November 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

This Memorable Day
by R.A. Hettinga 02 Nov '04

02 Nov '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109936293065461940,00.html> The Wall Street Journal November 2, 2004 COMMENTARY This Memorable Day By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON November 2, 2004; Page A22 In singular moments in our history, the security of the United States hinged on a single presidential election. Imagine George McClellan recognizing an undefeated Confederacy in March 1865. Consider an eight-year Jimmy Carter tenure. Or contemplate Walter Mondale taking over from a defeated President Reagan to implement unilaterally a nuclear freeze, Mike Dukakis asking Saddam to leave Kuwait, or Al Gore mobilizing America to invade Afghanistan. We are now faced with the same critical choice. Today's vote determines how the United States finishes the present war against terrorists, and, indeed, whether we continue to defeat Islamic fascism and those Middle East autocracies that fuel it. * * * John Kerry sees our struggle as an unending law enforcement problem, akin to gambling and prostitution. Thus the terrorist attacks of the 1990s were not deadly precursors to 9/11, but belong to a now nostalgic era of "nuisance." In contrast, George W. Bush envisioned September 11 as real war -- a global struggle against Dark-Age extremism, striving for a modern nuclear caliphate that could blackmail the industrialized world and destroy Western liberal values. So Mr. Bush took terrorist killers at their word, convinced that such "evildoers," like a Hitler or Stalin, had no legitimate complaint against America. Rather, they murder out of a deep frustration that Western-inspired freedom is on the march, threatening both Islamic fascism and those repressive regimes that hand-in-glove with them have deflected their own failures onto the United States. John Kerry promises "help is on the way" to remove President Bush, who has, according to Mr. Kerry, lied when he is exposed as incompetent. Such strident condemnation ignores the stunning victory over the Taliban, the first voting in Afghanistan in 5,000 years, the removal of Saddam Hussein with scheduled elections for next January, positive changes in Libya, Pakistan and the Gulf States, and the absence of another 9/11-like attack here at home. Moqtada al-Sadr and Osama bin Laden now whine about American retaliation and send out peace feelers. But their apprehension arises not because of Sen. Kerry's rhetoric or his promises of U.N. collectivism. Rather, the specter of four more years of a resolute George W. Bush equates to their continued defeat. Their trepidation was shared by the 1980 hostage takers in Tehran, who relented in terror of an inaugurated Ronald Reagan warning them of the impending end to Carteresque appeasement. Most of Sen. Kerry's allegations about this war ring false or insincere because he shifts in tune to mercurial polls. The senator's yes/no/maybe public statements and votes reflect the perceived daily pulse of the battlefield -- and his lack of either a strategic understanding of the war or faith in the skill and resoluteness of the U.S. military. He insists that there were no al Qaeda ties to Baathists, but we see them in postbellum Iraq, knew of them during the first World Trade Center bombing, and once accepted President Clinton's claim for them during his 1998 retaliation against the Sudan. WMD are likewise derided as a chimera. But President Clinton, Sen. Kerry, and Sen. John Edwards are all on record frantically warning about Saddam's bio-chem arsenal -- with others citing intelligence confirmation from Vladimir Putin to Hosni Mubarak. During the three-week war, American troops in the field did not don bothersome chemical suits because of President Bush's naoveti or duplicity. In Sen. Kerry's world, brave folk such as Iraq's Prime Minister Allawi, the Poles, and the Australians are belittled as hollow and bought allies, while Germany and France, that profited lucratively with Saddam, will be invited to join "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," now dubbed analogous to the Bay of Pigs. The explanation for Saddam's removal, in Teresa Heinz Kerry's words, is "blood for oil," a mantra echoed by "Fahrenheit 9/11," MoveOn.org, and bin Laden's latest infomercial. But after the invasion, petroleum prices soared. Iraq's national treasure is for the first time transparent and autonomous. France, Russia and the U.N. can no longer appropriate it. President Bush, once libeled as the villainous Texas oil schemer, is now reinvented on the campaign trail as Sen. Kerry's clueless naof, bullied by a sinister OPEC. True, much of the Kerry negativism derives from opportunism. Yet there is also a logic that explains the flip-flopping, rooted in deep-seeded doubts about both the utility and morality of using American military power. Thus Sen. Kerry voted against many of our present weapons systems. That obstructionism explains why in 1988 he looked back at the Reagan strategic build-up as one of "moral darkness." Mr. Kerry, as a soldier and a senator, conducted freelance negotiations with both the communist North Vietnamese and Sandinistas. His opposition to the 1991 Gulf War might have ensured a Saddam Hussein sitting on 30% of the world's oil, replete with nukes, and lording over what was left of Kuwait, the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. His recent embrace of a "global test" as the proper requisite of American military action was not novel, but reflected his 1994 remarks that American efforts to stop Serbian fascism should be predicated only on U.N. approval -- although Sen. Kerry later supported Bill Clinton when he subsequently bombed successfully without either the sanction of the U.S. Senate or the U.N. Security Council. And when President Clinton reaffirmed America as the "indispensable nation," Sen. Kerry predictably lamented the "arrogant, obnoxious tone." Sen. Kerry insists that President Bush "squandered" global goodwill and that America is now roundly disliked. But who is angry with President Bush -- and why? North Korea to be sure -- their Danegeld of oil and food is gone, their nuclear antics under multiparty scrutiny. Iran is furious as well -- but even more terrified that the U.S. is no longer in an investigative, but rather a warrior, mood. The Arafat kleptocracy and much of the Middle East pine for the good old days of "sensitive" American cops vainly subpoenaing terrorists snug in safe compounds and palaces. If Belgium, France and Germany are purportedly seething at Mr. Bush's troop repositioning, "dead or alive" homilies, and the smashing of Saddam's cashbox, then billions in India, China and Russia see all that as a larger effort to stop a globally despised Islamic fascism. Most Americans applaud the support of Australia and Britain rather than worry over the censure of New Zealand and Canada. Yes, George W. Bush is a divisive wartime figure -- so were Lincoln, Churchill and Roosevelt. But war itself is divisive precisely because to end it one side must lose. In war, it is hard to know when victory is near, since the last campaigns are often the bloodiest. Yet we are seeing the foundations of a new Middle East, with terrorists scattered, jailed and dead. And, yes, victory itself is on the horizon -- but only if on this memorable day we persevere, and allow George W. Bush to finish the job. Mr. Hanson, a military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, at Stanford. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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RE: Geodesic neoconservative empire
by Tyler Durden 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

Sounds good, but there's a little flaw in the logic: >At 10:07 PM 10/24/04 -0400, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > If the only way > >to kill barbarians is to kill barbarians in their bed before they > >kill you in yours, to pave over nation-states that support them, > >starting with the easiest first, it can't happen fast enough, as far > >as I'm concerned, and I'll gladly "vote" my expropriated tax-dollars > >for the purpose of draining the swamp that is the Middle East. We're not reducing the quantity of government, just consolidating under a single growing Borg-like government, namely the US. I consider one giant government a far more dangerous situation that lots of little ones. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

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Re: bin Laden gets a Promotion, UBL=Moses
by Major Variola (ret) 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

At 10:16 PM 10/30/04 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: >On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 02:42:25PM -0400, Sunder wrote: > >> As usual, South Park is a great source of wisdom. So, are you voting for >> the Giant Douche or the Turd Sandwich? > >My candidate is Mr Hanky, Poo party. > I'm voting for Kodos. [Simpsons ref] UBL was pleasantly rational in this one. Even explained the origin of the tower-dropping plans, which was a nice bit for the historians. I'm surprised the "Ask yourselves why we didn't attack Sweden" comment isn't discussed more; then again I find even intelligent people refractory to that obvious question. UBL still thinks lay Americans elect their leaders, or have a clue what they're doing, but he is a man of strong faith. He even gave a succint reminder of the way out, "Leave my people alone", Moses like. Time for more locusts, frogs, red tides, or modern equivalents, I'm afraid. Extra points for the commentary on Bush Sr learning about dynasty from the Saudis, etc, and installing his sons as governors. ------ M. Atta -an Army of One

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Activists fear e-voting security glitches
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

<http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid14_gci1020…> TechTarget Activists fear e-voting security glitches By Bill Brenner, News Writer 01 Nov 2004 | SearchSecurity.com It's a recurring nightmare for many political activists and IT experts: electronic voting machines around the country suffer security breaches on Election Day, affecting the outcome of a bitterly-contested White House race and other key battles. "I'm extremely concerned, especially in states like Florida," said Reed Hundt, a Democrat who chaired the Federal Communications Commission during the Clinton Administration. "Republican governors control most of the battleground states and they haven't done a thing to make these systems transparent and trustworthy. Democrats will have to turn out in record numbers to be counted. I worry about a vote-counting catastrophe." State and federal efforts to replace paper and punch-card voting systems with electronic machines gained steam after Florida's 2000 election debacle. In October 2002 Congress passed the Help America Vote Act, mandating that every voting district modernize its election systems by 2006 and allocating $3.9 billion for that purpose. Many states invested the money in electronic voting machines. A study by Washington D.C.-based Election Data Services estimates more than 48 million registered voters will cast ballots on electronic equipment Nov. 2, compared to 53 million who will use optical scan systems and 22 million who will still use punch cards. About the same number of voters will use lever machines, while only about a million will use paper ballots, the study estimated. But concerns abound in many states. There are fears people will be able to use security holes to vote multiple times, that a power failure could wipe out votes and that no paper trail will exist for backup. Interviews with political activists and security experts and an extensive review of media coverage over the last several months suggests most of the concern is among Democrats, Green Party members and civil liberty groups. Democrats worry e-voting security glitches could tip an extremely close election in President George W. Bush's favor. If Republicans fear problems could tip the election to Sen. John F. Kerry, they're not talking about it. President Bush has expressed faith in the nation's e-voting equipment, and Republican governors like Jeb Bush in Florida believe the machines will work fine on Election Day. Maryland reflects national debate Recent events in Maryland reflect what has happened across the country. A group called TrueVoteMD tried unsuccessfully to stop e-voting and is now fighting in court to send designated poll watchers to voting stations. The state has adopted an independent firm's recommendations to boost security and Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich believes the machines are ready. Critics remain skeptical. Pam Woodside, chief information officer for Maryland's independent State Board of Elections, said the state began experimenting with e-voting in Baltimore City in 1998 using Sequoia Voting System machines. After the 2000 election problems, then-Gov. Parris Glendenning commissioned a panel of experts to review the best voting technology for the state. Texas-based Diebold Election Systems was eventually chosen to provide the machines. Shortly after the contract was signed, Woodside said the trouble began. First came a report co-authored by Avi Rubin, computer science professor and technical director of Johns Hopkins University's Information Security Institute. The report cited several security problems with e-voting machines that could allow voters to cast unlimited votes without being detected and without insider privileges. Other problems mentioned included incorrect use of cryptography and poor software development. Woodside said many of the report's conclusions were off base. "It assumed source code was on the Internet. That was incorrect. It assumed you could attach a keyboard to the unit. That's not true. It assumed you could vote multiple times and that's not true either," she said. 'The most secure' system around After the media pounced on the report, Ehrlich ordered a risk assessment. The state hired Columbia, Md.-based RABA Technologies to do the work, and its final report said the machines failed to meet 66 of its 328 standards. Woodside said the state immediately addressed the problems and believes the machines are now ironclad. "One of the items we addressed right away was to get the vendor to change the software so we could create unique pins for voting units in each county," she said. "We now use security keys that are dynamically allocated. We also demanded more secure encryption from the vendor." The RABA report also recommended the state use locks and tamper tape to protect areas housing the server and memory card that will accumulate and store the votes. "We've done that, put antivirus software on servers, activated logs and applied applicable Microsoft patches," Woodside said. "We now have the most secure e-voting system around." Lingering worries Linda Schade, a member of TrueVoteMD and the Green Party, begs to differ. While the group failed to block e-voting in Maryland, it is now fighting in court for the right to send monitors into polling precincts around the state. "The use of paperless electronic voting in Maryland has been marred by serious problems," Schade said. "It is clear these machines need to be watched closely. We now know that in the last election, people received incomplete ballots missing candidates, machines failed to boot, technicians without identification worked on machines making undocumented alterations. The State Board of Elections told the media and the public that the machines worked flawlessly, but since then local boards of elections have reported widespread problems." Rubin also remains fearful security glitches could skew ballot counts and disenfranchise voters. After spending the day as an election judge in Baltimore County during the primary, he gained a new appreciation for poll workers, saying they worked diligently all day to ensure machines worked properly and everyone's vote was counted. But last week he said most states that will use e-voting Nov. 2 without a paper trail are "in over their heads." "I am more worried about the fact that the voting machines have the potential to be rigged than I am that they were actually rigged," said Rubin. "There's no way to know, and that's not healthy. The worst thing is that there could be a security breach, and we'd have no way of knowing it." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/01/opinion/01mon4.html?th=&pagewanted=print&…> The New York Times November 1, 2004 EDITORIAL OBSERVER Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy By DOROTHY SAMUELS t is only inevitable, I suppose, that some big issues never make it onto the agenda of a presidential campaign, and other lesser issues, or total nonissues, somehow emerge instead. Electoral politics, as Americans are regularly being reminded these final hard-fought days before the election, is a brutal, messy business, not an antiseptic political science exercise. That said, I hereby confess to feeling disappointed over Senator John Kerry's failure to home in hard on one of the more worrisome domestic policy developments of the past four years - namely the Bush administration's drastic expansion of needless government secrecy. President Bush's antipathy to open government continues to garner only a trivial level of attention compared with the pressing matters that seem to be engaging the country at the moment, including, in no particular order, the Red Sox, Iraq, terrorism, taxes and the mysterious iPod-size bulge visible under the back of Mr. Bush's suit jacket at the first debate. But the implications for a second term are ominous. Beyond undermining the constitutional system of checks and balances, undue secrecy is a proven formula for faulty White House decision-making and debilitating scandal. If former President Richard Nixon, the nation's last chief executive with a chronic imperial disdain for what Justice Louis Brandeis famously called the disinfecting power of sunlight, were alive today, I like to think he'd be advising Mr. Bush to choose another role model. As detailed in a telling new Congressional report, Mr. Bush's secrecy obsession - by now a widely recognized hallmark of his presidency - is truly out of hand. The 90-page report, matter-of-factly titled "Secrecy in the Bush Administration," was released with little fanfare in September by Representative Henry Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Reform, and one of the most outspoken critics of the Bush administration's steady descent into greater and greater secrecy. The objective was to catalog the myriad ways that President Bush and his appointees have undermined existing laws intended to advance public access to information, while taking an expansive view of laws that authorize the government to operate in secrecy, or to withhold certain information. Some of the instances the report cites are better known than others. Among the more notorious, of course, are the administration's ongoing refusal to disclose contacts between Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force and energy company executives, or to explain the involvement of Mr. Cheney's office in the awarding of huge sole-source contracts to Halliburton for Iraq reconstruction; the post-9/11 rush to embrace shameful, unconstitutional practices like secret detentions and trials; and the resistance and delay in turning over key documents sought by the Sept. 11 commission. The report lists many other troubling examples as well. Mr. Bush and his appointees have routinely impeded Congress's constitutionally prescribed oversight role by denying reasonable requests from senior members of Congressional committees for basic information. They forced a court fight over access to the Commerce Department's corrected census counts, for instance, withheld material relating to the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib and stonewalled attempts to collect information on meetings and phone conversations between Karl Rove, the presidential adviser, and executives of firms in which he owned stock. The administration has also taken to treating as top secret documents previously available under the Freedom of Information Act - going so far as to reverse the landmark act's presumption in favor of disclosure and to encourage agencies to withhold a broad, hazily defined universe of "sensitive but unclassified" information. Under a phony banner of national security, Mr. Bush has reversed reasonable steps by the Clinton administration to narrow the government's capacity to classify documents. Aside from being extremely expensive, the predictably steep recent increase in decisions to classify information runs starkly counter to recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission geared to strengthening oversight of the intelligence agencies. Not one for self-criticism - or any kind of criticism, for that matter - President Bush says he's content to leave it to historians to assess his presidential legacy. What he fails to mention is that he has seriously impeded that historical review by issuing a 2001 executive order repealing the presumption of public access to presidential papers embedded in the 1978 Presidential Records Act. On a superficial level, the hush-hush treatment of this issue on the fall campaign trail might seem perversely fitting. But Mr. Bush's unilateral rollback of laws and practices designed to promote government accountability surely rates further scrutiny by voters. We've learned over the last four years that what we don't know can hurt us. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Trio try for better mobile security
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

<http://www.vnunet.com/print/1159101> vnunet.com Trio try for better mobile security The Trusted Mobile Platform from Intel, IBM and NTT DoCoMo aims to make mobiles a better bet for secure networking Daniel Robinson, IT Week 01 Nov 2004 Intel, IBM and mobile communications company NTT DoCoMo last week announced a set of security specifications for mobile client devices. They said the aim is to create a secure architecture for future wireless data services. The Trusted Mobile Platform specification, available via the link below, defines a set of hardware and software components plus communication protocols that can be used to build devices with various levels of security. It is intended to be an open standard, according to NTT DoCoMo chief executive Takanori Utano. The specification defines three classes of trusted mobile device (TMD), ranging from handsets with no hardware security features to those that include a trusted platform module (TPM) to handle cryptography functions and hardware-enforced separation between trusted and untrusted applications and their data. It also defines a set of protocols that allow a TMD to communicate with other platforms more securely The partnership brings together Intel's expertise in silicon and wireless devices, IBM's experience of business security and NTT DoCoMo's knowledge of security in wireless networks, the companies said. "This collaboration enhances handheld architectures to provide the trusted capabilities vital for widespread adoption of mobile commerce and enterprise usage," said Intel vice-president Sean Maloney. Chip designer ARM already includes technology called TrustZone in its latest processor cores to provide separation between secure and non-secure code. Although Intel uses ARM technology in its XScale mobile chips, the company has not disclosed whether the Trusted Mobile Platform supports technologies such as TrustZone. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Ten reasons I'm not voting for you, Mr. George W. Bush.
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

<http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110005808> OpinionJournal - CAMPAIGN 2004 No More Years Ten reasons I'm not voting for you, Mr. George W. Bush. BY JIM TREACHER Monday, November 1, 2004 12:01 a.m. 10. Do you really think it's a good idea to be Hitler, George? Hitler killed millions of people and his approval ratings are in the toilet. Why can't you be somebody people like? Regis, maybe, or the Prophet Mohammed. Anybody but Hitler! Being Hitler = BAD IDEA. 9. Two words: You. Are. Dumb. 8. When Karl Rove used the remote-control device implanted in your upper back to force you to murder Iraqi babies and American soldiers for oil and/or no reason because Saddam was mean to your dad, plus what about the WMDs you lost after you lied about them even being there in the first place, and then Rove tried to make everybody think your Thanksgiving turkey wasn't plastic by planting fake documents about your military service and forcing Dan Rather to say "Sorry, I guess" on national TV, did you really think we wouldn't figure it out? 7. People might make fun of me. Maybe you're used to it by now, but I'm not. 6. I mean, black hoods? Fa-shion dis-a-a-a-ster. Wasn't Abu Ghraib dreary enough already? (More like Abu Drab!) I would have started a riot--a laugh riot. While pointing at you! 5. How dare you taunt a dying Christopher Reeve with a big brown bottle of stem cells? The man was on his deathbed, you sick monster. Why did you have to hold the spoon right in front of his lips? "C'mon, Chrissy, it's right here. You can do it, bwah! Just another coupla inches. Oooh, yer close. Close!" Shame on you, Dubya. 4. I can't really think of anything for item No. 4, and for that I blame you. (Also the Jews.) 3. Where's Osama? C'mon, Shrub, we all know you've got him in some secret Ashcroft prison and he's running around loose in the world, plus also besides which everybody just saw him live on tape giving the dramatic reading of "Fahrenheit 9/11" that the Halliburton PR department wrote for him to swing the election your way. Well 2. The Internet. 1. I can no longer afford the premiums on my falling-sky insurance. Adios, chimp! Mr. Treacher writes at JimTreacher.com. Editor's note: This is a satire of the Angry Left. Please do not take it seriously. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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RE: The "plagues" are Mosaic asymmetric attacks, not biological
by Tyler Durden 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

Variola wrote... >Again, the Mosaic approach of repeated asymmetric attacks on the Pharoah >is what Al Q >is up to. Eventually the Pharoah/US gets fed up and says fuck it. >Maybe not this election, but eventually, and Al has time. GW has only >4 more years, at best, and Rummy & Cheney are scheduled for a box in the >ground pretty >soon. Wolfy has more time, but after a few more kilocorpses will lose >power with >Joe Sixpack and Joe's post-Bush "leader". I think that's pretty on the money. Terrorism doesn't actually need to affect any single Head Bandit, but after a regime change or two and a pullout occurs the new Bandit can say "We meant to do that anyway." The French and Algeria is a great example. The Mosaic analogy was a good one, too, and not even original: See John Adams' "The Death of Leon Klinghoffer" and you'll know why it took so much heat....having Palestinians singing phrases from Exodus and Psalms was just a little too much for the music-funding establishment. It says a lot, however, that the guy still gets commissions. -TD "Oh Kent! I'd be lying if I said my men didn't commit any crimes!" -Homer Simpson "Touche." -Kent Brockman >From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> >To: "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> >Subject: The "plagues" are Mosaic asymmetric attacks, not biological >Date: Sun, 31 Oct 2004 21:11:55 -0800 > >At 05:21 PM 10/31/04 -0800, John Young wrote: > >To state the obvious to Major Variola, CDC will have first > >indication of a devastating US attack, reported fragmentarily > >under its links to hospitals, clinics and physicians, against > >which the might military and law enforcement have no defenses. > >You thought I meant bio plagues?! Jeezus John, is your metaphorizer >broken? Any >bio hazard is accidental, or Detrick, not Osama. A *succession of >attacks against the Empire* is what I mean, alluding to the Jews >attacking >the Pharaoh, until he let them alone. Pharoah=US, Moses=UBL, >Jews=Moslems. >Get your head around that one. > >News: >The infectious biological "attack" will be an accident of the modularity > >and recombination of influenza on some chinese duck/pig/human >farm. It will not be intentional but it will kill a lot before the >vaccine >can be produced, which takes ca. 6 mos.. See 1918 pandemic, >and add jet airplanes. A recent _Science_ article described >a model of this. You are one or two days away from that duck/pig/human >incubator nowadays, no matter where you live. That will happen, >but it won't be intentional. The geopoli implications will be fun, but >UBL is not involved there. > >Observation: >A non-infectious biological attack (eg anthrax which isn't >infectious) is cheap, but not Al Q's preferred MO. They go >for the special effects type attacks, simultaneous so you >know its them. (Otherwise it could be a suicical egyptian, >a rudder jerked too hard, a screw-jack improperly lubricated, >the NTSC is very creative.) > >Of course the Ft Detrick folks enjoy sending >the occasional sporulated letter to senators, but hey, their funding was > >running out, you do what you gotta do. > >Implementation: >A chem attack is pretty nifty, and in many ways easier than >fission or RDDs. Since there are so many chems moving >around, and rad sources are so easy to detect, by virtue of the >energy of the emissions, and controlled/surveilled materials. > >A tanker into a school is double the fun, >its been years since Columbine, and the underbelly is itching >for a scratch. (Again, you need to pull off 2 the same day.) >I wonder if there is a school that enrolls only >first born sons, that would be interesting to read about in your mosaic >er netscape er IE browser, eh? Since your allusion-detector is broken, > >"mosaic", get it? > >History: >"Let my people go" and taking a beating only works if you have >wannabe-moral brits who want to divest anyway and your name is >Ghandi. Otherwise the biblical plagues, aka asymmetric attack, approach >is >guaranteed to work in the limit. All you need is enough popular >support. >Its there. > >It only took 200 dead marines and one bomb >to evict us from Lebanon, maybe 50K corpses for S. Nam, don't know about > >N Korea, but do the math. .mil are disposable, but they have families >that >whine and vote. And the press is not *entirely* 0wn3d by the .gov, yet. > >Conclusion: >Again, the Mosaic approach of repeated asymmetric attacks on the Pharoah >is what Al Q >is up to. Eventually the Pharoah/US gets fed up and says fuck it. >Maybe not this election, but eventually, and Al has time. GW has only >4 more years, at best, and Rummy & Cheney are scheduled for a box in the >ground pretty >soon. Wolfy has more time, but after a few more kilocorpses will lose >power with >Joe Sixpack and Joe's post-Bush "leader". > >Operation Just Cause >Just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I have to ignore >Egyptian/Hebrew history. >Just because I live here doesn't mean I don't think the US deserves the >treatment >that any Empire deserves. Just because I'm an American doesn't mean I >can't use >sophisticated allusions. Just because I say Mosaic Plagues doesn't mean >I'm >talking about frogs & locusts. Dig? _________________________________________________________________ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx

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[IP] Call for Nominations - NRC project on Information Fusion and Data Mining (fwd from dave@farber.net)
by Eugen Leitl 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

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Car bomb targets Arab channel, killing 7
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Nov '04

01 Nov '04

One of Ryan's Lackey's business associates, a Shia network engineer from Southern Iraq, was killed in this bomb. Cheers, RAH ------- <http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-10/30/content_2159434.htm> www.xinhuanet.com XINHUA online CHINA VIEW VIEW CHINA Monday,Nov.1,2004 Car bomb targets Arab channel, killing 7 www.chinaview.cn 2004-10-30 02:04:00 BAGHDAD, Oct. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- A car bomb exploded outside the Al-Arabiya TV's office in Baghdad on Saturday, killing seven people and injuring more than a dozen of others, said the TV channel and hospital sources. Police officer Ziad Tareq said at least seven people were killed and one of them was a woman. Doctors at the nearby Yarmuk Hospital said they received more than 16 wounded. Al-Arabiya said all of the seven killed were workers with it's bureau, located in the wealthy Mansour neighborhood in western Baghdad, where senior Iraqi officials and foreign businessmen resided. The explosion, which took place around 15:10 p.m. (1210 GMT), started a fire and sent black smoke over the area, saw a Xinhua photographer. The fire was put off one hour later and about 30 vehicles were seen damaged. The facade of the office building was deformed and the site was bestrewn with glass and car parts. Three bodies were charred beyond recognition, according to the TV channel. A militant group identified as "1920 Brigades" claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack, said a statement attributed to the group. But its authenticity could not be verified. The group said it accused the "treacherous network" of taking a pro-American tone in its reporting and had kept warning it of possible attacks. Sabah Nayee, former Al-Arabiya Baghdad Bureau Chief, said he knew about the threat and his office could be the target, but believed that the pan-Arab satellite news network was doing right and maintained popularity in Iraq. He said a joint meeting was held inside the building attended by MBC and Saudi news provider Al-Ekhbariya at the time of explosion. But Nayee could not conclude if the attackers were aware of the meeting before unleashing the assault. The two companies were renting the building along with Al-Arabiya, who hired around 50 staff across Iraq. It appeared the first time a popular Arab language media was targeted in car bombings, favored by insurgents to wage attacks against US forces in Iraq and their cooperators. Based in Dubai and a sister news channel of Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya has broadcast purported videos and statements from militant groups, including former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network. It was previously temporarily banned by the Iraqi authority from covering news out of Iraq. However, the Saudi-funded channel was known by Iraqis to be more cooprative with the interim government led by Iyad Allawi, especially after he visited Saudi Arabiya earlier this year. End item -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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