We've Crossed the Cyberarms Rubicon

No one knows exactly where the Rubicon was flowing through when Julius Ceasar commanded his troops to cross its waters, thereby passing the point of no return. The flow of the river has changed in the many centuries since: many things have. War in Ancient Roman times was a much more technologically simpler affair, but now war is a technologically easier affair to wage.

 

And with that ease, the Pentagon has declared that a cyberattack is tantamount to an act of war. If Iran were to, for example, design a computer virus that disrupts US air traffic or the electrical grid, the US would be justified in launching missiles and sending in the boots. If we operate along the same lines of Pentagon thought as to what constitutes a declaration of war, hasn't the United States by its own definition already declared war on Iran?

 

The New York Times reported that the Pentagon developed a virus that caused Iranian nuclear centrifuges to spin out of control and self-destruct. The virus, Stuxnet, was developed jointly by the NSA and Israel's Unit 8200. However, the Israelis inserted extra code that resulted in the virus escaping its original parameters and attacking computers around the world. Vice-president Joe Biden angrily quipped: "It's got to be the Israelis. They went too far!"

 

And, yes, I agree that the Israelis went too far, but they are a small state working with the superpower's National Security Agency. Before Obama took office, he met with then president Bush who asked him to continue two classified programs: the drone program and the cyberweapons program. Obama not only complied, he expanded exponentially. Obama has gone too far; he has forced other states to launch their own cyberweapons programs.

 

The recent attacks against the New York Times are just the beginning. The next American war could very well come because Iran or China feel justified in developing a computer virus that disrupts America's air traffic or brings down its power grid. President Ahmajinehad himself stated on Iranian television that "the enemy" had already declared economic war. What Ahmajinehad failed to mention, however, was that "the enemy" has already declared a cyberwar, and that Iran has started its own cyberweapons unit in retaliation. There is no shortage of computer talent in Iran, I can guarantee you that.

France's "Mission Accomplished"

Saddam Hussein's forces fell like a house of cards when American forces invaded in 2003. Saddam's Soviet-era equipment was no match for the world's most powerful military force and its 21st century technological ruthlessness. However, it was the great military strategist Dick Cheney who so wisely observed in 1994 that (transcript):

The man was a military prophet, it's like he could see 20 years into the future. Cheney knew that a conventional military attack would  be quickly successful, but the ensuing guerrilla war would embroil the US in the same way that Vietnam did. And, let's not forget that Vietnam was French Indochina, a post-colonial problem that the US military-industrial complex was more than willing to get embroiled in due to the potential for mass profit and untold weapons test on the field.

 

The US has already set into motion the construction of a drone base in Niger, to make operations in North Africa more tenable. The Pentagon strategists can see what is obvious: the Islamist forces withdrew strategically to the more inhospitable north of Mali, where they are well-entrenched and have more base of support. The French know that too, and that is why they are reluctant to proceed. What Hollande has done is: provide training to the rebels, and give them time to analyze and prepare for the second wave of attack.

 

Nonetheless, president Hollande has taken one of the most expensive photo-ops for a European head of state in recent memory. He has traveled to a warzone, at grave taxpayer expense, to be photographed as the victorious savior of a jubilant people.

 

Some years down the line, we will look back at president Hollande smiling as he walked amidst the crowds in Mali, and remember Bush's arrival on the USS Lincoln by jet, and cheering to a jubilant crowd as the words "Mission Accomplished" were splashed behind him. Don't expect that French forces will actually be able to withdraw soon; the quagmire has just begun.

How Malcolm X Helped Me Go Vegan

I was a lean, fit child in the Dominican. It could be fair to say that I was addicted to my bicycle, often riding around town for up to twelve hours a day. When I got to NY, I was 60 pounds, and pretty much on the bone. Things, however, changed pretty quickly.

 

CES 64 in the Bronx was not the most well-equipped elementary school. We barely even had something that resembled a science class, much less a gym. There was a massive space in the lobby, where we would sometimes play kickball all the while trying to avoid the cement columns and marble floor. So, no gym in school, no capacity to do much outside because of the crime rate, no more traditional Latin cuisine, and you end up with a fat Jose. By age 15, my weight had already ballooned to 240 pounds. I went from 60 to 240 pounds in just a few years of misery in the Bronx.

 

I guess I was a typical male in many ways. I never really questioned what was on the plate; I simply ate it. I never thought about where the ice cream came from, or what was in it; I simply liked the look and taste, and for me that was enough. It was not until age 15 that tragedy and destiny would force me to start asking questions.

 

It was September 15th, 2002 and my father and I were watching the Vargas Vs. De la Hoya fight. I wasn't paying much attention to the fight, in reality I was on the phone with my buddy Jan. After babbling for about 10 minutes on the phone, my father turned to me and said in a tired, calm voice: "don't talk on the phone so much." He said it in Spanish and instead of saying, "no hables mucho por el telefono," he said, "no me hables mucho por el telefono." The use of the pronoun me before a verb is used in Spanish to indicate something that affects the speaker negatively or is a disadvantage to him. In essence, his last words on this earth were, "don't talk on the phone, I can't afford it."

 

Before I even finished talking with Jan, my father fell off his chair and started convulsing on the floor. We rushed him to the hospital; he'd suffered a debilitating stroke. On October 6, after almost three weeks in the hospital, I got a phone call informing me that he was never going to wake up. He was 46, like his father who was also 46 when a stroke took him from this earth.

 

Soon after, I started wearing black and my mind was filled with obsessive thoughts of my own mortality. I wasn't sure whether I'd make it past 46, and thought it best to embrace a culture of death, so that I could be more prepared for it. I would have gone down a very, very dark path had it not been from Ms. Gross' Malcolm X class that same semester.

 

Had I simply watched the movie or swallowed the book in a single week, my life probably wouldn't have been impacted the way it was. Though The Autobiography of Malcolm X has a largely conciliatory tone near the end, it was the black, militant philosophy throughout the book that helped me cope. For most of October, November, and December, we read Malcolm X at a very slow pace, and the anger that he felt before his trip to Mecca, I also felt. I channeled the pain from my loss and my fear of death into intellectual anger at America's history of racial injustice. You don't have to be a psychologist to recognize that intellectual anger is much more useful than despair.

 

But I also picked up some things from my surrogate father for those three very difficult months: dietary considerations. Malcolm X described pork in a way that simply convinced me it was too dirty and risky to eat. For the first time in my life, I began to wonder what exactly was on my plate and where it came from. I started asking myself: "What's in this meat?"

 

The recent horse meat scandal by no means shocks me. The fact that I was 15 and the adults who were giving me food couldn't tell me precisely what it was, taught me that most people simply consumed blindly. I decided to open my eyes; I went to the small local library behind Bronx Lebanon and withdrew all of its 12 books on nutrition. I became familiar with everything about nutrition, and after reading Diet for a New America and The Food Revolution, I understood that the American diet I'd adopted was not only destructive to me, but also to the environment -- not to even mention the animals themselves.

 

By January 2003, I was already solidly vegan, and had new determination in life: I was ready to join the track team. I had never before in my life eaten green, so it took two solid months of forcing myself to eat broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, cauliflower, and tofu. I threw up on a near daily basis. Something similar happened each time I went out running, but by the fall of 2003, I had already lost 80 pounds. In less than a year, I had gone from 240 pound couch potato to commanding the wrestling team in the 160-170 pound weight class. Malcolm X didn't direct me towards veganism, but he helped me open my eyes.

 

 

The Night of the Long Knives

Hitler was democratically elected as chancellor of Germany in 1932, and began serving in 1933. At the time, most of the power lay with the president, Hindenburg, and Hitler was seen as just another post-WWI chancellor, and not particularly special.

 

In 1933, the Reichstag, the German parliament, burned to the ground and a Dutch communist was blamed. History cannot say for certain whether the Reichstag fire was started by SS troops or by communist elements, but the next morning, Hitler had ready an impassioned plea to president Hindenburg asking for emergency powers, for the power to declare martial law, in order to save Germany from a communist takeover. Hindenburg gave him those powers, and Hitler began his first purge, eliminating many who opposed him.

 

Fast forward to June 30th, 1934, and Hitler is now ready for his second round of mass, premeditated murder: The Night of the Long Knives. Hitler, fearing that the leadership of the SA -- the street brigade he'd used to terrorize the opposition during his rise to power --was threatening his legitimacy with its homosexuality and street behavior ant thus decided to eliminate them all in the cover of night. Primarily, he suspected that the leader of the SA, Rohm, was planning a coup against him.

 

On the night of June 30th, Hitler personally oversaw the arrest of the SA leadership, while also simultaneously ordering the extrajudicial assassination of as many as 1,000 individuals who had opposed him or that he suspected could oppose him in the future.

 

One month after Hitler's second purge, president Hindenburg conveniently died, and Hitler merged the chancellery with the presidency, becoming absolute, unopposed ruler of Germany. Indeed, the formula for fascism has always been the same; it has almost always employed a Hegelian dialectic: thesis, antithesis, synthesis (problem, reaction, solution.) Hitler created a problem, awaited the expected response, and then swept in to emerge as savior.

 

Since the Benghazi attacks of 9/11, many prominent military servicemen have been forced to resign in disgrace or have been removed from their posts. Petraeus, John Allen, William Ward, Carter Ham, Charles Gaouette, Jeffery Sinclair, Joseph Darlak, and James Mattis have been removed from their high level positions over flimsy allegations.

 

The questions becomes: Does Obama expect a coup against him during his second term? Or are our top military brass all degenerates?

Operation Gladio, or How to Run a Secret Paramilitary Force

A stay-behind operation is essentially the last line of defense against an occupying power. During the Cold War, the CIA and NATO feared that many countries in Europe could fall to communism, be it democratically or with Soviet "assistance." Stay-behind networks were covert groups tasked with destabilizing any future government deemed communistic by either the CIA or NATO.

 

Stay-behind groups were trained in disinformation, political assassinations, and false-flag attacks -- false-flag attacks are violent acts attributed to an uninvolved party. If a country became socialist through democratic channels was of no concern to stay-behind groups. Their job was to terrorize by any means, and as a result the CIA and NATO often recruited from the far-right of society, from its fascist elements.

 

These paramilitary groups were based all throughout Europe, had underground arms-caches, trained with US Green Berets and the SAS, and answered to the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SAUCER.) As per tradition, the SAUCER is a US general that answers to the Pentagon. The Pentagon exercised very effective control over many Gladio operations.

 

It was not until 1990 that the first of these secret paramilitary armies was revealed to the public, and later proved to have existed in nearly every country in Europe, with the Dutch stay-behind group being the only one independent of NATO. A 1990 European resolution condemned Gladio as being a parallel clandestine service escaping all democratic scrutiny.

 

In Italy and in Turkey, where communism had the potential to become a majority democratic movement, Gladio operatives carried out terrorist attacks which were meant to convince the population of the need for a dictatorial, pro-Washington regime. According to the Guardian, "US intelligence agents were informed in advanced about several right-wing terrorist bombings, including the Dec. 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, and the Piazza della Loggia bombing in Drescia five years later, but did nothing to alert the authorities or prevent the attacks."

 

The number of attacks carried out by Gladio operatives is too long to list, but it proves how false-flag attacks have been used by the CIA to further Washington's international agenda.

 

Given history, and the increasing powers that have been given to the CIA since the start of The War Against Terror (TWAT,) it stands to reason that there are stay-behind groups in countries where the CIA fears an Islamist takeover. The files from Operation Gladio, fortunately for the CIA, can neither be confirmed nor denied.