Turns out all the hooey about “OMG HACKZ0RZ!” has at least a grain of truth to it. According to the New York Times, weeks before the “haha the Olympics are on and noone will notice” mini-war Russia just sprang on Georgia, the breakaway republic’s servers were being pelted by Cossack nerds aiming to humiliate them and take down their internet infrastructure. Besides the psychological benefits, cyberwar is also exceedingly cheap, costing much less than a tank full of soldiers to implement and maintain. Whether these cyberattacks are the work of the Russian government, intelligence agencies or criminal organizations (or all three) is unclear, but in a larger sense these incidents point to the way wars might be waged in future conflicts. Of course, the people with the most to lose aren’t the Third World powers but Western and Asian countries, where more infrastructure and economic muscle is tied into net connectivity. JUst like terrorism, cyberwarfare is essentially asymmetrical.
FISA, the amendment which will allow the American government to conduct warrantless wiretaps on its own citizens, is scheduled for approval this Tuesday. In the video below, Tim Ferris, the author of the “Four Hour Work Week“, interviews Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed the Pentagon Papers and was a key figure in both ending the Vietnam War and bringing down Richard Nixon. Watch the video and find out just how the privacy and freedom of American citizens is being frittered away in order to chase terrorist boogeymen.
Peter Bergen, who wrote the excellent Holy War, Inc., has penned a mammoth investigative report for the Independent that points to the possible decline of Al Queda as a force in the Middle East. Interestingly, it’s not American military pressure but Muslim religious leaders who are turning the tide away from extremism. Al Queda’s predilection for slaughtering plenty of innocent Muslims along with whoever else they have on their hit list isn’t going down too well, and opinion i turning against jihadism. It’s interesting that after pulling off the most spectacular terrorist attack in history and subsequently evading the American military for the better part of a decade, the one thing Bin Laden and Co. didn’t account for is human decency.
This one’s more ranting about the proposed Canadian DMCA. Also, on a technical note, it looks like video hosting sites don’t ike something about the end credits, so I guess I’ll have to tweak that for further episodes.
Roger Stone learned the dark art of political hatchet-jobbery from Richard Nixon and Roy Cohn, two of America’s finest villains. He’s continued with their “win at any costs” philosophy, most recently applying his vile talents to both the 2000 recount and the 2004 smear job on John Kerry. And he’s an unrepentant horndog, though interestingly his habit of frequenting Miami swinger’s clubs actually led to the downfall of former New York governor and whoremonger Elliot Spitzer. An article in the current New Yorker lays out his perfidious ways in detail, and if you want to get his personal take on the world, check out his blog. I would hope that somehow this toad is kept out of the current election, but somehow I can’t shake the feeling that Obama has been in his sights from the word go.
So says a new article in the New York Times. THe reasons cited include fatigue with an endless and pointless conflict, media running out of things to say about the war, and a government that’s more secretive than any since the Nixon administration. But you’ve got to wonder what’s wrong with a country when it’s people give a war in which 4000+ of their own soldiers and an untold number of Iraqis have died a colossal “meh.” With this kind of attitude, it’s no wonder that rising powers like China and India will soon be eating our lunch.
After five years and countless Iraqi and American deaths, progress is finally being made to pacify a raging insurgency and bring battling Shia and Sunni factions closer together. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Malaki, previously viewed as weak and ineffectual, has succeeded in pacifying Basra using Iraqi forces, and in the process marginalized Shia firebrand (and likely backed by Iran) Moqtada Al-Sadr. Al-Malaki had previously been tenuously allied with Sadr, and whether any of this actually lasts is another question. The Atlantic has all the details.
