Image by Ken Lund via Flickr Worm Was Perfect for Sabotaging CentrifugesExperts dissecting the computer worm suspected of being aimed at Iran’s nuclear program have determined that it was precisely calibrated in a way that could send nuclear centrifuges wildly out of control.
“We don’t see direct confirmation” that the attack was meant to slow Iran’s nuclear work, David Albright**, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said in an interview Thursday. “But it sure is a plausible interpretation of the available facts.”
Profile: David Albright
Ritter v. Albright
Administration Tries to Silence Experts
One of the most vocal opponent of the administration's prewar Iraq intelligence was David Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector and the president and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington, D.C. based group that gathers information for the public and the White House on nuclear weapons programs.
In a March 10, 2003 report posted on the ISIS website, Albright accused the CIA of twisting the intelligence related to the aluminum tubes.
"The CIA has concluded that these tubes were specifically manufactured for use in gas centrifuges to enrich uranium," Albright said. "Many in the expert community both inside and outside government, however, do not agree with this conclusion. The vast majority of gas centrifuge experts in this country and abroad who are knowledgeable about this case reject the CIA's case and do not believe that the tubes are specifically designed for gas centrifuges. In addition, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have consistently expressed skepticism that the tubes are for centrifuges."
Why Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame filed
The National Security Council and CIA officials said Cheney had visited CIA headquarters and asked several CIA officials to dig up dirt on Albright, and to put together a dossier that would discredit his work that could be distributed to the media.
Peddling Peril
Al Qaeda's Bomb
The image of Osama bin Laden discussing nuclear weapons around a campfire with two former senior Pakistani nuclear engineers is the stuff of movies. Yet it actually happened in August 2001, when A.Q. Khan's deal with Libya was in full swing. Access to these Pakistani engineers was a major shortcut to possessing nuclear weapons. No one could dismiss the likelihood of nuclear terrorism again.Sorry, Judy... Everybody Didn't Get it Wrong on WMD
Cheney Spearheaded Effort to Discredit WilsonSearch in Iraq Fails to Find Nuclear Threat
( So. Mixed review. Establishes credentials against Cheney's 'yellowcake' bullshit and righteous against antiIraqi scaremongering with WMD {which was the source of 'outing' Plame and killing Brewster-Jennings intelligence network for her CIA Middle East nuclear threat desk } and flogs the 'al Qaeda' rot, S.O.P. )
Search Returns | al Qaeda Mossad
- AL QAEDA SPOKESMAN ADAM GADAHN WORKS FOR THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT
- Iran needs stern lessons in freedom
- One Year after Fort Hood: The Missing Story of Muslim Peacemaking
Image via WikipediaUS-sponsored Murderous Dictatorships- Fake Al Qaeda
- THE CONSPIRACY TO REWRITE 9/11 ( Hearst News LOL Who remembers which newspaper chain promoted the Spanish-American War ? )
- Mujahadeen Al CIAda Al Queda
- Fake Al Qaeda!
- Bush-connected Firm Involved In Opium Production In Marja Afghanistan In 1970s
New Nuke Narratives Needed
President Obama has proposed including India in the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) and related groups that oversee and define trade in dual-use technology – that is, technology that can be used both for civilian nuclear power and for nuclear weapons.So we have the usual reaction from the usual suspects. The problem is that this reaction comes directly from the 1990s or earlier.
The world is different than it was then. If we’re going to get serious about eliminating nuclear weapons, we have to look at the world we’ve got, not the world we’d like to have.
Four nations decided to be exceptions to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT): India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan. North Korea withdrew from the treaty; the other three never joined. All have nuclear weapons. Every other nation on Earth has signed on, although it was the 1990s before that happened. The only way those four nations could sign on to the treaty would be to give up their nuclear weapons. None has expressed a desire to do that.
More Cleaning Up Republican Arms Control Messes
The Air Force’s Tug-of-War
South Park The Movie - Blame Canada
Pot growers portrayed as terror threat
Federal, state and local officials carrying out a counter-terrorism drill in Northern California Wednesday played out a scenario in which local marijuana growers set off bombs and took over the Shasta Dam, the nation’s second largest, to free an imprisoned comrade.
Image by Ken Lund via FlickrAccording to an account in the Redding (Calif.) Record Searchlight, the 12-hour drill was part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Critical Infrastructure Crisis Response Exercise Program, begun in 2003.“More than 250 people from more than 20 agencies took part,” said Sheri Harral, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation, according to the paper.
Harral said the drill took 18 months to plan and cost the bureau alone $500,000. The other agencies covered their own costs.
The paper made only passing reference to the scenario's designation of pot growers as terrorist villians.
( Deficit ? Austerity ? Intelligent allocation of resources ? 'Change you can believe in ?'
Not 'Gog and Magog' * perhaps, but Agog.
* Cryptic GWB quote )
Using Google Bookmarks and the Google Toolbar
Homeschooling Questions AnsweredWhy do we have a TSA?
What has brought us to the point where we let the government do the kind of stuff to us that we wouldn’t let anyone else do?
Judge's ruling on Islamic groups as 'unindicted co-conspirators' made public
I'd note that the New York Times reported back in August 2007 on the groups' legal motions complaining that they'd been smeared by the federal government. The paper has yet to return to the subject.
FBI moves to seize CAIR records from author
( Let us not forget in the middle of this that, for the supplier of an endless stream of arms to Israel to complain that Hamas is the terrorist group instead of bulldozing and land-thieving Israel, is recognition enough that any time people do not have a military buildup of uniformed forces to defend themselves from predation by nuclear-armed nations...they magically become 'terrorists' : a quaint colloquialism for 'easy prey.' )
Clinton Defends Trying Terrorism Suspects in Civilian Courts
( She can 'defend' it until Hell freezes over. Nobody kidnapped, fired in solitary, waterboarded, tortured in other creative ways and kept indefinitely without even the formality of decent record-keeping should be convicted of anything - unless the civilian courts are the farce that the kangaroo court military 'hearings' were. You know, the ones so disgusting the prosecutorial staff turned pro bono defense counsel after quitting the military.
For all that, I admit I don't disagree with civilian trials for people who are not military.
I'd just like anyone to give some semblance of an argument that the idea "Innocent Until Proven Guilty" is applied here.
Huh. Thought not. Rather rots the supposed basis of the legal system, doesn't it ? )
FCC may regulate Internet lines days before Christmas
( That would be quite the Christmas present, wouldn't it ? It would silence those idiots calling for Free Speech. Land of the Free : Cellblock #X )
My Florida Recount Memory
I had been covering the court for more than 20 years, and I thought I understood what made it tick. Suddenly, nothing was working the way it was supposed to.
I assured my editors that the court’s conservative majority believed too deeply in federalism ever to entertain a challenge to how Florida was counting the votes. I was not quite so categorical in my published articles, but it would have been clear to discerning readers that the Bush team’s evolving case — and including, for sure, its equal protection argument — was headed nowhere.
.....
I was then stunned when questions from the bench to my co-counsel David Boies, who argued the second and ultimate case, hinted that the court might make permanent its earlier decision to stop the recount temporarily.
But not even those hints prepared me for the 5-4 late-night decision in which the court announced that equal protection demanded a more uniform approach to counting the ballots — only to add that, having itself run out the clock, it sadly had no choice but to end all the counting that very night (Catch-22!). Left in the dust were the far more compelling equal protection rights of those whose ballots would never be counted at all, many of whom lived in heavily minority counties. It was galling to see the same equal protection clause that had integrated schools and legalized interracial marriage being deployed to disenfranchise predominantly minority groups.LAURENCE H. TRIBE, constitutional law professor and senior counselor for access to justice in the Department of Justice.
Mayor of London Warns Bush -- You Might Never See Texas Again
Found by Boardreader
George W. Bush can’t fight for freedom and authorise torture
If the West’s aim is to spread the rule of law, it cannot be achieved by vile means, argues Boris Johnson.
One moment he might be holding forth to a great perspiring tent at Hay-on-Wye. The next moment, click, some embarrassed member of the Welsh constabulary could walk on stage, place some handcuffs on the former leader of the Free World, and take him away to be charged. Of course, we are told this scenario is unlikely. Dubya is the former leader of a friendly power, with whom this country is determined to have good relations. But that is what torture-authorising Augusto Pinochet thought. And unlike Pinochet, Mr Bush is making no bones about what he has done.
Unless the 43rd president of the United States has been grievously misrepresented, he has admitted to authorising and sponsoring the use of torture. Asked whether he approved of “waterboarding” in three specific cases, he told his interviewer that “damn right” he did, and that this practice had saved lives in America and Britain. It is hard to overstate the enormity of this admission.
It does not produce much valuable information — and therefore it does not save lives. Of course we are all tempted, from time to time, by the utilitarian argument. We might become reluctant supporters of “extreme interrogation techniques” if we could really persuade ourselves that half an hour of waterboarding could really save a hundred lives — or indeed a single life. In reality, no such calculus is possible. When people are tortured, they will generally say anything to bring the agony to an end — which is why any such evidence is inadmissible in court. NONE DARE CALL IT SABOTAGE....
Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you actively disliked the United States, and wanted to deliberately undermine its economy. What kind of positions would you take to do the most damage?
You might start with rejecting the advice of economists and oppose any kind of stimulus investments. You'd also want to cut spending and take money out of the economy, while blocking funds to states and municipalities, forcing them to lay off more workers. You'd no doubt want to cut off stimulative unemployment benefits, and identify the single most effective jobs program of the last two years (the TANF Emergency Fund) so you could kill it.You might then take steps to stop the Federal Reserve from trying to lower the unemployment rate. You'd also no doubt want to create massive economic uncertainty by vowing to gut the national health care system, promising to re-write the rules overseeing the financial industry, vowing re-write business regulations in general, considering a government shutdown, and even weighing the possibly of sending the United States into default.
You might want to cover your tracks a bit, and say you have an economic plan that would help -- a tax policy that's already been tried -- but you'd do so knowing that such a plan has already proven not to work.
Does any of this sound familiar?
( If you haven't read Political Animal before, it might not be immediately apparent that the role of the piece is to provoke discussion and contention - which it does. Interesting thread, and even if intelligent commentary relating to the real world is, as usual, somewhat MIA - it doesn't seem quite as unreal as some.
What do I mean ? Um. As if, for instance, the ideas about Iran or al Qaeda resemble reality in the least. )
U.S. deploying heavily armored battle tanks for first time in Afghan war
M1 Abrams tanks, which will be fielded by the Marines in the country's southwest, will allow ground forces to target insurgents from a greater distance - and with more of a lethal punch - than is possible from any other U.S. military vehicle. The 68-ton tanks are propelled by a jet engine and equipped with a 120mm main gun that can destroy a house more than a mile away.
( So heavy armour is necessary against the Taliban - who have none. At least the most likely target is identified.
Is it just me, or is that a sign that the unequal 'battle' could never be waged without the need to destroy the U.S. military's expensive toys ? Sand, mountains,skilled native resistance - a recipe for constant casualties in guerilla warfare without letup. And the 'enemy' gets its funding from the US. taxpayer too ! Add that to outrageous costs per man to have them there in the first place.
Money...means nothing. Do you need to look further to see that ? Was it Mack Reynolds who wrote about a country bankrupting itself by the costs of its military successes ? )
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