http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-iranian-rial-2012-10
and.....
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/10/01/final-conflict-2012-engineering-world-war-iii/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+pakalert+%28Pak+Alert+
Press%29
http://www.debka.com/article/22398/More-Al-Qaeda-pre-US-election-attacks-forecast-Americans-quietly-lifted-out
and any truth as to whether Assad bought himself some time by
currying to Sarkozy and giving up Gaddafi ????
Syria’s Assad betrayed Qaddafi to French intelligence – London Daily Telegraph
DEBKAfile October 1, 2012, 11:04 AM (GMT+02:00)
and China going "phishing " for nuclear codes ????
And Here's A Chart Of The Iranian Currency Collapse That's Causing Protests On The Streets Of Tehran
We just posted a video of the protests that are inspired by the Iranian currency collapse.
Iran's currency, the Rial, is collapsing due to economic mismanagement and in part oil sanctions that are starting to bite.
So how bad is it?
Journalist Reza Asadi posted this chart showing how many Rial it takes to buy a dollar over the last 70 days.
You can see the number's gone bananas.
Note that on the Persian Calendar it's the year 1391.
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and.....
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2012/10/01/final-conflict-2012-engineering-world-war-iii/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+pakalert+%28Pak+Alert+
Press%29
Final Conflict 2012? Engineering World War III
Adrian Salbuchi
In today’s increasingly interdependent and interactive world, every action has a myriad of causes, meanings, objectives and reactions; many visible, many invisible. Some, openly admitted and declared; others no one would dare confess.
When trying to come to grips with the many complex conflicts going on in the world and the dizzying pace at which they transpire, it would be a mistake to approach them in isolation. Only a “holistic” bird’s eye view gives us the picture of where we are and, more importantly, whereto we are being dragged.
21st century geopolitics cannot be understood applying a silo mentality. Syria’s “civil war”, Egypt’s “ArabSpring,”” the destruction of Libya and Iraq, growing China, crippled Japan, the Eurozone crisis, America’s “missile shield” in Poland, Iran’s nuclear program, the coming Latin American “Spring…” Approached haphazardly, the picture we get is one of utter chaos. Approached applying the right model of interpretation, we begin to see how things interrelate, react and move in obedience to extremely powerful and dynamic – albeit, mostly invisible – forces silently driving today’s world.
Don’t (just) Read the Newspapers…
It’s good to be informed; it’s useless, however, if you cannot format that information into proper intelligible models. Too much unprocessed information will send your brain into overdrive. Thus, it’s good judgment to step away from all the noisy headlines, breaking news, terror alarms and show-biz news anchors. It’s like when you look at a Claude Monet impressionist painting: if you stand too close, you only see a maze of little coloured dots, but when you take a dozen steps back then the beauty of the work unfolds before your eyes.
In today’s information overdrive, we must join the dots correctly in spite of the global media’s insistence that we connect them all wrong.
By now, most of us have realised that ours is “a planet at war”; not at war with some alien world (that would make things easier to understand!). Rather, we are a civilisation waging civil war with itself and against itself.
Reading the global press, you might think this is a war between sovereign nations, but it’s more complicated than that. This world war is waged by a hugely powerful, illegitimate, authoritarian but numerically tiny Global Elite, embedded deep inside the public and private power structures of just about every nation on Earth; notably, the United States of America.
Like a cancerous malignant tumour, we can’t remove it outright; we can only hope to weaken it and arrest its growth before it metastasizes, killing mankind’s whole body politic. What the world needs now is some subtle sort of “virtual political chemotherapy” to remove and destroy this malignant tumour governing the world.
A key manifestation of this social and political illness lies in the extreme inequalities that exist in the USA, where the richest 1% of the population owns 35% of the country’s wealth, whilst the bottom 90% must do what they can with just 25% of national wealth. Worse still, the overwhelming majority of Congressmen, Senators, and top Executive Branch officers fall under the “top richest 1%” category.1
Understanding hidden intentions, long-term plans, hegemonic ambitions and the unconfessable plots necessary to achieve them is particularly important for US, UK, European and Australian citizens. After all, it’s their leaders who formally order their countries’ armed forces to ransack and destroy target countries.
When voters in Argentina, Colombia, Nigeria or Malaysia choose the wrong leaders, they themselves are the sole victims of their bad electoral judgment. But when US, British or French voters in their folly put the wrong people in power in their countries, then hundreds of millions around the world suffer from their bombs, drones, invasions, interference and regime changes.
Report From Iron Mountain
An old book from the late sixties called Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace2 was allegedly authored by the Hudson Institute future-prying think-tank at the request of then US Secretary of Defense Robert S McNamara. Many say the book is a hoax. But it uncannily reflects the realities of the past half century.
The book includes the claim it was authored by a Special Study Group of fifteen men whose identities were to remain secret and that it was not intended to be made public. It concludes that war, or a credible substitute for war, is necessary if governments are to maintain power.
Report from Iron Mountain states that, “wars are not ‘caused’ by international conflicts of interest. Proper logical sequence would make it more often accurate to say that war-making societies require – and thus bring about – such conflicts. The capacity of a nation to make war expresses the greatest social power it can exercise; war-making, active or contemplated, is a matter of life and death on the greatest scale subject to social control.”
The report goes on to explain that, “the production of weapons of mass destruction has always been associated with economic ‘waste’.” Iron Mountain stresses that war is an important tool, because it creates artificial economic demand, a demand that does not have any political issues: “war, and only war, solves the problem of inventory.”
Not surprisingly, Iron Mountain concludes that “world peace” is neither desirable nor in the best interests of society, because war not only serves important economic functions but also plays key social and cultural roles.
“The permanent possibility of war is the foundation for stable government; it supplies the basis for general acceptance of political authority… War is virtually synonymous with nationhood. The elimination of war implies the inevitable elimination of national sovereignty and the traditional nation-state.” Thus, “war has been the principal evolutionary device for maintaining a satisfactory balance between gross human population and supplies available for its survival. It is unique to the human species.”
So, in order to guarantee its own survival through its entrenchment inside the US, UK, European and other power structures, the Global Power Masters need war, the threat and rumours of war, just as fish need water, tigers need weak prey, and dogs need trees… and all for similar reasons!
But the United States, Britain and their allies cannot have just any enemy. They need a credible, dangerous, “scary” enemy: first it was Germany, then Japan, the Soviet Union, the global “Red Menace”; today it’s “Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism” and, increasingly, China and Russia are going centre-stage on the Global Power Master’s geopolitical radar screen.
The Case of Russia
In recent times, Russia has variously played the role of Buffer, Brake and (now, hopefully) Wall against Western power aggression.
When Russia acts like a Buffer, the world feels frustrated as the cases of Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Palestine show. In all these cases, Russia sounded adversarial, “confronting” the US/UK/EU/Israel in word but certainly not in deed. The Western powers always got their way, even at the UN.
In recent times, however, Russia is increasingly acting as a Brake on Western hegemonic ambitions, notably in Syria and Iran. In November 2011 and February 2012, Russia vetoed two US/UK/French sponsored UN Resolutions against Syria which, if passed, would have had the same devastating effect on Syria as UN Resolution 1973 had last year on Libya. Also, Russia has refused to support IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) pseudo-reports and sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. In addition, Russia has dispatched credible dissuasive military forces to counteract NATO’s militarisation of the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean.
Here we begin to wonder whether a gunfight might actually break out. This has had the sobering effect of forcing the US, UK, France and Israel to drag their feet in carrying out their threats of unilateral attacks on Iran and Syria. The downside is that this is cornering the US and its allies to resort to covert and criminal tactics involving engineered insurrection and civil war – aka “Arab Spring” (see below).
The key question is what needs to happen – what outrage must the Western powers commit – for Russia to start acting as a solid Wall, telling the Western powers in no uncertain terms, “This is as far as we’ll let you go; this is as much as we will tolerate!”
If and when Russia finally does that, will the Western powers stand down or will they bulldoze their way through the Russian Wall? This is the key question because it holds the answer of whether or not the near future will see the unleashing of World War III.
More importantly regarding the West’s decision-making process, all we say about Russia also holds for China which the Global Power Masters see as their real long-term enemy, because of its huge economic, political, demographic and military growth, and China’s increasing geopolitical control over the Pacific Basin and Indian Ocean.
The Case of China
As great air and naval powers, the US and UK well understand that China has many more options to control major oceans than does Russia, which is basically land and ice-locked. Add to this the fact that China holds over two trillion dollars in US-Dollar denominated government bonds, plus another trillion in Euros and then we begin to understand that China holds the financial valve that can trigger sudden collapse of US Dollar hegemony.
We must move away from just thinking in economic/financial terms as most in the West do, concluding that China would never swamp international markets with one or two trillion in US Treasuries because that would destroy their worth and, in a boomerang process, have a negative economic impact on China itself whose reserves would thus evaporate.
But China – the Empire of Ten Thousand Years – has a different thought process. China bides its time when it plays chess with the American Adolescent Empire. China might even decide to play a geopolitical – not financial-economic – card, sacrificing all its Dollar reserves just to cripple the US behemoth’s monetary free-ride with which it pays for its gigantic military machine. Will China fire the first geopolitical shots on the global financial stage?
In 2010, Wikileaks reported that in 2009 then Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd discussed with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton how to deal with China, both voicing their fears over its rapid rise and multi-billion dollar store of US debt, prompting Hillary to ask, “How do you deal toughly with your banker?” Both agreed that the Western powers should try to “integrate China into the international community, while also preparing to deploy force if everything goes wrong.”
The Pentagon knows full well that its long-term enemy after 2020 is China. US News & World Report quotes Aaron L. Friedberg – a former close Dick Cheney advisor, PNAC3 and Council on Foreign Relations member, and Princeton University professor – as saying that the US should spare no effort to “keep the Chinese dragon in its lair” because “strength deters aggression,” and warning “this will cost money.”
Keeping China in mind helps to better understand US moves in other far-away places as direct or indirect stepping stones on the road to China.
Take the Middle East, for instance, where geopolitical positioning and control over oil reserves by the US also acts as a beachhead into Russia’s Heartland and is geared at closing off oil sources to China – notably from Iran.
Wikileaks also exposed Kevin Rudd telling Hillary Clinton that China was “paranoid about Taiwan and Tibet,” adding that, “the West should promote an Asia-Pacific community intended to blunt Chinese influence.” Yet another example of Western double standards and misrepresentation because contrary to the US and Europeans, China has no global hegemonic ambitions.
Rather, China seeks to continue being the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific basin steering traditional Western intrusion, colonialism and interference away.
The West’s worst nightmare-scenario – as noted by Samuel Huntington in his “Clash of Civilisations” theory in the 1990’s – is if China achieves two key geopolitical goals on which it is progressing slowly but surely:
Bonding closer ties, cooperation and agreement with Russia and India on the Asian continent, and
Negotiating closer cooperation and overcoming the distrust of the past with Japan. If Japan and China agree a common geopolitical strategy as France and Germany did after World War II (leading to the EU), then the whole Asia-Pacific region powerhouse with two-thirds of the world’s population would be hands-off for the West. Just imagine marrying Japanese cutting-edge technology with Chinese resources and manpower!
The Five Types of War…
When Report From Iron Mountain was written back in the sixties, its authors went so far as to study whether substitutes could be developed for war but – alas – they surmised that war had to be maintained, even improved in its effectiveness. War could, however, take on unexpected and more subtle characteristics. The Report’s recommendations included:
- A giant space-research program whose goal was largely impossible to achieve (a black hole, budget-wise and hence able to feed the economy);
- Invent a new, non-human enemy: the potential threat of an extra-terrestrial civilisation
- Create a new threat to mankind: for example, pollution
- Implement new ways of limiting births: via adding drugs to food or water supply
- Create fictitious alternate enemies
Almost a half century later, some of these recommendations have been achieved (e.g., 1: a military and civilian space program), others are on-going or in the making (3, 4, and, if Hollywood’s PsyOps machine is any indication, number 2 is no doubt on the books), but 5 is the real keystone: “creating fictitious alternative enemies,” of which we’ve seen so many recently: Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Islamic Terrorism, and now: Iran and Syria.
The huge challenge mankind faces is that the US is increasingly resorting to covert, clandestine and technology-driven warfare over outright invasions, as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan looked really bad on the Evening News…
Thus, there are basically five types of war used by the Global Power Masters through their US/UK/NATO proxies, each characterised by increasing PsyWar and strategic/logistic complexity:
Military Invasion – Clearly visible, very territorial and using overwhelming military force and economic strength. As the Colin Powell Doctrine from the 90’s recommends, “the US should only wage war against foreign enemies where American military power is so overwhelming that victory is guaranteed.” Can a more ruthless doctrine by a major power be imagined? Cowards bombing people half-way around the world using a joystick and screen inside some safe facility.
Military Coup – Identifies dissident and treacherous elements inside the target country’s armed forces, egging them on to removing the local legal authorities and backing them with arms, money, “positive” global and local media coverage and diplomatic support. A favourite method used against Latin America in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, it’s still being used here and there, as Egypt shows.
Financial Coup – Consists of first cornering a country into an unpayable “sovereign debt” morass with the powerful global mega-banks. Then, when the target country cannot service that debt, the banksters send in the IMF/World Bank leeches supported by global media and rating agencies. They trigger economic and social hardship, financial and monetary collapse leading to widespread social upheaval, thus “justifying regime change.” Throughout Latin America they perfected the “Sovereign Debt Model” that is now being wielded against Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and – soon to come – the UK and US.
Social Coup – Consists of financing political activists to bring about controlled regime change in the target country. Here the local US/UK/Israeli embassies support all sorts of dissident groups rendering them ample financing and media coverage, plus the logistics to generate constant street turmoil, which ends up grouping around some US-friendly political party or movement. In the 80’s, they used the so-called “human rights” movements in Latin America of which Argentina’s “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” were a leading case.4
Engineered Civil War – Consists of financing, arming and supporting militarised “opposition” groups against the target country’s on-going government. Normally, a key “national liberation” or some such “council” is set up, as in Libya, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere, around which other militant groups, thugs and mafias can revolve. Here, CIA, MI6 and Mossad fronts play a key role and, in the cases of Libya and Syria, CIA offshoots like Al-Qaeda also play a fundamental “freedom-fighter” role. In the Middle East, they dubbed this the “Arab Spring,” presenting it to global public opinion as a spontaneous, genuine and legitimate fight for freedom by the local population against allegedly repressive and authoritarian regimes.
Thus, local conflicts ready to explode are taken advantage of: regimes that have been in power for too long (as in Egypt and Libya); religious divides (Shiites against Sunnis). It comes as no surprise to learn that Bassma Kodmani, a “member of the executive bureau and head of foreign affairs” at the Syrian National Council, attended the Bilderberg Conference last June in Virginia, USA.5
Lately, this author has been warning of the rise of a “Latin American Spring” that takes advantage of grave social and political grievances throughout Latin America reflecting the huge divide that exists between the very rich and the very poor. Normally, the rich are very US-aligned and the poor have leaders that naïvely point to “Yankee corporate exploitation” as the sole culprit, missing really fundamental political and social factors.
Signs of this coming “Latin Spring” can be seen in the recent Monsanto-orchestrated coup in Paraguay, the money-sloshing election fraud in Mexico, and increasing US militarisation in Colombia and elsewhere in the region.
Often these types of war start at a lower level – say, a social coup – and are then escalated into full-fledged civil war insurrection mode if it suits Global Power Master objectives. Libya, Syria, Egypt are examples of this.
What, Why, When & Where
What then exactly does this all add up to? Basically, we can see that such chaos engineered by the Global Power Masters, although chaotic locally in specific countries and regions, really points to a “new world order” on a global scale.
The “chaos” part is deployed to destroy whole countries, especially those that have come this far preserving their national sovereignty in one way or another. That is a key characteristic shared by all attacked “rogue states” – Libya, Iraq, Serbia – prior to them being invaded. The same goes for on-going targets like Syria, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea and Ecuador. The more sovereign states can be weakened, the better for the one-worlders who, after all, basically want to drag us all towards a single, communist-like global state under their total control.
All those Arab (and Latin) “springs,” invasions, no-fly zones, sanctions; all that “rogue state” rhetoric, are ground-clearing exercises geared at positioning the Western powers and their allies for the final assault on Asia which means war with Russia and China.
Of course, such a war would be a gross contradiction of the Powell Doctrine. China and Russia are very powerful, so messing around with them carries huge risks. If – God forbid! – it ever comes to war between China/Russia and the West that dragged in other powers like India, Pakistan and Brazil, hopefully it won’t happen any time soon. However, that’s what lies beyond the 2020 threshold. Its preliminaries are being played out today in different hotspots.
Why is all of this being done? Maybe imperial overreach and the grossly hyper-inflated dollar that saved the Money Power Bankers (don’t say that too loudly!) has cornered the Western Elites into an irreversible and unsustainable corner.
It’s like chess: What do you do when all possible moves only lead to checkmate? Well, basically, you have two “options on the table”: (1) admit defeat, or (2) kick the chessboard and… go for your gun.
Footnotes
1. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, 14 October 2011 acceptance speech of the Jury du Prix Tocqueville Prize, bestowed upon him by former French president Valery Giscard D’Estaing. Not surprisingly, both belong to the Rockefeller/Rothschild Trilateral Commission, a key “rich and powerful” decision-making body.
2. Originally published in 1967; re-published 1996 by the Free Press (Simon & Schuster).
3. PNAC – Project for a New American Century; the Neo-Con think-tank group from the late nineties that designed and planned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, promoting Israel’s strategic interests in the Middle East, that served as a blueprint for US post-9/11 policies to this day.
4. Its leader Hebe Bonafini is known to have embezzled millions of dollars.
5. See official Bilderberg site www.bilderbergmeetings.org/participants2012.html. Characteristically Ms Kodmani’s nationality is described as “International.” She serves her international masters very well.
and does AL Qaeda vote GOP ? ? Seems like interesting timing........ False Flag watch ?
More Al Qaeda pre-US election attacks forecast: Americans quietly lifted out
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 2, 2012, 11:00 AM (GMT+02:00)
Ayman Zuwahiri threatens anti-US terror offensive
Just five weeks before America’s presidential election, US intelligence reports signs that al Qaeda leader Ayman Zuwahiri is preparing a string of terrorist attacks as the sequel to the murders of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other US officials in Benghazi on Sept. 11, according to evidence collected across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
His twin goals are to influence the poll’s results and to build up his reputation as a master of spectacular terrorist operations. Eager to impress Al Qaeda’s franchise chiefs, Zuwahiri is reported to be celebrating his “Benghazi feat” – his first as Al Qaeda leader - and boasting of the harm to the Obama campaign caused by his administration’s stammering denials that it was an act of terror. The new terrorist chief claims his tactics had an instant, devastating impact on Washington and they were therefore superior to those of his predecessor, Osama bin Laden.
The Al Qaeda leader is now seen - not only by US intelligence experts, but by most experts in the West, the Middle East and Israel - to be impatient to capitalize on this success and so dramatically expose to the Muslim world America’s perceived weakness and his own worth as commander of the jihadist movement.
His planning for a new offensive has taken advantage of the Arab Spring upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa and turned them around to strike at the heart of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy objectives. The Arab revolutions have let Islamist extremist and fundamentalist Salafi groups off the leash in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, while Lebanon Jordan, Iraq and Syria teeter on the brink of chaos. The extremists now enjoy free rein to organize for political action while also gaining access to vast stocks of modern arms.
In the view of Western counterterrorism experts, Salafi groups have long maintained clandestine relations with al Qaeda, especially Ayman Zuwahiri, who joined al Qaeda in the first place as head of the violent Egyptian Islamic Jihad and stayed in close touch with its secret cells.
His planning for a new offensive has taken advantage of the Arab Spring upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa and turned them around to strike at the heart of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy objectives. The Arab revolutions have let Islamist extremist and fundamentalist Salafi groups off the leash in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, while Lebanon Jordan, Iraq and Syria teeter on the brink of chaos. The extremists now enjoy free rein to organize for political action while also gaining access to vast stocks of modern arms.
In the view of Western counterterrorism experts, Salafi groups have long maintained clandestine relations with al Qaeda, especially Ayman Zuwahiri, who joined al Qaeda in the first place as head of the violent Egyptian Islamic Jihad and stayed in close touch with its secret cells.
Al Qaeda planning also took advantage of the US counterterrorism focus in the last couple of years on the Arabian Peninsula franchise (AQAP) based in Yemen. Less US attention was devoted to the Islamist extremism simmering in North African and other Middle East arenas. It was there that Zuwahiri went to work to fashion new terrorist networks alongside Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM) from the Salafi groups now rampant across a broad geographical area encompassing Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Mali and thrusting into the Middle East through Egyptian Sinai.
America is therefore confronted with a broad new al Qaeda front, armed with scanty intelligence. Worst of all, Washington can’t trust the new regimes and local military and intelligence organizations, thrown into power in the post-“Arab revolt” countries, for cooperation in fighting terror.
Instead of confrontation, the Obama administration has opted for retreat.
DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources report that an administration team has hurriedly put together a list of 20 endangered countries where US diplomatic, military and economic may be targeted for al Qaeda attack.
The list is prioritized according to the level of risk and US security capability for protection.
The highest-risk locations have been quietly evacuated – either to the US or West European countries - leaving only a skeleton staff behind for emergencies. A senior American source told DEBKAfle Tuesday that Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Nigeria and Egypt have been virtually denuded of a US presence.
Instead of confrontation, the Obama administration has opted for retreat.
DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources report that an administration team has hurriedly put together a list of 20 endangered countries where US diplomatic, military and economic may be targeted for al Qaeda attack.
The list is prioritized according to the level of risk and US security capability for protection.
The highest-risk locations have been quietly evacuated – either to the US or West European countries - leaving only a skeleton staff behind for emergencies. A senior American source told DEBKAfle Tuesday that Tunisia, Libya, Mali, Nigeria and Egypt have been virtually denuded of a US presence.
Middle East intelligence observers have told DEBKAfile that they don’t recall US diplomatic military and intelligence personnel, businessmen and technical staff with their families being withdrawn from the region on this scale or at comparable speed.
President Obama made American retreat his order of the day after refusing to heed calls for a US military operation against AQIM and its head, Abdelmalek Droukdel. It was Droukdel, according to accumulating intelligence who, acting on behalf of Zuwahiri, orchestrated the Libyan Ansar al-Shariah militia’s murderous attack on the US Benghazi consulate.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday, Oct. 1, that Obama also decided against a punitive attack against al Qaeda’s stronghold in Mali.
President Obama made American retreat his order of the day after refusing to heed calls for a US military operation against AQIM and its head, Abdelmalek Droukdel. It was Droukdel, according to accumulating intelligence who, acting on behalf of Zuwahiri, orchestrated the Libyan Ansar al-Shariah militia’s murderous attack on the US Benghazi consulate.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday, Oct. 1, that Obama also decided against a punitive attack against al Qaeda’s stronghold in Mali.
and are power systems grids at risk especially in north and south america......
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/28/telvent_hack/
World's power-grid cyber breach traced to notorious Chinese crew
Telvent pulls plug on networks after shock raid
Posted in Security, 28th September 2012 16:28 GMT
An espionage attack on Telvent - the maker of power-grid control systems and smart meters - has been linked to a prolific Chinese hacking crew.
Telvent, a division of Schneider Electric, has admitted hackers breached its corporate network, implanted malicious software and lifted sensitive project files. The raid spanned Telvent systems in the US, Canada and Spain according to a letter sent to the company's customers this month.
Criminals can now study the documents for vulnerabilities in the systems, and potentially devise attacks to sabotage nations' electricity distribution networks.
Telvent boasts that it has "built a customer base second to none in the energy industry", adding: "Our systems now manage over 60 percent of the total hydrocarbon movements in North and Latin America and control transmission and distribution of over 140,000 GWh through worldwide electrical grids."
Investigative reporter Brian Krebs, who first revealed the breach, said the blueprints described Telvent's OASyS SCADA [supervisory control and data acquisition] product, a technology that offers power companies a means to bridge legacy systems to next-generation "smart grids".
Clues such as references to particular domain names and malware left behind by the spies match the digital fingerprints of a Chinese hacking crew called the Comment Group, which is linked to previous cyber-espionage campaigns, according to researchers at Dell SecureWorks.
Telvent has cut data links between at-risk portions of its internal network and clients' systems as a precaution while it probes the breach. Police have been called in to investigate the attack, according to this statement supplied to Sophos:
Telvent is aware of a security breach of its corporate network that has affected some customer files. Customers have been informed and are taking recommended actions, with the support of Telvent teams. Telvent is actively working with law enforcement, security specialists and its affected customers to ensure the breach has been contained.
Dale Peterson, founder and chief of industrial control security specialist Digital Bond, spelled out the kinds of information present in the lifted documents.
"Some project files contain the 'recipe' for the operations of a customer, describing calculations and frequencies at which systems run or when they should be turned on or off," he told WiReD.
"If you're going to do a sophisticated attack, you get the project file and study it and decide how you want to modify the pieces of the operation. Then you modify the project file and load it [onto a company's control system], and they're not running what they think they're running." ®
and Iran's currency pressured especially hard today......
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/01/iran-currency-rial-all-time-low
Iran's currency hits all-time low as western sanctions take their toll
Rial sent into tailspin in spite of Ahmadinejad's defiance as Iranians rush to convert assets to foreign currency or gold
Email
An Iranian woman browses in a gold shop in Tehran's Grand Bazaar. Photograph: Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters
Iranians are suffering their worst financial crisis since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, with the national currency hitting an all-time low and the prices of staple goods soaring.
With the Iranian economy crumbling under escalating western sanctions, the rial was sent into a tailspin on Monday, dropping by more than 15% to its lowest-ever level against the dollar. At midday, 34,500 rials bought $1 on the open market, compared to 29,600 rials on Sunday's close, according to Iranian currency-monitoring websites.
Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had previously rejected predictions that the rial would drop as low as 30,000 rials against the dollar, saying that such suggestions amounted to little more than "psychological war". The latest news will come as a further blow to a president already widely seen as a lame duck. Ahmadinejad will stand down in June 2013, and cannot run for a third term under Iranian law.
"What an embarrassment for Ahmadinejad," said Farshad, a student at Tehran University. "The economy is in crisis and he is either blind to it or simply doesn't want to see it."
Western sanctions are compounding the country's economic woes, sending the national currency into a nosedive and making dollars hard to come by. The situation has worsened significantly in recent months; the latest US and EU sanctions on Tehran came into effect in July. As a result, the prices of chicken, milk, cheese, bread, sugar and yogurt, among other staples, are now rising almost every day.
For Zohreh, a middle-aged housewife living in east Tehran, the current crisis evokes the bad old days of the Iran-Iraq war. "It's like the war years, the price today is different from the price yesterday," she said. "For certain items you have to queue up and some are not available anymore."
Zohreh, like millions of other Iranians, receives a monthly government payment to families to compensate for a cut in subsidies. But she said the money, known as Yaraneh, no longer meets her needs. "Just nine months ago, I used to go to the market with 120,000 rials in my pocket and come back home with a basket of vegetables, fruits and staples but now for [the] same items I have to pay 300,000 rials."
The rial has lost 57% of its value in the past three months and 75% in comparison to the end of last year. The dollar is now three times stronger than early last year.
Iran, one of the world's largest oil producers, relies on crude sales for 80% of its export revenue and to bring in most of the foreign currency. In the wake of the currency crisis, many Iranians who have lost faith in the rial are now contributing to its instability by rushing to convert their assets and properties to foreign currency and gold.
"The rial's fall has affected all aspects of life in Iran," said Amir, a shopkeeper in Tehran. "It's not only the prices of imported items that are increasing but domestic products have also been affected." He pointed to the price of a box of domestically made cigarettes, Bahman, which he said had doubled since last year. "You can only rely on foreign currency and gold these days in Iran."
Among those bearing the brunt of the crisis are patients and hospitals reliant on currency for imported medicines and foreign-based services. Iran's Haemophilia Society, for example, has blamed the sanctions for risking thousands of children's lives due to a lack of proper drugs.
The government has repeatedly attempted to bring the currency under control with no success. Last week it launched an exchange centre aimed at stabilising the rates, but the rial's fall has since increased.
Previous attempts also include a sharp rise in interest rates in February and an order for an imposed exchange rate to be used both in banks and on the open market. At the time, the police were sent to exchange bureaux to implement the order but they reacted by closing down temporarily or refusing to buy or sell foreign currency on official rates.
Hassan Hakimian, an Iranian economic expert and director of the London Middle East Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies, said: "The rapid depreciation of the rial reflects mainly negative market sentiments and an expectation that the Iranian government will continue to experience severe difficulties in selling its oil in international markets as the sanctions noose tightens."
Iran's economic weaknesses – perpetually high unemployment and government mismanagement – have been masked in recent years by the high price of oil but its very dependency on oil means the embargo has had a significant impact.
Despite the recent rial crisis, Hakimian believes the Iranian economy is still not on the brink of collapse.
"Talk of collapse as the Israeli minister of finance has recently mentioned is inaccurate and emotive. The enormous difficulties experienced could in the worst-case scenario result in a freefall for the currency (like in Zimbabwe) and result in hyperinflation (again as in Zimbabwe). Even unpopular governments in such harsh situations survive."
He added: "These are harsh times for the ordinary Iranians and there is no doubt that since the end of war with Iraq in the late 1980s, they have not experienced such hardship and uncertainty. Unfortunately, there is a serious risk – looking at Iran from the outside – that the US and EU will take this as prima facie evidence that sanctions are 'working': the logic being that 'if it is hurting, it is working'."
and any truth as to whether Assad bought himself some time by
currying to Sarkozy and giving up Gaddafi ????
Syria’s Assad betrayed Qaddafi to French intelligence – London Daily Telegraph
DEBKAfile October 1, 2012, 11:04 AM (GMT+02:00)
In what is described as “an extraordinary betrayal” - even for the Middle East - the Daily Telegraph Monday quotes a former Libyan intelligence official Rami El Obeidi as revealing that French spies operating in Sirte, Gaddafi's last refuge, were able to trap him by tracking his Iridium satellite telephone whose number they received from the Syrian ruler. In return, Assad obtained a promise of a grace period from the French and less political pressure on his regime.
This version refutes the official account that after NATO warplanes bombed his convoy, Qaddafi hid in a drainpipe where Libyan militias found him and let him be beaten to death on Oct. 20, 2011.
According to El Obeidi, French intelligence monitoring the Libyan ruler’s phone had a breakthrough when he rang a senior loyalist Yusuf Shaki and the Palestinian leader Ahmed Jibril in Damascus. After that, the French directed Libyan militiamen to the ambush site.
This version refutes the official account that after NATO warplanes bombed his convoy, Qaddafi hid in a drainpipe where Libyan militias found him and let him be beaten to death on Oct. 20, 2011.
According to El Obeidi, French intelligence monitoring the Libyan ruler’s phone had a breakthrough when he rang a senior loyalist Yusuf Shaki and the Palestinian leader Ahmed Jibril in Damascus. After that, the French directed Libyan militiamen to the ambush site.
While no other sources confirm this account, the Italian Corriere della Sera quotes its informants as maintaining that one reason for the French lead in the operation was that then President Nicolas Sarkozy wanted Gaddafi dead after the Libyan leader openly threatened to reveal details of the large amounts of money he had donated to Sarkozy for his 2007 election campaign. The French foreign ministry has refused to comment on either report.
and China going "phishing " for nuclear codes ????
White House Hack Attack
Chinese hackers break in to White House military office network in charge of the president’s nuclear football
AP
BY:
Hackers linked to China’s government broke into one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive computer networks, breaching a system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands, according to defense and intelligence officials familiar with the incident.
One official said the cyber breach was one of Beijing’s most brazen cyber attacks against the United States and highlights a failure of the Obama administration to press China on its persistent cyber attacks.
Disclosure of the cyber attack also comes amid heightened tensions in Asia, as the Pentagon moved two U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups and Marine amphibious units near waters by Japan’s Senkaku islands.
China and Japan—the United States’ closest ally in Asia and a defense treaty partner—are locked in a heated maritime dispute over the Senkakus, which China claims as its territory.
U.S. officials familiar with reports of the White House hacking incident said it took place earlier this month and involved unidentified hackers, believed to have used computer servers in China, who accessed the computer network used by the White House Military Office (WHMO), the president’s military office in charge of some of the government’s most sensitive communications, including strategic nuclear commands. The office also arranges presidential communications and travel, and inter-government teleconferences involving senior policy and intelligence officials.
An Obama administration national security official said: “This was a spear phishing attack against an unclassified network.”
Spear phishing is a cyber attack that uses disguised emails that seek to convince recipients of a specific organization to provide confidential information. Spear phishing in the past has been linked to China and other states with sophisticated cyber warfare capabilities.
The official described the type of attack as “not infrequent” and said there were unspecified “mitigation measures in place.”
“In this instance the attack was identified, the system was isolated, and there is no indication whatsoever that any exfiltration of data took place,” the official said.
The official said there was no impact or attempted breach of a classified system within the office.
“This is the most sensitive office in the U.S. government,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the work of the office. “A compromise there would cause grave strategic damage to the United States.”
Security officials are investigating the breach and have not yet determined the damage that may have been caused by the hacking incident, the officials said.
Despite the administration national security official’s assertion, one defense official said there is fairly solid intelligence linking the penetration of the WHMO network to China, and there are concerns that the attackers were able to breach the classified network.
Details of the cyber attack and the potential damage it may have caused remain closely held within the U.S. government.
However, because the military office handles strategic nuclear and presidential communications, officials said the attack was likely the work of Chinese military cyber warfare specialists under the direction of a unit called the 4th Department of General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army, or 4PLA.
It is not clear how such a high-security network could be penetrated. Such classified computer systems are protected by multiple levels of security and are among the most “hardened” systems against digital attack.
However, classified computer systems were compromised in the past using several methods. They include the insertion of malicious code through a contaminated compact flash drive; a breach by a trusted insider, as in the case of the thousands of classified documents leaked to the anti-secrecy web site Wikileaks; and through compromised security encryption used for remote access to secured networks, as occurred with the recent compromise involving the security firm RSA and several major defense contractors.
According to the former official, the secrets held within the WHMO include data on the so-called “nuclear football,” the nuclear command and control suitcase used by the president to be in constant communication with strategic nuclear forces commanders for launching nuclear missiles or bombers.
The office also is in charge of sensitive continuity-of-government operations in wartime or crises.
The former official said if China were to obtain details of this sensitive information, it could use it during a future conflict to intercept presidential communications, locate the president for targeting purposes, or disrupt strategic command and control by the president to U.S. forces in both the United States and abroad.
White House spokesmen had no immediate comment on the cyber attack, or on whether President Obama was notified of the incident.
Former McAffee cyber threat researcher Dmitri Alperovitch said he was unaware of the incident, but noted: “I can tell you that the Chinese have an aggressive goal to infiltrate all levels of U.S. government and private sector networks.”
“The White House network would be the crown jewel of that campaign so it is hardly surprising that they would try their hardest to compromise it,” said Alperovictch, now with the firm Crowdstrike.
Last week the senior intelligence officer for the U.S. Cyber Command said Chinese cyber attacks and cyber-espionage against Pentagon computers are a constant security problem.
“Their level of effort against the Department of Defense is constant” and efforts to steal economic secrets are increasing, Rear Adm. Samuel Cox, Cyber Command director of intelligence, told Reuters after a security conference.
“It’s continuing apace,” Cox said of Chinese cyber-espionage. “In fact, I’d say it’s still accelerating.”
Asked if classified networks were penetrated by the Chinese cyber warriors, Cox told the news agency: “I can’t really get into that.”
The WHMO arranges the president’s travel and also provides medical support and emergency medical services, according to the White House’swebsite.
“The office oversees policy related to WHMO functions and Department of Defense assets and ensures that White House requirements are met with the highest standards of quality,” the website states. “The WHMO director oversees all military operations aboard Air Force One on presidential missions worldwide. The deputy director of the White House Military Office focuses primarily on the day-to-day support of the WHMO.”
The office is also in charge of the White House Communications Agency, which handles all presidential telephone, radio, and digital communications, as well as airlift operations through both fixed-wing and helicopter aircraft.
It also operates the presidential retreat at Camp David and the White House Transportation Agency.
“To assure proper coordination and integration, the WHMO also includes support elements such as operations; policy, plans, and requirements; administration, information resource management; financial management and comptroller; WHMO counsel; and security,” the website states.
“Together, WHMO entities provide essential service to the president and help maintain the continuity of the presidency.”
Asked for comment on the White House military office cyber attack, a Cyber Command spokesman referred questions to the White House.
Regarding U.S. naval deployments near China, the carrier strike groups led by the USS George Washington and the USS Stennis, along with a Marine Corps air-ground task force, are now operating in the western Pacific near the Senkakus, according to Navy officials.
China recently moved maritime patrol boats into waters near the Senkakus, prompting calls by Japanese coast guard ships for the vessels to leave.
Chinese officials have issued threatening pronouncements to Japan that Tokyo must back down from the recent government purchase of three of the islands from private Japanese owners.
Tokyo officials have said Japan is adamant the islands are Japanese territory.
Officials said the Washington is deployed in the East China Sea and the Stennis is in the South China Sea.
About 2,200 Marines are deployed in the Philippine Sea on the USS Bonhomme Richard and two escorts.
The U.S. Pacific Command said the deployments are for training missions and carriers are not necessarily related to the Senkaku tensions.
“These operations are not tied to any specific event,” said Capt. Darryn James, a spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command in Honolulu, according to Time magazine. “As part of the U.S. commitment to regional security, two of the Navy’s 11 global force carrier strike groups are operating in the Western Pacific to help safeguard stability and peace.”
As a measure of the tensions, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Chinese military leaders during his recent visit to China that the U.S. military will abide by its defense commitments to Japan despite remaining publicly neutral in the maritime dispute.
“It’s well known that the United States and Japan have a mutual defense treaty,” a defense official said of Panetta’s exchange in Beijing. “Panetta noted the treaty but strongly emphasized that the United States takes no position on this territorial dispute and encouraged the parties to resolve the dispute peacefully. This shouldn’t have to get to the point where people start invoking treaties.”
A report by the defense contractor Northrop Grumman made public by the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in March stated that China’s military has made targeting of U.S. command and control networks in cyber warfare a priority.
“Chinese capabilities in computer network operations have advanced sufficiently to pose genuine risk to U.S. military operations in the event of a conflict,” the report said.
“PLA analysts consistently identify logistics and C4ISR infrastructure as U.S. strategic centers of gravity suggesting that PLA commanders will almost certainly attempt to target these system with both electronic countermeasures weapons and network attack and exploitation tools, likely in advance of actual combat to delay U.S. entry or degrade capabilities in a conflict,” the report said.
C4ISR is military jargon for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
Little is known within the U.S. intelligence community about Chinese strategic cyber warfare programs.
However, recent military writings have disclosed some aspects of the program, which is believed to be one of Beijing’s most closely guarded military secrets, along with satellite weapons, laser arms, and other high-technology military capabilities, such as the DF-21 ballistic missile modified to attack aircraft carriers at sea.
A Chinese military paper from March stated that China is seeking “cyber dominance” as part of its efforts to build up revolutionary military capabilities.
“In peacetime, the cyber combat elements may remain in a ‘dormant’ state; in wartime, they may be activated to harass and attack the network command, management, communications, and intelligence systems of the other countries’ armed forces,” wrote Liu Wangxin in the official newspaper of the Chinese military on March 6.
“While great importance is attached continuously to wartime actions, it is also necessary to pay special attention to non-wartime actions,” he said. “For example, demonstrate the presence of the cyber military power through cyber reconnaissance, cyber deployment, and cyber protection activities.”
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