A Senate committee unanimously approved major cybersecurity legislation which would allow Brother O to shut down Internet networks, block incoming Internet traffic from certain countries, and force private websites to comply with broad cybersecurity measures.

Last Thursday the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee agreed to send the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 to the Senate floor for a vote. The Act will create a White House Office of Cyberspace Policy and a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) center to adopt cybersecurity policies related to federal and private sector networks.

The legislation, crafted by Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Tom Carper (D-DE) is aimed at bringing the Internet under the regulatory power of the federal government. Lieberman’s “Kill switch” bill parallels last year’s legislation by Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) granting the government power to disconnect certain websites.

“We need this capacity in a time of war…. for the president to say, ‘Internet service provider, we’ve got to disconnect the American Internet from all traffic coming in from another foreign country, or we have to put a patch on this part of it’.” –Joe (Droopy Dog) Lieberman on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley

Droopy Dog’s “Kill switch” bill would hand Brother O absolute power to shut down the Internet for at least four months without Congressional oversight. His loosely worded bill also gives DHS’ new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) “significant authority” to monitor the “security status” of private websites, ISPs and other U.S. net-related business, and critical internet components in other countries.

“Companies would be required to take part in ‘information sharing’ with the government and certify to the NCCC that they have implemented approved security measures. Furthermore, any company that ‘relies on’ the internet, telephone system or any other part of the U.S. ‘information infrastructure’ would also be ‘subject to command’ by the NCCC under the proposed new law.” — Andy Chalk

Privacy and civil liberties groups fear that Droopy Dog’s “Kill switch” bill would grant Brother O the power to declare a “national cyber-emergency” at his discretion, which could force private Internet service providers and search engines to limit or cut off a whistle-blowing or political site’s connection to the Web for blaming or criticizing the Bread and Circuses administration.

“We have seen through recent history that in an emergency, the Executive Branch will interpret grants of power very broadly.” –Gregory Nojeim, from the Center for Democracy and Technology, a group that promotes Internet freedom

“The way it seems to be worded, the bill could easily represent a threat to free speech.” –Wayne Crews, vice president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute

Droopy Dog is pushing his “Kill switch” bill “at lightning speed” because he says the country’s “economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from … cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.”

“The need for this legislation is obvious and urgent.” –Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT)

“We cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realizes the importance of protecting our cyber resources.” –Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

Ginning up fears to rush legislation helps to mask the “Kill switch” bill’s real purpose, which is to keep the alternative Internet media from exposing the mainstream media propagandists in their whitewashing of government favoritisms, cover-ups, and atrocities. After all, the fear card worked to rush through and hide the real agenda behind the Wallstreet/Automotive industry bailouts, the Porkulus package, and the ObamaCare bill.

Interestingly, the communist Chinese also claim the need to police and censor the Web to maintain security and combat cyber warfare, but the totalitarian government’s real agenda is to silence those who criticize it. It would appear that Droopy Dog, whom Glenn Beck heralds as a man of honor, wants to add a technological iron curtain to quell America’s ambiance.

“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.” –Lieberman told Crowley

First Iran shuts down the Internet to quash a revolution, then Pakistan shuts down Facebook and Google to blackout “Everybody Draw Mohammad Day,” and now members of the U.S. Senate are mimicking communist China’s censorship and coercion policies to stifle Internet media outlets and bloggers who are quickly displacing the statists’ mainstream press organs.

Lieberman, whom Sean Hannity embraces as a friend and a “good guy,” declares his bill is “not a big deal,” and that his critics are over reacting and “intentionally peddling misinformation.” According to the conscience of the Senate, the President already has the authority under the Communications Act to close any facility or station for wire communication, “So I say to my friends on the Internet, relax.”

In the wake of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) floating of the Drudge tax as a way to fund mainstream newspapers and to tax out of existence their competitors in the alternative media, George Orwell’s discernment might be better suited for Lieberman than either Hannity’s or Beck’s.

“Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Lieberman: China Can Shut Down The Internet, Why Can’t We (2:04 Video)

Competitive Enterprise Institute — Lieberman-Collins-Carper Bill Threatens Nation’s Cybersecurity

If “crippling sanctions” are not introduced by Christmas, ”Israel will strike” Iran warned Ephraim Sneh, former Israeli Deputy Defense Minister in a Sunday Times interview.

Sneh told the newspaper that time is running out for Iran and that Israel will fight alone if it must. 

“If we are left alone, we will act alone,” Sneh said.

Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, sent a letter of protest to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moonin in response to Sneh’s remarks.

“There is no explanation for Israel’s continuing threats against Tehran,” Khazaee said.

Khazaee said that Sneh’s remarks were “irresponsible” and that he hoped the UN would take steps against such threats.

A disarmament crusade is not merely “naïve,” it’s a waste of valuable diplomatic energy, chided French President Nicolas Sarkozy following Brother O’s praise for the United Nations Security Council’s resolution calling for a world without nuclear weapons.

“We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions,” Sarkozy said.

American newspapers saw fit to blackout Sarkozy’s mockery of their president’s “naïveté regarding the realities of nuclear technology.” 

Brother O lauded the agreement as a major step in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and beginning multilateral disarmament:

“We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”

Sarkozy saw fit to address Brother O’s obvious myopia and point out the glaring difference between the forest and the trees:  

“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons . . . but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite. Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.

[W]hat good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state [Israel] off the map.”

Sarkozy concluded his derisive remarks with a call for sanctions:

“If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce our own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons.”

Although America’s newspapers chose not to inform the American people of the clash between Presidents Obama and Sarkozy, at least they have been spared from listening to another racism/right-wing conspiracy screed from former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Could the Sudetenland have once again been traded for peace in our time?

Wonder how that came about? Did you notice that GE and Morgan Stanely will soon go to Russia and meet with Putin? Can you say quid pro quo?

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad says Israel will not exist much longer. All the while we and the world allow Iran to pursue its nuclear ambition and Iran supports insurgents in Iraq and Afganistan.

In the background, Chavez confers with Russia, signs oil agreements with China and makes noise about expanding its military. Israel also travels to Russia to plead with them not to provide Iran with advanced air defense systems.

Any idea where all of this might be headed?

Consider that intelligence analysts assess that Iran’s nuclear facilities can be slowed by a military strike but not stopped. That suggests Israel will make their strike decisions knowing that the strike must be broad based and crippling. Wonder what kind of strike the Israelis could have in mind? Given Iran’s retaliation capabilities and the effect such retaliation will have on the world economy, I submit that an Israeli strike will not come in the form of a simple air strike alone. That would be militarily foolish and facilitate Israel’s demise. No, such a strike must be decisive enough to suppress Iran’s military infrastructure. At a minimum, it must take out Iran’s leadership. Like it or not, we will be affected and drawn into the fray.

One more comforting thought to ponder. Do you suppose our lack of border security may have encouraged the installation of myriad sleeper cells to be unleashed in the US as part of any retaliatory scheme? If I were Iran, I cetainly would know I could not play on the same military ball field as the US. Accordingly, I would look to develop a capability to strike hard and deep at my enemy’s infrastructure. I would do this in places where I could significantly hurt their economy and demoralize their society. This would cause my enemy to turn inward to deal with severe economic, social and political disruption. My enemy would be off balance dealing with simultaneous internal and external threats and its power and position in the world community substantially degraded. Imagine the upheaval brought about by major disruptions in the power grid, commuter travel and freight movement. The enemies of my enemy would be free to exploit and improve their power and position.

To say that the ramifications to our economy, given the current deficit and structure of spending priorities, would be serious is an understatement. The economic implications of oil at $200 plus per barrel (if you can get it and do the refining) by itself portends massive and worldwide economic disruption. Where is the manufacturing base needed to support and sustain ourselves in this scenario?

Health care and cap and trade are unimportant distractions. There will be no wealth to redistribute.

Ever since the obviously “fixed” results from last week’s Iranian presidential election declared Ahmadinejad the winner, Iranian students and other Iranian citizens longing for change have been demonstrating their dissatisfaction with the status quo in that country. Thus far Obama’s statements concerning that situation have been pitifully lame, in true keeping with his philosophy of appeasement.  Will our President find the courage and moral fortitude to condemn the oppressive shariah law-inspired Khamenei/Ahmadinejad dictatorship in Iran?  I’m not betting on it.

This is something he can’t blame on his predecessor, like he has everything else that has gone wrong. It all began on his watch, and with his abysmal lack of knowledge and experience in dealing with such a situation, his first reaction is to ignore it and hope it goes away.

After all, Obama was really counting on his charismatic personality to win over the jihadists bent on our destruction. If he managed to hypnotize over half of the U. S. voters into believing he was a messianic savior, why couldn’t he similarly charm the rest of the world with his vague rhetorical jargon? Since he is so fond of Islamic world leaders (kissing up to the king of Saudi Arabia, for example), maybe he thought he could convince them he was the long-awaited 12^th Imam. All indications are that he has the hubris to believe it.

His refusal to call them “terrorists” is so naïve as to be laughable. Iran has been funding and equipping terrorist groups all over the world for years. Ahmadinejad is very open about his intentions to annihilate Israel and the United States, and is rapidly building up the nuclear capability to carry out that threat. As the prophet Jeremiah phrased it, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” You can cozy up to a leopard and call it “kitty, kitty” if you want to, but it’s still going to attack you at the first opportunity.

How I long for George Bush’s moral clarity and strong leadership in accurately identifying the axis of evil and refusing to negotiate with it!  He made me feel safe and protected. Obama makes me feel vulnerable and embarrassed to be part of a country whose leader no longer stands up for the human rights of people trying to rid themselves of oppression.

Who knows what will pan out in the next few days in Iran?  Right now the demonstrators seem to be confined to the Teheran area; if the spirit of rebellion spills out into other towns and villages, it could become a real revolution. Let’s hope that if that occurs, Iran’s military leadership will have the courage to choose the right side.

Iran is ripe for revolution for several reasons. First, the Mullahs have ruled with an iron fist since their coup in 1979, and the meaning of “freedom” has vanished within that country. The human heart longs for liberty, not oppression.

As a direct result of the regime’s bully tactics, several million refugees have left Iran during that thirty-year period.

The country is now suffering from an unemployment rate that is somewhere between 30 and 50 percent.

And the regime does everything possible to suppress communication with the outside world. Video footage seen on television is due to private citizens in that country recording it secretly and then sending it via circuitous transmission to Twitter.

The demonstrators’ signs, in very clearly printed English, are a desperate bid for support from our country and others that still enjoy personal freedoms. Our terrorist-sympathizing, Islam-schmoozing President would be doing the world a service by at least coming out with a statement of support for their efforts to liberate their country from the election-rigging, Mullah-controlled jihadist theocracy.

The world watches as Iranians risk their lives to demonstrate for freedom. Internal politics in Iran have always been turbulent and involve a plethora of competing political factions. In addition to the fractured political landscape, the balance of power has long been complicated by meddling from other nations competing for access to the Persian Gulf oil reserves with money, influence, bribes and promises. So to assign “white hats” and “black hats” in the present upheaval would be overly simplistic. Notwithstanding, the future of Iran hangs in the balance this week. Will they remain a repressive and isolated theocracy, or will they take their place among the modern nations of the world?

Timeline of events

Friday, June 12 — Iranian presidential elections were held. Candidates included

• Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
• Reformist Mir Hossein Mousavi
• Former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Mohsen Rezai
• Chairman of the National Trust Party Mehdi Karroubi

Due to difficulties at some polling locations, polling was extended for four hours to 10PM (1730 GMT).

Saturday, June 13 — Early in the morning Ahmadinejad was declared the winner in a landslide victory. Immediately suspecting fraud, Mousavi supporters demonstrated in the streets of Tehran and set fire to a bus. Here is the crowd on June 13 in Tehran:

Sunday, June 14 — Mousavi called on Iran’s Guardian Council to cancel the election results and to hold new elections. Mousavi supporters continued to demonstrate in Tehran and set fires. Below is a picture of ten Basiji militiamen ganging up on a lone woman protester in Tehran on Sunday.

On Sunday night, the feared Basij militia joined the police in a raid on Tehran University dormitories. Below is night vision video of the raid. You can hear girls screaming in the background.

Monday, June 15 — Mousavi supporters marched in central Tehran. Seven of the demonstrators were killed, according to reports. Demonstrations were also held in the Iranian cities of Orumiyeh, Rasht, Tabriz, and Zahedan. Mousavi supporter Saeed Hajjarian, who formally appealed the result of the election to the Guardian Council, was arrested at his home.

Tuesday, June 16 — Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president who backed Mehdi Karoubi in the election, was arrested in the morning. Tens of thousands of Mousavi supporters marched in northern Tehran, despite a government ban. The Iranian government bussed thousands of Ahmadinejad supporters in from the countryside to stage a counter-demonstration in central Tehran. Below is a picture of the Mousavi rally.

Wednesday, June 17 — Thousands of Mousavi supporters continued to march in central Tehran, and in the cities of Mashhad, Orumiyeh, Rasht, Tabriz, Zahedan, and Zanjan. Riot police attacked the university students — you can hear their batons breaking bones in this video:

Thursday, June 18 — Now wearing black and carrying candles in tribute to those who had already died in the protests, Mousavi supporters silently marched to Imam Khomenei Square in Tehran, where they held vigil and lit their candles as night fell.

Friday, June 19 — Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was the speaker at Friday prayers in the large gathering hall of Tehran University, an open-sided shed with a corrugated metal roof. But his lengthy speech was not religious. It was a detailed political statement about the week long demonstrations, and a firm threat that such demonstrations would no longer be tolerated.

A summary of his main points was sent to us in an email by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and we have posted it here — MEMRI translation of Friday speech. The following videos give his speech in two parts:

 

Summary of the numbers

Eligible voters — app. 46 million
Ballots cast — app. 32 million
(Source.)

Ahmadinejad — 24,527,516
Mousavi — 13,216,411
(Source.)

Results from voters outside Iran only:
Total votes — 234,812
Ahmadinejad — 78,300
Karroubi — 4,647
Rezaei — 3,635
Moussavi — 111,792
(Source.)

Press TV, an English language channel funded by the Iranian government, reported the government approved vote totals from the 28 provinces of Iran and from the diaspora.

Upon learning that the election results were controversial, researchers in the outside world began statistical analyses to apply established models for human voting behavior to the results. Two circumstances supported these endeavors:

1. Farsi language websites published vote totals further broken down into 366 voting districts
2. The results from the 2005 Iranian presidential election were available for the 366 districts, with one of the candidates, Ahmadinejad, being the same, thereby providing baseline data for comparison

Most external observers suspect weighting of some of the totals. See, for example:

• Princeton Election Consortium — Statistical evidence for Iranian election fraud?
• Walter R. Mebane, Jr., University of Michigan — Note on the presidential election in Iran, June 2009
• Tehran Bureau — Faulty Election Data

Professor Mebane’s cautious preliminary conclusion:

In general, combining the first-stage 2005 and 2009 data conveys the impression that while natural political processes significantly contributed to the election outcome, outcomes in many towns were produced by very different processes…. …in more than half of the towns where comparisons to the first-stage 2005 results are feasible, Ahmadinejad’s vote counts are not at all or only poorly described by the naturalistic model. Much more often than not, these poorly modeled observations have vote counts for Ahmadinejad that are greater than the naturalistic model would imply.

The results from the diaspora are questionable on the face of it. There are over one million expatriate Iranians living in the Los Angeles area. Totals for American and European Iranians are estimated at about two million. By their very nature, one would not expect that these populations would yield much support for Ahmadinejad. And they were fired up for this election, with several polling places available to them, six in California alone.

Regime efforts to control information and tech savvy countermeasures

Early on, the regime banned foreign journalists from leaving their offices or hotel rooms, and limited their reports to the outside world to one per day. Into this vacuum of professional coverage, the citizen journalists of Iran exploded via the Internet.

The Iranian government jammed the signal of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Farsi language programming. The BBC reassigned two additional satellites to extend the coverage beyond what could be jammed.

The BBC said it was making its Farsi-language service available on satellite Eutelsat W2M, which it said Iranians could tune into by making a small adjustment to their satellite dishes. The BBC also said the service would soon be available on Egyptian satellite Nilesat….

Likewise, Voice of America has added three more satellite paths to Iran, for a total of five, and keeps transmitting through intermittent jamming. Radio Free Europe is ramping up its satellite program, and using a variety of technical tricks to stream content into Iran, including short wave.

When the Iranian regime began arresting bloggers and shutting down their weblogs, the tech savvy younger generation turned to social networking programs to get their content to the outside world — Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube.

StumbleUpon reported that Tweets about the Iranian elections were coming in at over 221 thousand per hour for the tag #iranelection alone. Iranians were using the short tweet messages to plan protests and rallies, to keep in touch with each other and the outside world when all other communication failed.

What is clear is that the people of our little planet will organise and demonstrate and stand in solidarity together no matter the government of the day. We have seen world leaders buckle for fear of poking Iran the semi sleeping tiger meanwhile the free peoples of the world send millions of messages of support to the Iranian people.

Our world has changed, power in many ways now lies with the people not the governments. Freedom of information and freedom of the message will break down even the thickest walls.

The Iranian government started looking for Twitter accounts based in Tehran to shut down. Bloggers througout the rest of the world reset their place/date stamps on Twitter to Tehran GMT+3:30 so it would look like the whole world was tweeting from Iran.

As the protesters were using their cell phones to plan and coordinate their rallies through text messaging, the government tried to use the cell phone signals to track down and arrest individuals. This tech savvy generation was one step ahead of the regime, however. They were removing the Subscriber Identity Modules, or SIM cards, from their cell phones after each call.

So the Iranian government interrupted the country’s cell phone network to prevent the citizens from getting information to the outside world through that medium. Protesters responded by setting up fax networks with trusted friends in other countries — The Iran Fax Project. A movement to put pressure on the mobile phone providers by not paying phone bills has sprung up — Don’t pay your mobile bill, Just got this message from Iran.

Protesters have published a list of government websites and are inviting people around the world to leave them open in their browsers. With enough traffic overload from the resulting refresh pings, they hope to tie up the government websites and prevent Ahmadinejad and Khamenei from giving information out that way.

Disinformation

The official story from the regime was that Mousavi’s support was mostly among the students in Tehran, and that there was little upheaval in the rest of the country. This picture of Mousavi supporters in Naghshe Jahan Square in Esfehan, one of the biggest city squares in the world, disputes that propaganda.

And it gets better. One astute blogger discovered that the official Iranian news coverage of the Ahmadinejad rally used a picture that had been Photoshopped to fill in the empty places in the crowd. What sharp eyes that fellow has — see below. You can click on the image to open a large copy for closer inspection.

Practical and moral support from the outside world

Official and unofficial support is coming from outside Iran in many ways. Twitter had scheduled routine maintenance during the height of the protests. But at the request of the US State Department, they postponed their scheduled downtime to keep the platform open for the Iranian tweeters.

In a rare show of bipartisan unity, the US House of Representatives voted 405-1 for a resolution that

(1) expresses its support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law;

(2) condemns the ongoing violence against demonstrators by the government of Iran and pro-government militias, as well as the ongoing government suppression of independent electronic communication through interference with the Internet and cell phones; and

(3) affirms the universality of individual rights and the importance of democratic and fair elections.

Within hours, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) introduced a similar bill in the US Senate, which passed at 4:12PM ET Friday afternoon. Not to be outdone by the House, they also passed another resolution introduced by Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-DE) condemning restrictions on the media in Iran.

One woman has started a new weblog urging bloggers around the world to flood the Internet with quotations about peace from the Quran — A New Way to Help Iran. There’s a good idea.

Support for regime may be eroding

On June 17, some members of the Revolutionary Guard posted a letter in Farsi on Blogger. This translation is from Tehran Broadcast:

In the name of God

“A Kingdom may survive with infidelity but will not last with injustice.”

We take God as our witness, that those who believe the National Guard is the leader’s Javidan Guard [reference to Shah’s royal guard] are mistaken. We take God as our witness, that we will not let the blood of the martyrs of the revolution and the imposed war, spilled on the streets and the pastures of this homeland for protecting our freedom, independence and the Islamic republic, be trampled upon by some power hungry exclusionists.

We take God as our witness, in spite of the great danger threatening our lives, that we stand firm against the traitors. Having performed our ablution for martyrdom, we will not let some corrupt and rentier commanders who are wearing the holy Guards’ uniform, slaughter people in a massacre.

We also strongly warn our Basiji brothers to either withdraw from disturbances or hand over their weapons and join the people.

Did you see how the unjustly spilled blood of the butterfly did not let the candle see the dawn?

“We are from God and to God we will return.”

On Friday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gambled all his chips on professing support for Ahmadinejad during Friday prayers at Tehran University. That may be his undoing.

There are reports that some influential clerics and some members of the revolutionary guard are going to the other side, put off by his suggestion that the government would turn against its own citizens. Said one man:

Never have I heard a leader of Islam warn he will kill muslims in his care.

Despite Khamenei’s Friday threat that the demonstrations must end, opposition leaders are said to be planning another demonstration for Saturday (today). Word is being passed around that Mousavi, Khatami and Karoubi will lead a march at 4PM from Enghelab Square to Azadi Square in Tehran for a crucial green protest.

Also despite the Supreme Leader’s warnings, reports coming out of Iran tell of citizens standing on their rooftops and balconies throughout the night shouting “Allahu Akbar!” and “Death to the dictator,” reminiscent of the tactics used in the 1979 revolution that overthrew Shah Reza Pahlavi thirty years ago.

What comes next?

On Friday night, on the eve of the coming green revolution, a young girl made this video against the night backdrop of people shouting from their rooftops, but only her own countrymen could know what she said. The folk at Freedom for My Iran thought the whole world should be able to hear her powerful message, so they translated the audio and provided English subtitles. Watch Where is “here” (Inja Kojast?)

What will this Saturday bring? Will a ruthless crackdown by the government of Iran plunge the country deeper into its isolationist and limiting theocracy, or will the blood of martyrs water the seeds of liberty? As one young man posted on Twitter:

“I have one vote. I gave it to Moussavi. I have one life. I will give it for Freedom.”

Related:

BBC — Timeline: Iran

Reuters — TIMELINE: Iranian election and aftermath

WEBNEVESHT — Mohammad Ali Abtahi’s blog, still online, compelling reading

Mashable — Mindblowing #IranElection Stats

New York Times — City of Whispers

MSNBC — Twitter1, Censors 0

Our electric power grid is vulnerable to missile attack, and Congress is doing nothing about it, according to the author of the book One Second After. The detonation of a small nuclear warhead above the center of the country would create an electromagnetic pulse sufficient to take out the national grid. (Remember what one little surge did in August 2003?)

From the National Review, here’s how it would work:

…one missile, properly targeted, could degrade the electronic grid of the entire continental United States… …even North Korea has weapons capable of doing this…

Rather than target the warhead at land, enemies deliver their payloads from 25 to 300 miles above the Earth’s surface. There, radiation from a nuclear explosion would interact with air molecules to produce high-energy electrons that speed across the earth’s magnetic field as an instantaneous, invisible electromagnetic pulse. Such an explosion would release a pulse strong enough to disrupt power grids, electronic systems and communications over the lower 48.

The United States never has prepared for this threat because experts long assumed it wouldn’t matter. An EMP attack, the theory goes, would come as a precursor to a full-scale nuclear exchange with our Cold War nemesis, the Soviet Union. At that point, the state of the power grid would be the least of our problems.

But today, we must consider a giant electromagnetic pulse (EMP) a significant threat on its own. The congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, calls EMP “one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold our society seriously at risk and might result in defeat of our military forces.” ….

During Bush’s presidency when the EMP commission did its research, United States Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, to which the commission reported. He had this to say:

[EMP is] a major threat to the United States, not only from terrorists but from rogue nations like North Korea.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack over American soil, one of the expert witnesses at the hearing said, is one of only a few ways that America could be essentially defeated by our enemies, terrorist or otherwise. A single nuclear weapon, detonated at the right altitude, would produce an electromagnetic pulse that — depending on its location and size — would knock out power grids and other electrical systems across much of the country, for months if not years.

Few if any people would die right away. But the long-term loss of electricity would essentially bring our society to a halt. Communication would be almost impossible. Powerless refrigerators would leave food rotting in warehouses, marooned by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still operable simply run out of gas (which can’t be pumped without electricity). The unavailability of clean water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention leave the inevitable fires raging unchecked. As we have seen in areas of natural and other disasters, this kind of scenario often results in a fairly rapid breakdown of social order.

Our society has grown so dependent on computer and other electrical systems that we have created our own Achilles’ heel of vulnerability, ironically much more so than less developed nations. Deprived of power in occasional blackouts, we are in many ways helpless. Typically, power is restored relatively quickly, but a large-scale burnout caused by broad EMP attack would create a much more difficult situation. Not only would there be nobody nearby to help, it could take years to replace destroyed equipment. Transformers for regional substations, for example, are huge and are no longer manufactured in the United States (emphasis mine).

Recent missile tests by North Korea and Iran involved trajectories over open water. Average citizens in the western world brushed them off and were not alarmed, because these did not look like the successfully targeted down-range tests we are familiar with. But that is because we always think of missiles as being aimed at a target. If the goal of rogue nations is simply to detonate a nuclear warhead over the continental United States to create an electro-magnetic pulse, then the delivery system only needs lauch and distance capability, not the technological refinement necessary for aiming. Iran declared its last test a success. For their purposes, most likely it was. This is not to say that Israel has no cause for concern, but that we should also.

The book One Second After by William R. Forstchen is fiction. But it is predicated on a very real situation. Its current popularity serves as a wake-up call to a dangerous threat.

Related:

Book website — One Second After

Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack — Website

Report of the Commission — Executive Report, 2004 (PDF)

Report of the Commission — Critical National Infrastructures Report, April 2008 (PDF)

Wall Street Journal — What a Single Nuclear Warhead Could Do

Heritage Foundation — The risk of electromagnetic pulse devastation is greater than ever. Why does Washington dismiss it?

CNN Inside Politics — FBI concerned about threat of terror-induced blackouts.

Wikipedia — Northeast Blackout of 2003

Tail wag: Larry Braden

Iran may have tested a series of nuclear weapons underground. The Israel Insider reported:

Iranian source: “Quake” Saturday was nuclear bomb test
October 28, 2008 at 11:00am

Israel Insider exclusively reports that a seismic event this weekend in southern Iran may in fact have been a massive underground nuclear bomb test. According to the USGS, the tremor measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale took place Saturday night, October 25 just before midnight Iran time, with its epicenter at 26.70°N, 55.02°E, just north of the strategic straits of Hormuz, opposite Abu Dhabi.

The claim that the tremor was in fact a nuclear test came from an Iranian nuclear scientist who claims to be working in uranium enrichment for the project. A report published by Israel Insider on Friday, October 24 included a captionless map that portrayed the area of the seismic event that occurred the following night, based on location information previously provided by the Iranian source.

Israel Insider’s source reports that the test is in fact the second in a series. A 4.8 Richter scale event occurred on October 21 with an epicenter (26.70N, 54.96E) within 5 km (3 miles) of the October 25 tremor.

Israeli and foreign sources have long speculated that Iran has been in possession of ready nuclear bombs but would only begin testing them when a full production line for nuclear weapons is in place.

The source indicated that Iran is being assisted by China and North Korea. Israel Insider’s Iranian source reports that two “nuclear rockets” have been completed and are intended for use against the Jewish State in the coming months.

The site of the test and the development facility are believed to be in close proximity. The location appears to have been carefully selected. The area is exposed to significant seismic activity, which could serve to mask nuclear tests, although the recent spike in activity in that specific area significantly deviates from historical trends. A tremor measuring 6.2 struck the area on September 10, 2008 (its epicenter was 80km or 50 miles due west), the largest seismic event in the area in more than 33 years.

The location on the Persian Gulf near the straits of Hormuz would also facilitate delivery and transport of material and personnel. the strategic importance of the immediate area may also be intended to deter potential strikes against the facilities, which could close down the flow of a substantial percentage of the world’s oil.

There has been NOTHING in the mainstream media about this. Perhaps they think it would help the McCain/Palin ticket!

T. Boone Pickens, who favors a comprehensive energy development plan including extensive wind farm installations, prepared a TV ad warning of Iran’s strategy to leverage the US through oil sales. Today he tells us via email that NBC won’t air the ad:

NBC is refusing to run one of our strongest ads, and I need your help in showing NBC they can’t control what we can or cannot say.

The 15-second ad talks about how the government of Iran is making a MAJOR effort to use natural gas in their vehicles so they can free up $120 a barrel oil to sell to us while we are doing nothing….

View the ad below. Let’s give it some legs.

 

If you want to get involved, visit Pickens Plan and indulge in a little activism.

Today in Israel, President Bush said attempting to appease terrorists is foolhardy, indicating such moves never have worked, and never will work, because Muslim radicals have declared unconditional war.

In their eyes, the only path to peace is our unconditional surrender.

Sen. Obama wants to partner with “moderate” Islam, pull out of Iraq, and combine military, police, foreign aid and diplomatic action to conquer terrorism.

Both the President and Sen. Obama are wrong because they wrongly assess Islam overall.

We underestimate the enemy by saying only radical Muslims fight us. The truth is, the entire Islamic world stands opposed to the West, and the entire Islamic world is driving global violence toward the goal of world domination.

If you disagree, fine, but read on and examine the evidence.

We have debated what to do about terrorism since that day in 1972 when five Palestinian Arab terrorists murdered eleven Israeli athletes at the Olympics in Germany.

Since then, Islamic terrorists have executed thousands of attacks worldwide killing millions of innocent men, women and children, and injuring millions more. If you doubt these figures, consider the almost one million killed in Sudan alone. In Iran, they teach little children to be suicide bombers. Increasingly women and the mentally retarded are used for suicide attacks.

In the last two months, there have been 300 attacks worldwide resulting in about 1,600 deaths, and thousands of injuries (source).

Note the perspectives of Michael F. Scheuer, the founding head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, delivered last August:

“Obama and all the other candidates in the other parties constantly say that ‘we have tried the military option and it does not work.’ This of course is a bald lie; U.S. military power has been used most daintily in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the military power we have delivered in both places so far is the best we can do, then American taxpayers have been monumentally swindled in the amount of taxes they have paid for their military during the past 25 years. And another billion dollars for aid for Afghan reconstruction would just be another billion wasted. It appears that Obama and his fellow candidates in both parties have not learned that programs for economic recovery, internal stability, and nation-building cannot be started with any hope of effectiveness and durability until the enemy has been definitively annihilated. If Obama is right and the military option has failed, then more aid is just throwing money away because – as all can see – the enemy is growing in size and ferocity and shows no signs of being on the edge of annihilation.”

Note the remarks of Newt Gingrich lent almost a year ago, saying he is deeply worried, because Iran will get nuclear weapons and use them, and we in the West are asleep, lazy, unprepared and unwilling to defend ourselves — Modern road to White House ‘verges on insane,’ says Gingrich.

Still not convinced? Watch, and weep — ISLAM: WHAT THE WEST NEEDS TO KNOW.

This is by far the most important issue facing Americans, and all freedom loving people everywhere. Global Islamic revolution is upon us. It is growing. It will prevail unless we take a comprehensive, systematic, aggressive stance not only to oppose it, but to destroy it.

The future security of the entire world depends on who becomes President in November, and whether or not the West rediscovers its courage.