Eideard

Federal officials said Wednesday they have found no evidence to support an initial state report that foreign hackers caused a water pump at an Illinois water plant to fail this month.

The preliminary report, collected by a statewide terrorist intelligence center in Illinois, had said that a Russian hacker had taken control of the operating system at the water plant in Springfield. The pump turned on and off repeatedly, burning out the motor, the report said…

But the Department of Homeland Security and FBI said they failed to confirm reports of a cyber­attack. DHS spokesman Chris Ortman called the Illinois state report nothing more than “raw, unconfirmed data.”

He said that the federal investigation also failed to confirm the report’s claim that hackers broke into a software company’s database and retrieved user names and passwords, which enabled access to the water plant system.

“In addition,” Ortman said, “DHS and FBI have concluded that there was no malicious traffic from Russia or any foreign entities, as previously reported.”

Officials from the state intelligence center did not return phone calls seeking comment…

Please, let’s don’t start letting reality, verifiable conclusions or facts stand in the way of Cold Warriors who are required by that alien implant in their brain to transform every possible SNAFU into an assault upon God, Apple Pie and the American Way of Life.

Set thirty meters underground, deep within the bedrock and in what was once used as a Swedish atomic bomb shelter, lies this high security internet center. What sounds like the perfect hideout for a CIA facility or a film set for the next Jason Bourne film, is actually the HQ for the Swedish internet server provider, Bahnhof. Named “Pionen, White Mountain,” the internet service facility is centrally located in Stockholm, directly below the Sofia Church, where the cave-like formation houses server halls and offices.

The architectural firm behind this impressive transformation was Albert-France Lanord which was asked to treat the granite rocks as if they were a living organism. The idea was to bring human comforts from earth underground, such as plants, light, water and technology. “We created strong contrasts between rooms where the rock dominates and where the human being is a stranger against rooms where the human being took over totally,” says AF-L. Daylight was obviously one of the biggest challenges for the architects, who designed a long tunnel, allowing for natural sunlight to filter through the underground space, with small buttresses to reflect the light into several zones.

There’s a steady market in leftover missile silos and command centers throughout the world. Bunkers that cost taxpayers billions of dollars are being sold for a comparative pittance.

Of course, you still have to find a reasonable use for something originally built to suit cowardice and fear.

The Chinese president has resisted US arguments about why China should let its currency strengthen, saying the dollar-based international currency system is a “product of the past”.

However, Hu Jintao admitted that it would take a long time to make China’s yuan (RMB) a world currency.

“China has made important contribution to the world economy in terms of total economic output and trade, and the RMB has played a role in the world economic development,” he told two US newspapers in a written interview ahead of his visit to the US next week. “But making the RMB an international currency will be a fairly long process…”

Hu said arguments that allowing the yuan to appreciate would curb inflation are too simplistic, adding that China is fighting inflation with a range of policies including interest-rate increases.

While inflation in China hit a 28-month high in November, Hu told the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post that prices were “on the whole moderate and controllable…We have the confidence, conditions and ability to stabilise the overall price level,” he said…

On other issues, Hu struck an upbeat tone about ties with the US. “We should abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality,” he said and “respect each other’s choice of development path.”

The president suggested co-operation with the US in areas like new energy sources, clean energy, infrastructure development, aviation and space…

The Chinese leader, who is expected to step down as president and general secretary of China’s Communist Party in 2012, arrives on Wednesday in Washington for his first and last state visit.

I chose this article from Al Jazeera deliberately to offer folks a middle-of-the-road view from outside the United States and most Western yes-men. Certainly, the content of the interview isn’t altered; but, presentation is still linked to American domestic politics – and that includes foreign policy.

The Washington Post article is somewhat neutral. The NY Times reflects their policy of being as hawkish as any Cold Warrior when it comes to economic and commercial challenges to the United States.

The planned overthrow of the United States government ended rather prosaically this fall, with a giant pile of mashed-up trucks in a muddy scrap yard a mile or so off the Interstate.

The crew at Alter Metal Recycling has been piling up the old trucks since the summer and sending them to Alabama, for melting down and reincarnation as everything from cars to washers and dryers.

The process is pretty standard, said Troy Brooks, the yard supervisor. But these trucks were a little different…

In certain circles in the mid-’90s, among those inclined to keep an eye out for black helicopters, they were more than just rumors. To them, the presence of 700 military-looking trucks bearing Soviet-bloc markings in a weed-strewn lot north of Gulfport was clear proof of a United Nations-brokered plan to take over the United States.

The specific outlines of such a plot were rather vague. But conspiracy-cult radio shows and right-wing fringe newsletters delivered somber reports about the vehicles, speaking of armored tanks and secret roads and the role of the vehicles in the establishment of a New World Order…

The apparent threat to national security was broadcast so far and wide that one night in 1994 Timothy J. McVeigh himself broke into the yard to examine the vehicles firsthand. He went away disappointed.

But the real tale behind the trucks, as is often the case, turns out to be more interesting than the conspiracy.

RTFA. A cautionary tale of one after another business scheme falling apart. Little forethought, less expertise, get-rich-quick schemes spinning from Germany’s reunification and more.

In the end, the vehicles mostly sat unwanted in the lot beside Highway 49, next to the Friendly Pawn Shop and across the way from a discount liquor store. The conspiracy theories dwindled, as did the visits by customs officials.

The rusting accelerated after Hurricane Katrina, and for various reasons, including a civil court judgment, the expiration of a trade license and the fact that nobody was interested in rust-covered trucks, Mr. Chawafaty decided to scrap them.

Frank Koval – participant in portions of the schemes – learned about their impending demise by reading about it in the newspaper like anyone else.

He laughed about the episode – failed business schemes, absurd conspiracy theories, all ending up as so much scrap to be melted down and recast as something useful. One can only hope as much ever results from future meltdowns of the Republican Tea Parties.

A Canadian mining company is close to finalizing a deal that will give a Russian company controlling interest in its uranium operations, which include a Utah town, a uranium mill and thousands of acres of claims.

In October, four members of Congress urged the U.S. Treasury Department to block plans by Uranium One to sell majority ownership to the mining company, Atomredmetzoloto (ARMZ), whose parent company is Rosatom, the Russian nuclear agency, to protect national security. Since then, the Treasury Department has approved Uranium One’s plans, as has the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Utah Division of Radiation Control.

“Uranium One has now received all necessary approvals to proceed with the closing of the ARMZ transaction,” said Rob Buchanan, head of investor relations for the Canadian company, “and we are on track to close the transaction before the end of the year…”

Hacks with their heads stuck into Cold War dementia should step aside from commerce and energy production designed for economies years ahead of American engineering, investment and politics.

“Day-to-day decisions with regard to the operations at the Shootaring Mill will be made by the management of Uranium One Exploration U.S.A. Inc. in coordination and consultation with Scott Schierman as the Corporate Radiation Safety Officer for the Shootaring Canyon Mill,” the company’s attorney said in an e-mail to Utah Assistant Attorney General Denise Chancellor. “Strategic decisions with regard to investment and development of the Shootaring Mill will be made by Uranium One Inc.”

I worked within the nuclear power generation industry when core operations – as far as I was concerned – were as dedicated to being a welfare check to participating corporations as they were to producing electricity. I left before greed and mediocre engineering required safety concerns to take precedence over advancements in design. Most US firms capable of competing have folded or been sold off.

Most environmental fears are now decades out of date. I know that doesn’t matter to the fearful. But, it is the reality.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

With critical decisions ahead on the war in Afghanistan, President Obama is about to receive an unusual opportunity to reshape the Pentagon’s leadership, naming a new defense secretary as well as several top generals and admirals in the next several months.

It is a rare confluence of tenure calendars and personal calculations, coming midway through Mr. Obama’s first term and on the heels of an election that challenged his domestic policies. His choices could have lasting consequences for his national security agenda, perhaps strengthening his hand over a military with which he has often clashed, and are likely to have an effect beyond the next election, whether he wins or loses.

That is all the more reason that Mr. Obama’s choices are certain to face scrutiny in a narrowly divided Senate, whose Republican leadership has declared itself intent on defeating him.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said he plans to retire next year, while the terms of four members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are scheduled to end: Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman; Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman; Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief; and Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations…

At the top of the new pantheon of military power, the president needs a heavyweight to succeed Mr. Gates, an unexpected holdover from the Bush administration who stayed longer than many expected to become perhaps the most influential member of the Obama cabinet…

Any commander in chief is theoretically free to replace his top civilian and military subordinates whenever he chooses, but it rarely happens all at once.

RTFA. Long, it contains all the what-ifs and scary-terrorist-under-the-bed scenarios plus a few Cold War clangers thrown in for good measure.

I presume the Republicans will try to build a furious defense against any change, any progress in modernizing our military – and worst of all – any attempt to reduce taxpayer welfare to the military-industrial corporations who still own the oldest geezers in the Republican Party.

Novelist Alan Sillitoe died today at the age of 82, his family said.

The Nottingham-born writer, whose novels marked him out as one of the Angry Young Men of British fiction who emerged in the 1950s, died at Charing Cross hospital in London.

His son, David, said he hoped his father would be remembered for his contribution to literature…

There was a period when Sillitoe was the most widely read writer in the English language in the world. Not just for his first two novels; but, his heartfelt contempt for Western politics and the move from serious dialectical conflict to media management.

He rejected Cold War ideology out of hand.

Sillitoe left school at 14 and worked in a bicycle factory in his native Nottingham before serving in the RAF.

His breakthrough came with the publication of the novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in 1958.

It was made into a film, starring Albert Finney, as was his next novel The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, which featured Tom Courtenay in the lead role.

The opening scene in the film version of “Saturday night and Sunday morning” rolls down from the polluted clouds over industrial Nottingham into the clatter of the Raleigh factory and Albert Finney describing the day-by-day lot of industrial workers like himself – “but, you don’t let the bastards grind you down!”

Both are seen as classic examples of kitchen sink dramas reflecting the reality of life in Britain at the mid-point of the 20th century.

Just as clear, just as sharp, his description fit the alienation of young industrial workers in America. The joyless days of a nation climbing onto the imperial throne recently departed by the Brits.

“Saturday night and Sunday morning” and his later works were about me and my mates here in the States just as much as the industrial heart of England.

A CIA manual instructing US agents on the use of magic tricks during the Cold War has gone on sale.

It was written in 1953 by magician John Mulholland for a fee of $3,000 – considerable at the time. It includes deceptions such as spiking drinks, pocketing small objects and tying shoelaces to communicate in code.

The CIA ordered copies destroyed in the 1970s, but one survived. It has been republished as The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception…

In the foreword, deputy CIA director John McLaughlin writes that “magic and espionage are kindred spirits“.

So are the politics of religion and the absurd power of patriotism.

Hillary Clinton unveils Walt Whitman statue on Moscow campus
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

An impassioned U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking to students at Moscow State University, admonished those in the U.S. and Russian governments who haven’t moved beyond a Cold War mentality.

Clinton said such people are “living in the past” and aren’t able to cooperate on issues such as missile defense because they “don’t trust each other.” She also called on the nations to find common ground, saying they “shouldn’t end all cooperation” just because they can’t agree on everything.

“Let’s be smarter than our past,” Clinton said, offering to bring a “new attitude bring to the relationship.”

Clinton spoke about surmounting historical difficulties in U.S.-Russian relations, changing a relationship “once defined by the shadow of mutually assured destruction into what is based on mutual respect and, over time, increasingly mutual trust.”

“We are different countries; we have different historical experiences, different perspectives,” she said. “But we are planting those disagreements in a much broader field of cooperation, and hopefully we are enriching the earth in which this cooperation can take root.”

Agreed. Overdue.

On a related note, The Cheney Troika is founding an organization to lead American Jihadists further into the past.

Chinese President Hu Jintao sent Taiwan counterpart Ma Ying-jeou a telegram on Monday applauding his election as party chief, the first direct communication between leaders of the two sides since the civil war ended in 1949.

Taiwan’s Nationalist Party (KMT) elected Ma as chief on Sunday, giving him more control of the island’s China policy at a time when ties are warming.

“I hope our two parties can continue to promote peaceful cross-Strait development, deepen mutual trust, bring good news to compatriots on both sides and create a revival of the great Chinese race,” Hu, who is also chairman of the Communist Party of China, said in the 73-word message in Chinese.

China has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since 1949, when Mao Zedong’s Communists won the Chinese civil war and Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT fled to the island. Beijing has vowed to bring Taiwan under its rule, by force if necessary.

Colonization of Formosa by mainland China began in the 16th Century. A fact which seems to escape most Westerners.

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