How Chinese Military Hackers Took Over A Nuclear-Armed B52

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.....

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

Germany: Staff of occupied bicycle factory take up production

Germany, FAU-IAA: Staff of occupied bicycle factory in the Thuringian
Nordhausen take up production in self-management
20 Sep 2007

Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Union Fettstr. 23, 20357 Hamburg -
http://www.fau.org FAU-IAA Pressrelease ----- Hamburg/Nordhausen, 19th
of September in 2007:

Staff of occupied bicycle factory in the Thuringian Nordhausen take up
production in self-management again The 135 colleagues of the bicycle
factory Bike Systems GmbH in the Thuringian Nordhausen, who keep the
factory occupied since 10th of July 2007, decided to resume the
production of bicycles in self-management. For this aim 1,800 binding
orders on bicycles must be received till 2nd of October. So the
collegues are working together with the anarcho-syndicalist union FAU
(Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Union -- Free Workers-Union), which
formed for this campaign the internetpage http://www.strike-bike.de.
Since more than two month the staff keep the factory in the south of
Harz Mountains in three shifts occupied. They want to prevent the
definite dismantling and sale of the factory. The file for bankruptcy
from 10th of august is against long odds: The factory is exploited and
ran down, the hall was emptied except for the coating line. The staff
receives unemployment compensation and hopes for a new concept and a new
investor.

The "Strike Bike" -- Solidarity-Bikes from Nordhausen

In the time of occupation and in the wake of discussions during the
visits of solidarity people, the colleagues of the factory developed the
idea to initially take up the production in self-management for a short
time. Because it's not the point to only prevent the evacuation of the
last machines and to wait for a new investor, the idea of an own
”Strike-Bike“ meet with more and more response. Now the opportunity
arises to show the ability to develop an own concept and to self-manage
production and distribution.

If it goes well to collect 1,800 advance orders for the bicycles
produced in self-direction, we spread solidary ideas and bolster the
colleagues in similar situations, not to let themselves easily being
restructured to zero. By whomsoever!

The staff gets assistancy by the solidary members of anarcho-syndicalist
union Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Union (Free workers-union),
which will become active in whole germany to spread the knowledge of the
struggle of the bicycle-workers and to support the sale of the
"Strike-Bike."

More Informations can be received at: http://www.strike-bike.de
for background informations and history of the occupation
http://www.labournet.de/branchen/sonstige/fahrzeug/bikesystems.html

To get in contact with the staff and to take orders

»Bikes in Nordhausen e.V.«
c/o. Andrι Kegel,
Bruno-Kunze-Str. 39 - 99734 Nordhausen
Telefon: 03631 - 622 124 and 03631 - 403 591
Fax: 03631 - 622 170
eMail: fahrradwerk@gmx.de

For further informations about the campaign of the FAU-Strike
Bike-Solidaritygroup:
Spokesperson:
Folkert Mohrhof
- mobile 0179-4863252 and ...
respectively monday till friday from 10 am till 3 pm:
+49 40 - 20 90 68 96

 

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20070921082139118

--
Dan Clore

News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo

Iran Threats / Gaza Crisis

STEPHEN ZUNES, zunes@usfca.edu,
http://www.stephenzunes.org
    Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus, Zunes said:
"[Iranian] General [Mohammed] Alavi's comment regarding Iran's
contingency plans to attack Israel with air and missile raids was
explicitly in reference to how Iran would respond if attacked by Israeli
forces. Despite White House claims to the contrary, Iran was simply
re-stating the policy it has in common with most countries: if a foreign
power attacks your country, you defend yourself by attacking them as
well. Israel has certainly made clear its willingness to do so if
attacked by Iran. Why does Washington find this Iranian position so
surprising or provocative?"
    Zunes is a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco
and the author of "Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of
Terrorism."
    The U.K.-based Center for International Studies and Diplomacy has
recently released a paper regarding U.S. plans for a possible attack on
Iran titled "Considering a War with Iran."
http://www.cisd.soas.ac.uk/index.asp-Q-Page-E-disarmament-and-globalisation--27216738

SARA ROY, sroy@fas.harvard.edu, http://www.counterpunch.org/roy10042006.html
    The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that the Israeli government
has decided that it "would disrupt electricity and fuel supplies" to
Gaza. The United Nations Secretary General, Ban-Ki Moon, said Wednesday:
"Such a step would be contrary to Israel's obligations towards the
civilian population under international humanitarian and human rights
law." http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/905693.html
Senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at
Harvard University, Roy is author of "The Gaza Strip: The Political
Economy of De-Development" and "Failing Peace: Gaza and the
Palestinian-Israeli Conflict."
    Roy said: "It is false to say that Hamas controls Gaza and Fatah
controls the West Bank. ... Israel controls all borders and hence, the
economy, all demographic and commercial movement, water and airspace.
Despite its 'disengagement' Israel still occupies Gaza as it does the
West Bank, where Israeli settlements and their infrastructure, and the
separation wall are the primary expressions of Israeli domination. It is
the occupation -- which gave rise to Hamas -- that is conveniently
overlooked, indeed forgotten, by many observers in the U.S."

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org

Fujimori to stand trial in Peru

SANTIAGO (AFP) - Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori lost a long
legal battle Friday as Chile's Supreme Court ordered his extradition to
Peru to face trial on corruption and human rights abuses.

The decision, which cannot be appealed, will send Fujimori back to his
home country after seven years in exile to stand trial over alleged
massacres and rampant graft during his 1990-2000 rule.

"We have awarded the extradition," announced judge Alberto Chaigneau,
adding the court's decision was based on the weight of one human rights
charge -- covering two separate massacres -- and six corruption charges.

In Peru, rights groups and relatives of victims of Fujimori's regime
hailed the ruling while the government promised a fair trial.

Human Rights Watch called the decision an unprecedented step forward
for international justice.

"This is the first time that a court has ordered the extradition of a
former head of state to be tried for gross human rights violations in
his home country," the US-based organization said in a statement.

"After years of evading justice, Fujimori will finally have to respond
to the charges and evidence against him in the country he used to run
like a mafia boss," said HRW's Americas director Jose Miguel Vivanco,
who was in Santiago for the announcement.

Under house arrest in Santiago since 2005, Fujimori, 69, fled Peru in
2000 to Japan amid a corruption scandal and resigned by fax from a
Tokyo hotel.

Once known as a master strategist, Fujimori appeared to have
miscalculated when he was detained in Chile in 2005 on his way to Peru
hoping to make a political comeback.
Instead of a triumphant return to Peru as a candidate, he will now be
coming back to stand trial on grave charges he backed death squads that
killed civilians, and misused public funds. He faces up to 30 years in
jail for the human rights charges and 10 for the accusations of
corruption.

As Chile prepared to transfer Fujimori later Friday by land and air,
Peru welcomed the ruling, pledging a fair legal process and dignified
treatment for the ex-president during his detention.

"The next step is to bring him to Lima and to offer guarantees of a
fair trial," Peruvian Foreign Minister Jose Garcia Belaunde told CPN
radio.

He said the Chilean Supreme Court had carried out its work with
"responsibility, seriousness and independence."

Fujimori was officially notified of the court decision in Santiago and
his defense lawyer said he had accepted the ruling.

The ex-president said after the decision he had believed he would be
extradited on fewer charges, but said he would prove his innocence.

"According to my calculations there were four (charges for
extradition) ... but I am certain and secure in addressing the actions
of my government in this trial and will emerge with honor," Fujimori
said in a radio interview from the Santiago residence where he has been
under house arrest.

Lima has accused him of responsibility in the 1992 massacre by state
forces of nine students at La Cantuta University, and the 1991 killing
of 15 people in a neighborhood of Lima, blamed on a military death
squad.

The acts were carried out by the army's Colina Group squadron during
the Fujimori government's bloody campaign against the Maoist Shining
Path insurgency.

He also faces a range of corruption charges, including misusing 15
million dollars in public funds.

Peruvian Prime Minister Jorge del Castillo vowed his government would
not politicize the case and said Fujimori should be treated with
"equity and justice."

Anti-corruption prosecutor Carlos Briceno said the trial would take
three to four months but would not say precisely where Fujimori would
be held.

Chile's high court judges had reviewed the Fujimori case after a single
judge ruled in July in Fujimori's favor against the extradition.

Born to Japanese emigrant parents, Fujimori spent five years in Japan
after fleeing Peru in 2000.

He had risen from obscurity as an little-known academic to capture the
presidency in 1990, defeating renowned writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who
was heavily favored in opinion polls.

A divisive figure, his tough crackdown against the Shining Path
insurgents won him loyal supporters but he was criticized for his
authoritarian style.

Japan, which confirmed Fujimori's citizenship, consistently refused
extradition requests from Lima before he flew unannounced to Chile in
2005 to launch another bid for Peru's presidency.

 

http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070921185925.3csvnrtp.html

Dehumanizing the Palestinians

By Ali Abunimah

The Israeli cabinet has voted to declare the occupied Gaza Strip a
"hostile entity," thus in its own eyes permitting itself to cut off
the already meagre supplies of food, water, electricity and fuel
that it allows the Strip's inmates to receive. The decision was
quickly given backing by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Israel is the occupying power in the Gaza Strip, despite having
removed its settlers in 2005 and transforming the area, home to 1.5
million mostly refugee Palestinians, into the world's largest
open-air prison which it besieges and fires into from the perimeter.
Under international law Israel is responsible for the well-being of
the people whose lives and land it rules.

There have been barely audible bleats of protest from the UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ("Such a step would be contrary to
Israel's obligations towards the civilian population under
international humanitarian and human rights law") and the European
Union ("The [European] Commission hopes that Israel will not find it
necessary to implement the measures for which the [cabinet]
decisions set the framework yesterday."

What? It hopes that Israel will not find it necessary to cut off
water supplies to 1.5 million people of whom half are children?

These statements serve only to underline that Israel operates in a
context where the "international community" has become inured to a
discourse of extermination of the Palestinian people -- political
and physical.

Yossi Alpher, for example, a former director of the Jaffee Center
for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University and once a special
adviser to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, argued coolly
this week that Israel should murder the democratically-elected
leaders who won the Palestinian legislative election in January 2006
-- calling for "decapitating the Hamas leadership, both military and
'civilian.'" True, he admitted, there would be a possible downside:
"Israel would again undoubtedly pay a price in terms of
international condemnation, particularly if innocent civilians were
killed," and because "Israel would presumably be targeting legally
elected Hamas officials who won a fair election." Nevertheless, such
condemnation would be quickly forgotten and, he argued, "this is a
mode of retaliation and deterrence whose effectiveness has been
proven," and thus, this is "an option worth reconsidering."

Alpher incited the murder of democratically-elected politicians not
in a fringe, right-wing journal, but in the European Union-funded
online newsletter Bitterlemons, which he co-founded along with
former Palestinian Authority minister Ghassan Khatib. What journal
would publish a call by a Palestinian -- or anyone else -- to murder
the Israeli prime minister? Alpher presumably does not worry that he
will be denied visas to travel to conferences in the European Union,
or will fail to receive invitations to American universities.
History tells us that he can feel confident he will suffer no
consequences. Indeed, in the current political climate, any attempt
to exclude Alpher might even be cast as an attack on academic
freedom!

Declarations that reduce Palestinians to bare biological life that
can be extinguished without any moral doubt are not isolated
exceptions. In May, as reported by The Jerusalem Post, Israel's
former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu issued a religious
ruling to the prime minister "that there was absolutely no moral
prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a
potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the
rocket launchings" (See "Top Israeli rabbis advocate genocide," The
Electronic Intifada, 31 May 2007). I could find no statement by any
prominent Israeli figure condemning Eliyahu's ruling.

And, in a September 6 blog posting, an advisor to leading US
Republican Presidential hopeful Rudolph Giuliani argued for
"shutting off utilities to the Palestinian Authority as well as a
host of other measures, such as permitting no transportation in the
PA of people or goods beyond basic necessities, implementing the
death penalty against murderers, and razing villages from which
attacks are launched." This, the advisor stated, would "impress
Palestinians with the Israeli will to survive, and so bring closer
their eventual acceptance of the Jewish state." (See: "Giuliani
Advisor: Raze Palestinian Villages," by Ken Silverstein, Harper's
Magazine, 14 September 2007) Giuliani faced no calls from other
candidates to dismiss the advisor for advocating ethno-religiously
motivated war crimes. Indeed the presence of such a person in his
campaign might even be an electoral asset.

The latest Israeli government declaration comes as Palestinians this
week marked the 25th anniversary of the massacres in Sabra and
Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, in which the Israeli occupation
army and political leadership were full participants. We can reflect
that Israel's dehumanization of Palestinians and other Arabs, its
near daily killing of children, destruction of communities and
racist apartheid against millions of people has been so normalized
that if those massacres occurred today Israel would not need to go
through the elaborate exercise of denying its culpability. Indeed,
the "international community" might barely notice.

[Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One
Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse
(Metropolitan Books, 2006). ]

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9002.shtml