Replies to post #216621 on $Stock*Shop*Charts*News*Option$

[Stock Lobster]

Thanks Lindy. I know the argument she was presenting, but I have a few issues with it. One is that it's about 7 years too old. China will very shortly no longer need 'complicated' US exports, because they already have much of that technology ...and whatever they don't have, Europe or Israel are glad to supply them with

(China has also been practicing industrial espionage on US high tech corporations for years, and has recently begun hacking into Pentagon and DoD computers)

In addition, even if Boeing continues to get orders from China in the near future, that may benefit the CEO and top directors of Boeing, but it fails to 'trickle down' to wages for workers. At best, it may benefit shareholders of Boeing stock.

The argument that americans can somehow re-tool ourselves to compete with workers making 1/6 our salary in Pakistan is one I've heard before, and find worthless. I know it's meant to make americans feel better, but it's about as valid as telling laid off Detroit workers in 1995 that all they had to do was learn computers in order to get a new higher paying job in the 'new economy'.

I seem to recall that almost as soon as those people learned programming, or how to answer tech questions over the phone, those jobs were already being outsourced to India. Fooled again.

Re your other point, I think no one addresses the question about what happens to millions of poor or undereducated americans, because there is no plan for them, unless it involves military service.

The truth remains that manufacturing is producing to over capacity around the world, and due to technologial breakthroughs, employing fewer and fewer workers. The result is that worldwide we have a glut of workers. There is no way around that. In the longer run, wages will have to fall. I wish it weren't the case, but unless there is a sharp decrease in global population, it seems inevitable.

I also strongly disagree with Meredith that the Chinese government is no longer communist. I believe they are a communist government going through a capitalist phase for reasons of their own, but one need only watch their activities vis-a-vis our military, their attitude towards internal dissenters,even the Dali Lama, to see that they have hardly embraced democracy except on the surface. If the CCP weren't dominant in China, why would they care whether our congress made a token gesture to a religious leaader? Why are they so worried about Falun Gong, or any display of religion? Are there open elections in China and a true chance of displacing the CCP as the governing body which decides Chinese national party? I don't think so...nor is it likely to develop. The myth of Chinese democracy is a lie US business likes to tell itself in order to rationalize pouring billions of dollars into establishing Chinese businesses, but I feel they are indulging in dangerous self-delusion.

The same is true in Russia where Putin is now stoking Stalinist nostalgia (which still mystifies me) and setting himself up as Czar for life. He may get it too. I never once thought that communism in Russia was dead...only sleeping. (I have always seen 'Communism' as really another word for totalitarianism one party governments and both China and Russia are still far closer to totalitarian rule than democracies, and both still view the United States as their enemy and rival.

The world is headed towards a massive military confrontation, and it isn't with terrorists armed with pipeboms. I believe it will be between the US, China and Russia, as our economies compete for the same scarce resouces.

The US is also at risk of financial instability. It is at a dangerous crossroad - losing it's economic pre-eminence, while maintaining it's vast military supremacy. What do threatened military governments do? There are many examples from history that suggest the most likely scenario.

China has ambitions to be the world's dominant power, and is sensing weakness in America's current financial plight. She has a ready ally in Russia, who is eager to regain their Soviet era power....

History suggests that these are the conditions which created the greatest risk of sudden military confrontations as nations attempt to use economic crises to realign global power dynamics.

I guess that the only upside to the scenario I sense developing, is that it would put a swift end to our 'just in time' economy which depends on cheap imports from developing countries which may or may not align with us during any serious confrontation. This might force us to re-think moving our manufacturing base overseas...

Depends on other factors, tho, and given all of the strange bedfellows which have emerged in recent years, it is hard to forecast what could happen.

But that there will be a confrontation between China and the United States within the next 5-10 years, of that I'm fairly certain...if not sooner.

[Stock Lobster]

"Are there open elections in China and a true chance of displacing the CCP as the governing body which decides Chinese national party?"

I meant to write 'which decides Chinese national policy'

sometimes typing so fast, I trip over words

Also is pipebombs, not pipebom..lol

[Stock Lobster]

FCW 2/13: Chinese hackers attack 'anything and everything'

BY Josh Rogin
Published on Feb. 13, 2007

_____________________________________________________

Related Links

Attack by Korean hacker prompts Defense Department cyber debate

Cartwright: Cyber warfare strategy ‘dysfunctional’

China is suspected of hacking into Navy site

China a major cyberthreat, commission warns

_____________________________________________________


NORFOLK, Va. -- At the Naval Network Warfare Command here, U.S. cyber defenders track and investigate hundreds of suspicious events each day. But the predominant threat comes from Chinese hackers, who are constantly waging all-out warfare against Defense Department networks, Netwarcom officials said.

Attacks coming from China, probably with government support, far outstrip other attackers in terms of volume, proficiency and sophistication, said a senior Netwarcom official, who spoke to reporters on background Feb 12. The conflict has reached the level of a campaign-style, force-on-force engagement, he said.

“They will exploit anything and everything,” the senior official said, referring to the Chinese hackers’ strategy. And although it is impossible to confirm the involvement of China’s government, the attacks are so deliberate, “it’s hard to believe it’s not government-driven,” the official said.

The motives of Chinese hackers run the gamut, including technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD networks for future action, the official said.

A recent Chinese military white paper states that China plans to be able to win an “informationized war” by the middle of this century. Overall, China seeks a position of power to ensure its freedom of action in international affairs and the ability to influence the global economy, the senior official said.

Chinese hackers were responsible for an intrusion in November 2006 that disabled the Naval War College’s network, forcing the college to shut down its e-mail and computer systems for several weeks, the official said. Forensic analysis showed that the Chinese were seeking information on war games in development at NWC, the official said.

NWC was vulnerable because it was not part of the Navy Marine Corps Intranet and did not have the latest security protections, the official explained. He said this was indicative of the Chinese strategy to focus on weak points in the network.

China has also been using spear phishing, sending deceptive mass e-mail messages to lure DOD users into clicking on a malicious URL, the official said. China is also using more traditional hacking methods, such as Trojan horse viruses and worms, but in innovative ways.

For example, a hacker will plant a virus as a distraction and then come in “slow and low” to hide in a system while the monitors are distracted. Hackers will also use coordinated, multipronged attacks, the official added.

Chinese hackers gained notoriety in the United States when a series of devastating intrusions, beginning in 2003, was traced to a team of researchers in Guangdong Province. The program, which DOD called Titan Rain, was first reported by Federal Computer Week in August 2005. Following that incident, DOD renamed the program and then classified the new name.

That particular set of hackers is still active, the Netwarcom official said. He would not confirm whether the Titan Rain group was linked to the NWC attack or any other recent high-profile intrusions.

Other senior military officials have spoken out recently on U.S. cyber strategy, saying the country urgently needs to develop new policies and procedures for fighting in the cyber domain.

Current U.S. cyber warfare strategy is dysfunctional, said Gen. James Cartwright, commander of the Strategic Command (Stratcom), in a speech at the Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla., last week. Offensive, defensive and reconnaissance efforts among U.S. cyber forces are incompatible and don’t communicate with one another, resulting in a disjointed effort, Cartwright said.

Gen. Ronald Keys, commander of Air Combat Command, told reporters at the conference that current policies prevent the United States from pursuing cyberthreats based in foreign countries. Technology has outpaced policy in cyberspace, he said.

The United States should take more aggressive measures against foreign hackers and Web sites that help others attack government systems, Keys said. It may take a cyber version of the 2001 terrorist attacks for the country to realize it must re-examine its approach to cyber warfare, he added.

Netwarcom officials described their approach as an active defense, in which monitors build defenses around the perimeter of DOD systems, work to mitigate the effects of attacks and restore damaged parts of the network.

Meanwhile, the consolidation of DOD’s cyber resources is ongoing. Netwarcom works directly with the Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations, DOD’s lead agency on network defense and operations, a component of Stratcom.

Netwarcom, the Navy’s lead cyber agency, is moving from monitoring the networks to full command-and-control capabilities. The Air Force announced in October 2006 that it will create a Cyber Command, based on the infrastructure of the 8th Air Force under Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., to coordinate its cyber warfare efforts.

In the end, the cyberthreat is revolutionary, officials said, because it has no battle lines, the intelligence is intangible, and attacks come without warning, leaving no time to prepare defenses. Education and training of computer users, not enforcement, are the most effective defense measures, officials said.

http://www.fcw.com/article97658-02-13-07-Web

[Stock Lobster]

Will Thomas: How Chinese Military Hackers Took Over A Nuclear-Armed B52

By William Thomas

The story sounded like a sequel to “Dr. Strangelove”. Leaked by the Pentagon's news service, Military Affairs to quell scuttlebutt racing through the ranks-and perhaps warn the world-a U.S. Air Force B-52 strategic bomber “mistakenly” loaded with six nuclear cruise missiles took off from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota on August 30, 2007 and flew for more than three hours over at least five states, before landing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

The mistake was so egregious, the National Command Authority comprising President George BU.S.h and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were quickly informed. The SecDef has since been assured that nuclear weapons “were part of a routine transfer between the two bases… at no time was the public in danger.”

Both statements are false.

In fact, nuclear weapons like these are carefully crated for shipment between bases, and placed inside the bomb bays or cargo compartments of transporting aircraft. In stunning contrast, this reporter has learned from two independent and highly placed sources that the six Advanced Cruise Missiles dangling from the B-52's fatigued and flexible wings were fully armed and ready to fire-except for a single fail/safe switch under the Command Pilot's control.

The quickly blacked out episode has prompted an Air Force investigation. Gates, whose official defense computer was hacked last June, necessitating the shutdown of the entire SecDef network, has ordered daily briefings on the Air Force inquiry. The Minot base commander, who might turn out to be the hero in this frightening affair, was relieved of his command.

DR. STRANGELOVE VISITS BOURBON STREET

As far as anyone knows, no U.S. aircraft has ever been armed with a full wartime loadout of six nuclear weapons. “Nothing like this has ever been reported before and we have been assured for decades that it was impossible,” declared Representative Markey, co-chair of the House Task Force on Nonproliferation. [AP Sept 5/07; Seattle Times Sept 5/07]

Hans Kristensen, an expert on U.S. nuclear forces, says he knows of no other publicly acknowledged case of live nuclear weapons being flown on bombers since the late 1960s. [http://ace.mu.nu]

Director Stanley Kubrick's “Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” was released in 1964

Each of the six ACMs carried a “dialable” 150-kiloton W80-1 warhead--for a combined total of 60-times the destructive power of the bomb that melted the city and inhabitants of Hiroshima--over the unsuspecting residents of five states. Depending on the route flown, a half-dozen armed nuclear weapons wafted for three-and-a-half hours over North Dakota and either South Dakota or Minnesota, Nebraska or Missouri, Oklahoma or Arkansas, and Louisiana.

It's no secret that Dick Cheney and his presidential surrogate intend to bomb Iran into the Kingdom to Come. [BBC News Aug 29/07]

But New Orleans?

“What does the government have against Louisiana?” asked a blogger named Lobster Martini. [www.democraticunderground.com]

TOUGH LOVE

The “mistake” was supposedly discovered when the B-52 landed at Barskdale, where the plane should have been secured by an armed security detail. Instead, it simply parked on the flight line, where ground crew noticed the words “nuclear armed” stenciled on the sides of the missiles. [ ]

Three officers confirmed the warheads were, in Bush's argot, “nucular.”

But the mission could have ended in a “broken arrow” nuclear calamity if the bomber had crashed, or inadvertently dropped its ordnance. Munitions, and even entire engines-such as the No. 1 turbine that fell off an American Airlines DC 10 after taking off from Chicago's O'Hare airport in May, 1979, killing two people on the ground and all 271 people onboard-occasionally drop from underwing pylons in flight. [Chicago Tribune May 26-30/79; National Transportation Safety Board Aircraft Accident Report NSTB-AAR-79-17]

A few other examples:

-- A B-36 ferrying a nuclear weapon from Biggs Air Force Base, Texas to Kirtland accidentally drops a bomb in the New Mexico desert. [ww.nuclearfiles.org]

-- A fighter pilot accidentally dropped a BDU-33 dummy bomb into a house, narrowly missing a family of three. [www.f-117a.com ]

-- A 500-pound bomb fell from an FA-18 plane during a routine training exercise and exploded on the edge of a U.S. base 100 miles north of Sarajevo. [ AP July 17/02]

-- A National Guard F-16 fighter jet on a nighttime training mission strafed an elementary school in New Jersey with 25 rounds of depleted uranium ammunition. [AP Nov 4/04]

-- Another U.S. Air Force practice bomb accidentally on the Yorkshire countryside in England. [ BBC Jan 12/04]

-- Electromagnetic interference from military transmitters may have caused an F-16 jet to accidentally drop a 500 pound bomb on rural West Georgia. [Montreal Gazette May 12/89]


A crash, mid-air explosion or structural breakup-not uncommon occurrences with heavily-laden B-52s-could have ignited the high explosives used to implode the warheads. The ultimate dirty bomber's fantasy could have seen plutonium--the deadliest substance ever conjured by humans-raining down over what would become a statewide “national sacrifice zone”, off-limits to all life-forms for more than 4 billion years.

Barksdale AFB is no stranger to nuclear accidents. On July 6, 1959, a C-124 “Flying Boxcar” crashed on takeoff, completely destroying the aircraft and the nuclear weapon it was carrying. [www.cdi.org]
[See: “Broken Arrows” ]

PROTOCOLS

The Air Combat Command has ordered a command-wide stand down for September 14, 2007 to “review procedures.” Though they actually responded flawlessly to apparently authentic orders, the highly trained specialists who carried out the nuclear loadout have been temporarily “decertified” from handling nukes.

Representative Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called the mishandling of arms capable of destroying cities “deeply disturbing. There is no more serious issue than the security and proper handling of nuclear weapons.” [AP Sept 5/07]

The crewdogs who flew their assigned mission without mishap have been ordered not to mention that all pilots are required to perform a “walk around” inspection of their airplanes and calculate elaborate “weight-and-balance” graphs before attempting to aviate. Failure to notice or be informed of the much heavier nuclear casings on the missiles they were carrying would have jeopardized flight safety.

According to a well-informed and extremely thorough U.S. military source I call “Hank” (with whom I have broken major stories over the past 15 years), someone “must have adjusted the bomber's balance. It had to have been done.”

In addition to knowing what is externally attached to their airplane, the amount of paperwork, signatures, and discrete passwords involved in releasing a nuclear weapon from its storage bunker and loading it onto an airframe are more formidable than flak.

And there were six of them.

PICKUP AND DELIVERY

The coded message to upload and launch the B-52 from Minot with six live nuclear weapons carried the signature of the
“football” containing the day's nuclear launch codes that is carried close to the president at all times by a specially detailed aide. After checking and counter-checking their coded orders, as few as a dozen people in uniform were actually involved in the subsequent secret nuclear mission.

According to Hank, at least three high-ranking officers were escorted into Minot AFB's nuclear arms bunker after passing through multiple doors secured by pass codes, whose complete sequences were supplied each officer, who only knew part of each code. One hiccup, a fumbled code sequence, or “the wrong wrench” would have cancelled the loadout instantly.

SAFETY FIRST

Because the base had stood down for Labor Day, the timing was ideal for security. In his standing orders for August 30, 2007, 5th Bomb Wing commander Colonel Bruce Emig encouraged his troops to “Enjoy a safe Labor Day weekend.

“Warbirds, It's hard to believe that Labor Day weekend is already here!” the colonel wrote. “Though cooler temperatures are right around the corner, the weather forecasters tell me that we should have a warm, summer-like weekend. Since Air Combat Command and Air Force Space Command have declared Friday a Family Day, many of you should be able to enjoy a nice, 4-day break as we transition from summer to fall. I wish all of you a relaxing and enjoyable time off, and urge you all once again to please keep safety in mind in all you do!” [www.libertypost.org]

Under a bomber's nuclear umbrella in a discrete corner of the sprawling airbase, air, ground and ordnance crews did not converse with each other. Or anyone else. Everyone involved knew better than to ask questions that could abruptly end their careers by inadvertently tipping people who did not need to know.

LOADOUT

Within hours, an airplane with a wingspan longer than the Wright Brothers' first flight was safely loaded with avgas, sandwiches, and six nuclear weapons. Uploaded to the bomber using an accordion cradle on each missile trolley, each Advanced Cruise Missile was fueled once it was secured to a hard point under the aircraft's wings. Because the ACMs were not inside a bomb bay, where they could be armed in flight, each underslung missile had to be fully armed before takeoff. “Wing walker” is not a B-52 job description.

The plates connecting the firing circuits of each warhead to the cockpit were then activated, and the safeties were pulled from each clearly marked “nuclear weapon”-rendering it “live”. For the Explosive Ordnance Disposal detail who performed the loadout, there could be no doubt they were activating six nuclear weapons.

Alarms on the flight line should have sounded as soon as they sniffed hot ions leaking from the pulled pile rods in six slowly fissioning warheads. But the alarms remain silenced. That order, Hank insisted, could only have come under the properly coded signature of the National Command Authority-Commander-in-Chief G.W. Bush or Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates.

The ensuing takeoff was an event branded on the central nervous system of every creature in auditory range as eight jet engines at maximum takeoff thrust levitated six missiles, up to 46,000 gallons of fuel, and an airplane the length of a 150-foot ship into a blue yonder that had just become much wilder. Everyone within miles knew that a B-52 had come into Minot and taken off again. But only God and the devil knew where it was going. [www.boeing.com]

And they weren't saying.

WHO DUNNIT?

In the silence left by this momentous departure, if there were questions, nobody voiced them. Perhaps there were a few quietly delivered high-fives instead. Despite the high stress that runs counter to every human instinct, everyone involved had carried out their assigned duties with complete attention to the details required to launch a half-dozen live nuclear weapons “safely”. The professionally conducted operation was carried off in complete secrecy, without a hitch, only after the loadout and launch order had been digitally confirmed as coming from the NCA.

There was only one problem regarding the originators of those orders, Hank emailed me:

“IT WAS NOT US.”

FAULTY (COMPUTER) TOWERS

Let us quickly review. My earlier exclusive on my former website, willthomas.net, disclosed how in October 2006, North Korea's leaders asked China to take out Japan's shiny new recon satellite before it could be tasked by American officers to monitor Pyongyang's first atomic test. Blowing up someone's satellite is an act of war. But overriding its “Made In China” microchips with a remote command from the ground could never be proven. Even if no solar flares were recorded at the time.

This first Chinese demo got the Pentagon's attention. After all, their stated goal of “Full Spectrum Dominance” over Earth's land, seas, airspace and electromagnetic spectrum depends on America's successful weaponization of space. But as the Joint Chiefs are only now discovering, many of the supposedly secure chips in America's civilian infrastructure-as well as all military communications, surveillance and weapons systems-have been “Wal-Marted” by U.S. corporations to low-bid Chinese suppliers-who rigged them for failure or takeover by “command override” in the event of war.


[See: “Faulty Microchips Threaten U.S. Attack On Iran” ]

SEE DICK RUN

The second demonstration of China's newfound capabilities to manipulate microchips came in late February 2007, when Dick Cheney's 757, flying home from Australia where the Vice President had not been well received by the locals, was forced to divert to Singapore.

In a story intriguingly tagged, “U.S. Denies Cheney Forced To Land,” Agence France-Presse reported that the White House admitted the Vice-President's “specially secured” Boeing 757 had “suffered electrical problems” before landing in Singapore. But Cheney spinner Lea Anne McBride insisted, “This was the preplanned, scheduled refueling stop. We were not diverted. The vice president did not get off the plane during his refueling stop.” [AFP Feb 26/07]

Wrong again.

According to U.S. military personnel present on the tarmac at Paya Lebar Air Base-who according to Hank said were “trying to yak with the locals: 'Can you get us this part? Do you have a Radio Shack?'”-a small Chinese delegation met with Cheney outside his electronically-challenged aircraft. Wandering in and out of the brief conversation, Hank's sources described the brief encounter, which occurred shortly after 1400 hours Singapore time.

Disembarking Air Force One, Cheney said something like, “Gosh, we got this kind of interesting problem…”

“No, you don't understand sir,” a Chinese official interrupted. “This is how we brought you here. And this is why.”

Cheney's visitors itemized the separately wired galley stoves, reading lights, in-flight video, and power outlets onboard the Vice President's aircraft that had all conked out in flight. They knew this, they said, because the electronic signals that had disabled the microchips controlling these various devices had been directed by their government. In an impressive feat, the Chinese military had located and selectively targeted a stealthy aircraft painted with radar-absorbent materials flying at nearly 500 knots at 35,000 feet without a public itinerary.

According to Hank's boots-on-the-tarmac sources, the mostly one-way conversation in Singapore concerned “Gulf of Tonkin possibilities.”

“They reached out and touched someone,” Hank related. “They had a message they wanted to get across: 'You've got ships out there in the Gulf. If this thing cooks off, all bets are off because some of the things that are put out there, we are really now wanting people to talk about.'”

The Chinese were referring to their control of most of the microchips on this planet.

A very thoughtful Dick Cheney departed two hours later.

OPENING THE GATES

The next Chinese digital demo came last June. In what came to be called “the most successful cyber attack ever mounted on the U.S. defence department,” Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network serving the defense secretary's personal office.

Like their American counterparts, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) regularly probes U.S. military networks. But American officials said these latest cyber attack caused grave concern when China demonstrated it “could disrupt U.S. defenses systems at critical times.”

“The PLA has demonstrated the ability to conduct attacks that disable our system... and the ability in a conflict situation to re-enter and disrupt on a very large scale,” revealed a former official, adding that the PLA has also penetrated the networks of U.S. arms corporations and war-launching think-tanks. [Financial Times Sept 3/07]

A Chinese official named Jiang repeated his government's denial that it had penetrated other government and military computer networks. But British and German newspapers cited intelligence and other officials saying that government and military networks in Germany, the United States and Britain had been broken into by Chinese army hackers this summer.

According to the Associated Press: “China's military has openly discussed using cyber attacks as a means of harrying or defeating a more powerful conventional military. In a 1999 paper on unconventional strategies titled 'Unlimited Warfare' two top Chinese military figures wrote that a hacker could have more power than a nuclear bomb.”

In a report this year, security software maker Symantec Corp. listed China as having the second most malicious computer activity in the world-after the United States. [AP Sept 6/07]

Speaking as a soldier, Hank commented, “The June hack showed an enormous hole in our ability to protect and communicate our information.

LOST IN SPACE

The next hack came almost immediately, when Russian computers controlling the International Space Station's orientation and supplies of oxygen and water inexplicably failed while the station's three crewmembers were hosting seven visiting shuttle astronauts.

Among the station's network of six Russian computers, only two remained functioning. A system-wide re-boot usually resolved smaller hitches, But this time, the system was unable to re-boot.

"A failure of this type has not occurred before," the BBC reported. [BBC June 14/07]

"This is serious," stated James Oberg, a retired rocket scientist turned author and consultant. "These computers run their life support, so if they can't be restored, the space station could become uninhabitable." Oberg added, "Statistically, this is not random. There is some new environmental factor that must identified and isolated, and neither step is trivial." [TechNewsWorld June 14/07]

Russian flight controllers and onboard engineers traced the problem to "odd readings" in electrical power cables feeding the Russian computers through a corroded junction box labeled BOK 3. [Space.com July 16/07]

The gremlins returned to the Russian machines on February 5, when another ISS computer system crashed in the Zvezda Service Module that routes data between orientation sensors and four positioning gyroscopes. The space station's solar power stopped supplying power, and communications were cut with Earth.

Though power and comms were restored three hours later, New Scientist reports, "The cause of the computer crash remains a mystery. NASA has so far not identified the cause of the crash." [New Scientist Feb 5/02]

But Hank was on it. "They had limited oxygen, a limited time frame," he observed. The astronauts onboard the space station didn't know if the next computer malfunction "would open an airlock." But like an airliner in flight, the station should have smoothly shifted over to backup systems.

It didn't.

"The word 'redundancy' never got into the story," Hank pointed out. Instead, all three backup circuit boards wired into three isolated circuits, "had to blow out in the same way at the exact same time. The fault that occurred in the first board, the second board, and the third board all had to be the same damn thing at the same damn time."

"Impossible," he declared. Especially, since each of the simultaneously faulty microchips had been "stress tested to hell and back. Except for internal stressors."

Except for "Made In China" microchip mischief.

While it is not yet confirmed that the February 5 microchip malfunction was related to the June 14 space station hack, according to Hank's sources, on that earlier date the Chinese pulled the equivalent of Cheney's Singapore diversion--in space. "Nobody got busted for it," he adds. "You always hear about the company at fault."

Not this time.

AC WE SEE

While White House fundamentalists remained mesmerized by the firepower ostensibly under their command, Beijing kept trying to send a very different message. Their next installment came in early September 2007, when U.S. Air Force officers passed through multiple levels of security and entered the inner computer sanctum of America's Air and Space Command deep under Cheyenne Mountain. This digital repository stores regularly updates archives needed to execute "clean reinstalls" in case air force computer systems crash or are otherwise compromised.

Entering the quietly humming room, the air force officers were shocked to see monitors aglow with light. The displays were supposed to be off. As they watched in shock and awe, randomly typed letters scrolled across a screen. The words were gibberish. But the message was heart-stoppingly clear: "We Can Play With Your Toys!"

The sender "left breadcrumbs," Hank related. The deliberately attached ISP (Internet Service Provider) pointed to China.

This was bad enough. But what really freaked out the officers was the realization that none of these "stand alone" machines was online. None of them contained a modem!

The only way to access these machines, Hank revealed, is to "use the sneaker net to walk up to it and tap on the keyboard. And yet they were interacting, and they were doing it in real time. They fussed with our stuff. These guys were able to go into what was a stand alone system and take control of it."

How did the PLA hack supposedly secure air force computers lacking network modems? Just like as select power companies can now pipe the Internet to home computers through electrical power lines, the Chinese were able to play on SAC's supposedly secure computers through the AC power cables connecting them to the national power... "grid".

But how did they break supposedly "unbreakable" military encryption?

And how were they able to transmit signals to override specific chips buried under a mountain of granite halfway around the globe? According to Hank, the International Space Station was not in line-of-sight with China when it's onboard computers and back-up systems simultaneously went down.

HIT MAN

When it comes to dialing up a bomber to drop nuclear weapons on another country, "It's kind of like hiring a hit man," Hank explained. You meet him in the parking lot with the assignment, a weapon, and cash. Later, you confirm that you haven't changed your mind. Then the mission proceeds, and either the target or the hit man is taken out.

In the case of the mission out of Minot, the First Phase began with an initiation order authorizing weapons release to arm a B-52 specially flown in for this operation. Proper codes and paperwork provided the Pilot in Command with an initial heading to fly, and initial waypoints or nav points to punch into the plane's GPS. No destination was provided. The pilots were just supposed to get in and drive.

They did.

Once the B-52 was airborne, it flew into an electronic black hole. No electromagnetic emissions came from the bomber. There were no radio calls to home base asking, "Are you guys sure you really want to do this?" Even more startling, no coded IFF squawks identified the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fucker) as friendly to prowling post-9/11 fighters. And no transponder beeps identified the airplane and its mission.

This is not the normal procedure for transporting weapons, or flying a B-52 through heavily-trafficked air corridors over the Continental United States. Every aircraft flying at high altitudes over CONUS, (or through Controlled Airspace around airports at lower attitudes) must transmit their identity on an assigned transponder frequency.

Commercial planes squawk in their own dialect. "When you're talking a government vehicle, like a C-130 [military transport], that's another level up," Hank noted. "It's a different kind of squawk. ATC knows how to treat that kind of traffic differently. A B-52 is another level up. Controllers don't see that every day. A C-5 [flying down from Colorado to dust a hurricane, for example]-they really don't see that every day."

The transponder code of the B-52 out of Minot would have prioritized it to civilian Air Traffic Control, and they would have cleared a corridor for its exclusive track-much like a presidential motorcade.

If this Bad Boy had been transferring six advanced nuclear cruise missiles to Barksdale, as official spin insisted, its transponder would have squawked: "Hey, guess what? We've got nukes onboard! Make sure no one runs into us. And if this signal stops scramble recovery people wearing proper attire."

Or code to that effect.

But this did not happen.

"The Situation Room in the White House was not stood up, but they still have people there,? Hank continued. ?One of their jobs is to track nuclear weapons. Somebody in that head shed should have seen a transponder code matched up with nuclear weapons loaded onto that aircraft. That should have been something that went up on the board. They would have known that a B-52 was getting a full loadout, and that all procedures had been followed. And someone else would have said, 'Mmm, six nukes. We'll keep an eye on it."

And given an order for radar operators to push a button to highlight that particular blip.

Instead, the blacked-out BUFF flew on.

TARGET IRAN

High in the stratosphere, where the nitrous oxide exhaust from eight fuel-hungry turbines attacked this planet's shredding ozone layer, boosting global warming another notch toward a catastrophic methane meltdown, wings never designed to carry heavy ordnance flexed up and down like a bird in flight. The crew must have considered the long roster of crashed Stratofortress with ?broken arrows? onboard. Not for a second could they forget that the six live nuclear weapons strapped to their wings were as close to detonation as a gremlin's wet dream.

Or the fail-safe switch under the Plane Commander's gloves.

An hour or two out of Minot, a bell chimed in the cockpit and a secure printer spat out a coded paper message. Even if they betrayed no emotion, the pilots must have felt a chill. Because the mission's next critical Fail-Safe had been passed. "We've thought about it, and the mission is still a go," the message essentially read. If these new orders had not been received, or had been issued incorrectly, the plane would have immediately turned back to the nearest base capable of handling its special needs.

But their orders were in order. Positively authenticated by both pilots as coming from the NCA, the new message received onboard the bomber issued the radio frequencies, call signs and rendezvous coordinates for "hitting" one of three aerial refueling planes constantly orbiting over the Gulf of Mexico. Their new "Go Code" also identified their target region. After topping off their tanks, they were to take up a heading for another Gulf, half a world away.

BLIND MAN'S BUFF

Wouldn't the base commander, or the other officers involved in sending live nuclear weapons toward Iran have second thoughts about a strike that could trigger an even bigger political-military chain reaction?

Not necessarily, Hank explained. Military leaders usually favor intimidation in place of bloodshed. If the Iranians could be dissuaded from acquiring a nuclear deterrent of their own, or decide to stop supplying their Shiite brothers next door with sophisticated shaped-charge rockets capable of penetrating the depleted uranium hides of M-1 Abrams tanks-terrific! Everyone involved in the mission must have hoped that in this high-stakes brinksmanship, when Iranian sensors picked up the radioactive signature of an inbound American nuclear bomber strike, the mullahs in Teheran would burn their Korans and turn to Jesus.

On the other hand, how do you say "pissed off" in Persian? The mullahs might panic and start pushing buttons of their own. Especially when the Israeli Air Force was notified of the strike, and launched "supporting" fighter-bombers of their own.

In any case, it was out of the hands of the base commander and his immediate superiors. Since any one of these key staff officers could conceivably be kidnapped or impersonated during a nuclear strike, none had the authority to issue a recall order. Even if someone in the chain of command issued an RTB (Return To Base), SAC bomber crews en route to the final IP coordinates to commence their attack are trained to ignore all such entreaties.

In fact, a frantic "Come home for lunch," or "Call your wife" command would confirm for the crew that something really was amiss, and they were at war.

In this way, a series of rote military assumptions can make an ash out of you and me.

WHAT, ME WORRY?

Meanwhile, the man under whose digitally coded authority this strike was being carried out, remained completely unaware that six nuclear cruise missiles with his name on them were headed toward Iran.

Phase Three would have issued coded authorization to take out their assigned targets. One target confirmed by two highly placed, independent sources was a nuclear power plant hard against the mountains of Iran. "But the bomber would still have five missiles left. And it would not leave the area empty," Hank insisted. "If they go loaded for bear, they're not going to leave with a rabbit."

After all, he added, a pre-BDA [Bomb Damage Assessment] would have been done before launching the bomber "to determine how many it would take. And they needed six?"

Despite all the Hollywood hype, cruise missiles are notoriously inaccurate. Just ask the folks ducking strays in Kuwait or Iran. Still, a cruise missile striking within 30 miles would have taken out that Iranian power plant. But if the nuclear-tipped ACM had detonated over its pile?

"Bad. Bad. Very bad," as Hank would say. Because the resulting electromagnetic pulses from such a synergistic chain reaction would have--among other things--fried every unhardened Chinese microchip aboard every American ship, plane and vehicle in the Persian Gulf.

"You don't have to sink the CAG, just turn it off," Hank said, referring to the formidable--yet completely microchip dependent--Carrier Air Group steaming off the coast of Iran. "Once they realized that these ships were just bobbing around out there," the bad guys would have "launched 10,000 rowboats" from surrounding shorelines to go play pirates.

Was this why several Chinese Aegis destroyers were steaming in from the east about 250 nautical miles from the Straits of Hormuz? Was this why two or three Chinese submarines had been deployed to the area of the transiting destroyers the week before?

Or were the two Chinese anti-aircraft destroyers part of an elaborate fail-safe in case the demonstration glitched and the bomber could not be recalled? Even if their anti-aircraft missiles could not reach the distant plane (easily tracked through its rigged Chinese chips), specific signals sent from the ship could have turned the plane around. Or its fuel off.

What were the Chinese thinking?

CHINESE CHECKERS

Ever since Katrina, and the subsequent standing wave put up off the south coast of Africa by HAARP to deflect hurricanes from the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Beijing has felt under siege as earthquakes and wild, shipping-interrupting storms continue to be conducted "all the way to China" by the powerful Gakona, Alaskan transmitter. [See "Where Have All The Hurricanes Gone"-upcoming on willthomasonline.net]

Three times, the Chinese have attempted to override HAARP. And failed. Elaborate demonstrations of their electronic warfare capabilities--including fizzing circuits in space, and a face-to-face with the U.S. Vice-President in Singapore--had not persuaded American leaders to A: Refrain from hoisting a false flag over a Persian Gulf of Tonkin, and B: Turn HAARP off.

Surely, Beijing must have reasoned, ordering a United State Air Force strategic bomber loaded out with six armed nuclear weapons to fly over the United States and then on towards Iran would conclusively demonstrate who was now in charge.

"This op would not have 'Made In China' stamped all over it," Hank pointed out. "Instead, American bombs, American bombers and American systems were used." No matter how the mission had proceeded, if Washington had been forced to tell the world, "It wasn't us. We lost control of our bomber carrying six atomic warheads"--how would that have looked to a global audience already angry over America's misuse of its military might?

Whatever Beijing's intentions, Hank was not the only person in the U.S. military to have his head rearranged by this latest Chinese demonstration. "They might have wanted to go all the way. Of they might have wanted to put pieces in play and see how far they could go," he surmised. "Maybe the Chinese started, and stopped it."

Either way, the unauthorized Minot mission has bluntly shown the White House and the Pentagon: "If you start something, we can stop it. You no longer know how much control you have over your own weapons systems because we can play with them at will. No matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, if you're using our chips you are vulnerable. And you can't know if our Trojan chips are in your systems unless you tear apart every circuits in every surveillance, communications, weapons system, pipelines, telecom and power grid in your entire military and civilian inventory and look. And then dismantle every network they are connected to."

"And one more thing," Beijing inferred, "If you take offense and pop off a missile, remember, we might make it do a loop-de-loop and come right back down on its originating silo."

Hank and others in America's command hierarchy remain alarmed and puzzled-which makes them even more uneasy. Would China's leadership have precipitated a cloud of radioactive fallout downwind over their own population? Emphatically, yes. The country's generals have long counted an expendable population and land mass as key factors in "winning" a nuclear war.

Best case scenario, this recent flight of fancy was a warning for Washington to chill the bomb Iran rhetoric, and dial down HAARP.

"Maybe the Chinese got it right and they were just messin' with us," Hank mused. "Or they got it wrong, and something very bad almost happened. But why only one plane? Why stop there? It's a limited use of a system that is now exposed."

But what can we do about it?

And what a message it sent!

[See "Cyber War"]

RECALL

Phase Three of the mission would have sent coded target grid coordinates and time(s) of weapon(s) release, as well as updates on weather over the area, enemy defense status and friendly escorts. Those orders never came.

Instead, Phase Four was initiated. When the cockpit teleprinter spat out paper tape again, it read, in so many words: "Forget the whole thing. Abort the mission. Turn back." The only people capable of issuing a nuclear strike recall order would be the President, the Secretary of Defense, a specific designate of the SecDef authorized by special code. Or a Chinese military hacker.

As Hank notes, "The plane had to be diverted to a base that could handle nuclear weapons." That would be Barksdale. But...

"Live hot nukes would have tripped alarms on the tarmac when it touched down. Either they were nonfunctional on both ends [Minot and Barksdale], which is scary beyond belief considering what we're talking about." Or the Joint Chiefs or the NCA could have ordered the radiation sensors silenced to keep the mission-and the hijacked mission-under wraps. Or the Chinese could have turned them off. If the system is digital, Beijing probably controls it.

Bottom line: if the incoming bomber had crashed approach, no one responding would have known they were dealing with a quiver-full of "broken arrows".

BARKSDALE

Thought the missiles were never launched, they still remain in play. As Hank worried, "Six nukes are now forward deployed to the air force base that handles Middle East ops."

A former counter-terrorism expert with the CIA and the State Department shares his concern. Larry Johnson does not buy the official story that six nuclear weapons were "mistakenly" flown over the USA-not after a retired B-52 pilot reminded him. "The only time you put such weapons on a plane is when they are on alert, or if the crew has been tasked to move the weapons to a specific site." Besides running nuclear war exercises like the Global Guardian drill it ran on the morning of 9/11, Barksdale AFB deploys "heavies" to the Middle East.

Like Hank, Johnson wants to know, "Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?" His pilot pal believes that an insider leaker tried to send up a bright red flag. Johnson asks, "Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran?" [www.antiwar.com]

But Hank points out another problem. Cruise missiles-which are essentially autonomous, unpiloted drones-have special needs. Since six cruise missiles showing up at Barksdale were an oddity, can they be adequately stored and maintained there? The Gulf Coast is "a very different environment" than Nebraska, Hank emphasizes. How long is Barksdale going to hold onto them? In the hurricane season?

"Are we going to see some of them floating out on the tide?" Hank wants to know. Americans need a big confirm that these weapons have been sent back north to a better home


http://www.willthomasonline.net/willthomasonline/Command_Override.html

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ZDNet: Hackers for the Chinese government stole U.S. military secrets

Security experts lift lid on Chinese hack attacks

Hackers for the Chinese government stole U.S. military secrets, security experts allege.

By Tom Espiner
Special to CNET News.com

Published: November 23, 2005, 11:48 AM PST

Security experts have revealed details about a group of Chinese hackers who are suspected of launching intelligence-gathering attacks against the U.S. government.

The hackers, believed to be based in the Chinese province of Guangdong, are thought to have stolen U.S. military secrets, including aviation specifications and flight-planning software.

The U.S. government has coined the term "Titan Rain" to describe the hackers.

"From the Redstone Arsenal, home to the Army Aviation and Missile Command, the attackers grabbed specs for the aviation mission-planning system for Army helicopters, as well as Falconview 3.2, the flight-planning software used by the Army and Air Force," Alan Paller, the director of the SANS Institute, said on Tuesday.

The team is thought to consist of 20 hackers. Paller said that the Chinese government is the most likely recipient of the information they intercepted.

"Of course, it's the government. Governments will pay anything for control of other governments' computers. All governments will pay anything. It's so much better than tapping a phone," Paller said at an event at the British Department of Trade and Industry.

Titan Rain first came to public attention this summer, when the Washington Post reported that Web sites in China were being used to target computer networks in the Defense Department and other U.S. agencies.

Time magazine later reported that Titan Rain had been counter-hacked by a U.S. security expert called Shawn Carpenter.

The ongoing attacks were particularly effective on the night of Nov. 1, 2004, said Paller, who outlined his version of how the hackers first scanned, then broke into, U.S. government computers:

• At 10:23 p.m. PST, the Titan Rain hackers exploited vulnerabilities at the U.S. Army Information Systems Engineering Command at Fort Huachuca, Ariz.

• At 1:19 a.m., they exploited the same hole in computers at the Defense Information Systems Agency in Arlington, Va.

• At 3:25 a.m., they hit the Naval Ocean Systems Center, a Defense Department installation in San Diego, Calif.

• At 4:46 a.m., they struck the U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense installation in Huntsville, Ala.


The United Kingdom is also under intelligence-gathering cyberattack from the Far East, according to National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre. The government body cannot name the countries concerned as this may "ruin diplomatic efforts to halt the attacks," NISCC director Roger Cummings said Tuesday.

Tom Espiner of ZDNet UK reported from London.

http://www.news.com/Security-experts-lift-lid-on-Chinese-hack-attacks/2100-7349_3-5969516.html

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From 2004: China's crackdown on dam protestors, thousands probably dead...did we ever hear much about this (and this is just one small story, how many others?)

Again, the fact that they're selling products doesn't make them a democracy...and can capitalism thrive very well and very long with this kind of government control and intervention? One wonders. Obviously we have made money trading China stocks, and there is money to be made there for enterprising businesses, but it's important to stop short of idealizing what's going on, or whitewashing the obvious repression and risks.

China's Sichuan Province Tense in Aftermath of Violent Anti-Dam Protests

By Luis Ramirez
Hanyuan, China
24 November 2004

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2004-11/China-Sichuan-Province-Tense-in-Aftermath-of-Violent-Anti-Dam-Protests.cfm

Ramirez report - Download 692k
Listen to Ramirez report

China's Sichuan Province remains tense as work continues on a new controversial dam power project, which will force 100,000 people from their homes. The dam has sparked major protests, which witnesses say culminated in government troops firing on and killing a number of residents. Access to the area is tightly controlled, but VOA's Beijing Correspondent Luis Ramirez managed to travel to the scene in Hanyuan County and files this report.

A group of elderly women practice the traditional 16-step dance at a pavilion in a town not far from the dam site where the violent demonstrations occurred this month. Their graceful, gentle steps and peaceful expressions hardly suggest what happened near this spot only a few days ago when, according to witnesses, tens of thousands of peasants staged a sit-in at the dam site before they were dispersed by heavily armed riot police. Witnesses say troops fired on the unarmed demonstrators.

This man, who did not want his name used, saw the confrontation and says it is impossible to know exactly how many people were killed. "People died," he said. "Maybe more than 10,000 died. It cannot be estimated."

Others in Hanyuan give accounts of staggering death tolls. But it is impossible to independently verify. The government promptly sealed off the entire region surrounding the dam, and banned all news media from entering. Witnesses cautioned that if journalists were discovered in the area, authorities would detain and expel them.

In a car with tinted windows, this reporter anonymously slipped into the gorge along the Dadu River - past heavily armed soldiers and police, to catch a glimpse of the gigantic dam project and the towns of villages that are to be flooded.

Authorities have strung banners urging stability and support for the dam project across streets in Hanyuan town following the unrest
Residents here are protesting against the project because they are not being compensated for having to relocate. The man who witnessed the demonstrations says peasants here are outraged that corrupt local officials are siphoning off compensation money. "The officials took the compensation money, so what was left for farmers was very little: the equivalent of $36 per square meter. People asked for the equivalent of $76. Altogether, the compensation should be thousands of dollars for each household."

Hanyuan County is arid and mountainous, and much of the farming takes place on the flood plains - choice land that is to be submerged. Farmers dread moving up higher to narrow terraces on the steep mountainsides, where harvest yields are much lower.

Pubugou Dam Project

Fear that the demonstrations would spread to other areas prompted both the central government and the Sichuan provincial authorities to take quick action, on both the military and propaganda fronts. Within days of the violent demonstrations, a steady stream of high-ranking officials traveled to Hanyuan, promising to boost compensation and stop construction work on the dam until the dispute is settled. At least one local Communist Party official was fired following the protests.

Inside the Hanyuan town, there is a sea of green tents housing the thousands of paramilitary troops rushed here from provincial capital. Groups of soldiers with assault weapons and riot shields patrol the streets, which have been plastered with Communist Party propaganda banners. Banners strewn across every downtown street blare out slogans that read: "The Government is Greatly Concerned about Reservoir Area People," or "the People's Liberation Army Supports and Protects the People." Next to the dam, large characters on a billboard call on the public to support the dam project.

Hanyuan county's most fertile land is on the flood plain of the Dadu River, much of which will be submerged
Given the swift and overwhelming crackdown on the demonstrations, it appears residents here will have no choice. Dai Qing is an environmentalist and writer who has challenged the government's decision to build massive dam projects. She says money and power interests driving the construction of the Pubugou dam in Sichuan are no match for ordinary farmers and workers. "The central government wants to have everything under control, and the local government and the electricity company wants to get money from the dam project," said Dai Qing. "I really feel sorry for the peasants. This is the situation of China today. We are not strong enough to watch the government and [to] limit it or what they do."

Faced with a soaring need for electricity caused by an economic boom, China's leaders are desperate to boost electricity production. When completed in 2011, reports say the Pubugou Dam is to generate more than 14 billion kilowatt hours of energy a year.

Meanwhile, from behind the car's tinted windows, it is apparent that work on the dam has in fact continued after officials announced they would halt construction. With heavily armed soldiers standing by, crews shovel gravel while others work on a huge intake on a side of the canyon.

The man who witnessed the demos here says protests are not likely to be staged again. "With the soldiers taking charge of this area, nobody dares to start a disturbance again," he said.

Analysts say the government has succeeded in keeping this conflict isolated and specific so that people's anger - for now - remains centered on their gripes against local officials and a singular cause - and not against the central Communist leadership. Officials with the central government were unavailable for comment and authorities in the Sichuan provincial capital, Chengdu, say they have no information on the incidents at Hanyuan.

All photos by VOA's Luis Ramirez

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Also from 2004: Missing leader Xu Shuangfu and recent arrest in Yunnan province

Posted Jun 11 2004

CHINA AID ASSOCIATION
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Bob Fu 267-205-5210
Email:[e-mail]
website: www.ChinaAid.org

CAA-Philadelphia (June 11, 2004)

Chinese Christians fear for house church leader’s safety; Persecution Intensified in Yunnan Province
(Picture: Arrested Missionary Zhang Yongguang’s family working at Wa minority)

Chinese house church leader Xu Shuangfu’s whereabouts and condition are unknown, and Chinese Christians fear for his life. Xu was the leader of a controversial house church group known as “Three Grades Servants” in Henan Province, northeast China.

Xu was arrested April 26th, and since then family members have been prevented from seeing him. CAA sources report that the case against Xu has been handled as a national security case, rather than as a religious-affairs case. Local Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) officials have been excluded from the case, which is being handled by the Department of National Security with orders apparently coming from the highest levels of the Chinese government in Beijing. Authorities have even questioned villagers in Xu’s hometown in Henan Province in their search for evidence against him.

Xu Shuangfu (also known as Xu Shengguang, which means “holy light”) has been a well-known house church leader since the 1980s. He has been arrested more than 20 times, and spent more than 20 years in prison. His group is known for the secrecy of its work, but is believed to have more than 500,000 members.

The PSB in Harbin City, Heilongjiang province, conducted major raids on the group in April. Xu Shuangfu was taken into custody that day, as was Gu Xianggao, a teacher in the group. Gu was beaten to death the next day while in the custody of Chinese Public Security Bureau (PSB) officers. He was 28 years old.

Xu was thought to be held at Harbin City’s Number One Detention Center, but a prison director has denied by phone that anyone by that name is currently being held there. Chinese Christians fear that Xu has been secretly transferred to another facility, and may even have already been executed.

If Xu is convicted of leading a so-called “Evil Cult,” he would face the death penalty.

Meanwhile, the persecution in Yunnan province in southern China has been intensifying recently.Yunnan is known across China for its springtime weather, but recently there has been a chilly spell for unregistered Christians across that region.

In February, an underground Bible training school in Kunming caught the attention of local policemen, and police in plain clothes went in disguised as sanitation inspectors. All the teachers and students left that building without being arrested.

One month later, the leader felt that it was safe to return to the building. Students had left a lot of the possessions behind, and wanted to retrieve them. The leader asked a former coworker, Zuoting Chen, to check on their possessions. However, the man was arrested by the police when he drove into the building on March 12. He has been charged with “endangering the interest of the nation.”

That night about 20 police raided his residence in Zigong town, 20 miles from Kunming. Officers did not present a search warrant, according to Guilin Qi, his wife. The police took away everything that might lead to a clue, including all their spiritual books, computers, VCD player, VCDs, and other items. The police refused to provide a record of the confiscated items, which is a clear violation of Chinese law.

Chen was detained for more than a month, and denied any visits from his wife. Finally, he was released because the police could not make the case against him. He was released on parole April 20. He has to go to the police station twice a week to report.

During the numerous interrogations, Chen was shown many photos of foreigners, and was asked if he knew any of them was engaged in Christian missions. He reported that foreigners were clearly the target of the police efforts.

Chen’s wife has become a target too. The Chens are faithful members in a house church in Zigong. On the evening of May 14, police came to their meeting to arrest Guilin Qi. She picked up her son, 8 years old, and ran, escaping to Sichuan province. Later she took her son to another province for refuge. Mother and the son are still on the run, moving from place to place.

The policemen in Zigong ordered the landlord to open the door of the couple’s apartment, and started a second search. Brother Chen is afraid to return to the apartment. The house church which the Chen family was attending has suspended their meetings because of the police threats.

Last year, police in Kunming raided another underground Bible school, and detained all the young students for more than one month, according to the source in Kunming.

This chilly spell is not limited in Kunming city.

Cangyuan is a very remote mountainous region in Yunnan where most people live in poverty. The central government calls for “volunteers” to work there. Zhang Yongguang and his wife, a dedicated Christian couple with a missionary heart for the Wa minority people in that area, moved there with their young son, 8 years old. They work hard. They have tried to obey and respect all the local customs.

On May 4, 2004 Zhang Yongguang was arrested by the police. They were accused of “engaging in illegal religious activities.” They attended a local house church, and preached there once a while.

Zhang was detained for 25days. On May 29, he was taken by the police to his hometown in Henan province. His wife Ms. Yuan Yuehua and eight-year-old son Zhang Lingen were forced to move too. Now Zhang is in jail in Henan.

CAA China investigators say he would either be fined up to 30000 Yuan (three years’ earnings) or sentenced to three years in prison. In Henan, his family was informed that he was detained because he was preaching an “evil religion,” but CAA sources say the charges stem from his unregistered church activity. His family members have been denied the right to visit him in jail.

“We ask that the Chinese government publicly state the charges against Pastor Xu,” said Bob Fu, “and we ask that his family be allowed visiting rights in keeping with Chinese law.” CAA urges the Yunnan provincial government to reconsider its repressive policy against the innocent law-binding Chinese Christians and to start serious dialogues with the house church leaders for a better mutual understanding.

People of faith and conscience around the world are encouraged to write a polite letter of protest on behalf of Pastor Xu Shuangfu and the arrested religious leaders in Yunnan.. Letters can be addressed to:

Ambassador Yang Jiechi Hu Jintao
2300 Connecticut Ave NW, People’s Republic of China
Tel:[phone] Fax:[phone]

Embassy of the People’s Republic of China President
Washington DC 20008 Beijing
People’s Republic of China
Director of Religious Affairs: [phone]
[e-mail]

http://chinaaid.org/2004/06/11/missing-leader-xu-shuangfu-and-recent-arrest-in-yunnan-province/

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CSM: Why Did China Shut Down 18,401 Web sites?

Oh yeah, Communism is dead in China..LOL

BEIJING, Sept. 25, 2007
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Christian Science Monitor) This article was written by Peter Ford
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Chinese authorities are in the midst of an unusually harsh crackdown on the Internet, closing tens of thousands of websites that had allowed visitors to post their opinions, according to bloggers and Internet monitors in China.

The new censorship wave appears linked to next month's 17th Communist Party Congress, a key political gathering that will set China's course for the coming five years. Party leaders generally prefer to meet undisturbed by criticism.

Censors and Web-hosting firms always keep an eye out for unapproved views on sensitive subjects, often deleting them.

But this campaign seems more indiscriminate. In recent weeks, police nationally have been shutting down Internet data centers (IDCs), the physical computers that private firms rent - from state-owned or private companies - to host websites offering interactive features, say industry insiders. "With the approach of the Party Congress, the government wants the Internet sphere silent, to keep people from discussing social problems," says Isaac Mao, one of China's first bloggers, who is now organizing a censorship monitoring project. "Shutting down IDCs is a quick and effective way of shutting down interactive sites."

To avoid being blocked, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in China and individual websites have been disabling chatrooms, forums, and other interactive features that might provide a platform for viewpoints unacceptable to the authorities.

"We don't want to get shut down so we shut down anything that could be offensive," says one foreign ISP employee. "Our upstream provider [the company that owns the servers] told us verbally there should be no commentary, no blogs, no bulletin board services, because the government is going bananas."

More than 18,000 websites blocked

In a recent circular, one Shanghai-based ISP warned its clients that "a special working party against illegal Internet information and activities" had begun work on Aug. 30 and "started to focus on cleaning up pornographic videos … and 'harmful' information … and so took control of Internet information services security management."

Earlier this month, the government-controlled "Shanghai Daily" reported that the authorities had blocked access to 18,401 "illegal" websites since April. Just under half of them carried pornography, the paper said, while the rest were unregistered.

Responding to the new campaign, one website, "Xiucai," has posted an ironic "patriotic" banner urging readers to "Joyfully welcome the 17th Party Congress, building a harmonious society together. Xiucai is a good comrade. This site has temporarily shut down comments and forum features."

Although no accurate figures are available, some Internet experts estimate that as many as half the sites hosted in China that offer interactive features have been blocked in recent weeks.

"I cannot find any law to support such action," says Mr. Mao. "I wonder if anyone is using current law to defend their rights" against recent government moves to shut down servers.

The law, however, has not proved of much assistance to Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer who sued his ISP last month for censoring articles about current legal cases posted on his blog.

Mr. Liu complained that Sohu.com, one of China's biggest blog-hosting sites, had blocked access to nine recent posts he has put up. All he received by way of explanation, he says, were e-mails from Sohu.com's customer service center stating that the posts had been hidden "for certain reasons."

"My posts did not break any law or regulation, nor did they violate my user agreement with Sohu," says Liu. All bloggers on Sohu must pledge not to "damage the nation's reputation or attack the party or government," "violate Chinese traditional virtues," or "damage social stability," among 14 specific limitations.

"Maybe my perspective is different from CCTV or Xinhua," says Liu, referring to the state-owned TV and news agency. "But as long as I did not break any law or regulation, Sohu has an obligation to publish all of my articles," says Liu. "I think they breached our contract."

The Haidian district court in Beijing threw out his suit, he says, ruling that it did not meet required criteria to be heard. But he appealed last week to a higher court. "I want to send a message to all Chinese bloggers that when our rights are violated we have a right to sue these websites," he says. "And I want to know the reasons for which Sohu blocked my articles. They have subjective standards that I am ignorant of."

Confusion over what is permitted

Bloggers in China have long puzzled over what is and what is not allowed by the censors that operate at various levels, ranging from automatic filters that block posts containing sensitive keywords to "Net Nannies" employed by the larger Web-hosting services.

Different companies use different standards. Liu's nine articles, for example, appeared on the blog he operates on Sina.com, even though they were deleted by censors at Sohu.com.

"It is left to the discretion of private companies to a pretty large degree," says Rebecca MacKinnon, an expert on the Chinese Internet at Hong Kong University. "Censorship gets outsourced and delegated to private businesses, and it is in their interests to overcompensate to stay out of trouble."

Chinese censors target more than just pornography or dissident material. A reporter with "Chinese Sports Illustrated," Guan Jun, found that the blog he launched last month, titled "The Beijing Olympics: I Don't Support Them" was closed after six days. On his new blog, called "The Beijing Olympics: Opposition Is Not Allowed," Mr. Guan recounts a subsequent visit from "the relevant authorities [the police] ... to get an idea about my ideological stance, social connections, who I've been in touch with."

In the run-up to the next Party Congress, censorship has reached such a pitch that John Kennedy, an internet commentator on "Global Voices Online," wondered in a recent post, "If war were to be declared on bloggers, is the state of today's China blogosphere what it would look like?"

Voluntary censorship encouraged

Among the authorities' shots in this "war," since President Hu Jintao called last April for "the glorious development of web culture with Chinese characteristics," is a voluntary pledge by the largest Chinese content-provider companies to encourage bloggers to censor themselves and to register their real names. Among them are Yahoo! China and MSN China.

Real name registration - long mooted by the central government - has now become official policy in Xiamen, a southern city where the authorities allow servers to operate only if forum hosts ensure that all contributors register their real names and IDs, according to an industry source.

"They are trying to make things more trackable," the source says.

The authorities are also seeking to shut down information avenues that cannot be tracked. In recent days, bloggers complain, access to Feedburner.com, a news aggregator used by Netizens to access RSS feeds from blocked sites, has been seriously disrupted.

The new atmosphere has left many bloggers hoping that things will improve once the Party Congress is over.

One angry blogger, Chen Min, who works as an editor at "Southern Weekly," a sometimes outspoken newspaper based in Guangzhou, complained recently that, "In the past they always left at least a corpse but now they are ... deleting things as clean as a whistle."


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/25/tech/printable3295146.shtml

© 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

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RFA: China Raids Blogger's Home, as Political Arrests Double

2007.11.30

http://www.rfa.org/english/china/2007/11/30/china_internet/


The Hepatitis B site, whose forums were shut down. Image: www.hbvhbv.com

HONG KONG—Authorities in Shanghai have raided the home of a Chinese blogger after he posted a detailed account of the closure of his magazine earlier in the year.

We haven't been allowed any leeway at all. They just shut it down immediately. This is an illegal act.

Hepatitis B forum moderator Lu Jun
The move comes as part of what many see as a tightening of control over China’s netizens. It also follows a doubling in the number of those detained under state security laws last year.

“Five people came to see me at about 10 this morning,” former journalist and editor of the nonprofit Minjian magazine Zhai Minglei told RFA’s Mandarin service.

“Three of them showed ID that confirmed they were from the Shanghai cultural business bureau. They said that I was involved in the illegal publication and distribution of materials, and acting as a freelance editor. They took away 41 copies of Minjian magazine,” Zhai said.

Magazine banned

Minjian is published under the auspices of the social and citizenship development research center of Zhongshan University in Guangzhou. Its publication license was revoked by the news publishing bureau of the Guangzhou municipal government on July 6.

More than 5,000 copies of the summer edition were confiscated at that time. The online edition of Minjian was closed by the city’s Internet police on Aug. 20. An edition hosted on an overseas server was blocked inside China in October.

Zhai reported his blog blocked in China last week, although the U.S.-hosted site was once more accessible from China on Thursday, when Zhai posted an account of the raid.

“They also took the hard drive of my computer. Then they left, saying I would have to come for further investigation...I told them that the magazine is published by Zhongshan University, which hires me to edit it. I am not a freelance editor,” Zhai told reporter Ding Xiao.

Zhai said he was sure the investigations were linked to a highly detailed account of the closure of Minjian magazine that he posted on his blog, Yibao, drawing dozens of messages of support.

In November, Zhai attended a conference of Chinese bloggers in Beijing, where the majority of topics were highly technical and involved the innovative use of the new generation of online applications, known as Web 2.0.

New rules

At one forum, foreign media organizations were strongly criticized for a perceived over-emphasis on freedom of speech and Web-based censorship.

In one presentation, titled “The Chinese blogosphere in the eyes of Western academics, and what they’re doing wrong,” one speaker told the CN Bloggercon conference that Western academics focused too much on censorship when considering China’s blogosphere and that they were missing important changes.

At least one commentator agreed: “Too many Western journalists/academia people have been drinking too much of their own Kool-aid, and the so-called ‘leader of the free world’ is giving freedom, democracy, dual-process, a bad name,” wrote “Ji Village News.”

“Political grandstanding type of talk is cheap and serves only to divide people and drive them apart. Small but concrete steps happening on the ground are what’s needed.”

China’s Internet authorities issued a new set of rules earlier this year, aimed at curbing the spread of “interactive” Internet sites such as bulletin boards (BBS), chat rooms, blogs, and discussion forums.

Amid thousands of “mass incidents,” protests, sit-ins, disputes, and riots reported across the country in official statistics annually, the authorities have a perennial fear of the informal connections made possible by civil organizations, especially with the speed and increasing availability of the Internet to all but the poorest in China.

Plug pulled

Under the new rules issued in early September by the Ministry of Information Industry in Beijing, all providers offering such services must reapply for a license to operate, according to a statement posted on the Guangdong provincial telecommunications bureau Web site.

Those without a license under the new scheme were ordered closed.

Around politically sensitive dates such as the 17th Communist Party Congress in October, authorities pulled the plug on entire Internet Data Centers (IDCs), knocking out thousands of sites. Many of those that were cut off hadn't broken any rules.

IDCs and Web publishers were then told they would have to re-apply for their operating licenses, but with the bar set much higher than before.

Many in the industry said they had noticed that Web sites and articles previously regarded as meeting government requirements were now being ruled out.

An example of tighter controls came when a popular Web site running an information service and vital online support forums for carriers of the Hepatitis B virus was closed at the end of November.

Many rely on forums

An official at the Beijing municipal telecommunications bureau said they had received many phone calls about the closure. “It was probably closed because they neglected to file a required application,” the official said.

The Hepatitis B site, at www.hbvhbv.com, had been running for six years without any interference from the authorities—until now.

“We haven’t been allowed any leeway at all. They just shut it down immediately. This is an illegal act,” forum moderator and consultant Lu Jun said.

Lu, who also acts as a consultant for the NGO that owns the site, said the problem had arisen when the site was reclassified as a provider of healthcare services, and had most of its forums removed following recommendations from the Ministry of Health.

China now has 120 million known carriers of Hepatitis B. This Web site has been a strong force in the last three years in fighting social discrimination against them.

“The feedback from the Health Ministry was that our forums were inappropriate,” Lu said. “After all, what can people who have the same illness say to each other? They don’t need to talk to each other. If they are sick they can go to the hospital to seek treatment...This is totally unacceptable,” he told reporter Fang Yuan.

State security arrests

Another forum moderator, Guo Dong, said the HBV forums had provided a slender lifeline to some Hepatitis B carriers who were experiencing severe mental health difficulties as a result of their diagnosis.

“Many people come to this forum when they are on the brink of psychological breakdown, to get a little emotional support. These closures are going to affect a lot of people,” Guo said.

“In the past we have had a lot of people on the forums talking about committing suicide. Whenever we saw someone talking like that, we immediately found out their location and found a volunteer to go and support them. There was a young lad in Shenzhen recently who was going to jump off a building... and we sent someone round there to talk him down. So this Web site has really helped a lot of people.”

Chinese arrests for “endangering state security” more than doubled in 2006 to 604, compared with just 296 in the previous year, according to official statistics recently released by the Chinese government.

The just-published 2007 China Law Yearbook records that state prosecutors approved the arrest of 604 individuals detained by public security and state security police in national security cases. Prosecutions were initiated in 258 cases involving 561 individuals in 2006, compared with 185 cases involving 349 people in 2005.

The figures provide the only official clue about exactly how many political prisoners China has, human rights groups say.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Fang Yuan and Ding Xiao. Service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han

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A few songs, in the theme of these news stories:

Just wait long enough, and everything old is new again...

Fred Small "Hole In The Ground"

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You hear so many rumors sometimes you get confused
But I read it in Time Magazine and I heard it on the news
We'll see dramatic changes in the lifestyle we enjoy
If those megatons of atom bombs are actually employed.
The scenarios are scary, oh, but they don't worry me
Since I received a pamphlet from a federal agency
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And it told me what to do in case of nuclear attack: Just
CHORUS:
Dig a hole in the ground, and climb right on down
Lay some boards on top of you and sprinkle dirt around
You won't have to be dead if you only plan ahead
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You can climb aboard the Amtrak train, sit back, and enjoy the sights
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CHORUS
We're sure to give you notice up to seven days before
But it's wise to recognize the warning signs of nuclear war
If the temperature is rising in a flash of blinding light
Grab your toothbrush and a flashlight and shut the windows tight
If the wind is blowing wicked and there's buildings in the air
Blisters on you body, fire in your hair
If the tupperware is melting and your dinner plans are wrecked
Stay calm, it's time to put this foolproof plan into effect: Just
CHORUS

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Tom Lehrer: "So Long Mom...!"

[Suppressed Sound Link]

Tom Lehrer performance on youtube: