I

‘m working on a political thriller in which the Chinese are up to no good. The scheme I’ve created for them to carry out is pretty imaginative and nefarious, but I just might have to reconsider it, because what they’re doing in the real world is much, much worse, according to the WSJ:

WASHINGTON — Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven’t sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.

“The Chinese have attempted to map our infrastructure, such as the electrical grid,” said a senior intelligence official. “So have the Russians.”

Power companies were unaware their systems had been breeched; U.S. intelligence agencies discovered Chinese and Russian footprints in what should be our most secure non-governmental computer networks. They found intrusions across the systems, and the frequency of penetrations and probings is increasing in frequency and scope, as water and sewage infrastructure are being hit, too.

Consider the latter for just a moment. Sewage treatment plants utilize a carefully balanced microbial process to break down sewage, so an attack on a plant that knocks off the balance and kills the microbes will eliminate the plant’s ability to clean sewage for several days, until balance can be achieved again. Until then, there’s no place to store millions of gallons of wastewater, so it must pass through the plant without treatment.

Plants like these line our rivers, and without them, water in the downstream city would become polluted and undrinkable. Knock out a strategic series of plants along a major river like the Ohio, and you could cause disease outbreaks and mass migrations from a string of major cities.

And that’s the tougher of these three scenarios; computer-spawned disasters in the power or water systems would be swifter, and it’s much easier to imagine the catostrophic results. Add to that the computer systems that run pipelines and industrial facilities and everything starts to snowball to the point when we’ll need a batallion of Jack Bauers.

The Bush admin spent $17 billion in secret funds to strengthen the defenses of government computer systems, and the Obama admin is currently reviewing this program and considering expanding it to include infrastructure-related systems. This is one area where a little government intrusion into the private sector is necessary – the utilities apparently haven’t gotten their act together – and normally should be encouraged, but as is their wont, Dems are not letting any crisis go underutilized:

Last week, Senate Democrats introduced a proposal that would require all critical infrastructure companies to meet new cybersecurity standards and grant the president emergency powers over control of the grid systems and other infrastructure.

I’m with you up to that pivotal “and.” Let’s not be granting this president any more authority to take control of the private sector than we absolutely must. I fear this is a debate that will occur without much public awareness, and that it will end with Obama having the authority to expand federal control over life’s essentials – water and power.

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C

ould Russia be taking Hillary up on her “Reset” (not “overcharge”) invitation?  Are they resetting glasnost and peristoika for the comfy familiarity of the cold war?  What do you read into this AP report?

A Russian Air Force chief said Saturday that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has offered an island as a temporary base for strategic Russian bombers, the Interfax news agency reported.

The chief of staff of Russia’s long range aviation, Maj. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, also said Cuba could be used to base the aircraft, Interfax reported. …

Zhikharev said Chavez had offered “a whole island with an airdrome, which we can use as a temporary base for strategic bombers,” the agency reported. “If there is a corresponding political decision, then the use of the island … by the Russian Air Force is possible.”

Interfax reported he said earlier that Cuba has air bases with four or five runways long enough for the huge bombers and could be used to host the long-range planes. …

Independent military analyst Alexander Golts said from a strategic point of view there was nothing for Russia to gain from basing long-range craft within relatively short range of U.S. shores. “It has no military sense. The bombers don’t need any base. This is just a retaliatory gesture,” Golts said, saying Russia wanted to hit back after U.S. ships patrolled Black Sea waters.

At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey sees it as possibly that foreign policy challenge Joe Biden predicted his boss would get in the admin’s first six months:

It took John Kennedy more than a year to precipitate a military standoff with the Soviet Union over Cuba in the 1962 missile crisis.  It’s taken the Obama Amateur Hour less than two months.

James Joyner of the Atlantic Council is dismissive:

I’m sure Golts’ assessment is right here.  The Soviets did not have permanent bases in the area during the Cold War, so the strategic rationale for doing so now is hard to fathom.  Most likely, this is just a selective leak to the press to tweak the Obama administration.  

I tend to stand closer to Joyner here.  The Russians tried this once before when America had a young president who lacked deep experience, and they ended up giving JFK a leg up on foreign policy.  Unless the Russian memory fades to black around 1963, they will see the high-probability endgame of accepting Chavez’s invitation as the Bear shuffling back to the Mother Country, tail between its legs.

There are two other scenarios:  They fly in a TU-95 or two for a “goodwill” visit just to test the Obama response, which, if we can tell much from his first 50 days, will be late, weak and confused – giving Putin a victory as his planes wing home.

Alternatively, it’s the New World Order, with Obama and Putin just playing with our heads.

Dang, I’m missing W.

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The Greens Go Very, Very Red

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just logged onto Terra Daily, a Greenie/Warmie hysteria site that books itself as “Earth News, Earth Science, Energy Technology, Environment News.” I often look at Terra while writing Sunday Scan because it’s so amazingly gloomy – all about environmental disasters and (related, they claim)  higher CO2. But today it reads like the People’s Daily. Have the Chinese bought the environmental movement lock, stock and barrel?

The lead story, China says Somali mission signals no change in military policy, is a statement from the Chinese military saying, in effect, “Don’t worry just because we have ships engaged off the coast of Somalia. We’re still just a passive little defensive navy.”  And this has what, exactly, to do with the environment?

The second lead is China pledges more support for impoverished Malawi, noting that last year Malawi switched its backing from Taipei to Beijing. The green connection seems to be missing here.  That’s followed by, under the heading “Farm News,” China couple first to take milk pay-out: State media, and under “Sino Daily,” China awash with fake 100 yuan notes. Again, does anyone see green here instead of red?

There are two more stories out of China before we finally get to the typical Terra Daily fare of surging CO2 levels and death tolls from floods (nothing to be seen about the various deep cold snaps, though).  Nothing on the site explains this transformation since I last looked at it last Sunday. It’s all presented totally matter of factly, as this news is the news that appeals to the Gaian deep greeners.

Maybe it does.  Maybe they’re finally letting their true colors show.  Or possibly, Terra Daily was flailing, unable to find enough readers to keep the owners in their metro-yuppie-hipness, so they sold out to the Chinese.  If so, it’s very heavy-handed, which is what we’d expect.  And if so, it won’t stop with little ol’ Terra Daily.  From sea to shining sea, major newspapers are looking for buyers.

Continue Reading »

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L

et’s get right to the point:  California will soon be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas and a cluster of nearby states will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York may soon join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states.  Hawaii will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

And when is all that going to happen?  Oh, around 2010 or so.  I just ordered Mandarin Chinese from Rosetta Stone.

The projected imminent fall of the U.S., a theory of Igor Panarin, a former KGB analyst and current dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats, is getting a ton of play in Putin’s captive national media – and increasingly, here.  There was a spurt of Drudge-driven posts back in November, and now the WSJ has picked up the story:

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

“There’s a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur,” he says. “One could rejoice in that process,” he adds, poker-faced. “But if we’re talking reasonably, it’s not the best scenario — for Russia.” Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces — with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

Panarin’s theory dates back to 1998, and was pretty far-fetched in those robust times.  The current economy makes you tug your collar a bit – but it’s also taken the “mass” out of our immigration problem.  Moral degredation could well do us in – but that’s in God’s hands, and if moral degredation is a nation-ender, the Russians better look in the mirror.

In a recent article in Isvestia, Panarin laid out his theory yet again and summarily dismissed Obama’s ability to deal with it:

Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama “can work miracles,” he wrote. “But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles.”

Well, I can agree with Panarin’s assessment of Obama as no miracle-worker.  White House spokesperson Dana Perino was more subdued; she declined to comment when asked about Panarin’s theories.  But that’s just fodder for the anti-Bush conspiratists.

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South Ossentia: It’s Just More Russia

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t’s been six months since Russia pried South Ossentia out of Georgia’s hands, supposedly out of grave concern for the well-being of the South Ossentians. So, as Dr. Phil would say, how’s that workin’ for ya?

Not too good, according to Spiegel.

Besides Russia, so far only Nicaragua has recognized the separatist republic. Foreign journalists are only permitted to travel in the tiny country when accompanied by officials from the foreign ministry in Moscow. Even the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union, which brokered the cease-fire between Russia and Georgia, are being denied entry by the South Ossetians and their protective power, Russia. For this reason, very little reliable information makes it out of the region.

This makes what recently appeared in Russian newspapers all the more surprising: that the republic is on the brink of social unrest, just as winter is beginning, because the government has allegedly embezzled Russian reconstruction aid funds, as the former South Ossetian defense minister and head of the security council, a Russian lieutenant general, explained; or that South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity fled spinelessly during the war; and that millions of rubles deposited in the safes at the national bank in Tskhinvali had gone missing and that Russian businesspeople are refusing to invest in South Ossetia while its brawny separatist leader remains in power.

In South Ossentia, any controversy is squelched by “state secrets.”  Any homes that are rebuilt are rebuilt through EU or American efforts, not Russian.  Money disappears.  Leaders flake.

In other words, Russia happens. Continue Reading »

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he Bear is back.  The Georgian village of Perevi on the western border of South Ossetia was for one brief day once again under Georgian control – as it should be – until earlier today, when hundreds of Russian soldiers occupied it.  Says AFP:

Interior ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said from 500 to 600 Russian soldiers moved into Perevi early Saturday in what he described as a “military operation” involving paratroopers, helicopters and armoured vehicles.

Georgia and EU monitors had announced Friday that Russian forces were withdrawing from Perevi, a mainly ethnic Georgian village of about 1,100 people on the western border of South Ossetia, which had been under Russian control since a five-day war in August.

Georgian police had moved into the village on Friday after Russian forces withdrew. About 20 Russian soldiers returned late Friday and Georgian police were forced out when the large contingent of troops arrived, Utiashvili said.

“They presented Georgian police with an ultimatum: get out or we will shoot,” he said.

The Russians have refused the requests of EU ambassadors in the region to visit Perevi, and the EU has called the Russians provocation a breech of the EU-negotiated ceasefire and demanded called on the Russians to pull back to the South Ossetia border.

Interesting confrontation, eh?  The EU – which as you recall is also negotiating with the even more trouble-making Iranian regime – has made a major commitment here, brokering a cease-fire, monitoring it, and calling on Russia to pay attention to their calls to play by the rules, saying the old Bear’s actions are “unacceptable under all relevant instruments of international law.”

So far, no word from Moscow.  It’s winter and their gas pipeline is keeping Europe toasty, so they’ll take their time deciding what to do about the self-emasculated pipsqueaksfrom Western Europe.

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O

nward through Larry Schweikart’s 48 Liberal Lies about American History (That You Probably Learned in School) we go,with two more lies from this solid review of what liberal history profs are doing to revise the past and pollute the minds of the next generation.

Lie #9 – Michael Gorbachev, Not Ronald Reagan, Was Responsible for Ending the Cold War

Gorbachev’s revorm policies led not only to the collapse of the Soviet empire but also to the breakup of the Soviet Union itself. – James West Davidson et al., Nation of Nations

This is one of the lies that appals me the most, since I remember the incidents in such detail, it having been one of the most riveting times of my life – but living memories or not, liberal profs hate Reagan for his successes and his enduring popularity and are doing all they can to strip away his greatness.

First, let’s dispense with the notion that Gorbachev willingly put a stop to Russian imperialism, which is a part of this myth. Schweikart reminds us that Gorby kept Soviet forces in Afghanistan until their losses were no longer supportable, then unhappily pulled them out. He also tried to pull off Cuba II, the Soviet-supported Cuban take-over of Grenada, which Reagan put a quick end to.

This chapter is the most fascinating so far, describing the National Security Decision Directives issued by the Reagan administration starting in 1982 that spelled out how the US would bankrupt the USSR: attacking Soviet expansionism in Afghanistan and elsewhere, limiting sources of cash (like delaying the gas and oil pipeline to W. Europe), and limiting high-tech exports the Soviets desperately needed because they couldn’t come close to matching our technology.

“You have declared war on us, economic war,” said Gorby’s precessor, Leonid Brezhnev. Part of that war was NSA’s “Farewell Dossier,” a collection of punches using the Soviet’s never-ending efforts to steal our technology by sending fake technologies their way – including one that trashed their pipeline for a time.

Schweikart concludes:

As president, the Gipper played the [arms race] card. Across the board, using American banks and bullets, money and missiles, tehcnology and diplomacy, the United States put a full-court press on the Soviet Union. The best tha tcan be said for Garbachev was that he was open to defeat.

Lie #10 – September 11 Was Not the Work of Terrorists: It Was a Government Conspiracy

Don’t ask me to tell you want happened on 9/11. All I know is that the official account of the buildings’ collapse is improbable. – Paul Craig Roberts, Gullible Americans

This is another pre-emptive chapter in the book. Schweikart was unable to find a quote from an existing textbook for the beginning of the chapter, but as I said earlier, profs do allow and encourage outside reading – often from a prof-chosen list – so he feels compelled to attack these lunatic conspiracies as well.

C-SM readers don’t need a rehash of the disgusting and fantabulous arguments proffered by the 9/11 Truthers Dingbats, but like me, they might need a reminder of what our Sec of State-apparent did on the floor of the Senate:

In May 2002, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Hillary Clinton waved a copy of that day’s edition of the New York Post with the headline, BUSH KNEW.  The story claimed the president had been given a briefing warning of impending terrorist attacks.  “The presidnet knew what?” she asked. “My constituents would like to know the answer to that and many other questions.

Questions like what, Hillary?  That steel doesn’t melt at those temperatures? (It loses tensile strength and bends.) That thousands of pounds of explosives were packed into the building by the CIA or Mosad?  That the missing passengers of the four planes have all been quietly, willingly secreted away to some unfindable destination, where they’ve stayed mum for seven years out of fervid love of George W. Bush?

Hillary just might look good in a tinfoil hat.

The Lies They Teach – #8
The Lies They Teach: #6 And #7
The Lies They Teach: #4 And #5
The Lies They Teach: #1 – #3

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he other CSM has a chilly little story today rolling out the five foreign policy principles of Russia’s president, Vladamir Putin Dmitry Medvedev. Christian Scientists may have the patience to wade through the entire story to ferret out the five principles, but I know you, so:

1. Protect Russians wherever they are. What’s a Russian? Just someone with a spanking new Russian passport, like those the Russians are handing out like cheap vodka shots in Crimea, which is independent but happens to host an important Russian naval base?
2. Attend to Russia’s “privileged interests” – oil, gas, warm water ports – in Moscow’s area of influence, which we can translate as areas that used to be in the USSR but are not in Russia today.
3. Make sure the world is not “unipolar.” Hmm. That one kinda hits close to home. I’d sure like to see the tactics they’ve penciled out in support of that goal.
4. Do not be isolated. Russian boots tromping through Georgia, Russian policy chiefs controlling the flow of much of Europe’s energy resources – yeah, that’s keeping Russia out from behind its walls.
5. Oh, and in case you’re getting a little hot and bothered by now, let’s wrap up with principle #5: Comply with international law. Ahhh! All better!

The other CSM casts this news rightly:

Is this Cold War II? It’s more like a throwback to the 19th century, when great powers carved up the world like a pot roast.

That was an era in which Czarist Russia expanded into the Caucasus, Central Asia, and across Siberia. When America told Europe “hands off” in Latin America. When Europe’s monarchies sliced up colonies in Africa and Asia.

That era is over, or so the world thought.

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H

ere are some excerpts from reports posted on the Human Rights Watch Web site:

Human Rights Watch researchers have uncovered evidence that Russian aircraft dropped cluster bombs in populated areas in Georgia, killing at least 11 civilians and injuring dozens, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called upon Russia to immediately stop using cluster bombs, weapons so dangerous to civilians that more than 100 nations have agreed to ban their use. …

Human Rights Watch said Russian aircraft dropped RBK-250 cluster bombs, each containing 30 PTAB 2.5M submunitions, on the town of Ruisi in the Kareli district of Georgia on August 12, 2008. Three civilians were killed and five wounded in the attack. On the same day, a cluster strike in the center of the town of Gori killed at least eight civilians and injured dozens, Human Rights Watch said. Dutch journalist Stan Storimans was among the dead. Israeli journalist Zadok Yehezkeli was seriously wounded and evacuated to Israel for treatment after surgery in Tbilisi. An armored vehicle from the Reuters news agency was perforated with shrapnel from the attack. (source)

And:

When Human Rights Watch entered Tskhinvali on August 13, the city was largely deserted. Human Rights Watch researchers saw numerous apartment buildings and houses damaged by shelling. Some of them had been hit by rockets most likely fired from Grad launchers, weapons that should not be used in areas populated by civilians, as they cannot be directed at only military targets and are therefore inherently indiscriminate. Also, Human Rights Watch saw several buildings that bore traces of heavy ammunition as if fired from tanks at close range. There was some evidence of firing being directed into basements, locations where civilians frequently choose as a place of shelter. (source)

Where are the howls of outrage from the American left, who are so deeply offended whenever one of our precisely targeted bombs goes off target and despite all our care, some civilians are killed?

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J

ohn McCain is enjoying his foreign policy superiority over a confused and halting Barack Obama this week, but he’s in serious danger of overplaying his Georgia card and should back off until he gets his mouth right.

The biggest risk of too aggressive a stand against Russia is that a war-weary American electorate will fear McCain will drag them into another conflict, while the doves of peace that dreamily circle around the haloed head of Obama signal peace, brothers and sisters. Yet McCain’s speeches yesterday, replicated in today’s WSJ op/ed, look too much like a scattering of the doves. Are we in fact all Georgians, as McCain says? Or do we wish this little nowhere rough-edged democracy would just leave us alone? Quite a lot the latter; a bit of a stretch on the former.

McCain needs to be careful here, vetting his comments so they appear deeply knowledgeable on foreign policy, tough enough to stand up to trouble, but wise enough to read the truth in every situation he faces. The lead of his op/ed totally blew that image out:

For anyone who thought that stark international aggression was a thing of the past, the last week must have come as a startling wake-up call.

This most unfortunate sentence got an immediate drubbing down from the Left. Yglesias is as good as any for this illustration:

We all recall, of course, John McCain’s outrage when the United States violated this rule back in 2003.

Rule: Don’t hand-feed laughers to the left. Words are important, and here the important words “against democratic nations” are missing. Iraq was the disposition of a tyrant who was killing his people after years of international diplomatic efforts to bring about peaceful change; Georgia was a crushing military attack against a (weak and flawed) democracy carried out as a surprise without so much as a head fake to the diplomats. But McCain ineptly let the left focus on this canard instead of getting to the meat of the issue: How do the candidates respond to international crises?

Later in the op/ed he did articulate the thought correctly:

The world has learned at great cost the price of allowing aggression against free nations to go unchecked. (emphasis added)

McCain may be a maverick, but he still needs a message deck that tames the maverick enough so he doesn’t throw away his strength now or cause international incidents later, should he win in November. The conservative blogs are full of praise for McCain on all things Georgian. I started there, but I’m afraid McCain is playing his Georgia card more worrisomely with each passing day.

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