By the end of the attack, Barr's iPad was reputedly erased, his LinkedIn and Twitter accounts were hijacked, the HBGary Federal website was defaced, proprietary HBGary source code was stolen and with over 71,000 private emails now published to the internet, HBGary was laid bare.
In this, was our first lesson: The asymmetry of cyber warfare.
Former Minnesota governor, navy SEAL, and pro rassler Ventura has a new truTVshow investigating but not necessarily debunking conspiracy theories. This companion to the program, a sort of teaser, dissects such famed objects of unending speculation as the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations. Ventura concludes that none of those were twisted-loner crimes but rather resulted from conspiracies of varying vastness. Anent the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Ventura asserts that “our government engaged in a massive cover-up” and had “ties to the hijackers.” He ventures that “unanswered questions remain about how the towers were brought down and whether a plane really struck the Pentagon” and that the “Bush Administration either knew about the plan” or “had a hand in it.” Heady, paranoiac stuff, to be sure, but there are even more forthright charges regarding the assassination of Malcolm X, the Jonestown massacre, and the “stolen” elections of 2000, 2004, 2008, and, for that matter, 1980. Believable? Some of it. An action-packed read? You bet. –Mike Tribby
If independent, democratic, governments are formed in the Middle East, they won't follow Washington's orders.
Lamis Andoni
09 Mar 2011 11:45 GMT
Al Jazeera
Barack Obama, the US president, has still not fully grasped the essence of the revolutions underway in the Arab world. He genuinely seems to believe that the people rallying for democracy in the region are making a pro-Western, if not pro-Israeli, statement.
ASADABAD, Afghanistan: Emotional Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday urged international troops to “stop their operations in our land”, his strongest salvo yet in a row over mistaken civilian killings.
Karzai's comments came after a week in which a relative of his was killed in a raid by foreign forces and he rejected an apology by the US commander of troops General David Petraeus for the deaths of nine children in a NATO strike.
“I would like to ask NATO and the US with honour and humbleness and not with arrogance to stop their operations in our land,” Karzai said, visiting the dead children's relatives in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan.
If you're from Tyler, your state Rep. Leo Berman gave the OK for a rally last Saturday at the Capitol to promote a November vote on whether Texas should secede from the United States.
Read rest of short article….
Phi Beta Iota: Texas is not alone. The most likely states to secede are Vermont and Hawaii, followed by Texas and Alaska. If the US Government continues on its present course, we speculate that at least ten to fifteen states will evaluate, if not execute, secession options that include the recovery of federal lands, the exclusion of federal forces, and complete tax moratoriums.
Here’s the thing: the House Republicans are going after their version of unsightly pimples on the body politic — the programs they and their billionaire sponsors find ideologically unpalatable — without seriously considering where our money really flows. We at TomDispatch thought we might lend a hand to Congress’s deliberations this week by offering something new: the first real figure on what American taxpayers actually pay for the Pentagon, the U.S. military, homeland security, our distant wars, the care of veterans, intelligence, and every other aspect of our national security and war state.
. . . . . . .
$1.2 Trillion: The Real U.S. National Security Budget No One Wants You to Know About
What if you went to a restaurant and found it rather pricey? Still, you ordered your meal and, when done, picked up the check only to discover that it was almost twice the menu price.
Phi Beta Iota: We used to admire Jim Clapper, so much so that a member of our collective issued a press release in his defense when Donald Rumsfeld fired him for telling the truth. General Clapper appears to have forgotten how to tell the truth, and he is not leading the US Intelligence Community, he is administering it with cronies assigned to administer the various agencies. There is no longer intelligence at the top of the intelligence community. It is time for a full-spectrum house cleaning, to include the conversion of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, which is not needed, into the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Peace Operations, which IS needed. Mike Vickers is not qualified for either position.
Media Spin: Clapper told the truth. Reality: Clapper is out of touch with reality–he cannot even outline the ten high-level threats to humanity or explain why continued fragmentation of the US Government is the greatest threat to our near term as well as a long term stability and prosperity. Russia and China are not military threats to the US but rather economic threats, and in the case of China, a demographic and scientific & technology threat. The Old Guard is dead, may they rest in peace. Sadly, there is no bench within the US Intelligence Community OR the contractor world. We anticipate nothing beneficial for our $90 billion a year.
