La guerra cibernetica del Pentagono!!!! (en ingles)

Machetera:
Yoani Sánchez: Pentagon babe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Yoani Sánchez: Pentagon babe!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


May 8, 2009 · 12 Comments


Rosa Miriam Elizalde has finally pointed out what never occurs to Time magazine or Grupo Prisa. Or maybe it has occurred to them – they just can’t bring themselves to admit it. That blog by the blocked Cuban blogger/whiner ain’t no ordinary blog. Lots o’ cash behind it.

There are other translations of this floating around on the Internet. Just not as good.
Cyber-command and Cyber-dissidents, More of the Same

Rosa Miriam Elizalde
English Translation: Machetera
Havana – The news has gone around the world. The Obama administration is putting the final touches on a new cyberspace army. First the Wall Street Journal and then the New York Times reported that the objective of this cyber-command is to guarantee the security of U.S. military computer networks threatened by the intrusion of hackers, particularly those linked to countries such as China and Russia.
Victims are being offered a single pill in which to swallow the fantasy of an external enemy and the details of the homicidal weapon used to kill it (a cyber-command that will keep watch over the planet and eventually enter into action). As Tom Burghardt, of Global Research [1] put it, the United States is using the subterfuge of cyber-security as a pretext for cyber-war, a project forged by the North American hawks before September 11, 2001 and one that began to come together in 2003, when a secret document [2] signed by Donald Rumsfeld, the ex-Secretary of Defense, was leaked, in which the order was given to create this special Command.
Since then, the military has been greasing the arsenal in order to hack into servers, engage in internet espionage, buy cyber-mercenaries, attack laws in order to criminalize citizens in the name of the war on terrorism, twist the arms of telecommunications companies and even launch – in March of 2003, in Iraq – an electronic bomb, which disabled all electronic systems at once.
The unprecedented thing then was not the creation of this army, but the actions of electronic warfare, which previously were split among 10 Pentagon operations and other centers of intelligence, as well as the Air Force, which began to function in a single direction, in order to extend Bush’s holy war – “Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” – not only against countries but against businesses, groups and individuals who would begin to be hunted like rabbits via the great nervous system of the global era.
For some bureaucratic reason that has not been revealed, the shadowy National Security Agency (NSA) is in charge of the Cyberspace Command. However, in 2003, the Cyberspace Command was introduced under the umbrella of the Air Force and would become an independent army in October, 2008, with a $2 billion operational budget for its first year.
Air Force General Robert Elder, who in November of 2006 was head of the Command, explained the reason for this new offensive deployment in cyberspace, at a press conference: “The cultural change is that we’re going to treat it [cyberspace] as a warfighting domain, and we’re going to actually focus attention and put priority on doing things in cyberspace,” he said.
In fact there’s nothing new, either in the Command or the self-promotion of the new Pentagon head who follows the same path as his predecessors in the Bush administration, nor in the offensive launched by the warlords. It’s the same strategic version for repression and subversion that the U.S. government has been implementing for decades, simply re-calibrated for a new era; the information era, whose spinal column is the Internet.

Get Out of the Way, That’s My Spot
USA Today realized in March of 2007 that one of the favored strategies of cyber-war was already in practice: [4] pirate attacks against Internet sites that bothered the Bush administration, for which the Air Force’s Investigation Laboratory had $40 million dollars to spend.
But since then, the jewel in this offensive was the concentration on the creation of websites and cyber-dissidents putting forward the rhetoric of liberation for the North American troops in order to justify their bellicose actions.
This same publication realized some time later, in May of 2008, that the Pentagon “is creating a worldwide network of foreign language news websites, including a site in Arabic for Iraqis, and it hired local journalists in order to write stories on current events and other features that might promote the interests of the United States and messages against insurgents.” [5]
The daily added that “The news sites are part of a Pentagon initiative to expand ‘Information Operations’ on the Internet.” It reported that websites built by the Pentagon included the Iraqi www.mawtani.com, the Balkan portal www.setimes.com and www.magharebia.com, for the Maghreb region.
What was the common denominator for all these publications, according to USA Today?

• They were written by local journalists hired to write stories in line with the Pentagon’s objectives.
  
• Military personnel or contractors edit the stories to make sure they are compatible with these objectives.
  
• The journalists are paid for their published stories.
  

And of course, the sites are highly discreet, in order to conceal the web hosters and domain registries, as well as the money trail for the payment of translators, journalists and technical personnel. USA Today announced the preparation of similar websites for Latin America, in particular, a portal that would be managed by the Southern Command, whose name and characteristics would remain anonymous.
Strange Coincidences
A simple exercise in comparing the domain registries for these websites revealed by USA Today, and another which enjoyed a fair amount of publicity in the first months of 2008, reveals the following results:
Domain Name: setimes.com
Date Created: 1 Oct. 2002
Expiration Date: 1 Oct. 2009
Last Update: 2008-08-05
Server name:
dns1.carpathiahost.com
dns2.carpathiahost.com
IP address: 66.117.39.197
IP location: Unknown server, Virginia, USA
Domain registered to: Domains by Proxy, Inc. GODADDY.COM, INC
Domain Name: magharebia.com
Date Created: 2004-10-13
Expiration Date: 2010-10-13
Last Update: 2006-07-17
Server name:
dns1.carpathiahost.com
dns2.carpathiahost.com
IP address: 66.117.39.197
IP location: Unknown server, Virginia, USA
Domain registered to: Domains by Proxy, Inc. GODADDY.COM, INC
Domain Name: mawtani.com
Date Created: 2007-08-16
Expiration Date: 2010-08-16
Last Update: 2006-07-28
Server name:
ns53.domaincontrol.com
ns54.domaincontrol.com
IP address: 193.179.58.35
IP location: U-turn A.s Ustecky Kraj, Czech Republic
Domain registered to: Domains by Proxy, Inc. GODADDY.COM, INC
Domain Name: mawtani.com
Date Created: 2003-09-8
Expiration Date: 2009-09-8
Last Update: 2008-7-4
Server name:
ns1.bluehost.com
ns2.bluehost.com
IP address: 69.89.26.116
IP location: Orem, Utah (USA) Bluehost Inc.
Domain registered to: Domains by Proxy, Inc. GODADDY.COM, INC
Another common element, not revealed by USA Today, is that the domains are in the hands of the GoDaddy domain registry, which characterizes itself as offering these services to preserve the anonymity of the buyer. It charges a premium for this of course. The owner of and sole investor in this company is Bob Parsons, an enormously rich ex-Marine and Vietnam vet and enthusiastic defender of extreme methods for “softening up” terrorists. [6]
GoDaddy has a long history of closing sites belonging to its clients without previous notification, and like other North American domain registries, it cannot offer registrations to businesses or people linked to countries which appear on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) blacklist. Cuba is on the list.
Electronic commerce or the sending of remittances is prohibited by OFAC. In fact in March of 2007, the U.S. government, through OFAC [7] ordered the closing of 80 web sites belonging to a foreign tour operator whose owner lives in Spain and does business in the U.K. Without further notice, the ENOM registry blocked 80 domain names belonging to this tour operator, including some sites dedicated to purely cultural exchange, such as www.cuba-hemingway.com.
However, GoDaddy, which also has legal orders to close domains linked with Cuba and does so without a second thought, maintains a supposed Cuban website for the rock group Porno para Ricardo. It’s a rabidly anti-governmental group, and money can be sent through the website to “buy musical instruments” for its members. The Cuban-ness of the website is suspect, because like others dedicated to Internet propaganda against the Cuban government, it’s not administered on the island, its servers are not in Cuban territory, it doesn’t use Cuban domains, its owners don’t appear to be in the Caribbean, and the sophisticated administrative tools and services offered at this website – with its payment gateway and electronic money transfer via credit cards – could not possibly be administered by a truly independent Cuban journalist without Washington’s political support and financing.
Add to this the overwhelming publicity campaign for this and other sites for “dissident” Cubans in Internet search engines, a campaign that also cannot be done from Cuba. Google won’t allow it, out of compliance with the marching orders of the U.S. blockade against Cuba. In other words, if no-one here in Cuba can use a credit card to carry out a publicity campaign using Google Adwords [8], will the directors of the famous search engine help track the money as it courses through the Internet, promoting these kinds of websites and creating the stars of worldwide cyber-dissidence?

Cyber-Dissidents
Military academics offer another extremely important variable in the information war waged on the Internet. In order to turn prejudices into real facts, they should be filtered through a personal perspective, preferably accompanied by pictures and other evidence which prove that the witness can be found where the story takes place.
Military Review,[9] the Pentagon’s official magazine, has dedicated extensive analysis to the importance of blogs and cyber-dissidents in this strategy. They serve to offer a face and anecdote to a rhetoric that corresponds to the political designs of the North American military for each region in conflict, particularly those where Internet use is on the rise.
Just as they themselves have built websites, the experts in the information war have created cyber-dissidents a la carte. A very controversial case was that of the Iraqi blogger Salam Pax, who during the U.S. invasion was mysteriously able to keep his anti-Saddam and anti-Bush blog running. There’s evidence of suspicious cyber-dissidents in Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam, Iran, and Syria.
In regard to Cuba, the meteoric rise of the blogger Yoani Sánchez comes to mind, meeting as she does, all the conditions required by the Pentagon experts. The design of her blog follows various fallacies: the name of the host site: www.desdecuba.com suggests that all its Internet connection efforts come from Cuba. However, the server is hosted in Germany, registered to Josef Biechele – who is this man? Why does she never mention this generous sponsor? She enjoys administrative resources that are not within the reach of any ordinary blogger, much less a Cuban one, who does not have the local administrative resources for a blog and must put up with an extremely slow connection in order to connect with international blogging platforms such as Blogger and others.
The technical support for this site, which is dedicated practically exclusively to her blog is a custom configuration, that at current market prices costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The marketing strategy, through Google and other digital and traditional media is major league.
The blog’s content is manipulative. The blogger calls for demonstrations using Twitter, social networks and other versions of Internet 2.0 that are barely used in Cuba, a country with extremely limited bandwidth and weak Internet facilities, because for one thing, its entire Internet connection is via satellite. The U.S. blockade has prohibited Cuba from accessing electronic commerce and digital technologies via an undersea cable, for more than a decade. Those in Cuba who connect at a rate of 30-40 Kbps can barely manage to check their email and dedicate themselves to priorities that are light years away from Yoani’s die-hard negativism.
To whom then, does this woman who obviously has no readers in Cuba, speak? Is she speaking to the Cubans or to an audience outside Cuba, bombarded by a prejudiced discourse that she is trying to highlight? Is her objectivity guaranteed by the fact that she is privileged to be here?
She claims to be apolitical, not committed to any system, and yet, the description that the creators of her blog use to identify her site say that www.desdecuba.com is a “Politically independent magazine. It offers a view different from that offered by the Cuban government.” Among her scribblings, the worn-out political theses used over the years by the State Department to put Cuba on all the blacklists, seasoned by a 1950’s esthetic and the stereotype of Havana in ruins, are ways of giving the worst possible impression in the least space possible.
Lately she hasn’t even bothered to hide her ultra-rightwing excesses, something that surely must be catching the attention of her handlers, since it is far from the role she is supposed to play. It’s becoming more a blog that Luis Posada Carriles [10] might write, rather than one that might be expected from a pacifist blogger, a likely candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. For example, a post dedicated to the “night of the long knives that will befall the island” adheres explicitly to the license to kill attitude that comes out of Miami every now and then:

People waiting, with a stick or a knife under the bed, for the day that they can use them. Entrenched hatred against those who ratted them out, who denied them a better job or prevented their youngest child from studying at the university. There are so many waiting for the possible chaos that would give them the time necessary for revenge, that one would wish not to have been born at this time, when one can only be a victim or victimized, when so many yearn for the night of the long knives. (Yoani Sánchez, April 24, 2009)

If the logic of the North American strategy is followed, the face that anti-Cuban discourse has today – whether that of a woman or anyone else – is the least important element. She and those who will follow are preparing the terrain for an escalation that allows them to continue to impose their pre-determined point of view on an audience of more than a billion Internet users who get their most of their information there. As well, it is a way of winning space to influence Cubans who because of the development and efforts to educate thousands of children and teenagers in digital technology, will be increasingly connected to the Internet.
The strategy of using the Internet for political intervention has been underway for at least five years, with a crescendo in recent months, culminating with the recent measures announced by the Obama administration. He inherited from Bush the decision to redirect financing for subversion against Cuba in the arena of telecommunications. That this announcement was nothing new was confirmed in the piece published by Paul Richter on May 7, 2008 in the Los Angeles Times: [11]

“U.S. Agency for International Development, which oversees the program, is trying to persuade Central European and Latin American nongovernmental groups to join U.S. organizations in applying for its grants. A chief goal, officials say, is to spend most of the $45-million budget on communications equipment, such as cellphones and Internet gear, that possibly could be smuggled into Cuba to increase its people’s exposure to the outside world.”

Could part of these funds have been allocated to technical support and the disproportionate marketing of Cuban “cyber-dissidence”? Which European institutions are receiving this U.S. government money? Did the Spanish Prisa group’s prize for the Cuban blogger come out of this? Is it coincidence that Prisa, Yoani’s main marketer in Europe also owns Noticias 24, the Venezuelan opposition blog that is the most aggressive against Chávez?
Whatever the answer is, there’ll be more of the same. Not the Cyberspace Command, nor the Internet, nor the prefabricated cyber-dissdents, nor the politically designed collaboration meant to annihilate Cuba’s government.
[1] Burghardt, Tom (2009): “The Pentagon’s Cyber Command: Formidable Infrastructure arrayed against the American People”. En Global Research, April 26, 2009. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13354
[2] Rumsfeld, Donald (2003): Information Operations Roadmap, United-States National Security Archive, October 30, 2003. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/info_ops_roadmap.pdf (PDF 2,3 Mb)
[3] Wood, Sara (2006) “New Air Force Command to Fight in Cyberspace.” American Forces Press Service. U.S. Department of Defense, November 3, 2006.
[4] Michaels, Jim (2007): “U.S. Military Beefs Up Internet Arsenal.” USA Today, March, 28, 2007.
[5] Eisler, Peter (2008): “Pentagon launches foreign news websites.” USA Today, May 1, 2008.
[6] In June of 2005, Parsons generated a huge controversy when he stated in his blog that the U.S. interrogation methods being used at Guantánamo “are incredibly mild. All of the prisoners receive regular medical attention.” Parsons, Bob (2005): “Close Gitmo? No Way,” June 19, 2005
[7] The so-called Torricelli Law or Authorization and National Defense Law for fiscal year 1992 authorized Cuba to connect to the Internet via satellite, with the condition that every megabyte would have to be purchased from U.S. businesses or their subsidiaries and approved by the Treasury Department. It established limits on these contracts and set extraordinary sanctions – fines of $50,000 for each violation – for those who facilitated either within or outside the United States, electronic commerce or the slightest economic benefit to Cuba. This has been rigorously applied and little by little, OFAC has gone about expanding the blacklist like crazy. In April of 2004, OFAC informed Congress that of its 120 employees, four had been assigned to track the finances of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, while almost two dozen were assigned to enforce the blockade against Cuba. It admitted that the Internet was used as a fundamental source to follow payments. In Obama’s recent announcements [on Cuba policy] the subject of electronic financial transfers was not even mentioned. In other words, here as well, the blockade remains intact.
[8] Google Adwords is a way for Google to sell advertising under its control. They are ads which come up as relevant to whatever search is being done by the user. For example, if the user looks for “Cuba” on the right hand side or above the indexed pages, there will be ads referencing “Cuba.” Google charges the advertiser for each click on the ad.
[9] There are numerous examples in this magazine theorizing about the war of information and the use of so-called new technologies. Recommended reading: “Partnering with the Iraqi media” Military Review, July/August 2008. http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/JulAug08/DeCarvalhoEngJulAug08.pdf
[10] Luis Posada Carriles, Cuban-born Venezuelan citizen. An admitted terrorist, responsible for the downing of a civilian airliner which killed 73 passengers, as well as a series of bombs that exploded in Cuban hotels during the 1990’s and killed an Italian tourist. Posada Carriles lives in Miami.
[11] Richter, Paul (2008): “Cuba USAID Program Gets Overhaul” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2008. http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/07/world/fg-uscuba7
Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and reviser are cited. This article is also available at Tlaxcala.



Categories: A "free" press? It would be a good idea! · Cuba
Tagged: black propaganda, blocked cuban blogger, cyberspace command, fake blogs, fake websites, internet access in cuba, josef biechele, salam pax

YOANI SANCHEZ !!!! PENTAGON BEBE

ROSA MIRIAM ELIZALDE FINALMENTE APUNTO' , LO QUE NUNCA SE LE OCURRIO' A LA REVISTA TIME O AL GRUPO PRISA, O TAL VEZ SE LES OCURRIO' A ELLOS, PERO NUNCA PUDIERON ADMITIRLO.
ESE BLOG BLOQUEADO, "" EL BLOG CUBANO/GANADOR, NO ES UN BLOG ORDINARIO, HAY MUCHO DINERO DETRAS DE 'EL.

HABANA- LA NOTICIA ES MUNDIAL, LA ADMINISTRACION OBAMA, LE ESTA' PONIENDO LOS TOQUES FINALES AL NUEVO "" EJERCITO CIBERNETICO.""
PRIMERO EL " WALL STREET JOURNAL" Y LUEGO EL "' NEW YORK TIME' REPORTARON QUE EL OBJETIVO DE ESTE COMANDO CIBERNETICO, ES PARA GARANTIZAR LA SEGURIDAD DE ESTADOS UNIDOS,"" LAS REDES DE COMPUTADORAS MILITARES, AMENAZADAS POR LAS ENTRADAS DE " HACKERS" PARTICULARMENTE AQUELLAS VINCULADAS A PAISES COMO CHINA Y RUSIA""
A LAS VICTIMAS, LES ESTAN OFRECIENDO UNA PILDORA POR LA CUAL "' TRAGAN" LA FANTASIA DE UN ENEMIGO EXTERNO Y LOS DETALLES DE UN ARMA HOMICIDA, USADA PARA ASESINAR.
UN COMANDO CIBERNETICO QUE VIGILA EL PLANETA Y EVENTUALMENTE ENTRARA' EN ACCION"" COMO LO EXPLICA TOM BURGHARDT
INVESTIGADOR GLOBAL]

ESTADOS UNIDOS ESTA' USANDO LA SEGURIDAD CIBERNETICA COMO PRETEXTO PARA LA " GUERRA CIBERNETICA", UN PROJECTO OLVIDADO ANTES DE SEPTIEMBRE 11 DE 2001, QUE RECOMENZO' EN EL 2003, CUANDO UN DOCUMENTO SECRETO FUE' REVELADO, FIRMADO POR DONALD RUMSFELD, EX SECRETARIO DE DEFENSA, EN EL CUAL , LA ORDEN ERA, CREAR 'ESTE COMANDO ESPECIAL.
DESDE ENTONCES, LOS MILITARES HAN ESTADO ENGRASANDO EL ARSENAL, " HAKEANDO" SERVERS, ESPIANDO EL INTERNET, COMPRANDO
MERCENARIOS CIBERNETICOS, CREANDO LEYES PARA CRIMINALIZAR A LOS CIUDADANOS, EN NOMBRE DE LA GUERRA CONTRA EL TERRORISMO; TORCIENDOLE LOS BRAZOS A LAS COMPAÑIAS DE TELECOMUNICACIONES Y HASTA LANZANDO UNA BOMBA ELECTRONICA, QUE APAGO' TODOS LOS SISTEMAS ELECTRONICOS IRAKIES A LA VEZ.

EL ECHO, SIN PRECEDENTES, NO FUE' LA CREACION DE 'ESTE NUEVO EJERCITO, SINO LAS ACCIONES DE LA GUERRA ELECTRONICA, LA CUAL PREVIAMENTE FUE' DISEMINADA EN 10 OPERACIONES DEL PENTAGONO Y OTROS CENTROS DE INTELIGENCIA, COMO LA FUERZA AEREA, QUE COMENZO' A FUNCIONAR EN UNA DIRECCION: EXTENDER LA GUERRA " SAGRADA" DE BUSH
""" ESTAN CON NOSOTROS, O ESTAN CON LOS TERRORISTAS"""
EXTENDIENDOSE CONTRA NEGOCIOS, GRUPOS E IDENTIDADES, QUE COMENZARON A SER " CAZADOS COMO CONEJOS, VIA EL SISTEMA
NERVIOSO DE LA ERA GLOBAL.

POR ALGUNA RAZON BUROCRATICA, QUE NO HA SIDO REVELADA, LA AGENCIA DE SEGURIDAD NACIONAL [ NSA] ESTA' A CARGO DEL COMANDO CIBER ESPACIAL, AUNQUE EN EL 2003, FUE' INTRODUCIDO BAJO LA SOMBRILLA DE LA FUERZA AEREA,PERO SE CONVIRTIO' EN UN EJERCITO INDEPENDIENTE EN OCTUBRE DE 2008., CON DOS BILLONES DE DOLARES EN COSTO OPERACIONAL, EN SU PRIMER AÑO.
EL GENERAL DE LA FUERZA AEREA, TOBERT ELDER, QUIEN EN NOVIEMBRE DEL 2006, ERA EL COMANDANTE EN JEFE, ESPLICO' LA RAZON DE LA NUEVA OFENSIVA, EN UNA CONFERENCIA DE PRENSA "" LOS CAMBIOS CULTURALES SON LOS QUE TRATAREMOS EN 'ESTA GUERRA GLOBAL Y ENFOCAREMOS NUESTRA ATENCION Y PRIORIDADES EN 'ESTO"""" DIJO. ???????????

DE ECHO, NO ES NADA NUEVO, NI EL COMANDO NI EN LAS NUEVAS PRIORIDADES DEL PENTAGONO, QUE SIGUEN LOS MISMOS PASOS DE SUS ANTECESORES EN LA ADMINISTRACION BUSH, ES LA MISMA ESTRATEGIA , EN UNA NUEVA VERSION DE REPRESION A LA SUBVERSION, QUE EL GOBIERNO ESTADO UNIDENSE, VIENE IMPLEMENTANDO POR DECADAS, SIMPLEMENTE, RECALIBRADO, A LA NUEVA ERA DE LA INFORMACION, CUYA COLUMNA VERTEBRAL, ES EL INTERNET.