CIA Overseeing 3-Day War Game on Internet
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 25 May 2005 20:33:19 -0500 Subject: [CP-General] We are the enemy [The important part of the account below is not how the CIA chooses to spend its (unaccounted) tax money, but rather whom the USG sees as its enemy: an "alliance of anti-American organizations that includes anti-globalization hackers." Thus "American" is equated with corporate globalization, and opponents of the latter are defined as opponents of the former. They mean it when they say, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." --CGE] CIA Overseeing 3-Day War Game on Internet May 25, 6:42 PM (ET) By TED BRIDIS WASHINGTON - The CIA is conducting a war game this week to simulate an unprecedented, Sept. 11-like electronic assault against the United States. The three-day exercise, known as "Silent Horizon," is meant to test the ability of government and industry to respond to escalating Internet disruptions over many months, according to participants. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the CIA asked them not to disclose details of the sensitive exercise taking place in Charlottesville, Va., about two hours southwest of Washington. The simulated attacks were carried out five years in the future by a fictional new alliance of anti-American organizations that included anti-globalization hackers. The most serious damage was expected to be inflicted in the closing hours of the war game Thursday. The national security simulation was significant because its premise - a devastating cyberattack that affects government and parts of the economy on the scale of the 2001 suicide hijackings - contradicts assurances by U.S. counterterrorism experts that such effects from a cyberattack are highly unlikely. "You hear less and less about the digital Pearl Harbor," said Dennis McGrath, who has helped run three similar exercises for the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth College. "What people call cyberterrorism, it's just not at the top of the list." The CIA's little-known Information Operations Center, which evaluates threats to U.S. computer systems from foreign governments, criminal organizations and hackers, was running the war game. About 75 people, mostly from the CIA, along with other current and former U.S. officials, gathered in conference rooms and pretended to react to signs of mock computer attacks. The government remains most concerned about terrorists using explosions, radiation and biological threats. FBI Director Robert Mueller warned earlier this year that terrorists increasingly are recruiting computer scientists but said most hackers "do not have the resources or motivation to attack the U.S. critical information infrastructures." The government's most recent intelligence assessment of future threats through the year 2020 said cyberattacks are expected but terrorists "will continue to primarily employ conventional weapons." Authorities have expressed concerns about terrorists combining physical attacks such as bombings with hacker attacks to disrupt rescue efforts, known as hybrid or "swarming" attacks. "One of the things the intelligence community was accused of was a lack of imagination," said Dorothy Denning of the Naval Postgraduate School, an expert on Internet threats who was invited by the CIA to participate but declined. "You want to think about not just what you think may affect you but about scenarios that might seem unlikely." An earlier cyberterrorism exercise called "Livewire" for the Homeland Security Department and other federal agencies concluded there were serious questions over government's role during a cyberattack depending on who was identified as the culprit - terrorists, a foreign government or bored teenagers. It also questioned whether the U.S. government would be able to detect the early stages of such an attack without significant help from private technology companies. Copyright 2005 Associated Press. ___ counterpunch-general mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://counterpunch.org/mailman/listinfo/counterpunch-general -- "All empires collapse eventually: Akkad, Sumeria,=20 Babylonia, Ninevah, Assyria, Persia, Macedonia,=20 Greece, Carthage, Rome, Mali, Songhai, Mongonl,=20 Tokugawaw, Gupta, Khmer, Hapbsburg, Inca, Aztec,=20 Spanish, Dutch, Ottoman, Austrian, French,=20 British, Soviet, you name them, they all fell,=20 and most within a few hundred years. The reasons=20 are not really complex. An empire is a kind of=20 state system that inevitably makes the same=20 mistakes simply by the nature of its imperial=20 structure and inevitably fails because of its=20 size, complexity, territorial reach,=20 stratification, heterogeneity, domination,=20 hierarchy, and inequalities. " -Kirkpatrick Sale "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul." "Sentimento sin acci=F3n es la aniquilaci=F3n del alma." --Edward Abb
Re: Silicon Valley, five years after
For a look at the people blown up by the boom in San Francisco and the East Bay, check out our documentary 'Boom - The Sound of Eviction' at http://www.boomthemovie.org which comes from the perspective of the people who were living in the city before the boom and didn't rise with the 6 figure salaries, but were expected to compete for rental units that doubled and tripled, forcing many people into the street to protest (or to try to live). Anecdotally I have heard rents dropping a hundred or two hundred dollars in a unit, but this is from rents that went up an easy thousand, so i couldn't call that a settling, more like some easing of the crazy ratcheting effect. Land values in San Francisco are indeed unique due to the absolute limits of a 48 square mile county at the end of the peninsula, but the boom itself triggered a massive transfer of wealth to property owners. This is perhaps the biggest legacy here. And perhaps a number of people in the tech sector got into the market right away and were pleased to see their values increase 20% a year (try finding that in a local savings account or even on the stock market), and perhaps some folks are living on 2nd mortgages... The fact is the a lot of money left over after the bust didn't go back to the stock market, but came here (and in many other World Cities) into real estate, and now we are faced with a second bubble in the housing market without a parallel increase in wages or jobs, even in the tech sector, much less the lower working class markets. (I have heard that tech jobs are coming back... Certainly the biotech boom never materialized here, despit the City's best efforts to usher it in.) Very few working families will afford a million dollar home. A shitty house on the outskirts will start at 600,000. Even The Economist is advising people to rent until the bubble bursts. There's an interesting classical economist by the name of Henry George who wrote a book called Progress and Poverty back in the 1880s in San Francisco who was at least able to predict the massive homelessness and poverty right here in this city, side by side with every increasing, spectacular wealth. His premise is that private ownership of land itself is the funneling-off mechanism for what should be the greater returns to both labor and capital that come with increased productivity (vis a vis high technology for example)... henrygeorgesf.org mark Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 14:34:52 -0800 From: ed phillips <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net Subject: Re: Silicon Valley, five years after Steve, Thanks for posting this to nettime. It is interesting to see you mention the dotcom period now. I've been reading Keith Hart's The Hitman's Dilemna and some other interesting remarks by Keith and one with which I think I concur is that Bay Area markets and money and individual economic "actors" in the Bay Area and in the U.S. generally are that much more quick to to turn to new markets, new money. ascribe it to what you will, the absence of a welfare net, or some sui generis dynamism. <...> -- "All empires collapse eventually: Akkad, Sumeria, Babylonia, Ninevah, Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, Mali, Songhai, Mongonl, Tokugawaw, Gupta, Khmer, Hapbsburg, Inca, Aztec, Spanish, Dutch, Ottoman, Austrian, French, British, Soviet, you name them, they all fell, and most within a few hundred years. The reasons are not really complex. An empire is a kind of state system that inevitably makes the same mistakes simply by the nature of its imperial structure and inevitably fails because of its size, complexity, territorial reach, stratification, heterogeneity, domination, hierarchy, and inequalities. " -Kirkpatrick Sale "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul." "Sentimento sin acción es la aniquilación del alma." --Edward Abbey Whispered Media P.O. Box 40130 San Francisco, CA 94140 USA (415) 789-8484 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.whisperedmedia.org Video Activist Network http://www.videoactivism.org # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net
Re: the dollar's demise (and the rise of Asia)
here's that article link exactly: http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3421877 there were a number of articles written about a hidden motivation for the (2nd) iraq war - that saddam (and iran already) started accepting the euro as official currency for iraq's oil instead of only the american dollar. venezuela was also moving in this direction, and some authors wrote that the US was trying to nip all that in the bud. here is one such article archived from the guardian uk from july: The Real Reasons Bush Went to War By John Chapman http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/072904C.shtml mark # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
smartmeme report on RNC/DNC organizing
excerpt:
Challenging the Frame
The Democratic and Republican parties are already using their
massive public relations machines to focus America's attention on
what is happening inside the conventions and on their electoral
strategies. There is a trend of an emerging frame in both Boston
and New York where any non-party, outside-theconvention-hall events
are presented as marginal and/or irrelevant.
Thus grassroots groups organizing in both Boston and New York are
struggling to place the Conventions in a much broader frame where
the diverse voices of community advocates can be heard.
In New York, the RNCnotWelcome.org collective (an unincorporated
group) has focused on framing the conflict by connecting the
national policy impacts of the Republican Administration to how the
RNC convention itself impacts the everyday lives of New Yorkers.
Their framing of "not welcome" allows local opponents of the RNC to
lay claim to the sympathetic mantel of legitimate New Yorkers, while
painting the RNC as invaders wreaking havoc on the local communities
through both their policies and their gala events.
In Boston many group's efforts to challenge the framing of the
conventions are complicated by the nuances and ranges of perspective
on the Democratic Party. Since the Democrats do not currently hold
power they are less a target for popular outrage and most events in
Boston have a far less confrontational tone than New York.
One significant exception is the unincorporated group, The Bl(A)ck
Tea Society, who is striving to articulate a systemic critique about
the state of American democracy which challenges the legitimacy of
both political parties. Both their name and their message, "Finish
the American Revolution!" trumpet a call to action that frames the
Democrats (and by default the Republicans) in the same light as
British colonial rulers, and capitalizes on the backdrop of the
historic revolutionary war markers of Boston.
Other groups are using creative methods to expand the frame around
the convention and communicate messaging that transcends any
specific tactic. South Philadelphians Together Against Bush (STAB),
an unincorporated group, is calling on people to display a red
bandanna ("red for regime change") during the RNC. This is a simple,
memetic (viral), effort to create a unifying visual that reveals the
massive popular opposition to the Republican agenda. Red is a color
with a wide range of associations (from Marxist revolution to
Republicanism), so if this effort becomes popular it will be
interesting to see how well it communicates its specific message.
ANNOUNCING A NEW REPORT FROM THE SPIN PROJECT AND smartMEME!
===
PRIME TIME FOR CHANGE: GRASSROOTS COMMUNICATIONS
STRATEGIES AT THE DNC/RNC 2004
**Includes Organizer's Directory of groups doing media work at the DNC &
RNC! **
===
Greetings,
We are please to announce the release of a new report for grassroots
organizers -- "Prime Time for Change: Grassroots Communications Strategies
at the DNC/RNC 2004."
DOWNLOAD REPORT in PDF FORMAT BY CLICKING ON THE LINK BELOW:
http://www.smartmeme.com/downloads/PRIMETIMEFORCHANGE.pdf
OR
Visit SmartMeme.com or spinproject.org and download the report:
http://www.smartmeme.com/
Grassroots organizers across the country are mobilizing their
constituencies this summer for the 2004 Democratic and Republican National
Conventions (DNC/RNC). In this politically charged election year, many
different kinds of organizations and groups - from political parties and
organized labor to local non-profits and unincorporated grassroots
entities - are working to deliver their messages for change at these major
national events.
Prime Time For Change: Grassroots Communications Strategies at the DNC/RNC
2004, produced by the smartMeme collective and the SPIN Project, looks at
84 organizations, mostly non-profits and unincorporated grassroots
entities, that volunteered information about their upcoming Convention
activities in Boston and New York.
A web-based survey and phone interviews focused on four areas in order to
compile an inventory of organization types and messages; goals,
activities, and strategies; resources and needs. The results, and
accompanying interpretations and analysis, provide illustrative examples
and strategic insights for amplifying the overall impact for any
organization undertaking communications work at theDNC/RNC.
The report makes four strategic conclusions that highlight both strengths
and challenges for on-the-ground media work: (1) Know the terrain-Know the
media climate, (2) Message equals strategy-Move your message, (3) Show
action logic-Stories have power, and (4) Network, Share resources, and
Build movements.
An "Organizers Directory" of parti
