and basic science.
"So when you ask how can a lagging country like North Korea be so good at hacking, I want to say that you're looking at a technology that they've been honing for the past 50 years," Kim told Al Jazeera.
However, in addition to its lack of untrammeled access to the internet, North Korea does not have routine access either to advanced technologies, or to reliable electricity supplies. It is also reliant on China and Japan for internet hosting services and would be not be able to "use the proxy strategy followed by both China and Russia, where private hackers carry out state instructions, operating as irregular forces or mercenaries", said Kim.
Marcus Noland, deputy director and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, says these motives are consistent with the country's governing Juche ["self reliance"] ideology and its control over the economy.
"It is a common theme in North Korean economic discourse to emphasise scientific breakthroughs and technological developments. The reason is that it is a way of offering some hope or rationale for prosperity, without confronting the systematic deficiencies of the economic system of the regime," Noland told Al Jazeera.
"The North Koreans are regularly going on about science and breakthroughs because it allows them to not talk about the fact that the effort to centrally orchestrate their economy has been a failure."
While reports about the isolated North grooming computer prodigies to become hackers for its bolstered cyber warfare programme cannot be independently verified and thus "must be taken with a grain of salt", Noland believes there is "some truth" to the North being capable of cyberattacks such as those that have recently hit South Korea.
"Cyber responses to the South Korean conventional forces' superiority is consistent with basic discussions and tendencies in economic sphere for decades," Noland told Al Jazeera.
"In order to provide, in their minds, for the political security of the regime, they have to have other non-military capabilities to threaten South Korea. It costs a lot of money to procure weapons of mass destruction and [their] delivery systems. It's a country that cannot compete in terms of putting tanks on the field and are trying to maintain some kind of capacity to deter an adversary," he said.
Repercussions for the internet
Haroon Meer, the cyber and information security expert, says governments must be careful when attempting to enforce regulations that infringe upon online freedoms, and should first look into technological approaches to achieve better security solutions.
"One of the fundamental problems that you're going to get to is that our technology is immature. You're seeing a fundamental problem with the internet: such attacks are technically possible right now and [for the moment] it's easier to be a offender than a defender," Meer said.
"All the talk of cyber war is going to get people to usher in regulation that can start to affect our freedoms on the internet because that will become a way to protect, for which we haven't had ways to protect technologically."
The Silicon Valley engineer also pointed to a more fundamental problem with the lack of better cybersecurity: the fact that cybersecurity experts don't see the need to invest in defence mechanisms - unless a need for them arises.
"It seems that the industry puts emphasis on finding ways to securely send and receive information, rather than network security," the engineer said.
"For now the only way to prevent DDoS attacks and hacking incidents at large is to stop hackers from accessing the internet, but there is no actual way of doing that," he said.
"Even if that were possible, that would undermine the very raison d'etre of the internet - an egalitarian tool for communicating and exchanging information."
Saturday, May 7, 2011
After Osama, China fears the next target
Although relieved with bin Laden's death, many Chinese are scared where Washington will focus its attention next.
The Chinese reaction to the circumstances surrounding Osama bin Laden's death were mixed with admiration for a successful covert operation, and fear for where Washington would start focusing its attention next [EPA]
The United States' most vilified terrorist foe has been dead only a week but China is already haunted by the phantom of the next big US enemy. Almost simultaneously with the spread of the news of Osama bin Laden's death in a covert US operation in Pakistan, Chinese analysts had begun the guessing game of where Washington will focus its attention next.
"Why didn't they catch him alive?" speculated military affairs analyst Guo Xuan. "Because he was no longer needed as an excuse for Washington to take the anti-terror war outside of the US borders. It is because of bin Laden that the US were allowed to increase their strategic presence in many places around the world as never before. But Libya and NATO's attack there have changed the game. They (the US) no longer need bin Laden to assert their authority."
Even before bin Laden's death, Beijing had expressed concern that the US strategists are diverting their attention from the war on terror to containing the rise of China and other emerging economies.
A long article on Libya stalemate published by the editor of Contemporary International Relations magazine, Lin Limin, argued that the US has been unwilling to take the lead role in the Libya conflict because it has "finally woken up to the fact that its main reason to worry are the emerging countries.
"If the US position on Libya is not only a tactical stance but a strategic one and they have really come to understand that they should not waste military power and energy in numerous directions 'spreading democracy' all over the world but should begin focusing their attention on the rise of emerging countries, then we do have a reason to worry," Lin argued.
The US presence in Afghanistan has always been a controversial one for Chinese politicians. China joined the global war on terror because bin Laden's political agenda of setting up an Arab caliphate and sponsoring terrorism presented a direct threat to its restive Muslim north-western region of Xinjiang. But Beijing has been suspicious of the US intentions, worrying that Washington is pursuing a broader agenda for long-term presence in the region, which China regards as its backyard.
Beijing officially hailed the killing of the terrorist leader by the US as "a milestone and a positive development for the international anti-terrorism efforts".
"Terrorism is the common enemy of the international community. China has also been a victim of terrorism," foreign ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying after bin Laden's death.
She was referring to Xinjiang, where Muslim separatists have been waging a bloody insurgency against Chinese rule. Beijing had linked the global war against terror with its struggle to quell separatist sentiments in the Muslim region, insisting insurgents are aided from outside.
Chinese public reaction to the news of bin Laden's death has mixed reluctant admiration at the success of the secret mission played out reportedly on screens in front of US president Barack Obama with outright fear over what comes next.
"The whole thing seemed like an intelligence operation lifted straight out of '24' (a TV series about US counter-terrorism agents)," said Huang Mei, a TV producer with barely concealed awe. "How advanced and confident they must be to ask their president to watch the killing mission on screens live!"
But some see bin Laden's demise as a blow to efforts to promote a school of Anti-American thought.
"The great anti-America fighter bin Laden was murdered by the US! How sad!" wrote one commenter on Sina's popular Weibo micro-blogging site.
"Is this real? Excellent!" wrote another of the news. "Now the only terrorist left is the United States!"
Commentators have begun analysing the political capital reaped by Obama and preparing for the possibility that he may win a second term in office. Writing in Beijing's Xinjing Bao, commentator Chen Bing predicted the US will exploit the death of bin Laden to expand its influence in the Middle East and bring the Arab spring to an end.
"What a great way to issue a warning to all anti-American politicians in the region," Chen said. "And a declaration that it (the US) intends to mould the Middle East according to its own design."
The Chinese reaction to the circumstances surrounding Osama bin Laden's death were mixed with admiration for a successful covert operation, and fear for where Washington would start focusing its attention next [EPA]
The United States' most vilified terrorist foe has been dead only a week but China is already haunted by the phantom of the next big US enemy. Almost simultaneously with the spread of the news of Osama bin Laden's death in a covert US operation in Pakistan, Chinese analysts had begun the guessing game of where Washington will focus its attention next.
"Why didn't they catch him alive?" speculated military affairs analyst Guo Xuan. "Because he was no longer needed as an excuse for Washington to take the anti-terror war outside of the US borders. It is because of bin Laden that the US were allowed to increase their strategic presence in many places around the world as never before. But Libya and NATO's attack there have changed the game. They (the US) no longer need bin Laden to assert their authority."
Even before bin Laden's death, Beijing had expressed concern that the US strategists are diverting their attention from the war on terror to containing the rise of China and other emerging economies.
A long article on Libya stalemate published by the editor of Contemporary International Relations magazine, Lin Limin, argued that the US has been unwilling to take the lead role in the Libya conflict because it has "finally woken up to the fact that its main reason to worry are the emerging countries.
"If the US position on Libya is not only a tactical stance but a strategic one and they have really come to understand that they should not waste military power and energy in numerous directions 'spreading democracy' all over the world but should begin focusing their attention on the rise of emerging countries, then we do have a reason to worry," Lin argued.
The US presence in Afghanistan has always been a controversial one for Chinese politicians. China joined the global war on terror because bin Laden's political agenda of setting up an Arab caliphate and sponsoring terrorism presented a direct threat to its restive Muslim north-western region of Xinjiang. But Beijing has been suspicious of the US intentions, worrying that Washington is pursuing a broader agenda for long-term presence in the region, which China regards as its backyard.
Beijing officially hailed the killing of the terrorist leader by the US as "a milestone and a positive development for the international anti-terrorism efforts".
"Terrorism is the common enemy of the international community. China has also been a victim of terrorism," foreign ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying after bin Laden's death.
She was referring to Xinjiang, where Muslim separatists have been waging a bloody insurgency against Chinese rule. Beijing had linked the global war against terror with its struggle to quell separatist sentiments in the Muslim region, insisting insurgents are aided from outside.
Chinese public reaction to the news of bin Laden's death has mixed reluctant admiration at the success of the secret mission played out reportedly on screens in front of US president Barack Obama with outright fear over what comes next.
"The whole thing seemed like an intelligence operation lifted straight out of '24' (a TV series about US counter-terrorism agents)," said Huang Mei, a TV producer with barely concealed awe. "How advanced and confident they must be to ask their president to watch the killing mission on screens live!"
But some see bin Laden's demise as a blow to efforts to promote a school of Anti-American thought.
"The great anti-America fighter bin Laden was murdered by the US! How sad!" wrote one commenter on Sina's popular Weibo micro-blogging site.
"Is this real? Excellent!" wrote another of the news. "Now the only terrorist left is the United States!"
Commentators have begun analysing the political capital reaped by Obama and preparing for the possibility that he may win a second term in office. Writing in Beijing's Xinjing Bao, commentator Chen Bing predicted the US will exploit the death of bin Laden to expand its influence in the Middle East and bring the Arab spring to an end.
"What a great way to issue a warning to all anti-American politicians in the region," Chen said. "And a declaration that it (the US) intends to mould the Middle East according to its own design."
Sunday, February 13, 2011
How Being Cheap Will Leave You Broke
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investopedia_logo.jpg
All of us want to save money, right? Even the multi-millionaires want to save money on taxes, and those of us not in those high-level income brackets often need to live as frugally as possible in this tight economy. There are great ideas for saving money, but there are also bad ideas: Things we can do that seem to save money, but end up costing us in the long-run. Here are a few budget blunders to make sure you avoid.
More from Investopedia:
• Digging Out of Debt in 8 Steps
• 5 Moves That Make You Look Cheap
• 20 Lazy Ways to Save Money
1. Neglecting Basic Maintenance
You need a place to live and a way to get from one place to another, and those items -- home and car -- are usually the biggest ongoing expenses. But neglecting the basic maintenance needed on your home and car will only end up costing you more money down the road. House upkeep, such as changing furnace filters, cleaning out the chimney, cleaning out the gutter, even keeping up with landscaping, is not something you should neglect. Neither is changing the oil and checking the fluids on your car. Lack of maintenance inevitably leads to something big breaking and that will cost you a lot more to repair than it would have cost to make small, ongoing investments in regular maintenance.
[Click here to check savings products and rates in your area.]
2. Doing Your Own Taxes
If your tax returns are simple and you know enough about finances and tax laws to fill out the right forms, send in the right documents and keep your own records, doing your taxes isn't a big deal. However, if your tax situation is at all complicated, or you're at all unsure of what you need to report, then doing your own taxes can end up costing you if you miss something. Even a small miss will end up being a big cost because of the penalties and interest that will apply when the IRS catches your mistake. Shell out a little bit now and get a professional to make sure your taxes are done correctly.
3. Diving Into Your Retirement
Nobody likes paying interest on a credit card, or having to go without something that seems essential. But diving into your retirement fund to fix those urgent money problems you have today will backfire like nothing else in life. Your retirement fund needs the years it has until your retirement to build, and when you take it out early, you're costing yourself a huge amount that you'll definitely wish you had later. Solve your urgent problems with a little creativity.
For example:
• Pick up a side job or do some freelance work to make cash.
• Sell some of your belongings that you don't need.
• Stop (or cutdown on) eating out and buying coffee or soda.
• Look for ways to cut costs in your regular expenses, such as dropping/reducing your cable and cell phone plans.
But don't cheat yourself out of retirement money!
4. Not Saving Anything
Another significant financial sin is neglecting to save at all. Why is this so bad? Because life happens. Unexpected expenses will come. And if you don't have any sort of savings cushion to help you deal with those expenses, you'll find yourself relying on your credit cards, high interest loans or some other equally horrible way of paying for stuff in a crisis. So save something out of every single paycheck. Maybe it's only $10 or $20 at first, but eventually you could build up to $50, then work your way to $100. Save whatever you can and the savings will add up, helping you avoid more debt in the future.
5. Skimping on Food
Food is a big expense, and it's a big temptation to buy the cheapest stuff out there, whether for eating at home or when you need to eat out. But cheap, nasty food results in nasty meals and doesn't help you stay healthy. If you can't avoid eating out from time to time, go somewhere with healthier, better food, and eat less. Split an entree, or have an appetizer instead of a main course. Skip the alcoholic drinks, which will increase your bill in a hurry. And for the food you eat at home, spend a little bit more on your grocery bill so you can cook healthy, great-tasting meals that will make you enjoy eating at home.
6. Risking Your Health
Health insurance is expensive, but paying your own medical bills is even more expensive. And neglecting to deal with your medical problems because you don't think you can afford the bills? Expensive and stupid. No, you don't need to run to the doctor for every single cold you get. And yes, you can certainly research and save money on your health insurance. If a high-deductible health savings plan is your best option, that's OK.
7. Letting Coupons Shop for You
You can find any number of blogs and websites dedicated to the fine art of coupon shopping. Buying a product at the discounted price you get with a coupon is certainly cheaper than paying full-price -- no one's arguing with that concept. However, if coupon clipping leads you to make purchases you wouldn't normally make, it's money wasted, not money saved. Only use coupons if they apply to your normal and needed purchase items. Otherwise, skip the coupon and skip the purchase altogether.
The Bottom Line
Saving money is smart; we all know that. But you want to save money in smart ways, by saving, investing, cutting back on unnecessary spending, paying off debt, and not by going cheap when it will end up costing you more long-term. Check back on the cheap choices you've made lately -- are you making smart financial moves or just responding to urgent situations? Good financial habits now -- and smart choices for saving money -- will help you build a solid financial future.
investopedia_logo.jpg
All of us want to save money, right? Even the multi-millionaires want to save money on taxes, and those of us not in those high-level income brackets often need to live as frugally as possible in this tight economy. There are great ideas for saving money, but there are also bad ideas: Things we can do that seem to save money, but end up costing us in the long-run. Here are a few budget blunders to make sure you avoid.
More from Investopedia:
• Digging Out of Debt in 8 Steps
• 5 Moves That Make You Look Cheap
• 20 Lazy Ways to Save Money
1. Neglecting Basic Maintenance
You need a place to live and a way to get from one place to another, and those items -- home and car -- are usually the biggest ongoing expenses. But neglecting the basic maintenance needed on your home and car will only end up costing you more money down the road. House upkeep, such as changing furnace filters, cleaning out the chimney, cleaning out the gutter, even keeping up with landscaping, is not something you should neglect. Neither is changing the oil and checking the fluids on your car. Lack of maintenance inevitably leads to something big breaking and that will cost you a lot more to repair than it would have cost to make small, ongoing investments in regular maintenance.
[Click here to check savings products and rates in your area.]
2. Doing Your Own Taxes
If your tax returns are simple and you know enough about finances and tax laws to fill out the right forms, send in the right documents and keep your own records, doing your taxes isn't a big deal. However, if your tax situation is at all complicated, or you're at all unsure of what you need to report, then doing your own taxes can end up costing you if you miss something. Even a small miss will end up being a big cost because of the penalties and interest that will apply when the IRS catches your mistake. Shell out a little bit now and get a professional to make sure your taxes are done correctly.
3. Diving Into Your Retirement
Nobody likes paying interest on a credit card, or having to go without something that seems essential. But diving into your retirement fund to fix those urgent money problems you have today will backfire like nothing else in life. Your retirement fund needs the years it has until your retirement to build, and when you take it out early, you're costing yourself a huge amount that you'll definitely wish you had later. Solve your urgent problems with a little creativity.
For example:
• Pick up a side job or do some freelance work to make cash.
• Sell some of your belongings that you don't need.
• Stop (or cutdown on) eating out and buying coffee or soda.
• Look for ways to cut costs in your regular expenses, such as dropping/reducing your cable and cell phone plans.
But don't cheat yourself out of retirement money!
4. Not Saving Anything
Another significant financial sin is neglecting to save at all. Why is this so bad? Because life happens. Unexpected expenses will come. And if you don't have any sort of savings cushion to help you deal with those expenses, you'll find yourself relying on your credit cards, high interest loans or some other equally horrible way of paying for stuff in a crisis. So save something out of every single paycheck. Maybe it's only $10 or $20 at first, but eventually you could build up to $50, then work your way to $100. Save whatever you can and the savings will add up, helping you avoid more debt in the future.
5. Skimping on Food
Food is a big expense, and it's a big temptation to buy the cheapest stuff out there, whether for eating at home or when you need to eat out. But cheap, nasty food results in nasty meals and doesn't help you stay healthy. If you can't avoid eating out from time to time, go somewhere with healthier, better food, and eat less. Split an entree, or have an appetizer instead of a main course. Skip the alcoholic drinks, which will increase your bill in a hurry. And for the food you eat at home, spend a little bit more on your grocery bill so you can cook healthy, great-tasting meals that will make you enjoy eating at home.
6. Risking Your Health
Health insurance is expensive, but paying your own medical bills is even more expensive. And neglecting to deal with your medical problems because you don't think you can afford the bills? Expensive and stupid. No, you don't need to run to the doctor for every single cold you get. And yes, you can certainly research and save money on your health insurance. If a high-deductible health savings plan is your best option, that's OK.
7. Letting Coupons Shop for You
You can find any number of blogs and websites dedicated to the fine art of coupon shopping. Buying a product at the discounted price you get with a coupon is certainly cheaper than paying full-price -- no one's arguing with that concept. However, if coupon clipping leads you to make purchases you wouldn't normally make, it's money wasted, not money saved. Only use coupons if they apply to your normal and needed purchase items. Otherwise, skip the coupon and skip the purchase altogether.
The Bottom Line
Saving money is smart; we all know that. But you want to save money in smart ways, by saving, investing, cutting back on unnecessary spending, paying off debt, and not by going cheap when it will end up costing you more long-term. Check back on the cheap choices you've made lately -- are you making smart financial moves or just responding to urgent situations? Good financial habits now -- and smart choices for saving money -- will help you build a solid financial future.
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