Wow. The sky really is falling!

If you’ve followed this blog for a given length of time you know that I love analogies. The more absurd the analogy the better and every time I turn around the Government gives me more material for new analogies. This Thursday the Navy is going to try to shoot down one of the NRO’s spy satellites. This is a satellite the spy agency at first told us is nothing to worry about, even though it’s loaded with about 1000 pounds of highly toxic fuel and, if that weren’t enough, somewhere between three quarters of a pound to almost a pound and a half of plutonium. So, now the Navy gets to “test” it’s new missile defense shield system on this bus sized beast.

Folks, Imagine you are sitting in your apartment and there is a knock at the door. You open the door and there is your neighbor with smiles for you and a slightly sheepish look on his face. “Hey, I hate to bother you but I just wanted to let you know that if you see a snake in your apartment you should get away from it and come see me.” You ask your neighbor why and he says, “I’m a snake collector and one of them…well…sort of got out and I can’t find him in my apartment, so I’m afraid he’s going to show up unannounced in someone’s apartment. He wouldn’t have slithered away outdoors since it’s winter and too cold.” Your neighbor leaves with the reminder, “DON’T go near the snake if you see it, just come get me. Okay?”

Away your neighbor runs and you are flipped out over the snake news. A few days later he knocks at your door again wearing snake boots, heavy protective clothing, carrying a shotgun with bandolier strapped across his chest and a pack of insane and fierce ferrets in a box. “I have a plan for getting the snake. Can I come in for a bit?” Now your neighbor tells you he needs to kill the snake because it’s just too dangerous to allow a surprise appearance. “Look, I hate to tell you this but it’s a deadly black Mamba that got out. He last ate a few weeks before he turned up missing and I think he’s hungry, pissed and aggressive. I need to set the ferrets loose and dig around for this thing and kill it.” You ask if it’s safe to be in your apartment and your neighbor tells you, “Um…yeah…sure. Just sit down and do what you normally do at home. Oh, and if the snake slithers out in front of you I need you to yell for me immediately.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what our government is up to these days. There is a highly toxic bus soaring out of control over our heads, which also houses the latest and greatest electronic spy secrets the NRO can lift into outer space. Something has spooked (no pun intended) the spooks so badly that they have let the cat out of the bag with other alphabet agencies and the danger posed by this is so great that the Navy is going to shoot it down.

Let’s be honest, the government doesn’t really care if toxic substances poison 100% of the world’s population. Even recent history shows that they lied their asses off about the levels of toxicity in the World Trade Center debris and dust clouds. Before that we have above ground atomic bomb tests, the spraying of biological pathogens on the city of San Francisco and we still have a massive arsenal of chemical and biological weapons sitting in bunkers, still not destroyed. The government isn’t worried a bit about people dying if this thing crash lands smack in the middle of Times Square or even on an elementary school in Somewhere, USA. To paraphrase Stalin, one dead person is a tragedy, a million dead bodies is a logistics challenge.

So why are they all hot to trot at shooting this thing down? Is it the equipment onboard that has them shaking like crazy? Are they afraid the thing will wind up in the middle of China, spilling secrets willy-nilly like a missing Los Alamos hard drive? This would still be a lousy “real world” test of the missile shield defense system since the parameters of the test would be uncontrollable.

I have to wonder if there are not other secrets onboard this craft that the government does not want the world to know about? I have to assume that the NRO’s satellites have a defensive system onboard with several sub-systems and ancillary systems supporting the mission. A “gun” system would of course be needed to disable or destroy anything that is trying to destroy the satellite. I doubt it’s a real gun with ammunition that packs a high kinetic kill capability, due to the weight issues of carrying a magazine of high-density slugs. An energy-based weapon would be more in line with I assume it would have and it also makes me think there may be more plutonium onboard than first mentioned. I’d say the pound and a half, while quoted as the high end, is actually on the low end.

I assume it would have an electronics package for target assessment, target assignment and weapons tracking. This would be a big loss to the spy agencies if it fell into foreign hands, as it would give them the blueprint for jamming the defense systems. I also assume it is carrying the most recent mods for the actual surveillance payload. The imaging system is perhaps far beyond what any of us can imagine and there have been hints before that the newest generation of these satellites can see through dense material. In other words, it can see through walls and roofs. I have always assumed they have advanced these systems to a point where they can actually pick up sound as well.

Let’s keep an eye on this one, it could be interesting and even if the Government says all was a success and the satellite was shot down and is now sitting in harmless chunks on the bottom of the Pacific, I’d still be suspicious of what has actually occurred. Consider a news story that just came to light yesterday with the Dallas DA’s office announcing the release of 15 boxes of secret info about the Kennedy assassination. In the more than 40, and approaching 50 years since that stockpile has been sitting in a vault, every Dallas DA had decided to keep those documents and their existence, a secret. If the Dallas DA’s office can keep a secret squirrel stash of over a dozen boxes of evidence after the millions of man hours, maybe even billions, spent by researchers and enthusiasts to study the Kennedy Assassination, we have to automatically assume the Feds know far more than they are letting on. We can apply this same knowledge to our current governmental agencies and personnel.

Keep looking to the skies…keep looking.

Uncle Sam's wire cutters

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” Oscar Wilde.

In the span of less than a week, four major underwater telecommunications cables have been “cut”. Can you imagine being in a car wreck on Monday and the ambulance you are riding in after the wreck is also involved in a wreck and on Tuesday you wreck the rental car that the insurance company got for you and when you leave the lot with a second rental car, that one gets totaled too? Telecoms, governments and the media all want us to believe the car wreck story. That’s what they are force-feeding us when they aren’t busy trying to ignore the story.

What would be the reasons behind taking down an entire region’s communications grid in this way? There are several possibilities and I think the wilder ones could carry the most weight as this is an extraordinary set of equipment failures.

Some people are postulating that this is an opening salvo before Iran opens its oil Bourse. The latest given date for the opening is February 11th and it will be interesting to see how the communications situation is resolved and if there are other problems popping up when the Bourse opens. It is possible that the cables were taken down as a warning to not only Iran, but also the rest of the world, that their main means of operating in the modern financial world could be taken down with a moment's notice. I think this explanation carries the most weight as the timing and the “signal” of this communications outage is most prescient.

There are a few “I don’t know about that…” twists with a warning shot theory. Namely, the dollar is already being unpegged from Middle East oil producers and let’s face it, the US economy is already fucked six ways to Sunday. Sending some SEALs to the Med and the Gulf, armed with wire cutters and spare air tanks seems a bit like overkill. Then again, subtlety isn’t a trademark of the US Government.

There is also quite a bit of speculation that the outage is a byproduct of the US Government carrying out a large-scale surveillance program. I assume the NSA is capturing data streams en masse and in real time on most if not all international communications lines, so this seems less likely unless there were specific traffic routes that they had no access to. I have wondered, from an IT professional’s perspective, if the cables were cut to corner or head off a stream of communication that had the potential for damage. The idea of taking an all or nothing course of action with a dangerous communications link by cutting all traffic seems more damaging to the overall picture than helpful so I am not crazy about this idea either.

Time will tell what the real deal is behind the communications outage but we should keep in mind that if or when the shit really hits the fan here in the US we would never be able to find out in real time, from alternate sources, what has transpired. If the powers that be decide to pull the plug on our Democracy they’ll do it under the cover of night and we’ll all wake up to a glossy doll’s eyes version of the normal life we have become accustomed to. It will be as though surreal pixies remade our world overnight. The news will report that “something” has happened but we will not be privy to the reality. It will be as though someone snipped our transatlantic cables and satellite communications with the rest of the world. We will be blinded and unable to find content other than what they allow us to view. At this very moment, Iran is in that exact position.

One other thing to consider is the similarities of this outage and what ATT customers experienced during the transition periods when the NSA installed it's equipment in their COs. Add the BellSouth customers who couldn't get email when ATT "transitioned" those customers into their network and you have an interesting case study in how things don't flow when the feds snoop. To this day there are latency issues with email coming from BellSouth where looking at the header info will show an outbound email from a BellSouth customer, bouncing around like a pinball within ATT's network.

Persian Poker or: What's the deal with this new NIE report?

If you play card games of any type you know there are three things that guide your strategy: 1) The cards you can see. 2) The odds for the cards you can’t see. 3) Understanding the habits and strategy of your opponent(s). There are a finite number of cards, a finite number of plays and a finite number of players in any card game. If you are playing with or against someone with whom you have played before, you know how they play the cards, the odds and how they play against or with you. Politics, of any sort, bear a close resemblance to card games, the only real differences being there are fewer rules in the polemic game but the stakes are much higher. The recent revelations regarding the NIE report on Iran’s nuclear programs have brought the card game analogy to my mind.

In the spring of 2005, NIE reports that trumpeted an increased determination and focus in Iran in regard to their nuclear programs. This led the Bush administration to apply heavier pressure and increase the rhetoric against Iran. Now the NIE is rescinding that assessment stating:

“"We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Furthermore, “Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005." As well as, "Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs."

Taking the circumstances of this new NIE report at face value is a dangerous maneuver. To take them at face value is the equivalent of the US government directly telling the Iranian intelligence apparatus that at least two sources of intelligence have contradicted each other, and the results point directly to the source. Regardless of how the intelligence was gathered it would lead the Iranians to a strategy of back tracking their own steps to see what caused these two NIE report findings.

To take this at face value from the perspective of the Iranians would be equally dangerous. It would result in a change in their methods, a new emphasis on information security and would provide the US Intelligence Community with an opportunity to see the Iranian Intelligence Community hard at work. The best way to learn about your opponent’s methodology is to simply sit back and watch him work. Observation of the world is how we learn about the world.

We need to ask ourselves a few questions about this turn of events:

1) What are the specifics regarding the 2005 estimate that led the US government to overestimate the Iranian nuclear program?
2) What new intelligence brought to light the incorrect assessment from 2005?
3) What lessons can be learned about Iran’s strategy and tactics since they have sat back for the last two years, watching the US watch them, while knowing all along that the NIE report was wrong?
4) What lessons did Iran learn about the US Intelligence Community and it’s strategy and tactics over the last two years?
5) Did the Iranian IC manipulate the US IC into thinking it had an ongoing and active program underway? i.e. Did they give the US a red herring? What caused the US to finally realize it was a red herring?
6) Does looking at the white, black and gray propaganda from the last two years shed light into the inner workings of the Iranian and US IC?

With the exception of point number 6, details will certainly be hidden from the public. There is simply no chance in hell that this administration or any government agency would willingly tell the world the specifics of how it gathers, analyzes, disseminates and reacts to the intelligence it sifts through. Point number 6, the study of propaganda about the Iranian nuclear program(s), is one we can study.

In February of 2005, when threats of a US attack on Iran were high, Iran conducted a media campaign that threatened the use of asymmetrical warfare in the event of a US attack on it’s soil. This came only a matter of months after they conducted a massive war game exercise that increased tensions in the gulf, Washington and Tehran. The effect of this threat of guerrilla warfare stirred a series of op-ed pieces that threatened and warned American citizens that Iran has sleeper cells throughout the Persian Gulf and possibly here in America.

It also had the effect of contributing directly to two consecutive rises in the futures trading price for oil. At the end of 2001, with US forces on the ground in Afghanistan, the yearly average price for a barrel of oil was $23. At the end of 2002, when the war drums were beating heavily, the average price had dropped a little less than 1% to $22.81. At the end of 2003, with the US in Afghanistan and Iraq and the early drumbeats of war against Iran were beating, oil rose in price 21% and stood at $27.69. In 2004 oil rose another 36% to $37.66. By the end of 2005, with Washington rhetoric high and an Iranian “bring it on” style response to the Bush administration, oil had risen to $50.04, an increase of another 32%. In just 4 short years the price of oil had risen 117%.

I’m not saying that the NIE overestimate was done solely to boost oil company profits, after all the profits of every single defense contractor has also skyrocketed in this period of time as a direct result of waging two wars on two fronts, so there are other factors. Still, it cannot be overlooked that the increased uncertainty in that region that has driven the price of oil to incredible levels is directly tied to the instability created by both the incorrect NIE report and the unnecessary saber rattling by the Bush administration. This, in turn, has had an enormous and negative impact on the US economy and placed an even greater strain on the budgets of US citizens. In other words, the Bush administration has caused greater harm to the paychecks of Americans in this period of time than the government of Iran.

In this case, the white propaganda meted out by the Bush administration and it’s sycophants can be viewed as advancing the interests of the oil industry. Both the corporations and the government’s that profit on the production of oil benefited greatly by this white propaganda. The effect and the source of this propaganda cannot be overlooked.

A more recent series of events can be looked at as having a possible connection to this recent NIE report and it has a direct influence on the white and gray propaganda currently being spread regarding the situation in Pakistan. Is it possible that the sudden change in the NIE assessment of Iran’s nuclear status has less to do with Iran and everything to do with the evolving situation in Pakistan?

In August of 2005, when the initial wave of propaganda swept out from the NIE report that stirred this hornet’s nest, the IAEA released a widely under-reported piece of news. Their inspections uncovered a key piece of evidence regarding the Iranian bomb-making program. Their tests showed that the enriched uranium particles found on Iranian equipment came not from Iran, but from Pakistan. Pakistan is where this equipment was illegally imported from, all in secret.

Now, we all know that Pakistan has the bomb and we can safely assume that their nuclear program now consists primarily of making more bombs, designing higher yield bombs and honing strategies for future use of those weapons in time of war. The problem in Pakistan in regards to it’s nuclear secrets has been directly tied to Abdul Khan, the government official and nuclear scientist who admitted in 2004 to selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea and was exposed in 2003. Iran bought this equipment from Khan in secret and there has been no dispute over that sale.

Recent events in Pakistan have given us the return of Bhutto, assassination attempts on her life, major abuses of freedom following Musharraf’s crackdowns and we have the threat of a nuclear power losing control of it’s weapons due to political turmoil. This could also lead to the release of more information regarding Abdul and his connections if the political conditions deteriorate further. Considering the probability that Abdul operated within the full knowledge and light of the major Intelligence Communities of the world, the last thing the US and other governments need is the threat of their secrets in this arena being exposed.

These pieces of information and the evolving nature of Pakistan’s power base and connections are interesting when placed against the backdrop of her history and the direct connections she has had with the underworld of smuggling, covert operations and varying loyalties based on financial considerations. Pakistan held a vital place in the British East India Company’s holdings with the production of opium and the illegal smuggling of opium into China during the Opium Wars. The great fortunes of the leaders in international finance today were based on the fortunes gained by the opium smuggling trade. CitiGroup, ING, HSBC and others own the booty that was gained as Bostonian smugglers and well-heeled Englishmen plundered the wealth of China and addicted a full quarter of her male population 200 years ago. Pakistan was the proving grounds and classroom for the CIA’s future drug smuggling schemes.

The US/Pakistan relationship has been hot and cold since it’s formation in 1947. The 50’s, 80’s and this first decade of the 21st century have placed them in close contact and with a location that provides perfect base of operations for covert operations, it is not difficult to see Pakistan being a covert ally to various components of the US Intelligence Community even in the worst of times.

Which leads me back to the possibility that the reason for the new NIE report being tied somehow to events in Pakistan. If there is fear that the US/Pakistan relationship will sour, and very soon at that; and concerns that Pakistan is on the verge of collapse, would it not make sense to downgrade the trumped up assessment of Iran to ensure that any change in the status of Pakistan does not expose more than the Bush administration wishes to be known?

All of this, of course, is speculation. However, it is most curious that the only major development in world politics of great significance in the months prior to this reversal is the turmoil and upheaval in Pakistan. What cards does Bhutto hold, is Musharraf bluffing or will he be forced to fold? Has Iran been playing it straight all this time simply to see how the others at the table are showing their hand? One thing is certain; this administration has the worst poker face ever seen. They bluff when they should fold, raise when they only have a pair of twos, they fold with a king high full house and Bush can’t even do an overhand shuffle without the cards flying all over the table.

A new day, a new spy program and another massive database to write a DTS package for.

Never be foolish enough to think that just because the feds say they are shutting down a controversial program that it means an evil entity has gone away. Take this recent piece of news from the Pentagon. The DoD has announced that it will shut down an anti-terrorist database that was associated with the TALON program. This database was criticized widely because among it’s targets were peaceful anti-war demonstrators such as the Quaker group, American Friends Service Committee.

This database isn’t simply going away, as it should be. In a perfect world the Pentagon would see the error in it’s ways of spying on the citizens they provide protection for and delete the whole database and destroy the backups, with stern warnings in place to never repeat such an awful crime against it’s own citizens. This is not the case. The DoD will simply turn the database over to the FBI to be integrated with their database system known as Guardian.

First of all we have the issue of our own military spying on, and most likely running counter-intelligence operations against it’s own citizens. Second, will the FBI weigh the DoD data after running it through many matrix’ and filtering processes? You and I know they will never do that. They’ll just import the data and be off on their fat happy way. God only knows how many alerts will be generated once they pull in the new data.

This doesn’t mean the DoD is done with you and I either. The Pentagon has said they have a new system, not necessarily a database, which will streamline their “threat reporting.” This makes me wonder how much of Poindexter’s TIA system is accessible to the DoD. Isn’t it wonderful to know that we throw insane amounts of money at the DoD so they will spy on you and I and call all of us a threat?

For the final slap in the face, a faceless Army officer speaking for the Pentagon said that the TALON database isn’t being shutdown because of “public criticism of how it was used.” That is a nice way of saying the public’s anger at such a program as TALON wasn’t something the DoD gave a fuck about. Sometimes I think the Pentagon and all the demonic generals and admirals who suck at the teat of our taxes will be delighted to turn their weapons on us.

Another day, another spy program.

News - Verizon tells court they were exercising 1st amendment rights in NSA spying scandal.

This will make your head spin. Verizon is claiming that the lawsuit filed against the company for helping the government spy on it's citizens, should be dropped because they were merely exercising their first amendment rights.

The gravamen of plaintiffs records claims is that defendants allegedly communicated information about them to the government namely, that a call was
placed from a certain telephone number to another number. Communicating such
factual information to the government would be speech that is fully protected by the First Amendment.

When the country is engaged in an armed conflict with foreign enemies, that right applies to communicating information that may be useful in defending the country from expected attacks. Based on plaintiffs own allegations, defendants right to communicate such information to the government is fully protected by the Free Speech and Petition Clauses of the First Amendment, and is a privilege and immunity that arises directly under the federal Constitution.

We've seen far too many examples of ideas and words being redefined to suit the wants and needs of the powers that be over the last 6 years but this one is an award winner. I honestly don't know where to begin. This is a prime example of why I absolutely despise the mega-corporations in this country. It's just mind boggling to think that this defense could work for them.

If this doesn't work in the court, the President is ready to push a bill in which there is a section that would grant all telecommunications companies retroactive immunity from any and all legal action by the American public in relation to their efforts to assist the government in spying on us.