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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: It’s Payback Time! The cyberwar begins The headlines are ablaze with news of the war – no, not that war, or that war, or even this war – I’m talking about the “cyberwar” being waged against the enemies of WikiLeaks, not only the American and Swedish governments, but also the corporate collaborators who have done their best to drive WikiLeaks into the ground. A group of computer-savvy warriors for truth and justice, who call themselves “Anonymous,” have brought down the internet operations of MasterCard, , and FinancePost (the Swiss that abruptly terminated WikiLeaks’ account), as well the site of the Swedish prosecutors’ office and that of the odious “feminist” lawyer, Claes Borgstrom, who is fronting for the CIA’s sex-smear-frame-up of Julian Assange. This cyberwar, which was started by the US, has two sides going at it, but you’d never know that from reading the “news” accounts in the legacy media. Take this typical story from USA Today, headlined “Pro-WikiLeaks cyberattacks show growing threat,” which avers: “The attacks Wednesday were part of a recent series by supporters and enemies of WikiLeaks, said Gunter Ollmann of Internet security firm Damballa. ‘It’s like a Wild West shootout … and we’ve had these different organizations being caught in the crossfire,’ he said. “Last week, WikiLeaks servers were knocked offline by people angry over its release of diplomatic and military information that critics said could embarrass the government and even risk lives, he said.” Who are these “people” who are “angry” at WikiLeaks – random “patriots”? Sean Hannity? Sarah Palin? Joe Lieberman? Of course not: it’s these guys, i.e. employees of the US government whose online aggression is illegal and unethical. WikiLeaks, you’ll recall, was brought down by a series of powerful denial-of-service (DOS) attacks undoubtedly launched by US government thugs. WikiLeaks supporters are now firing back, and for daring to defend themselves are deemed a “growing threat” by such arbiters of online etiquette and Just War Theory as the editors of USA Today. A similar case of self-imposed blindness permeates the “reporting” of the Washington Post, which described the attacks on MasterCard, Visa, et al, as follows: “The online attacks are part of a wave of support for WikiLeaks that is sweeping the Internet. Twitter was choked with messages of solidarity for the group, while the site’s Facebook page hit 1 million fans. “Late Wednesday, Operation Payback itself appeared to run into problems, as many of its sites went down. It was unclear who was behind the counterattack.” It’s “unclear” only to those whose vision is blurred by State-worship. For the rest of us, it’s all too clear who was and is responsible for the online thuggery directed at WikiLeaks and its supporters. The same people who believe they have a God-given “right” to carpet-bomb civilians and murder Naturally, our online spooks have a cover story, albeit not a very convincing one, dutifully trotted out by the Los Angeles Times: “A group called Anonymous temporarily disables the websites of Visa and MasterCard after they said they would no longer handle donations to WikiLeaks. A rival ‘patriotic’ hacker, the Jester, fights back. “… Meanwhile the Jester has claimed responsibility for taking down WikiLeaks’ website several times since it posted its first batch of confidential State Department cables on Nov. 29. The Jester, who describes himself as a patriotic hacker with a military background, claims other like-minded hackers have approached him to help.” We’re supposed to believe that a single private individual, who claims to be “ex-military,” and who tweets “TANGO DOWN!” every time he hits his target, is responsible for bringing down WikiLeaks. Those who fall for this story are like those children who really believe you can’t see them if they hide their face behind their fingers. Well, peek-a-boo, Mr. Government Employee – I see you! And so does anybody else with an ounce of sense. Like all government employees, however, these Pentagon hackers are engaged in “work” that is neither productive nor useful even to themselves and their masters, because WikiLeaks is stronger now than it has ever been if strength on the internet is measured in terms of accessibility. In response to what is clearly a government-mandated campaign to destroy them, their supporters have harnessed the technology to evade and indeed make a complete mockery of the enemy. As this rather technical but fascinating piece concludes: “If suppressed content automatically goes viral, the Internet’s construction basically guarantees that that content will have a home for the rest of time. If you attack DNS support, people will tweet raw IP addresses. If you take down the BGP routes to web content, people will put up more mirrors, or switch to overlay networks to distribute the data. You can’t burn down the Library of Alexandria any more— it will respawn in someone’s basement in Stockholm, or Denver, or Beijing.” Which is precisely why the US government fears and loathes not only WikiLeaks, but the Internet itself, and is now making an effort – futile, as explained above – to control it. It’s a realm entirely beyond Washington’s power to regulate and suppress – and we can’t have that! This is why they’re trying to make an example of WikiLeaks, and Assange, and that’s why they will ultimately fail. Furthermore, their efforts to do so will boomerang and cause their ultimate downfall, as Assange explains in his brilliant essay, "State and Terrorist Conspiracies." [.pdf] Assange likens authoritarian and neocorporatist regimes to conspiracies, with various branches that communicate with each other and yet must maintain enough secrecy to stave off growing opposition to their schemes. To threaten this essential element of all such regimes – secrecy – is to cause the ruling elite to clamp down and restrict information flow even within its own apparatus, lest a dreaded “leak” seeps out. And that course is fatal, as Assange explains: “Literacy and the communications revolution have empowered conspirators with new means to conspire, increasing the speed [and] accuracy of the their interactions and thereby the maximum size a conspiracy may achieve before it breaks down. Conspirators who have this technology are able to out conspire conspirators without it. For the same costs they are able to achieve a higher total conspiratorial power. That is why they adopt it. For example, remembering Lord Halifax’s words, let us consider two closely balanced and broadly conspiratorial power groupings, the US Democratic and Republican parties. Consider what would happen if one of these parties gave up their mobile phones, fax and email correspondence — let alone the computer systems which manage their subscribes, donors, budgets, polling, call centers and direct mail campaigns? They would immediately fall into an organizational stupor and lose to the other. “An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think is powerless to preserve itself against the opponents it induces. When we look at an authoritarian conspiracy as a whole, we see a system of interacting organs, a beast with arteries and veins whose blood may be thickened and slowed until it falls, stupefied; unable to sufficiently comprehend and control the forces in its environment.” This recalls the key insights of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek, the libertarian theorists of the “Austrian” school, whose critique of socialism was that imperfect knowledge dooms efforts by central authorities to regulate business and fix prices. Our rulers, however, have other ideas. Armed with computer technology, and the hubris of scientism – which purports to wear the mantle of science – they think they can get around the inherent limitations of the human condition, and control the uncontrollable. What they didn’t take into account was that such hubris induces opposition – and so the first cyberwar has begun. It is a war the US government, with all its resources, cannot win, because the nature of the technology – the weaponry – has defeated it before even the first shot was fired. And make no mistake: that first shot was fired by Washington, not Assange – an act of aggression our puffed-up rulers will live to regret. The more the government clamps down and tries to hide its secrets, the more vulnerabhttp://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/postarticle.cgile it will become – until that glorious day dawns when its blood is so thickened and slowed that “it falls, stupefied, unable to sufficiently comprehend and control the forces in its environment.” Assange is a thinker, as well as a doer: he long ago perfected the theory of which WikiLeaks is the practice, and you would do well to investigate what he has to say in his seminal 2006 essay [.pdf]. I can’t resist quoting the wonderful introduction, which puts the WikiLeaks fight in perspective: “To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not. “Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neocorporatist behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of thinking about this behavior that is strong enough carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective action.” Words to inspire, as well as inform. One last thing: these “hactivists” have been denounced as “nihilists,” and “anarchists” (as if the two terms are synonymous, which they are not), but this is just regimist propaganda designed to scare people into accepting an ever-tightening tyranny that is reacting in a way that seals its own doom. It is not “nihilism” to oppose our rulers and their “new world order” of client states and perpetual war: it is patriotism of the highest order, patriotism in the service of liberty. They think they can stop the rising tide of rebellion by arresting a 16-year-old boy in the Netherlands – but can they arrest the over 40,000 people who have recently downloaded the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, the hi-tech weapon of choice that brought down MasterCard? Of course not. They rule by fear, and smear – but only if we let them. Of course, Antiwar.com does not endorse illegal acts, nor do we urge people to engage in them. But this war, Cyberwar I, was started by the Powers That Be – and now let them fight it, even as they realize that they cannot win.
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#1. To: F.A. Hayek Fan (#0)
The problem of course with all of Justin's giddiness is that he still does not fully comprehend the psychotic mindset of the people we are opposing. They ARE psychotic enough to cut off their nose to spite their face. Once we sift through the noise we are left with the following: By shutting down the entire Internet by disabling the backbone they can effectively end the Internet as we know it. That would be an extreme move, but to maintain power and control they would, will, do it if they have to. It is the "logic of power". What Justin appears to assume is that we are dealing with reasonably sane, although evil, governments. The fatal flaw in that reasoning is that THEY ARE NOT sane.
That's right. You are the only one that sees it. Everyone else is an idiot who hasn't been blessed with your insight (eyes rolling). By shutting down the entire Internet by disabling the backbone they can effectively end the Internet as we know it. That would be an extreme move, but to maintain power and control they would, will, do it if they have to. It is the "logic of power". What Justin appears to assume is that we are dealing with reasonably sane, although evil, governments. So your opinion appears to be that in order to ensure that the internet does not get shut down that no one should do or say anything that might make the government upset and if someone does then they are CIA operatives. Sorry, I'm not buying into that. I neither believe that Assange is a CIA operative nor do I believe that the government will be able to shut down the internet.
Oh, I don't necessarily think he is CIA. No, more likely MI-6 or Mossad. Did I say that? NO. I said Justin didn't get it, nor do the terminally naive - such as yourself. Psychotics, by definition, do not think the same way a sane person does. The sane mind does not contemplate murdering 1 - 2 million people in Iraq and another 2-3 million in Afghanistan and then write it off as "the cost of doing business" and maintaining and expanding their power. Sane minds do not bring down large skyscrapers in a staged event to provide political justification and motivation to commit even more murders. And intelligent people do not have to resort to personal attacks to make a counter point.
BS. The majority of voting Americans punched a chad twice in succession (2000 and 2004) for GWBUSH, proving your assertion is silly at best. Of course, sanity is based upon the norms of any society not your personal, secretive basis for rationality which is far from existence on this planet called Earth.
You still miss the point buck. Yes, many people were deluded and scared into voting for Duhbya. However, it is by no means certain that he actually won the (s)Election either time as the level of vote fraud was epic. Without going into the diversion of hanging Chad or chads he almost certainly lost to Kerry in 2004 as there were so many documented instances, by http://www.blackboxvoting.org , of voting irregularities which were indicative of fraud (Ohio being one of the biggies - where using Diebold Machines Duhbya received more votes than voters). Not that I am a fan of Duhbya's "Bones Brother" Kash-n-Kerry. Interestingly Kerry did not at any point, despite multiple indications of irregularities, challenge anything.
Let's go back to your absurd remarck, shall we? By 2004, even GWBUSH declared a voters mandate about his re-won election; he took it to the bank and continued his same methods to create war on foreign soil BASED on that same "voter mandate." It was already well known that America had been in a losing military posture and so time and again more and more US resources were thrown at the Iraqi shit-hole. I say the American People are insane for voting or even allowing these actions in the first place. They knew no formal declaration of war was announced by Congress thus they gave GWBUSH more centralized power. That same BS is carried forward with 0bama. He can't even get out of that HELLHOLE ... but, he never tried either other than his pre-election political rhetoric.
First false premise. No, it was not well known. It was well known among many, but by no means all, people who got their news off of the internet, AND did not accept the Propaganda. Among those who got their news from the lying controlled media the perceptions were completely different albeit wrong and based on false data and propaganda. There was an interesting study done in about 2004 among people based on where they got their "news". People getting their news off of the internet had the most accurate picture. People getting their news off of the lying mainstream media were not only the least informed much of what they "knew" was wrong. As late as 2004 people getting their new off of the Lamestream media believed that Saddam's WMD's had been found. I know that is screwy, but based on their "news" sources that is what they believed to be true. The media spent a lot of time discounting the numbers of innocents killed and "catapulting the propaganda". Lincoln was right: "You can fool SOME of the people all the time." Also P.T. Barnum was right: "There's a sucker born every minute, ..." People stampeded by fear, lies, and xenophobia will do insane things. People operating off of false data will draw screwy conclusions. I am not defending their stupidity, but I do understand the wellspring from where the befouled waters arise.
As would anyother objectively thinking homosapien not drunk with his/her own opinion of his/her self-importance.
One has to explain things carefully to buckie - in small words.
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