While the U.S. and Iran Negotiate, War Commences In Cyberspace 181
An anonymous reader writes "A series of reports shows that the U.S. and Israel are engaged in a cyber war with Iran to stop it from developing nuclear weapons. Oddly enough, at the same time, the United States and others nations are trying to negotiate with Iran. As America and others start the world's first undeclared cyber-wars, dangerous precedents are being set that this type of warfare is without consequences. Such ideas could not be further from from truth."
Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
As crazy as this may sound, talking with each other is usually the best option.
Re:Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. They are negotiating. "War" involves shooting and death. Using it to describe sabotage is just hyperbole.
Re:Crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. They are negotiating. "War" involves shooting and death. Using it to describe sabotage is just hyperbole.
Hyperbole, yes, but not without a purpose. You could also call it fund-raising [imagicity.com].
This is another example of a military-industrial complex ginning up a new theatre of operations in which to spend billions^W^Wdeploy.
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Exactly. They are negotiating. "War" involves shooting and death. Using it to describe sabotage is just hyperbole.
Hyperbole, yes, but not without a purpose. You could also call it fund-raising [imagicity.com].
This is another example of a military-industrial complex ginning up a new theatre of operations in which to spend billions^W^Wdeploy.
Which side are you talking about? The military-industrial complex in Iran is easily tighter than in the USA. Besides that, Iran has people in power who are not above releasing election results in a spreadsheet which do not even add up, let alone reflect anything close to reality (I kept a copy after downloading it from the Irandian government site) Really, they have contempt enough for everybody. Negotiation only buys them more time. I think Israel gets this and that's why they're eager to launch an at
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Negotiation only buys them more time.
is really harmful. As if a real war wasn't avoidable. Truth is, the only country trying to go on war is USA (and probably Israel too, but not openly). Do you work for the NSA?
Re:Crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
Hyperbole, numbnuts. The weapon used in cyber-warfare are not one shot and gone, do not disappear in an explosion are not fired and used. Software weapons last forever, once released, released into the wild, anyone can access them, mutate, edit them for their own purpose. What you have is idiot government agencies basically handing over the tools of crime to criminals. Here's a back doors, here's a hole, here's an exploit, and here is the tool to attack it, go edit it have fun, do as much for profit attack to private sector as possible, "JUSTIFY OUR SECURITY BUDGETS".
One would have to become deeply suspicious at the real reason behind releasing these attack tools to the wild, where any organised crime gang can access them, where any foreign government can access, where skilled coders can edit them to their own purpose. This is criminal stupidity.
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Okay, but it's still sabotage. We have a perfectly good word for it and everything... why invent "cyber-war" when it fits the definition of sabotage so perfectly?
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I think it is pretty short-sighted to believe that this sort of sabotage will not lead to deaths. But even if it were never to amounts to that in a direct way, enormous amounts of harm can be done to societies.
Negotiation while committing acts of war against the other party is essentially duress, which is prohibited during international negotiations by international law and which can reasonably be argued to invalidate any agreement made under it, just as it would if someone made you sign over the deed to yo
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which can reasonably be argued to invalidate any agreement made under it
Right, but you are already dealing with an entity that is not holding to their agreement (nuclear non-proliferation). Obviously you won't just take their word in any agreement reached, you will also require verification.
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I guess my point is that even calling it an agreement is wrong. If I point a gun at you and demand the deed to your house, to then assert that we've come to an agreement about the house's ownership is like something a gangster might say, but not an accurate description of events.
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If there weren't people with guns to each other's heads, an agreement wouldn't be necessary.
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How is Iran pointing a gun at anyone's head? Even assuming that they are fully intending to develop nuclear weapons, which is a point of view that even the US intelligence community does not concur with, that couldn't really be said to be pointing a gun at anyone's head.
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Iran has been in almost continuous hostile action with Israel since that country's founding. They actively worked to sabotage American efforts in Iraq, and now Afghanistan. They have been caught recently trying to play CIA in several different countries. The idea that Iran is somehow passive in this whole mess is not very hard to dismiss.
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They are negotiating. "War" involves shooting and death.
I can think of two relevant sayings here:
"War is the continuation of politics by other means"
which I believe is attributable to Clausewitz. And there's this infamous saying:
"You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
which is attributed to Al Capone. The point here is that there are viewpoints out there which have this smooth transition from talking to shooting. Sabotage would naturally fit on this spectrum as a fairly aggressive option.
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. "War" involves shooting and death.
Like murdering Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers with car bombs? If that isn't war, then what is it? Terrorism?
I'm amazed the Iranians have been so restrained. It is as if we are begging them to car-bomb Tel Aviv and New York. They are smart enough to know it is a trap.
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I'm amazed the Iranians have been so restrained.
I'm amazed that anyone would say that they believe that.
Malaysia court orders extradition of Iranian over bomb plot [telegraph.co.uk]
Israel says Thai bombs similar to those in India, Georgia [washingtonpost.com]
Good 'ole peace loving Iran.
Iran sends troops to Syria [nydailynews.com]
Iran boosts Qods shock troops in Venezuela [washingtontimes.com]
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Correcting bad link:
Experts: Iran's Quds Force Deeply Enmeshed in Iraq [foxnews.com]
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Like murdering Iranian nuclear scientists and engineers with car bombs?
Exactly. Or Iran's long-time support of Hezbollah.
I'm amazed the Iranians have been so restrained.
I'm not sure where you get that they are being restrained.
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I'm not sure where you get that they are being restrained.
By not doing tit-for-tat retaliation, ie killing American scientists on US soil, or sabotaging US industrial facilities.
The US and Israel have taken this way past the cold-war style funding of insurgents.
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Why would they go tit-for-tat? They may not have the resources to do that easily, at least not immediately. Even if they did, the bang-for-the-buck isn't there. Killing American scientists would do very little to actually harm any program in the US, so it would be simple revenge. Cathartic, but not very strategic and a terrible waste of resources. Sending a boatload of missiles to Hezbollah is something that they can do using established channels, and it commands a huge amount of Israeli resources.
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First, it 9/11 wasn't really "war". Second, I'd count a plane full of fuel crashing into a building as "shooting".
Re:Crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
But the US gave up talking. They cripple the factories as good as they can, on the other hand demand that Iran proves its innocence (which is impossible). They demand Iran give up their sovereignty and let IAEA roam freely around the country, while at the same time IAEA has leakage that gets Iranian scientists murdered.
If you refer to the US and Iran talking, you are only talking about a charade. The US lost trust by its actions. Like it did with torture, or starting illegal wars, it cancelled diplomacy single-sidedly.
I think Iran would be reasonable if the negotiators took Iran as an entity and their rights seriously instead of telling them from the distance what to do. Participators need to understand the culture of Iran (a lot of friction is created in the translations [wikipedia.org]). That's why diplomats are so important, presidents aren't enough for the talking.
If Iran hadn't signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it wouldn't even be bothered by the IAEA. It would be left alone to make nuclear weapons as it wished. I wonder if they could cancel the treaty. There is no real reason for Iran to build nuclear weapons and hide the fact, except now that everyone is making a fuzz to show that they can, then destroy it.
Re:Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
Participators need to understand the culture of Iran.
Yes, let's all gather around, share our feelings, get to really know each other, sing "Kumbaya" around the campfire, and peace will follow. F***ing A.
The U.S. and Iran aren't preparing for war because we don't understand each other. We're preparing for war because we *do* understand each other.
What you say is unbelievably ignorant. I bet that you have never talked to any actual, living Iranian in your life and probably know absolutely nothing about Persian culture or even Iran as a country. (Like e.g. that you can go skiing there. You didn't know that, right?) In contrast to what you might presume with prejudice the Iranians I've met at conferences were friendly, not wearing beards, and had world-views that resemble most closely those of Europeans. (From my personal experience, Iranians are rather skeptical about the US, which is not very suprising given that the US has attacked and occupied a neighboring country.)
Moreover, the only people in US and Iran who are perhaps preparing for a war are the people in small circles of governments, each of which are corrupt in their own ways. The vast majorities of people in these countries certainly do not want a war. However, it is most likely that the US not preparing for a war with Iran, and of course Iran is not preparing for a war with the US either. (The latter would be so patently absurd that not even the current Iranian government would consider it.) Its all just rhetorics, geopolitical strategy plus some cheap attempts to score points in inner politics.
The Iranian people are suppressed by a theocracy. There is a dangerous moral police on the streets, so most of the live is within their homes, where they throw parties and dance to pop music. AFAIK, the situation is similar to other totalitarian states like the GDR or 70ies Soviet Union. People are careful what they are saying to whom and stay amongst friends. But most of them are pro-Western, although not pro American, and would like to live in a more secular and modern Muslim democracy.
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As crazy as this may sound, talking with each other is usually the best option.
Problem is, every time USA, France, Germany, anybody, tries to talk to the leadership in Iran they are met with a very disingenuous leadership who will talk round in circles, but never give an inch. Rather like talking to the North Korean Government. They'll concede nothing and take everything they can get.
Not surprising - Iran's Revolutionary Guard and they aren't about to give up anything. If Grand Ayatollah Khamenei gives them too much trouble they'll just see to it he's replaced. Really is very Krem
Re:Crazy (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>every time USA, France, Germany, anybody, tries to talk to the leadership in Iran they are met with a very disingenuous leadership who will talk round in circles
Source?
Last I heard Iran allowed UN inspection teams to enter the country and look at the labs. ALSO you seem to be unaware that Iran is allowed to develop nuclear capability under the terms of the Nonproliferation Treaty. It's not a crime for them to purify uranium below 29% purity. You appear to hate Iran simply because you were TOLD to hate Iran, without any logical reason for doing so. You're a "useful idiot" of the politicians.
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>>>every time USA, France, Germany, anybody, tries to talk to the leadership in Iran they are met with a very disingenuous leadership who will talk round in circles
Source?
Last I heard Iran allowed UN inspection teams to enter the country and look at the labs. ALSO you seem to be unaware that Iran is allowed to develop nuclear capability under the terms of the Nonproliferation Treaty. It's not a crime for them to purify uranium below 29% purity. You appear to hate Iran simply because you were TOLD to hate Iran, without any logical reason for doing so. You're a "useful idiot" of the politicians.
Here's a source [nytimes.com] from only 4 months ago. Wasn't really that hard to find. Iran has often allowed inspection teams into the country, but not into specific labs, plants, etc. that are suspected of being used to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that they are being used for this, but Iran has definitely not allowed inspectors in to look at them.
The question of whether they should is a bit different.
Also, it's foolish to think that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon
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Parchin is a military site that is out of the jurisdiction of IAEA. It is the heart of Iran's Missile technology and hosts many production and test facilities. Iran has agreed and allowed inspection of this site twice already (2005 and 2006 IIRC), and says it will allow it again if ALL the complaints were to put on the table, all the evidence provided and the probable cause established, which has never been accepted by IAEA, because of demands of some member countries (which we know who they are).
Don't kid
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It's not a crime for them to purify uranium below 29% purity.
No, it's not a crime... but it's just a teensy weensy bit difficult to explain why a peaceful nuclear program would need to enrich their peaceful uranium to peaceful weapons grade, to peacefully conceal the existence of their peaceful nuclear facilities, and bury these peaceful nuclear facilities hundreds of feet under a peaceful mountain in facilities hardened against bunker-busting bombs. Which is what the Iranian regime has done.
Seriously, what's with all the love for Iran's totalitarian regime ? Why do
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Where do you get your information? (links?) The local media seem to provide very little detail here, but go heavy on useless opinions. There is more depth elsewhere.
http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,16006008,00.html [www.dw.de]
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Usually but not always. There are times when war, cyber or not, is the best option.
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Star Trek The Origional Series covered this idea.
dude (Score:2)
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And not use USB sticks. And not buy computers, peripherals, or other electronics from other countries.
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From what I've heard the systems that were damaged by Stuxnet were not on the internet. They were infected by a scientist bringing the virus in on a usb drive that he was using to work at home.
Re:dude (Score:4, Informative)
Going the DIY route for a complete software stack isn't a magic solution to hackers. It's damn hard to write secure software and expecting any organised group to rewrite all its own software from the ground up without introducing its own set of new security holes is ridiculous. Reinventing the wheel is wasteful and likely to produce an inferior wheel. Iran deciding to roll its own software from scratch would be a massive boon for the American and Israeli hackers.
Even if Iran were to choose to go down this path, its unlikely that they have enough qualified manpower to do the job. What you're suggesting is that Iran essentially creates something similar in scope to a Linux distro and a complete network infrastructure, except building the entire thing from scratch or known good components. Now imagine trying to do this with less manpower and no help from hardware manufacturers. It would take years to produce anything that is halfway usable and they'd still be introducing the same sorts of beginner's errors that the current designers have already made and fixed in their products.
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Let's say I'm the CIA. Let's say Iran is buying PCs through some outside country which I or the Israelis have infiltrated. Is it still so hard to imagine how the computers could be tampered with?
My understanding is that the centrifuges were NOT on the internet.
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Just a thought, but what things can pass through a tunnel that is constipated?
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Also, maybe let the diplomats of both sides work this out? It worked with the Soviet Union/Russia.
really then whats was Vietnam war, Korean war, Cuban missile crises, and all of the nastiness in eastern Europe? we didn't just talk things out. it was war by proxy
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As for your being modded up is like when only the criminals have guns.
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I'm surprised you're even willing to post that comment without the cloak of anonymity. I hope, for your sake, that you were being sarcastic/facetious. Stuxnet didn't penetrate Iran's facilities via the Internet at all. It escaped to and spread via the Internet after the fact, but that wasn't its delivery vector.
Cyberwar (Score:3, Funny)
This isn't 'Nam there are rules
Pollyanna straw man strikes again (Score:2)
No one is this world is that stupid who doesn't chose to be. Even a four year old knows that N=1 sets a precedent if your cheeks are chubby and you engage the waterworks.
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I read the article but see nothing about "dangerous precedents". Where did /. get that from?
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The /. summary got it from the summary??
Yo Dawg, I heard you like summaries...
Strat
In AD 2012 (cyber) War was beginning.... (Score:2)
Somebody set us up the Stuxnet!
Re:In AD 2012 (cyber) War was beginning.... (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody set us up the Stuxnet!
For sale: 5,000 slightly damaged nuclear centrifuges.
As-Is for parts
Best offer. U pickup.
Contact M.Ahmadinejad.01@facebook.com
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By the way... I apologize for the GP. The story title was just too tempting.
Make Cybersex not Cyberwar (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Make Cybersex not Cyberwar (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it just me or does anyone actually support the actions of our government besides the government?
Our levels of civic education and the amount of civic responsibility (voting, jury duty, military service, etc.,) are shockingly low compared to other first world countries. Our public education system continues to show a steady downward trend in the diversity and depth of material, fewer graduates are capable of multi-factor analysis, critical thinking... even basic math skills markedly eroded in the 18-25 group. It doesn't matter what our government does; The population has become functionally illiterate. The general population simply lacks the ability to understand government action. If tomorrow CNN reported that we've started carpet bombing say *shakes magic 8 ball* Mauritania because *shakes magic 8 ball* they funded training camps for buddhist suicide bombers... most people would just nod their heads, shrug, and go about their business and in a few months FOX News would be showing us a picture of a buddhist monk setting himself on fire as proof of their radical buddhism, perhaps juxtaposing some people that look vaguely buddhist burning a flag before offering 15 seconds for J. Random College Professor of Sociostrategogamia at Princeton to say "I think we're really mischaracterizing thi--"... and then cut to commercial break with dancing toilet paper.
That's what America is today. I'm sorry... I can't honestly say anyone really supports or doesn't support the government on anything other than emotive thinking and a vague sense that they shouldn't really question what they're told or Bad Things Will Happen. There is no longer any public discussion of what our government does, there's no real public forum for it: The few that people have attempted to form have been stigmatized by the Department of Homeland Security. It may not be Soviet Russia in the 80s, or East Germany... people aren't exactly disappearing off the street, but there is still a palpable fear in our public places. People just don't talk to each other anymore.
Re:Make Cybersex not Cyberwar (Score:4, Informative)
Funny, a quick browse of the threads shows a broad spectrum of opinion, civil discussion for the large part (minus one +5 about the US sticking its dick in the asses of every country in the world then invading when they retaliate), and a lot of facts and citations and interesting discussion.
Perhaps what you're trying to say is, "Not everyone agrees with me and this is horrible! Groupthink! Censorship!".
Bonus points: You called Iran a "3rd world theocracy". Do you know who made them into a theocracy by actively overthrowing the democratically elected, reasonably secular leader and installing hardline fundamentalists? I'll give you one guess. [wikipedia.org]
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The last I remember, we installed the Shah, he was later overthrown by the Islamic extremists (in 1979)? So, no we didn't make them into a theocracy.
As for Mosaddegh he was about to nationalize the oil fields that we developed and was dealing with the Russians so it was right to depose him at the time. It's naive to look at the dirty geopolitical games of the cold war outside the context as if USSR never existed and USA was doing all that just for fun.
An undeclared war (Score:5, Insightful)
"As America and others start the world's first undeclared cyber-wars, dangerous precedents are being set that this type of warfare is without consequences. Such ideas could not be further from from truth."
Oh please. The French have been doing this kind of thing since before the United States even had a name for it. It's called industrial espionage, and they're so good at it that the executives of major companies are frequently told to never use the fax machines in hotels, or the phones, or the internet (unless it is an encrypted VPN), because the French government aggressively works to steal industrial secrets from other countries and provide it to their own businesses. People think because you add the word "Internet" to a social problem, that suddenly makes it new and special... le sigh.
All the internet did was make it faster and more efficient; Which is (wait for it) what computers in general do to socioeconomic processes.
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"As America and others start the world's first undeclared cyber-wars, dangerous precedents are being set that this type of warfare is without consequences. Such ideas could not be further from from truth."
Oh please. The French have been doing this kind of thing since before the United States even had a name for it. It's called industrial espionage, and they're so good at it that the executives of major companies are frequently told to never use the fax machines in hotels, or the phones, or the internet (unless it is an encrypted VPN), because the French government aggressively works to steal industrial secrets from other countries and provide it to their own businesses. People think because you add the word "Internet" to a social problem, that suddenly makes it new and special... le sigh.
All the internet did was make it faster and more efficient; Which is (wait for it) what computers in general do to socioeconomic processes.
Even if you had anything to back up these claims, a state obtaining information from companies for economic gain would not be anything like a state secretly destroying part of another state's energy infrastructure and/or weapons program. How significant would it be if it was revealed that the French government had destroyed Russian gas drilling equipment or the Japanese government had sabotaged North Korean missiles?
Re:An undeclared war (Score:4, Insightful)
a state obtaining information from companies for economic gain would not be anything like a state secretly destroying part of another state's energy infrastructure and/or weapons program
The end result remains the same: Your adversary loses an asset. That loss can be quantified in monentary terms. How you get there and the morality, ethics, legality, etc., are logistical matters, not strategic.
How significant would it be if it was revealed that the French government had destroyed Russian gas drilling equipment or the Japanese government had sabotaged North Korean missiles?
Is now a bad time to point out the very word saboteur is French? They are so famous for just such things that we have named the act itself after them. Is every reported case of an industrial "accident" really an accident? Even Hollywood joked about it in Iron Man, "Call it a training accident." I'm not sure whether you're naive or arrogant to say that such a revelation about state-assisted sabotage would ever be revealed to the general public. Regardless, what you're demanding nobody here will give you: Anyone with proof of state-assisted industrial espionage is not going to hand it out on the demands of some guy on the internet who fancies himself an intellectual. Offer me a few million dollars and I'll consider it though. Offer me a few million more, and it might even be true.
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And yet industrial (or any other) espionage is not an act of war while sabotage definitely is. There is a reason why there was no sabotage between countries that already have nuclear weapons (tall tales about gas pipelines notwithstanding).
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Just...Wow!
From your screen name I'm assuming you're female here.
I've never seen you, have no idea who or where you are, have no idea how young/old you may be, don't know your ideological/political beliefs, nor have any clue whether you are physically attractive or not.
But, and please don't take this the wrong way, for that brilliant line in your post *alone*, I'd ask you out to dinner and cou
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No shit. And it's hardly unheard of for two countries to be engaged in some form of conflict (open or covert, economic or armed) while also being at the conference table. The anonymous reader/submitter needs to study his history.
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Stuxnet was not industrial espionage. It was a weapon designed to destroy critical infrastructure[...]
Thinking is not your strong point. You're going to screw up a facility via a network connection that's been purpose-built with very specific hardware, requiring very specific instructions to be carried out in a very specific order, in order to refine one of the rarest chemicals in the world from some of the rarest ore in the world into one of the rarest isotopes of that rarest of chemicals... without knowing anything about the hardware, the process, the code that makes it all work... just push the "I win" b
Once again proving the USA is really the bad guys (Score:4, Insightful)
The USA is beginning to look an awful like an awful country run by despotic psychopaths.
The complete history of the endless war over the last 60 years has conclusively proven the USA to be quite evil.
Each action is seemingly taken as a response to provocation, but it is very clear that it openly engages in hostilities well and truly before any open warfare. Being the bully and then pretending the victim is the reson d'être. Pearl harbour, Vietnam, desert storm, 911 and now this. The USA had very deliberately stuck its dick in another counties ass, claims to be the wronged when the victim retaliates, then mobilises the very next week. It is prepared for war instantly. it is premeditated and very deliberately provocative.
The school bully uses this same method. They invariably go to jail or end up in a shit job. Soon, perhaps, the world will react against this menace.
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The school bully uses this same method. They invariably go to jail or end up in a shit job. Soon, perhaps, the world will react against this menace.
"The world" is not a unified entity and will not react against injustice any more than it has in the past. However, as a US citizen, I am quite concerned that this will be one of the things that provokes Iran to retaliate against Israel or some other ally and suck us into yet another stupid war.
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The USA is beginning to look an awful like an awful country run by despotic psychopaths.
The complete history of the endless war over the last 60 years has conclusively proven the USA to be quite evil.
Each action is seemingly taken as a response to provocation, but it is very clear that it openly engages in hostilities well and truly before any open warfare. Being the bully and then pretending the victim is the reson d'être. Pearl harbour, Vietnam, desert storm, 911 and now this. The USA had very deliberately stuck its dick in another counties ass, claims to be the wronged when the victim retaliates, then mobilises the very next week. It is prepared for war instantly. it is premeditated and very deliberately provocative.
The school bully uses this same method. They invariably go to jail or end up in a shit job. Soon, perhaps, the world will react against this menace.
I have to say, you get originality points for being the first I've seen to label the US as "quite evil" for surreptitiously fighting against Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany before Pearl Harbor and, uh, I guess the "official" start of hostilities? Maybe if you took your naivete-colored glasses off you'd realize maybe it isn't such a bad thing.
Seriously? Desert Storm (and the 1991 Persian Gulf War) was evil? I suppose you think Kuwait deserved to be invaded?
There's not a big evil conspiracy here - despite wh
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And yet not a comment out of you that China, North Korea, Russia, AND YES, IRAN, has been doing this for the last decade.
Yet, twits like you scream bloody murder when the west finally sits up and says that we need to KNOW what is going on, rather than go in with guns blazing.
So, let me guess. You are working for the Chinese MSS?
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Preventing a theocracy from getting a nuclear reaction is inarguably a good thing. Additionally, put it in the context of every single nation being involved in corporate hacking. Instead of doing hacking to make money, the way China or every other nation does, it's to prevent theocracies from developing nuclear weapons.
In before "the US is the biggest theocracy of all!"
Oh, and this is a dupe of an article from a week ago.
Fixing India's and Pakistan's nuclear arsenal should be the number one priority for the international community.
Iran is a game changer the same way NK is a game changer. No real game changer.
But if India goes nuclear on Pakistan or viceversa we will find ourselves in a world of hurt.
Funny how Pakistan, a country that finances and supports terrorism is given a free pass to having a nuclear arsenal. Yeah nothing could ever go wrong eh ?
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Funny how Pakistan, a country that finances and supports terrorism is given a free pass to having a nuclear arsenal
You really have to wonder about that. Since the 1980's they have supported a wide variety of Sunni extremists, often in direct military conflict with US soldiers. Iran has never done that. Why then is Pakistan considered an ally and given billions in military aid even though it has been a Saudi-financed supporter of active enemies of the US for decades? Why is Iran the big enemy even though
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Funny how Pakistan, a country that finances and supports terrorism is given a free pass to having a nuclear arsenal
You really have to wonder about that. Since the 1980's they have supported a wide variety of Sunni extremists, often in direct military conflict with US soldiers. Iran has never done that. Why then is Pakistan considered an ally and given billions in military aid even though it has been a Saudi-financed supporter of active enemies of the US for decades?
Because of history and geopolitics, which you need to read up on. Because India used to be much more closely aligned with the so-called "non-aligned" countries and the Soviet Union in the days of the Cold War. Because Pakistan actively helped the US out with the mujahedeen when they were the "good guys" fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Because Pakistan used to be run by a military that maintained close ties with the US military with liaisons and training of Pakistani officers in the US.
Re:Once again proving the USA is really the bad gu (Score:5, Insightful)
Preventing a theocracy from getting a nuclear reaction is inarguably a good thing.
This is rubbish. You are using a premise as its own justification. Israel is not in danger from an Iranian nuclear attack. Such an attack would be complete suicide for Iran. At best, Iran wants to play the game of using the Bomb as a political weapon as does everyone else. It isn't e very credible game, given the force asymmetry between them and Israel. Israelis know Iran is not a substantial threat, as some of their intelligence officials have pointed out. The question is, why are Israel and the US conducting open hostilities against Iran, including operations by US Special Forces on Iranian territory and support of terrorist attacks in Iran by Mujahedin e Khalq as well as Flame, Stuxnet, etc.?
In the past one could have speculated that they help maintain the illusion of great instability in the Middle East, which helps justify huge financial support of the US and international arms industry (where Israel is an important player, BTW) as well as high petroleum spot market prices (the traditional reason to ensure that there is always conflict somewhere vaguely near our political allies' oil fields, but not too near). Oddly, though, oil prices have fallen in the recent past, presumably due to unusually weak demand (in spite of that all-time favorite: "The Summer Driving Season"). Military spending has not diminished, however, and in the US Republican politicians are constantly trying to take military spending "off the table" when budget cutting activities heat up.
Frankly, I never am able to figure out why such things occur until well after the fact when the other shoe drops and it becomes clear who is making the big bucks out of the deal. Make no mistake, though. This is about money, one way or the other. The "Israel is in mortal danger from the crazy mullahs" scam is pure horse shit. I guess we'll have to wait for Steve Coll [amazon.com] to quietly write a book 10 years from now with the details.
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Good expositions, this one and the one above. I don't blame Republicans exclusively, BTW. Outside of the usual menu of hot-button issues the differences between Republicans and Democrats are relatively subtle and primarily rhetorical.
I agree that it is not in the interests of Iran to turn all of this into a hot war. On our side, though, there seems to be quite a bit of motivation to go that way, not least because there will be a lot of money to be made in various venues.
A proxy bomb set off by Iran-support
Casualties... oh the humanity! (Score:2)
Iranian President Ahmadinejad found playing FarmVille.
Ayatollah Khamenei utters, "Bastards!!"
reading into it incorrectly (Score:2)
So do it already. (Score:2)
"Cyber-war" relies on the victim deliberately choosing to connect systems to the internet which should not be connected.
Fuck shit up and build some "herd immunity".
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"Cyber-war" relies on the victim deliberately choosing to connect systems to the internet which should not be connected.
Fuck shit up and build some "herd immunity".
You seem to have missed the part where Stuxnet was planted on site at Natanz. None of the critical systems were connected to the Internet.
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a scientific approach to why we keep doing this "lets fight a war every 4 years in the middle east" baloney. Some have speculated its a doctrine incepted by the former president carter, others say its driven simply by the military industrial complex, but im really curious to see if anyone can come up with a reason why we have to erect a punching bag like clockwork each presidency. both sides might bicker on finances and the budget, but both bob their heads in agreeance each time an expensive protracted excursion into war comes along without much dissonance.
The fact that the united states needlessly and violently attacks the middle east whenever it sees fit was something that Osama Bin Laden and Anwar al Awlaki touched upon. OBL actually had the nerve to insist we stop doing it as a condition upon which he would stop attacking america. It was a very reasonable request; a negotiated ceasefire.
Nothing doing so it seems. We partner up with the only nation in the region that seems to vitriolically hate iran and start coming up with the same clever chicanery we used to sabotage gas well computer control systems in soviet russia. Israel is a state sponsor of terrorism and hasnt signed any of the nuclear treaties we're shoving toward iran, but they havent made it into anyones axis of evil. Why do they get to have nuclear power and iran, a much larger state by population alone, doesnt?
You sounded halfway reasonable until the third paragraph. To say that Israel is "the only nation in the region that seems to vitriolically hate iran" is hilariously lazy revisionist history. Are you forgetting the Iran-Iraq war? How about the fact that Iranian leaders frequently call for the destruction of Israel and actively support groups that were created for this goal. The Saudis fear Iranian power almost as much as the Israelis.
Of course it's not fair that some states are allowed to have nuclear power
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What most Americans seem to not realize is that the various owners of the 'Middle East' has been chomping at each other for at least the past 8 centuries. This is not new. The various religious / tribal conflicts coupled with a fairly inhospitable landscape that makes many resources scare seems to create tensions that no one has been able to quench for any length of time. Since the 1400's the other major source of tension has been the "Western" world (various Christian sects) versus Islamic religions.
The
It isn't war, it's espionage (Score:4, Insightful)
Which isn't exactly a new idea - both stealing secrets and sabotage.
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Which isn't exactly a new idea - both stealing secrets and sabotage.
Indeed, the NY Times (?) article that started this "exposure" of the cyber stuff casually mentioned that US arranged to ship faulty components to Iran that would explode. If it's a war or not depends on what the victim does.. It's arguably more direct involvement than the Afghan government had with the 9/11 attacks.
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I regret that last comparison, the damage was very different. sorry...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage [wikipedia.org] - also espionage, not war.
And the Afghan government didn't have involvement with 9/11. They had involvement with not handing over a person the US wanted.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage [wikipedia.org] - also espionage, not war.
That would be an act of war. And this is exactly why it could not possibly happen.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage [wikipedia.org] - also espionage, not war.
And the Afghan government didn't have involvement with 9/11. They had involvement with not handing over a person the US wanted.
Don't whitewash the Taliban. Al Qaeda was an active military partner with the Taliban on Afghan territory - helping fight and recruit against the Northern Alliance. In return, the Taliban provided bases and recruiting for al Qaeda with which they planned and organized their attacks. The Taliban's refusal to hand over al Qaeda members after 9/11 was just theatrics after the fact.
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It is the weapons, not the intended effects that are somewhat new. The US and Israel have essentially admitted that they did this, which implies that they do not think such an attack is a violation of international law. (They had the option of declaring that the attack was not authorized, firing a few people etc - it wouldn't be believed, but it would show that we do not consider this a legal act). I think this is an unfortunate choice for several reasons:
The US currently is in a position of unchallenged
Sorry, not putting any weight on this (Score:2)
TFA is nothing but speculation, and quotes from folks that have bones to pick or are outright, simply known liars. (Iran)
This submission, and green-lighting is more whitewash like we had here last week.
Move along, nothing to see.
China and North Korea anyone? (Score:2)
So, yes, this is relatively without consequences.
Re:United States playing the role of 1941 Japan (Score:5, Informative)
. The U.S. had already been at war against Japan for several years, bombing & killing their soldiers in China
What? No. They had an oil embargo, but that was a peanut response to the occupation and attempted colonization of China, which America was nominal allies with.
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There were U.S. planes striking Japan's supply lines and southern Chinese bases BEFORE Pearl Harbor happened. The U.S. (or more precisely: President Roosevelt) started the aggression first..... nobody should have been surprised that Japan struck back to get revenge.
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The US was actively involved in supporting the nationalist Chinese government (not the communist red army, the group that fled to Taiwan and founded the government of Taiwan) in repelling the Japanese assault. Supplies and planes were ferried from UK controlled India and provided to the Nationalists. There were also US pilots, planes and bombers actively working to destroy Japanese supply lines to assist the nationalists.
Several dozen US service members were killed by the Japanese in mainland China long bef
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Re:United States playing the role of 1941 Japan (Score:5, Informative)
The Flying Tigers were not US Military -- they were a force of trained Pilots who volunteered their service to a non-US Military effort out of a personal interest and as such, took their lives into their own hands -- hence the Blood Chit that the Tigers had tacked to the back of their flight jackets since the US had no significant military presence in the theatre to perform rescue operations on downed pilots and any US forces present were engaged in civilian relief operations and humanitarian roles only.
So no -- the US was not at war with Japan prior to Pearl Harbor.
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>>>So no -- the US was not at war with Japan prior to Pearl Harbor.
A distinction that matters not when you're Japan and your soldiers are getting blown to bits by U.S. airplanes flown by U.S. servicemen by direction of a U.S. general answering to the U.S. president. Next I suppose you'll claim the U.S. was not at war with Iraq in the 1990s (even though we blew-up a lot of them). If you cannot understand that our victims would desire revenge after watching their comrades die, then you must have
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Not to mention that the Flying Tigers were the employees of CAMCO - an American company formed for the purpose of fighting in China, and that permission to resign from US military service to go to work for CAMCO was granted and some individuals later returned to US military service, retaining their rank etc.
CAMCO was a mercenary force effectively, approved by the US president of the time, employing US service personnel to fly aircraft sold by the US government to CAMCO, and apparently paid a bounty for each
Re:United States playing the role of 1941 Japan (Score:4, Informative)
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they were a force of trained Pilots who volunteered their service to a non-US Military effort out of a personal interest and as such, took their lives into their own hands
I find interesting to note that this kind of acts would label you as terrorist, and for a super power like Japan at the time, they would be justified to put the country that trained those freelance dedicated pilots in his own "axe of evil".
That being said, the world was a very different place in the 1940, by those times moral standard, I'm a depraved failure. Context matters ...
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The U.S. froze Japan's assets in June 1940 when Japan entered Northern French Indochina when France was invaded by Germany. When Japan seized the rest of French Indonesia in the summer of 1941, either FDR or Dean Acheson depending on which histories you believe, effectively embargoed Japan's oil supplies in concert with Great Britain. Japan either had to cave to U.S. demands or seize the oil rich Dutch East Indies.
As far as the Japanese were concerned the asset freeze and oil embargo were acts of war and
war preparations (Score:3)
If by "not US Military" you mean "composed of pilots from the United States Army (USAAF), Navy (USN), and Marine Corps (USMC)" (source [wikipedia.org]). And by "civilian relief operations and humanitarian roles only" you mean "trained in Burma before the American entry into World War II with the mission of defending China against Japanese forces" (same source). Then yes, the Flying Tigers were just civilian humanitarians.
While the Flying Tigers first combat was after Pearl Harbor, singling out this fact ignores a lot of Am
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Yes, Japan and the United States both have histories of aggression in controlling others' resources and people. If you're hinting that out of control fascist militaries will typically lead a country to destruction, well, you'd be in good company with (military, industrial, congressional complex) Eisenhower and others.
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And the unshriven and damned proclaim, "Oh my deity give me a Pearl Harbor to inflame the American people to that tipping point even 9/11 could not tip."
Seriously. I don't know what that point is. I don't know how much it will take. I do know that should the US go freaky dark we're all damned and I'm a US citizen and would most likely not survive it.
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I'm confused. In the first paragraph you say the USA is like 1941 Japan, yet in the second you say Japan of 1941 had plenty reason to justify what it did. So in establishing the parallel, you're saying that in the case of Stuxnet/Flame, when viewing the actions of the USA, we're in need of understanding and sympathy for it, and that the USA isn't the primary instigator, but justifiably reacting to hostile action by others (in your comparison, the parallel of 1941 USA being modern Iran). However, from the to