Il disordine sta nel fatto che gli incentivi per incoraggiare l’adozione di pannelli solari e soprattutto di sistemi fotovoltaici sono lievitati negli ultimi anni senza nessun freno. Tanto che nelle prossime settimane ci si aspetta una drastica riduzione decisa da decreti ministeriali in materia. Potrebbe significare che se il cittadino che paga da tempo in bolletta la sua “tassa” per investire nell’energia del sole dovesse nei prossimi mesi decidere di comprare pannelli solari potrebbe pagare ben più salate le stesse strutture che qualcuno ha pagato molto meno nei mesi scorsi. In definitiva, dopo aver dato la sua quota per sostenere gli incentivi, qualcuno non ne beneficerà. E questo perché, senza nessuna regolamentazione, la politica ha votato misure esagerate. In pratica: o tutto o niente. E’ la prima incongruenza. Un’altra sta nel fatto che non sono state altrettanto incoraggiate altre energie rinnovabili. Si definiscono così le fonti di energia che si distinguono da quelle fossili per il fatto che non si esauriscono e non inquinano come appunto carbone e petrolio. Gli impianti fotovoltaici servono a ricavare energia elettrica in pratica direttamente dal sole. I pannelli solari, simili nella concezione, ricavano calore che scalda acqua calda, utile nella gestione domestica. Ma oltre a quella solare, ci sono altre fonti di energia: quella idroelettrica, quella eolica, quella marina, quella geotermica. Nessuna di queste ha ricevuto tanto impulso come i sistemi fotovoltaici. Viene da pensare che forse non erano rappresentate da lobby altrettanto forti. Ma il punto è che il previsto dietrofront metterà in crisi proprio il settore che più ha favorito: si prevedono ricadute negative sull’occupazione per i tagli agli incentivi. Lo teme Diego Gavagnin e conferma i timori anche Vincenzo Ferrara, dirigente dell’ENEA e consulente del Ministero dell’Ambiente. Ferrara sottolinea anche che il settore non è stato bene accompagnato perché si è trattato di sistemi venduti e istallati in Italia ma prodotti altrove, soprattutto in Cina. Il disordine, a suo avviso, sta anche nel fatto che il boom di vendite non ha permesso i tempi per sani investimenti da parte di ditte italiane. Ferrara non ha dubbi: “L’Italia, che attualmente dipende per oltre l’80% del fabbisogno da energia acquistata all’estero, può arrivare alla indipendenza energetica ma deve saper investire davvero nel futuro, senza disordini”. C’è da dire che guardando all’MIT ci si sente già nel futuro. Donald Robert Sadoway del Massachussetts Institute of Technology spiega che il mitico istituto di Boston ha messo a punto pannelli solari a 3D:  l’energia prodotta sale fino a 20 volte rispetto ai classici pannelli piatti.

L’UE: si può risparmiare l’80% di energia solo tagliando gli sprechi

L’Unione Europea chiede da tempo un programma organico e equilibrato tra i diversi fattori che incidono in tema di energia e ora denuncia sprechi notevoli. Bruxelles ha lanciato tempo fa il programma che si chiama “20.20.20” chiedendo che entro il 2020 si aumentino le energie rinnovabili del 20% (tutte e in modo equilibrato); si riducano le emissioni di Co2 del 20% e si taglino i consumi del 20%. Ma poi in questi giorni Commissione Europea e Europarlamento hanno trovato un accordo su un ulteriore documento che chiede di fare di più per il risparmio energetico. Non si tratta di tagliare i consumi dei cittadini ma di assicurare efficienza energetica: dunque, lotta agli sprechi, che pagano i cittadini. André Mordant è il presidente del Comitato europeo socio-economico, che ha studiato il tutto, ed è anche il relatore sul documento: assicura che solo riadattando le funzionalità dei palazzi e, ad esempio sfruttando per il calore l’energia prodotta in alcuni edifici per altri scopi, si può arrivare entro il 2050 a una riduzione del consumo di energia dell’80%. Un esempio di costi: un taglio del consumo energetico in Europa solo del 20% in un anno significherebbe in concreto comprare 2,6 miliardi di barili in meno, che a loro volta significano 193 miliardi di euro risparmiati. E il conto tra l’altro parte dal prezzo di 73 euro a barile, che è già cresciuto. Il piano di Commissione e Parlamento deve passare al vaglio del Consiglio dei capi di Stato e di governo: la partita si gioca nelle prossime settimane e c’è chi come l’europarlamentare francese Claude Turmes ammette che c’è battaglia: ci fa capire che non mancano interessi in gioco all’interno di ciascun Stato membro. Mordant spiega che “l’efficienza energetica è qualcosa su cui è difficile che si investa eppure può essere una via per uscire dalla crisi che è forte in questo momento”. “Investire nell’efficienza energetica – ribadisce – rappresenta un potenziale inesplorato che può portare non solo beneficio ambientale ma anche beneficio economico e sociale”. Mordant invita l’opinione pubblica a fare pressione: “I cittadini devono pretendere che si facciano fatti e non parole”.

Calano i consumi di energia per la crisi ma aumenta il costo del petrolio: non è risparmio energetico

E’ crisi non solo in Grecia, Irlanda, Spagna o Italia. Dell’insospettabile Francia, il responsabile dell’Ufficio europeo per l’energia nelle città, Frederic Boyer ci dice: “Nel mio Paese è stato un inverno molto freddo almeno all’inizio e alcune persone quest’anno non sono state in grado di pagare la bolletta del riscaldamento.” La crisi si fa sentire e, infatti, la riduzione dei consumi c’è stata: negli ultimi due mesi si è tagliato il consumo di energia del 10%. Nessuno però si è accorto di aver risparmiato perché, nello stesso periodo, il costo del petrolio è lievitato del 22%. L’energia al momento significa ancora sostanzialmente petrolio. Le energie rinnovabili sono la punta dell’iceberg.

L’oro nero è sempre più costoso anche se da tutto l’Occidente cala la domanda. Di solito al calo di richiesta corrisponde calo di prezzo. Ma il punto è che non si deve solo ragionare di Occidente: in altri Paesi è boom di consumi e lo sarà sempre di più. Secondo dati Ocse, in generale la domanda di energia da qui al 2050 nel mondo sarà cresciuta dell’80%, con Paesi che si distinguono, come il Messico per cui la prospettiva è un aumento del 112%. Per non parlare della lanciatissima Cina.

Il petrolio non è inesauribile e soprattutto inquina: è di poche settimane fa la Conferenza intitolata Planet under pressure che ha riunito a Londra 3000 scienziati. L’allarme è ormai condiviso: le conseguenze dell’inquinamento minacciano la salute umana, la sicurezza alimentare e idrica, gli ecosistemi. D’altra parte il clima è un equilibrio energetico tra atmosfera, suolo, oceani, ghiacci e biosfera. Il parametro risulta alterato: il surriscaldamento provocherà sempre più desertificazioni e eventi estremi come uragani. Uno degli esperti in materia, Sir Bob Watson, cattedratico britannico, ci spiega in poche parole: “Il messaggio è che dobbiamo agire ora. E’ urgente. Abbiamo a che fare con i cambiamenti climatici, la biodiversità, le questioni del cibo, acqua, energia e dunque abbiamo a che fare con la sicurezza per l’uomo”. Watson lamenta che gli esperti lo ripetono da anni: se non si interviene, il costo economico sarà enorme. E afferma: “Non c’è dicotomia tra rispetto dell’ambiente e crescita economica, anzi: mantenere un buon ambiente porta a una buona economia”.

Tra i corridoi della Conferenza mondiale a Londra abbiamo ascoltato off the record la cosa che più ci colpisce: tutte le più grandi aziende mondiali studiano sempre di più la location dei loro quartier generali perché per i loro cervelli migliori serve aria buona, non inquinata. Anche questo fa pensare, mentre il mondo parla di Green economy e prepara Kyoto 2: tutti i Paesi devono presentare le linee guida entro il 1 maggio. E si dà appuntamento a giugno per Rio+20, la Conferenza globale sulla salute dell’ambiente a 20 anni dal primo Vertice sulla Terra nella stessa città brasiliana. L’obiettivo è lo stesso da alcuni anni: trovare alternative alle risorse fossili, come carbone e petrolio. Resta da dire che non esiste solo l’Occidente e non esiste neanche soltanto il mondo industrializzato. C’è ancora chi è senza energia elettrica. Jason Anderson del WWF ci ricorda che 1 miliardo e 400 milioni di persone al mondo vive senza energia elettrica e che 1,1 miliardo di persone la ricevono in modo irregolare. Tra tanti programmi, dunque, dovremmo pensare anche strategie per un’equa distribuzione delle risorse. L’Onu sembra provarci: ha dichiarato il 2012 Anno per le energie sostenibili per tutti.

Fausta Speranza

Dopo la bellissima sorpresa del primo incontro, YOGA DELLA POTENZA diventerà presto un appuntamento mensile fisso.

Il termine YOGA, confuso da molti con un insieme di esercizi fisici, indica uno stato di Coscienza ove ogni cosa è pace e puro equilibrio. Ogni opposto si incontra armoniosamente, ogni conflitto si risolve in una maestosa sintesi. E’ la sintesi delle polarità che caratterizzano la Vita di ogni essere e tutte le fasi della Natura e che governano la Vita in questo remoto settore del Mondo.
La vita stessa può essere Yoga, oppure può essere lo strumento privilegiato per il raggiungimento dell’imperscrutata meta.

Quanti inseguono un miraggio del Cuore pur conoscendo del Cuore solo l’ombra, quella propria del mondo animale?

Quanti si crogiolano nell’illusione di praticare antiche scienze dell’Evoluzione ritrovandosi però in un club d’appartenenza che difficilmente si distingue da una tifoseria? 
Quanti seguendo qualche gruppo si sono visti proporre uno stato di finta pace, gioia o benessere, che ha per la mente il sapore e l’effetto che avrebbe un antidolorifico per il corpo? Se non di un vero e proprio psicotropo…

Qual è il segreto dell’Evoluzione?

La scienza dello Yoga, uno dei piú importanti e incompresi sistemi d’evoluzione codificati nella tradizione Tantrica dalla razza Dravidica, è stata per millenni retaggio di pochi tra i pochi, ovvero coloro che ne comprendevano la potenza e la portata nel generare il cambiamento di condizione da “uomo allo stato animale” a  Uomo.

Nel seminario dedicato allo Yoga della Potenza verranno presentati i principi di una scienza e la metodologia di una vera e propria tecnologia. L’obiettivo è avviare il sistema e dargli energia!

Si tratta di una scienza per cui conta in fondo più di tutto l’esperienza e la comprensione che ne deriva.

Il seminario è diviso in 2 sessioni. È possibile partecipare a una o ad entrambe le sessioni.

In ogni caso, è importante considerare che il numero di partecipanti non può essere superiore a 25 persone e, dunque, è necessario prenotare. E’ rispettoso inoltre farlo solo se davvero si pensa di non mancare.

I piú sportivi possono fermarsi a dormire nel Centro che ospita questo seminario dotandosi, naturalmente, di sacco a pelo.

Via Piane 152, 64046 MONTORIO AL VOMANO – TERAMO

Email: progetto.enoc@gmail.com
Oppure compilare il modulo allegato.

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Vedi Mappa

“In quel libro, che è la mia memoria, alla prima pagina del capitolo, che è il giorno in cui t’incontrai la prima volta, io leggo le parole: qui comincia la Vita Nuova.”

In queste parole, liberamente tratte da la Vita Nova di Dante, è celata la chiave di una delle porte che conducono verso il risveglio della Coscienza.
Una giornata può servire alla comprensione come strumento di realizzazione verso La Vita Nuova.
Lo sguardo può essere indirizzato verso il Sentiero che conduce al centro, dov’è generata la Realtà, in uno spazio di armonia, di equilibrio, di chiarezza, lontano dalle proiezioni mentali che nutrono la nostra tendenza a polarizzare la vita e l’esperienza.

Il programma Evolution and New Order Civilization (E.N.O.C.) offre all’essere umano la possibilità di un balzo evolutivo oltre la condizione normalmente vissuta. Prima di tutto, però, è necessario che l’individuo apra gli occhi e si accorga di trovarsi in una prigione, limitato fortemente da un attaccamento eccessivo alla propria natura animale. Solo chi realizza ciò e decide di evolversi può portare a termine il programma. Il risveglio è solo l’inizio, non l’obiettivo. La fase iniziale mira a portare l’essere umano a una nuova capacità sensitiva e operativa. Il primo passo è la ristrutturazione dell’aggregato umano a partire dalle sue tre componenti fondamentali: corpo, mente, struttura emotiva. Per quanto riguarda la componente emotiva, le persone impareranno a riconoscere le proprie emozioni più vere da quelle che derivano dall’influenza esterna. In seguito, la persona acquisirà la capacità di generare dei ‘campi emotivi stabili’ e di creare al suo interno un’emozione per irradiarla nell’ambiente circostante, influenzandolo.

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Wang Yang is known as a “liberal” and has for some time been pushing for greater political reform in Guangdong. Thanks to him, the inhabitants of Wukan have won their battle against the local authorities accused of corruption (see: 16/01/2012 Wukan celebrates: protest leader appointed Communist secretary) and Guangdong enjoys a more rapid economy market, many tensions between workers and entrepreneurs are remedied with dialogue which takes responsibility for the Party itself. Although Wang continues to reiterate that China “must not imitate the West”, he is known for his opposition to the neo-Maoism of Bo Xilai, former secretary of Chongqing, now fallen from grace.

In the presentation of the Party Congress of Guangdong, which began yesterday, he said. “We must abandon the misconception that the happiness of the people is a favor bestowed by the Party and government.” And again: ” Seeking happiness is the right of the people” and that the role of government is to give “the masses of people” freedom to “boldly explore their own road to happiness”.

Wang notes are detached from the deeply traditional rhetoric of the party seen as a deity, who gave independence, welfare, order, success to China. The young Chinese, right from elementary school are taught to thank the Party for everything from candy to books.

At the time of Mao this gratitude was also crossed by a semi-religious inspiration, with Mao Zhuxi (President) playing the part of the Divinity. And in fact the Party was concerned about the Chinese “from the cradle to the grave.” Later, with the economic reforms, and subsequent scandals related to corruption of officials, the Party has always remained the largest employer in the country. Anyone capable of ingratiating himself finds a job, is protected if in has trouble with the law, has an above average lifestyle compared to other Chinese.

Wang’s statements emphasize the pursuit of happiness as a personal matter, in which the State and the Party have no role. And secondly, that the State (and Party) must serve the individual.

Among the more than 70 million party cadres, many have long since discovered the way to happiness in other ways out of communism, at least one third of the members adhere to a religious community official or underground (see: 28/02/2006 Communist Party in crisis: 20 million members go to church or temple)

Wang Yang’s statements are historical because they were spoken in public by a senior member of the Party, who probably will become a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest power in China.

Therefore, although not mentioned in the official media reports, his sentences are spreading on the Internet. Among the comments there are many words of support, along with a fateful “This sentence will go down in history.”

by Bernardo Cervellera

Independent scientists and engineers in the United States and Russia have
consistently judged past efforts to be failures
<http://www.fas.org/rlg/03%2000%201968%20Bethe-Garwin%20ABM%20Systems.pdf>,
and they have written detailed reviews showing why the plans for such
missile defenses are not technically feasible. Yet, in spite of these
technical critiques and negative results, the US government has persisted in
its claims of success. Until now.

A little-noticed report <http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA552472.pdf>
released in September 2011 by the Defense Science Board, an independent
advisory committee to the US Defense Department, found three major problems
with the Early Intercept Ballistic Missile Defense now being developed.
Apparently, (1) none of the necessary radars in the European Phased Adaptive
Approach defense system are powerful enough to work, (2) none of the
existing missile defense sensors can reliably distinguish among warheads,
decoys, and other debris, and (3) US intelligence already has observed
foreign ballistic missile launches that can deploy decoys and other
countermeasures. So, after 27 years of development and $150 billion spent,
there still is no effective missile shield — it is still a dream.

From news of this report, we might conclude that the missile defense that
we’ve all heard about for many years is now defunct. The system that Russia
views as a threat to its security does not work, and, even if the problems
could be remedied — a big if — the system would still not be operable for
many years to come.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the NATO Summit. In the run-up to
the May 20 conclave in Chicago, NATO officials are still talking about
missile defense as if it were already a reality; in fact, later this month,
they are expected to announce new plans for cooperation to deploy it in
Europe. Furthermore, these same officials are actually angry at Russia for
suggesting that it would preemptively strike the new system if it is
deployed. Russia, apparently, still has the nerve to view the proposed
system as a threat to its own missiles. Alas, this kind of thinking earned
Russia a rebuke from the head of NATO, who called the Russians’ position
“unjustified.”

Just to be perfectly clear: NATO is trying to cram down the throats of the
Russians an imaginary ballistic missile system that, if it worked — which
it doesn’t — could be used against Russian intercontinental ballistic
missiles. Since NATO is treating the system as if it were a reality, Russia
must as well. And so Russia insists it will take out the missile defense
system by force if it is deployed, even though the system can’t possibly do
what it’s supposed to do. So NATO and Russia are at each other’s throats
over a weapons system that doesn’t work as intended and, if it did, could
reasonably appear to threaten Russian interests, though NATO denies the
claim. This is indeed “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” But
instead of Russia being the riddle, as Winston Churchill proclaimed in 1939,
it is NATO’s plans for a missile defense that are the mysterious and
enigmatic riddle.

There is hope, however, that this riddle can be solved. I’ve learned from
ballistic missile expert Ted Postol of MIT that informal discussions among
engineers and missile defense experts from the United States and Russia are
taking place to bring clarity to missile defense plans. The first meeting of
Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and
the Russia Academy of Sciences’ Committee of Scientists for Global Security
in September 2011 resulted in a joint statement on missile defense
cooperation that recognized Russia’s concerns about the proposed US phased
adaptive approach with its deployed interceptors and radars in close
proximity to the Russian border.

The statement also set out four principles to guide ballistic missile
cooperation: (1) missile defense should contribute, together with Russia, to
the security of the Euro-Atlantic area; (2) NATO needs to take account of
the possible impact of missile deployment on Russia, and Russia needs to
take account of NATO’s concern about possible missile threats from Iran; (3)
plans for ballistic missile defense should not place obstacles in the way of
strategic cooperation between the United States and Russia; and (4) missile
defense cooperation should be founded on principles of transparency and
openness.

The most promising outcome of a subsequent meeting of the two groups in
March was a proposal for American and Russian missile experts to collaborate
on research and development of a “forward active defense” system that would
replace the current phased adaptive approach — the one that doesn’t work.
Collaborating on the newly proposed system would have at least two
advantages: It would promote strategic cooperation between the United States
and Russia as they collaborate to develop a joint ballistic missile defense
system; and the proposed system just might work. We hope word of this
proposed collaboration reaches NATO officials before the summit later this
month. It would be a shame if NATO and Russia came to metaphoric blows over
a defense system that turns out to be a mirage.

BY KENNETTE BENEDICT

“My older brother took the cellphone from me and beat me very badly. It was
dinnertime. They told me that they would execute me after dinner. They said
to me this would be my last meal,” says “Lina,” a pseudonym.

The question of how to protect the rights of Afghan women after U.S. troops
leave the country has become a key question. But this task hasn’t been easy,
even with a huge American troop presence in Afghanistan.

Lina’s story illustrates the point: When she came to an American military
base pleading for help, U.S. officials had to figure out how to save her
life without enraging the local community.

“I was terrified to think of running away from home, but suddenly a voice
from inside told me to flee before my brothers killed me. Maybe the devil
made me do it,” says Lina. “I took one of their cloaks and wrapped it around
me to look like a man. Then I slipped out of the house and started walking
to the foreigner’s base nearby.”

So-called honor killings are common in Afghanistan, along with other
gruesome punishments for women suspected of contact with men outside their
family. It’s considered a dishonor even when a woman is the victim of sexual
assault. Hundreds of women are in Afghan prisons for “moral crimes” such as
being the victims of rape.

Seeking Refuge

It’s not clear if her brothers knew it, but Lina says one of her in-laws was
regularly abusing her < physically and sexually. Women in remote villages
have little recourse, almost no route of escape. Most spend their lives
barely leaving the house. Advocates say they have heard of only a few cases
where Afghan women approached American bases for help.

“She approached the gate. When they realized she was in danger, they took
her in,” says U.S. Marine Maj. Jennifer Larsen, who was to become Lina’s
almost constant companion for the next several weeks. (The location of the
base is also being withheld to protect Lina.)

Larsen says the guards at the gate saw the same car passing again and again.
Each time it drew near, Lina looked petrified. They took her to a doctor who
discovered fresh bruises on her back and knees from the beating. After
treating her, Lina moved into a tent with three American women and an Afghan
translator < her exposure to male soldiers on the base was limited.

But even that small corner of the American base was a new world for Lina,
after a life of sequester in the village. Things like television and hot
running water were new < as was the existence of books, written words and
even written numbers.

But Larsen says the girl embraced them. She devoured new foods from the
cafeteria, especially ice cream and Doritos. She quickly gained a small
English vocabulary, including phrases from the PG-rated movies they watched
to pass the time. Some showed men and women kissing. “Kiss” was a favorite
new word, says Larsen.

“She was scared and overwhelmed, but she was a strong person, and as she had
new things come to her, she adapted quickly. I found out she was very
bright,” says Larsen.

“She wanted to get away from where she was. Anytime you asked her a
question, her answer was, ‘Do I have to go back?’ Our answer at the time was
‘no,’ and we had to figure out how to keep that promise,” Larsen says.

Pressure To Return

But saving a teenage girl was not part of the battle plan for U.S. forces in
Afghanistan < it might even have jeopardized that mission.

Afghan advisers told Americans at the base very bluntly: To keep peace with
the community, Lina had to go home, even if it meant her death. Her original
“crime” now paled in comparison to the fact that Lina had spent weeks living
with non-Muslim soldiers, says Huma Safi, a women’s rights advocate in
Kabul.

“In Afghan society, women stay with their families. When they spend nights
in other places, it’s a dishonor for their families. It’s not just the
military base … they don’t want their daughters to spend the night
anywhere,” says Safi.

An elder from the community stayed on the base with Lina, but he stopped
speaking to her once she said she wanted to stay with the foreigners. Her
family also tried to convince her to come home, but Lina knew it was a
trick, says Larsen.

“The hard part was as I watched her sister beg her to come home. Even her
niece and nephew, who were very young, were there as well,” Larsen says.
“She was glad to see them, she hugged them and kissed them. But as soon as
her sister even suggested that she come back home, the whole meeting came to
a screeching halt. She had no time for her sister, and she asked her to
leave. It was hard to watch. At that moment, an interpreter was
unnecessary.”

Lina also saw her brothers again < they surprised her by showing up at a
meeting near the base. Larsen says she feared the brothers might try to
kidnap Lina or even throw acid on her at the meeting. Lina says she knew her
family planned to lure her home to kill her.

“My brothers pleaded with me to return home. I told them no. They said they
would let me marry whoever makes me happy. I asked them, ‘Why would I ever
believe you?’ ” Lina says.

This is where the story in Afghanistan often ends: The woman is sent home,
and later killed by her family to cleanse the dishonor.

But Lina’s tale has a rare happy ending. U.S. officials helped fly her to a
women’s shelter in a larger city, while Afghan officials in her province
agreed to look the other way.

A Life Of Hope

Women’s shelters in Afghanistan can be virtual prisons, and Lina says she
felt depressed after about eight months there. But the same pluck that
helped her escape death served her again.

When she was brought before a female Afghan judge, Lina asked for help. The
judge said she knew a young man looking for a wife. Lina insisted on seeing
him first, and that she not be made a second wife to a married man. They
met, and after a short discussion, decided to get married. She is now
expecting her first child.

Larsen, Lina’s Marine caretaker, says that news brought tears to her eyes.

“It’s overwhelming sometimes. I don’t even know what to say. There are so
many women who have this issue. It would be nice if there was something we
could do that was tangible, but I don’t know what that thing is,” Larsen
says. “We did help one, and hopefully she’ll be able to help others in the
future.”

Speaking by phone from her new home, Lina says she wants for nothing. After
fleeing her home with only the clothes on her back, she now wears the
traditional rings and necklaces given to a bride by her husband.

Lina’s husband is aware of her past and, unlike most men in this deeply
conservative society, is still accepting of her. She says she’ll never
forget the Afghans and the Americans who helped her escape.

“I have everything I ever dreamed of,” Lina says. “I live with a big family,
and they all love me very much.”

By Quil Lawrence and Ahmad Shafi

Liberals helped to elect Barack Obama in part because of his opposition to
the Iraq war, and probably don’t celebrate all of the president’s many
military accomplishments. But they are sizable.

Mr. Obama decimated Al Qaeda’s leadership. He overthrew the Libyan dictator.
He ramped up drone attacks in Pakistan, waged effective covert wars in Yemen
and Somalia and authorized a threefold increase in the number of American
troops in Afghanistan. He became the first president to authorize the
assassination of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was born in
New Mexico and played an operational role in Al Qaeda, and was killed in an
American drone strike in Yemen. And, of course, Mr. Obama ordered and
oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Ironically, the president used the Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech as an
occasion to articulate his philosophy of war. He made it very clear that his
opposition to the Iraq war didn’t mean that he embraced pacifism < not at
all.

“I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to
the American people,” the president told the Nobel committee < and the
world. “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent
movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince
Al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes
necessary is not a call to cynicism < it is a recognition of history, the
imperfections of man, and the limits of reason.”

If those on the left were listening, they didn’t seem to care. The left,
which had loudly condemned George W. Bush for waterboarding and due process
violations at Guantánamo, was relatively quiet when the Obama
administration, acting as judge and executioner, ordered more than 250 drone
strikes in Pakistan since 2009, during which at least 1,400 lives were lost.

Mr. Obama’s readiness to use force < and his military record < have won him
little support from the right. Despite countervailing evidence, most
conservatives view the president as some kind of peacenik. From both the
right and left, there has been a continuing, dramatic cognitive disconnect
between Mr. Obama’s record and the public perception of his leadership:
despite his demonstrated willingness to use force, neither side regards him
as the warrior president he is.

Mr. Obama had firsthand experience of military efficacy and precision early
in his presidency. Three months after his inauguration, Somali pirates held
Richard Phillips, the American captain of the Maersk Alabama, hostage in the
Indian Ocean. Authorized to use deadly force if Captain Phillips’s life was
in danger, Navy SEALs parachuted to a nearby warship, and three
sharpshooters, firing at night from a distance of 100 feet, killed the
pirates without harming Captain Phillips.

“GREAT job,” Mr. Obama told William H. McRaven, the then vice admiral who
oversaw the daring rescue mission and later the Bin Laden operation in
Abbottabad, Pakistan. The SEAL rescue was the president’s first high-stakes
decision involving the secretive counterterrorism units. But he would rely
increasingly upon their capacities in the coming years.

Soon after Mr. Obama took office he reframed the fight against terrorism.
Liberals wanted to cast anti-terrorism efforts in terms of global law
enforcement < rather than war. The president didn’t choose this path and
instead declared “war against Al Qaeda and its allies.” In switching
rhetorical gears, Mr. Obama abandoned Mr. Bush’s vague and open-ended fight
against terrorism in favor of a war with particular, violent jihadists.

The rhetorical shift had dramatic < non-rhetorical < consequences. Compare
Mr. Obama’s use of drone strikes with that of his predecessor. During the
Bush administration, there was an American drone attack in Pakistan every 43
days; during the first two years of the Obama administration, there was a
drone strike there every four days. And two years into his presidency, the
Nobel Peace Prize-winning president was engaged in conflicts in six Muslim
countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. The man
who went to Washington as an “antiwar” president was more Teddy Roosevelt
than Jimmy Carter.

Consider the comparative speed with which Mr. Obama and his Democratic
predecessor, Bill Clinton, opted for military intervention in various
conflicts. Hesitant, perhaps, because of the Black Hawk Down disaster in
Somalia in 1993, Mr. Clinton did nothing to stop what, at least by 1994, was
evidently a genocidal campaign in Rwanda. And Bosnia was on the verge of
genocidal collapse before Mr. Clinton decided < after two years of dithering
< to intervene in that troubled area in the mid-1990s. In contrast, it took
Mr. Obama only a few weeks to act in Libya in the spring of 2011 when Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafi threatened to massacre large portions of the Libyan
population. Mr. Obama went to the United Nations and NATO and set in motion
the military campaign < roundly criticized by the left and the right < that
toppled the Libyan dictator.

None of this should have surprised anyone who had paid close attention to
what Mr. Obama said about the use of force during his presidential campaign.
In an August 2007 speech on national security, he put the nation < and the
world < on alert: “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value
terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” he said,
referring to Pervez Musharraf, then president of Pakistan. He added, “I will
not hesitate to use military force to take out terrorists who pose a direct
threat to America.”

That’s about as clear a statement as can be. But Republicans and Democrats
blasted Mr. Obama with equal intensity for suggesting that he would
authorize unilateral military action in Pakistan to kill Bin Laden or other
Al Qaeda leaders.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, then a Democratic rival for the presidential
nomination, said, “I think it is a very big mistake to telegraph that.” Mitt
Romney, vying for the Republican nomination, accused Mr. Obama of being a
“Dr. Strangelove” who is “going to bomb our allies.” John McCain piled on:
“Will we risk the confused leadership of an inexperienced candidate who once
suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan?”

Once in office, Mr. Obama signed off on a large increase in the number of
C.I.A. officers on the ground in Pakistan and an intensified campaign of
drone warfare there; he also embraced the use of drones or covert military
units in places like Syria and Yemen, where the United States was not
engaged in traditional land warfare. (Mr. Bush, who first deployed
C.I.A.-directed drones, did not do so on the scale that Mr. Obama did; and
Mr. Obama, of course, had the benefit of significantly improved, more
precise, drone technology.)

Nothing dramatizes Mr. Obama’s willingness to use hard power so well as his
decision to send Navy SEAL Team 6 to Abbottabad, to take out Bin Laden. Had
this risky operation failed, it would most likely have severely damaged Mr.
Obama’s presidency < and legacy.

Mr. Obama’s advisers worried that a botched raid would disturb < or destroy
< the United States-Pakistan relationship, which would make the war in
Afghanistan more difficult to wage since so much American matériel had to
travel through Pakistani airspace or ground routes.

The risks were enormous. A helicopter-borne assault could easily turn into a
replay of the debacle in the Iranian desert in 1980, when Mr. Carter
authorized a mission to release the American hostages in Tehran that ended
with eight American servicemen dead and zero hostages freed.

SOME of Mr. Obama’s top advisers worried that the intelligence suggesting
that Bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound was circumstantial and much
too flimsy to justify the risks involved. The deputy C.I.A. director,
Michael J. Morell, had told the president that in terms of available data
points, “the circumstantial evidence of Iraq having W.M.D. was actually
stronger than evidence that Bin Laden was living in the Abbottabad
compound.”

At the final National Security Council meeting to consider options connected
to Bin Laden’s possible presence in the Abbottabad compound, Mr. Obama gave
each of his advisers an opportunity to speak. When the president asked,
“Where are you on this? What do you think?” so many officials prefaced their
views by saying, “Mr. President, this is a very hard call,” that laughter
erupted, providing a few moments of levity in the otherwise tense, two-hour
meeting.

Asked his view, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said, “Mr. President, my
suggestion is, don’t go.”

For the president, however, the potential rewards clearly outweighed all
risk involved. “Even though I thought it was only 50-50 that Bin Laden was
there, I thought it was worth us taking a shot,” he said. “And I said to
myself that if we have a good chance of not completely defeating but badly
disabling Al Qaeda, then it was worth both the political risks as well as
the risks to our men.”

The following morning, on Friday, April 29, at 8:20 a.m. in the White House
Diplomatic Reception Room, Mr. Obama gathered his key national security
advisers in a semicircle around him and told them simply, “It’s a go.”

Three days later Bin Laden was dead.

The Bin Laden mission will surely resurface in the coming election; the
campaign has already produced a 17-minute documentary that showcases the
raid. This, combined with Mr. Obama’s record of military accomplishment,
will make it hard for Mitt Romney to convince voters that Mr. Obama is a
typical, weak-on-national-security Democrat. And, if Mr. Romney tries to
portray Mr. Obama this way, he will very likely trap himself into calling
for a war with Iran, which many Americans oppose.

Mr. Obama plans to be in Chicago for the NATO summit meeting in late May,
just as the election campaign heats up. He’ll arrive knowing that the United
States and Afghanistan have already agreed to a long-term strategic
partnership that is likely to involve thousands of American soldiers in
Afghanistan, in advisory roles, after combat operations end in 2014. (The
details of the agreement are still being negotiated.) This should inoculate
the president from would-be Romney charges that he is “abandoning”
Afghanistan.

None of this suggests that Mr. Obama is trigger-happy or that, when
considering the use of force, he is more likely to trust his gut than
counsel provided during structured, often lengthy, deliberations with his
National Security Council and other advisers. In instances in which the
risks seem too great (military action against Iran) or the payoff too murky
(some form of military intervention in Syria), Mr. Obama has repeatedly held
America’s fire.

This said, it is clear that he has completely shaken the “Vietnam syndrome”
that provided a lens through which a generation of Democratic leaders viewed
military action. Still, the American public and chattering classes continue
to regard the president as a thinker, not an actor; a negotiator, not a
fighter.

What accounts for the strange, persistent cognitive dissonance about this
president and his relation to military force? Does it stem from the campaign
in which Mrs. Clinton repeatedly critiqued Mr. Obama for his stated
willingness to negotiate with Iran and Cuba? Or is it because he can never
quite shake the deliberative tone and mien of the constitutional law
professor that he once was? Or because of his early opposition to the Iraq
war? Whatever the causes, the president has embraced SEAL Team 6 rather than
Code Pink, yet many continue to see him as the negotiator in chief rather
than the warrior in chief that he actually is.

Peter L. Bergen is the director of the New America Foundation and the author
of the forthcoming book “Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden < From
9/11 to Abbottabad.”

By Peter L. Bergen

Another problem with submarine electronics systems is that they are not
built with network based warfare in mind. While surface ships have, for the
last two decades, been increasing their ability to quickly and automatically
share information with other ships and aircraft, subs have, because of their
stealthy and isolated (underwater) operating environment, stayed out this
move towards connectivity and networking. But now submarines can send and
receive information (slowly and in small quantities) while submerged and
that means subs can become much more effective by getting onto the net and
becoming more tightly coordinated with the rest of the naval operation it is
a part of.

The new architecture for SSN electronics will also make it easier to upgrade
equipment and reduce the training time for sailors transferred from one
class of subs to another.

Egypt is a case in point: This has been a year of mostly nonviolent
democratic revolution. But it has brought to power some Salafist and Muslim
Brotherhood groups that share common theological roots with bin Laden. And
the al-Qaeda goal of driving the “apostate,” pro-American President Hosni
Mubarak from power has been achieved.

Bin Laden was trying to clean up his movement’s bloody image among Muslims
in the year before he died. This desire to reattach al-Qaeda to the Muslim
mainstream is evident in the documents I reviewed that were taken from bin
Laden’s compound the night he was killed.

As Wednesday’s anniversary of bin Laden’s death approaches, I have been
going back over my notes of these messages. I found some unpublished
passages that show how bin Laden’s legacy is an ironic mix: His movement is
largely destroyed, but his passion for a purer and more Islamic government
in the Arab world is partly succeeding. In that sense, the West shouldn’t be
too quick to claim victory.

Consider this appeal for Muslim unity in a long message to his key deputy,
Atiyah Abd al-Rahman: “In these efforts to achieve unity, there should be a
special message directed to our brothers [in Iraq] that stresses the
importance of unity and collectiveness and that they maintain a basic
foundation of the religion, so it must get precedence over names, titles or
entities if they obstruct the achievement of that great duty.”

As I reported last month, bin Laden was so worried that killing Muslims had
tainted al-Qaeda’s image that he proposed rebranding the group with a
different name. What bothered bin Laden, he wrote, was that “al-Qaeda
describes a military base with fighters without a broader mission to unify
the nation.”

Al-Qaeda couldn’t make the transition from violent jihad to nonviolent
Islamist politics. That wasn’t its DNA. Bin Laden continued to plan suicide
operations against America and its political leaders, and he beseeched
Atiyah to find “a brother distinguished by his good manners, integrity,
courage and secretiveness, who can operate in the U.S.” Basically, he wanted
to keep killing Americans but stop killing Muslims.

This theme of internal reform, which would halt the Muslim bloodshed, is
clear in a December 2010 admonition from Atiyah and another deputy, Abu
Yahya al-Libi, to the Pakistani Taliban movement known as the TTP: “We
stress on the fact that real reform is the duty of all, and to succeed we
should look for and correct our actions and avoid these grave mistakes.”

What we’re seeing now in Egypt is something that might be called electoral
bin Ladenism. Take the group Gamaa Islamiya, which under its spiritual
leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, made the first unsuccessful attempt to
destroy the World Trade Center in 1993. Today, the organization has formed a
Salafist political party with the benign name Building and Development
Party. This organization, which like al-Qaeda traces its roots to the
Islamist theorist Sayyid Qutb, has 13 seats in the new Egyptian parliament.

Syria will be a test of whether this post-bin Laden Islamist movement can
continue to reject violence or will instead be radicalized by the jihadist
magnet that is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The successor to bin Laden,
Ayman al-Zawahiri, has tried to use the anti-Assad battle to rehabilitate
the al-Qaeda brand < even though it’s another fight that embodies the
Muslim-on-Muslim violence that bin Laden came to abhor.

Zawahiri got little traction with his opportunistic “Onward, O Lions of
Syria” video in February. But as time passes, al-Qaeda is slowly becoming a
more potent part of the Syrian opposition.

And the battle is still raging in Yemen, the place that bin Laden believed
offered his best chance of victory. The United States just decided to step
up its drone war there, which is a sure sign that al-Qaeda poses a
significant, continuing threat.

So, a year on, it’s a time to think about bin Laden’s failures but also
about the ways his fellow Islamists have morphed toward a political movement
more successful than even bin Laden could have dreamed.

By David Ignatius

Forward Operating Base Extortion has too much lush green grass and too few
concrete blast walls to pass for a real airfield in Afghanistan. But for a
few days this month, the encampment of military tents and trucks at
Ellington Field in Houston will bring dozens of Army reservists as close to
a war zone as they can get without leaving Texas.

The 77 reservists from 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment traveled by
convoy from the unit’s headquarters at Fort Hood to Ellington last week for
four days of computerized war games orchestrated by Houston-based 75th
Training Division.

They sleep on cots in tents they pitched themselves, eat meals cooked in a
portable “containerized kitchen” and monitor a virtual battlefield from a
tactical operations center powered by generators and outfitted with the same
computers and communications equipment used by troops overseas.

The base is named for Extortion 17, one of the unit’s Chinooks that went
down in Afghanistan on Aug. 6, killing 38 people, including 17 Navy SEALs.

“The goal is to make them totally immersed in the scenario we’ve created for
them,” said Maj. Gen. Jimmie Jaye Wells, commanding general of the 75th. “As
soon as you walk in, it looks, feels and tastes as real as you can get.”

Scenarios range from firefights and humanitarian disasters to medivacs and
missions to retrieve troops killed in action. The reservists also face any
number of smaller-scale emergencies, such as a suicidal soldier, a sexual
harassment claim or a Freedom of Information Request from a pesky reporter.

“It can’t be just an exercise out of a box,” Wells said. “We work real hard
to be creative.”

World War I airbase

The 75th controls the scenarios from inside a 40,000-square-foot Battle
Projection Center that opened last year at Ellington as part of a $100
million construction project to revitalize the former World War I airbase.

With Pentagon officials looking to cut half a trillion dollars from the
defense budget in the next 10 years, the 75th pitches the high-tech training
exercises it runs at Ellington and other facilities across the country as a
cost-effective way to keep National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers
battle-ready, even as the war in Afghanistan winds down.

“We have to be able to maintain that same baseline standard, and do it with
less,” said Col. Jason Walrath, a group commander for the 75th.

It would cost about $10,000 per hour to put a real Chinook in the air for a
similar live exercise, Walrath said. A computer-simulated helicopter flight
is far cheaper. “This is already a sunk cost,” he said.

A sudden crisis

At Ellington on Monday, Chief Warrant Officer James Wylie, 33, of Leander,
piloted an Apache helicopter over Kandahar in a computer simulation called
Virtual Battle Space 2. Similar to a first-person shooter game like “Call of
Duty,” the simulation uses topographical maps to re-create the terrain users
would see in Afghanistan.

“It’s almost an exact replica,” Wylie said, as his Apache swooped over
buildings and fields.

With a click of a mouse, one of the 75th’s trainers triggers a sudden
crisis: Ground troops in a convoy to the north have called for air support.
They’ve been ambushed, and there are casualties.

Inside the khaki tent that serves as the tactical operations center at FOB
Extortion, Lt. Col. Jim Fitzgerald tries to get a medivac helicopter to the
scene in less than 15 minutes. But such helicopters carry no weapons and he
can’t send one into a hot landing zone without an escort.

“How far out are the Kiowas (armed scout helicopters)?” Fitzgerald asks a
soldier.

“Sir, they’re 25 miles to the south.”

“I need you to get on the phone to Brigade and get ‘em with the Apaches,”
Fitzgerald says.

In the end, the casualties do get evacuated safely. The rescue unfolds in
real time, but without any actual aircraft. Later, the commander and his
staff will review their performance to pinpoint what they could do better.

“The beauty of this is we can bring these guys in here and they can practice
their battlefield skills as a team, because this is an orchestra,”
Fitzgerald said.

By Lindsay Wise

The department expects to get approval from the White House for the
expansion within 60 days, Takai said today at a conference in Arlington,
Virginia, organized by U.S. Representative Jim Moran, a Virginia Democrat.

“We provide information to them as it relates to threats, and they also
share in a confidential manner the threats they face and the actions they’re
taking,” Takai told reporters at the conference, referring to defense
contractors. “We all get hit by the same kinds of things but also different”
threats from time to time, she said.

The Pentagon started the Defense Industrial Base Information Sharing
Environment two years ago to test how the Defense Department and companies
could share information on attacks aimed at the computer networks of
contractors that design, develop and build U.S. weapons. Companies’
participation in the program is voluntary.

Approval from the White House Office of Management and Budget is required
because the project involves “agreement between government and private
entities,” Takai said. Clearance may also may pave the way for a project led
by the Department of Homeland Security that is intended to bolster corporate
cybersecurity, she said.

The Homeland Security project would let Internet service providers such as
Verizon Communications Inc. and defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin
Corp. receive classified intelligence data that would be used to protect
other companies from cyber attacks.

Expanded information-sharing is needed because hackers, especially in China,
are accelerating efforts to penetrate computer networks such as those of
defense contractors, Rear Admiral Samuel Cox, director of intelligence for
the U.S. Cyber Command, told reporters at today’s conference.

“The rate of amount of cyber exploitation by China continues to increase
significantly,” he said. “The changes are in regards to the sophistication
of what they are going after.”

Contractors are coming under increasing attack because the Pentagon has
greatly improved its capability to defend its classified networks, Cox said.

“They go after the weaker links, and they are having significant success in
that regard,” Cox said.

Asked if Chinese hacking efforts were state-organized or carried out
independently, Cox said, “When you look at China’s system of government,
there is very little that goes on in that country the government doesn’t
know about.”

By Gopal Ratnam and Tony Capaccio, Bloomberg News

The newspaper quoted a senior administration official as saying that the executive order was designed to target companies and individuals assisting Iran and Syria, but future orders could expand the list.

The paper said the order noted that while social media and cell phones had helped democracy advocates organize in the Middle East, they had also enabled security services of autocratic nations such as Syria and Iran to conduct surveillance of dissidents and block access to the Internet.

The order will acknowledge these dangers and the need to adapt U.S. national-security policy to a world being remade rapidly by technology, the Post quoted the official as saying.

It said Obama would announce the move in a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The newspaper noted it comes at a time when his policy toward Syria — where a year-long government crackdown has killed thousands of civilians — has been criticized by Republicans seeking the party’s nomination for the November 6 U.S. presidential election.

The Post said Obama would say that he had asked for a first-ever National Intelligence Estimate — a consensus view of all U.S. intelligence agencies — to include an appraisal of the potential for mass killings in other countries and their implication for U.S. interests.

As part of the initiative, the president will also create a high-level panel to serve as a clearinghouse for real-time intelligence, policymaking and other issues related to mass killing.

He will also encourage the participation of the private sector through a program of grants to encourage firms to develop technologies to help people vulnerable to mass killings better detect and quickly alert others to impending dangers.

The Post said the White House would announce new sanctions against both Syria and Iran on Monday. It said these would include a visa ban and financial restrictions on two Syrian “entities,” one Syrian individual and four Iranian “entities.”

Administration officials did not identify the targets of the sanctions and say the term “entities” describes both government agencies and private companies in Iran and Syria.

The Washington Post said Samantha Power, the National Security Council’s senior director for multilateral affairs and human rights, would chair the Atrocities Prevention Board, a panel whose creation was announced in August.

Il termine YOGA, confuso da molti con un insieme di esercizi fisici, indica uno stato di Coscienza ove ogni cosa è pace e puro equilibrio. Ogni opposto si incontra armoniosamente, ogni conflitto si risolve in una maestosa sintesi. E’ la sintesi delle polarità che caratterizzano la Vita di ogni essere e tutte le fasi della Natura e che governano la Vita in questo remoto settore del Mondo.
La vita stessa può essere Yoga, oppure può essere lo strumento privilegiato per il raggiungimento dell’imperscrutata meta.

Quanti inseguono un miraggio del Cuore pur conoscendo del Cuore solo l’ombra, quella propria del mondo animale?

Quanti si crogiolano nell’illusione di praticare antiche scienze dell’Evoluzione ritrovandosi però in un club d’appartenenza che difficilmente si distingue da una tifoseria? 
Quanti seguendo qualche gruppo si sono visti proporre uno stato di finta pace, gioia o benessere, che ha per la mente il sapore e l’effetto che avrebbe un antidolorifico per il corpo? Se non di un vero e proprio psicotropo…

Qual è il segreto dell’Evoluzione?

La scienza dello Yoga, uno dei piú importanti e incompresi sistemi d’evoluzione codificati nella tradizione Tantrica dalla razza Dravidica, è stata per millenni retaggio di pochi tra i pochi, ovvero coloro che ne comprendevano la potenza e la portata nel generare il cambiamento di condizione da “uomo allo stato animale” a  Uomo.

Nel seminario dedicato allo Yoga della Potenza verranno presentati i principi di una scienza e la metodologia di una vera e propria tecnologia. L’obiettivo è avviare il sistema e dargli energia!

Si tratta di una scienza per cui conta in fondo più di tutto l’esperienza e la comprensione che ne deriva.

Il seminario è diviso in 2 sessioni. È possibile partecipare a una o ad entrambe le sessioni.

In ogni caso, è importante considerare che il numero di partecipanti non può essere superiore a 25 persone e, dunque, è necessario prenotare. E’ rispettoso inoltre farlo solo se davvero si pensa di non mancare.

I piú sportivi possono fermarsi a dormire nel Centro che ospita questo seminario dotandosi, naturalmente, di sacco a pelo

Via Piane 118, 64046 MONTORIO AL VOMANO – TERAMO

Email: progetto.enoc@gmail.com
Oppure compilare il modulo allegato.

MODULO DI RICHIESTA PARTECIPAZIONE ALL'EVENTO. (Specificare nome e data dell'evento nel testo del messaggio)

*(indica campo obbligatorio)

Nome: *

Indirizzo email: *

Oggetto: *

Messaggio: *

Codice CAPTCHA: *

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L’hacker Fabio Ghioni, divenuto famoso per il caso Telecom ed oggi consulente di governi e istituzioni internazionali, apre orizzonti di riflessione sulla zona oscura ai più della Rete, cioè i meandri tecnici. Una dimensione in ombra che potrebbe per certi versi incidere sulla vita di ognuno di noi più della zona “illuminata” della navigazione senza limiti di luogo o di tempo. Chi gestisce i dati che immettiamo ogni giorno sui social network è solo uno degli interrogativi che generalmente non ci si pone, pur vivendo l’amicizia virtuale per ore al giorno. Ghioni chiarisce l’assoluto arbitrio dei singoli operatori di FaceBook, per fare un esempio. I sistemi degli operatori di telecomunicazioni che hanno a disposizione i dati più sensibili (posta elettronica, password, dati telefonici…) sono accessibili da Internet attraverso fornitori esterni. Chi sa dove si trovino, e – assicura Ghioni – chi ci lavora lo sa, in soli cinque minuti può fare un copia e incolla dei tabulati o della lista degli intercettati.   “Quando si parla di sistemi inviolabili – assicura Ghioni ad Area – è solo per fare operazioni di facciata”. A questo proposito, un po’ sottovoce Ghioni ci fa una considerazione pesante: “Se un sistema è vulnerabile, è possibile violarlo dando la colpa agli hacker, ma se è completamente sicuro rappresenta un problema anche per le agenzie di intelligence che non possono accedervi senza essere scoperti. Lasciarli vulnerabili è spesso una scelta”.

Ghioni invita tutti a maggiore consapevolezza, mentre toglie sonno alle notti. Spiega che gli aggiornamenti continui dei service provider, che al massimo ci risultano noiosi, sono momenti di comunicazione aperta con il nostro computer in cui le macchine potrebbero comunicare qualunque tipo di dati e non solo quelli relativi all’aggiornamento. Ancora: cancella ogni illusione di sicurezza sull’utilizzo delle reti Wi-Fi: da tecnico assicura che non c’è ad oggi un sistema Wi-Fi che non sia vulnerabile. Per non parlare dei virus che permettono di tramutare qualunque computer in un computer spia, cosiddetto Zombie, che trasmette ogni tipo di dato a un pc terzo. Se consideriamo che le società più evolute dell’Occidente sono anche le più tecnologizzate e digitalizzate, il pensiero corre subito alla cyber criminalità e al cyber terrorismo. Basti pensare che solo sapendo qual è l’indirizzo da attaccare di un sistema critico si può bloccare un’intera nazione, per esempio il suo sistema elettrico.   “La cosa incredibile – sottolinea Ghioni – è che gli unici Paesi vulnerabili sono quelli occidentali”. E’ impossibile, infatti, pensare a un cyber attack a Paesi come l’Iran o l’Iraq, perché non hanno sistemi critici collegati a quelli informatici. Non sono digitalizzati. D’altro canto, però, Fabio Ghioni che è consulente di diversi paesi arabi, ci spiega che l’Iran ha la più grossa organizzazione governativa d’attacco: la Iranian Cyber Army. La Cina è specializzata nello spionaggio aziendale: ruba informazioni, formule e, senza spendere milioni in ricerca, produce, minacciando le nostre economie. Mettere in ginocchio un’azienda attraverso un computer è anche un modo di fare guerra.

Scenari inquietanti sui quali non si può non tenere alta la riflessione. Tutto ciò, che investe i dati personali dei singoli utenti di Internet ma si ripercuote anche sulla società intera, chiama in causa i legislatori. Il cyber world, infatti, rischia di rimanere terra di nessuno. La legislazione non tiene il passo della tecnologia. Dal diritto romano fino ad oggi le normative si fondano su territorio e giurisdizione ma Internet ha scardinato i parametri, creando il mondo virtuale della Rete che va oltre tempo e spazio. I legislatori a livello nazionale tentano regolamentazioni ma basta dire che un pedofilo o uno stalker che opera da un computer collegato ad un Internet Protocol Number diverso da quello del suo computer e del suo Paese non lascia traccia delle sue scorribande odiose in Rete e, dunque, non è rintracciabile. Un altro esempio: negli USA il Patrioct Act permette tra le altre cose che le autorità accedano ai dati personali dei cittadini senza restrizioni. Ma gli utenti Microsoft, come quelli di Google, sono sparsi in tutto il mondo. Ciò potrebbe significare che le autorità americane possono violare la privacy di un cittadino italiano avvalendosi di una legge statunitense.

Anche il fatto che le poche normative in materia a livello nazionale siano diverse da Paese a Paese contribuisce al far west. In Russia il pirataggio informatico non è un reato. In Corea del Sud è obbligatorio far coincidere l’identità virtuale con la propria identità reale. Andando a Seoul e scoprendo questa norma ci si sente in una giovane democrazia che conserva retaggi della presidenza quasi assoluta che ha avuto fino a qualche anno fa, ma poi parlando con Ghioni si comincia a pensare diversamente. Ghioni, innamorato della tecnologia digitale, hacker libero pensatore, approverebbe immediatamente l’obbligo di coincidenza di identità. Spiega: “la privacy da difendere è un’altra cosa, non è la libertà di mentire su web”. Ma se, come è in Corea del Sud, per i social network si imponesse nel resto nel mondo la corrispondenza tra identità reale e identità virtuale, meno persone forse aderirebbero a un sistema che rappresenta un bacino di informazioni  per compagnie pubblicitarie e non solo. Gli interessi in campo non mancano. E infatti l’hacker che spiega la necessità di avere regole sottolinea anche a gran voce l’enorme difficoltà, proprio per le implicazioni di tanti fattori.

Emerge tutto lo spessore di un dibattito epocale: la necessità di senso critico per il singolo utente e la necessità di una riflessione, a livello globale, sul piano legislativo. Da parte sua, Andrea Melodia, presidente dell’Ucsi nazionale, lancia un vero e proprio appello ai giornalisti e alla società civile a mantenere alta la riflessione per pretendere regole, sposando la battaglia per la trasparenza sulle identità. Emerge il bisogno condiviso di una qualche forma di controllo del mondo virtuale che ovviamente non deve lontanamente significare controllo di contenuti, censura, come fanno circa 60 governi al mondo. Ma per paura di sconfinare nel controllo o per scetticismo sulle difficoltà di governance, ci si può abbandonare all’idea che Internet sia terra di nessuno senza se e senza ma? A questo proposito è chiaro che qualunque forma di “controllo” debba essere sovranazionale anzi mondiale. E dunque, ci sembra che, oltre agli appelli che si sentono da più parti ad una governance mondiale in tema di economia, si aggiunga anche la stessa esigenza in tema di Internet.

Va detto che in Unione Europea e negli Stati Uniti qualcosa bolle in pentola. A Bruxelles a inizio anno la Commissione Europa ha presentato un regolamento sulla privacy dei dati che però è solo un’indicazione mentre per esempio la battaglia concreta con google per avere maggiore trasparenza sul rastrellamento e l’uso di dati personali è tutta aperta. A Washington sono in discussione al Congresso due proposte di legge, siglate SIPA e SOPA, che a dire il vero si concentrano di più sulla questione copyright.  Solo recentissimamente Obama ha lanciato un appello a trovare forme di tutela della privacy on line. Ma si sa che le sensibilità sono diverse: in EU il diritto alla privacy è assoluta priorità, negli Stati Uniti concettualmente viene dopo il diritto d’impresa. Certamente un accordo sulla privacy tra EU e USA aiuterebbe. Risulta chiara comunque la complessità anche solo a immaginare una normativa generale.

A proposito di sistemi immaginabili, va menzionato Logbox, un sistema che rappresenterebbe praticamente una  “scatola nera” per Internet che, come per gli aerei, possa dirci la verità di quanto accaduto su web. LogBox è stato presentato al Parlamento Europeo dall’europarlamentare PPE Tiziano Motti su idea di Ghioni. Prevede di crittografare i dati mettendo la “chiave” per decriptarli nelle mani di autorità, notaio, utente stesso. Dunque un certificato digitale che passa attraverso la garanzia di 3 entità, tra cui l’utente stesso che ha voce in capitolo.
Il meccanismo implica la “collaborazione” dei sistemi operativi. Dunque si chiamano in causa Windows, Apple, Linux. Dovrebbero contenere le caratteristiche di generazione di tutti i log (in pratica i tabulati) di attività che vengono attuati dal computer su cui gira il sistema operativo. Non è poco, perché così i log sarebbero firmati digitalmente in modo da far risalire a uno specifico computer e al suo utilizzatore. E questo indipendentemente da qualunque accorgimento per anonimizzare qualunque attività illecita. Ghioni assicura che i costi per l’operazione sarebbero estremamente bassi. Il sistema è attualmente all’analisi della Commissione Europea. Ghioni ci confessa: “Non credo che verrà approvato perchè in tanti non sono interessati alla trasparenza”. Ci convince sempre di più sull’importanza di un dibattito della società civile.

Resta da sottolineare che tutto il discorso non tende minimamente a demonizzare Internet o social network. Si tratta semmai di rivendicare maggiore educazione all’uso. E’ bello ricordare che il Consiglio d’Europa ha giustamente inserito a dicembre scorso tra i diritti fondamentali dell’uomo quello dell’accesso a Internet. E che il Parlamento Europeo ha assegnato a fine 2011 il Premio Sacharov per la libertà di pensiero a esponenti di diversi Paesi del Nord Africa che hanno fatto la “primavera araba” nei loro Paesi anche attraverso la Rete.  Il punto è che Internet è innanzitutto un’opportunità ma va conosciuta meglio nei suoi contenuti come nei suoi meandri tecnici. Un esempio di meandri del prossimo futuro: Internet 3.0. Significa non più solo computer che comunicano tra loro ma anche elettrodomestici e oggetti di uso quotidiano che comunicano in Rete attraverso sensori. Non si può non seguire quest’altra accelerazione della tecnologia con la riflessione e il pensiero. D’altra parte è sempre quello che accade all’uomo di ogni tempo: la tecnologia lo catapulta sempre in terreni nuovi dove si ritrova a reinventare il pensiero.

Si capisce la sfida che il mondo virtuale pone all’umanità di oggi. Con la consapevolezza che Ulisse è sempre nell’animo umano. Nell’antichità, l’Ulisse di Omero sfidava e veniva sfidato dai confini fisici tra noto e ignoto. Nel Medio Evo l’Ulisse di Dante “sconfinava” inseguendo la conoscenza tra vizi e virtù dell’animo. Poi nel ’900, l’Ulisse di Joyce ha rappresentato la stessa brama di conoscenza ma sui “confini” tra conscio e inconscio. Oggi, Ulisse è sfidato sempre sul solito terreno della conoscenza ma nella zona in ombra tra reale e virtuale.

di Fausta Speranza, dal mensile Area

Cyber experts from across the U.S. government, speaking at a conference at
Georgetown University, said organized crime, espionage and security activity
on the Internet pose a rising threat to U.S. intellectual property, military
superiority and critical infrastructure.

“What we’re looking at is a global cyber arms race,” said Rear Admiral
Samuel Cox, director of intelligence at U.S. Cyber Command, which was set up
18 months ago to protect Pentagon computer networks and conduct offensive
cyber operations if the president orders them.

“It’s not proceeding at a leisurely or even a linear fashion but in fact is
accelerating. I wouldn’t claim that it’s following Moore’s law, but the
curve looks kind of similar,” he said, referring to a computer industry rule
of thumb that computer processing power doubles every couple of years.

Howard Schmidt, cyber security coordinator at the White House, said more
than $8 trillion worth of transactions were carried over wired and wireless
networks each year.

“This is not just a national security issue,” he told the conference. “It’s
a national security, public safety as well as economic.”

Officials said the most effective way to counter the threat is to adopt an
approach that promotes collaboration among government agencies and reaches
out to private industry as well as international partners.

Team sport

“To really operate effectively in cyberspace … it’s really a team sport,”
said Steven Schleien, the principal director for cyber policy at the
Pentagon.

That’s why the Defense Department has been working with private companies
and allies like NATO, Japan and South Korea to discuss information sharing
and coordinated responses to incidents on the Internet, he said.

NATO wants to bring all of the civilian and military networks in the
organization under the wing of the NATO Computer Incident Response
Capability by the end of 2012, which would allow a coordinated response to
cyber attacks.

The United States has begun discussions on cyber security with Japan, South
Korea and New Zealand, and is working closely with the Britain and Australia
on a “full spectrum” of cooperation in cyberspace, Schleien said.

The United States does not view arms control treaties as a means of dealing
with the problem but would like to see the international community agree on
norms of behavior for cyberspace, he said.

“This is not an area where arms control works. I don’t know what we would
monitor. I don’t know how we would verify anything in terms of cyber weapons
or cyber tools,” Schleien said.

Discussions on norms of behavior would begin to address the issue of how to
fight proxies who carry out Internet attacks on behalf of governments, and
“hactivists,” who attack computer networks for their own political ends.

“How do you deal with hactivists from your soil?” Schleien asked. “Are you
responsible as a sovereign nation for what comes out of your country?”

The issues are sensitive and complex. A U.S. nonprofit group, for example,
concluded Russian civilians acting with advance notice of Russian military
intentions carried out cyber attacks in the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict.

Some websites used to organize those attacks were hosted in the United
States.

By David Alexander, Reuters

SEATTLE < U.S. Air Force pilot Patrick Burke’s day started in the cockpit of
a B-1 bomber near the Persian Gulf and proceeded across nine time zones as
he ferried the aircraft home to South Dakota.

Every four hours during the 19-hour flight, Burke swallowed a tablet of
Dexedrine, the prescribed amphetamine known as “go pills.” After landing, he
went out for dinner and drinks with a fellow crewman. They were driving back
to Ellsworth Air Force Base when Burke began striking his friend in the
head.

“Jack Bauer told me this was going to happen < you guys are trying to kidnap
me!” he yelled, as if he were a character in the TV show “24.”

When the woman giving them a lift pulled the car over, Burke leaped on her
and wrestled her to the ground. “Me and my platoon are looking for
terrorists,” he told her before grabbing her keys, driving away and crashing
into a guardrail.

Burke was charged with auto theft, drunk driving and two counts of assault.
But in October, a court-martial judge found the young lieutenant not guilty
“by reason of lack of mental responsibility” < the almost unprecedented
equivalent, at least in modern-day military courts, of an insanity
acquittal.

Four military psychiatrists concluded that Burke suffered from
“polysubstance-induced delirium” brought on by alcohol, lack of sleep and
the 40 milligrams of Dexedrine he was issued by the Air Force.

In a small but growing number of cases across the nation, lawyers are
blaming the U.S. military’s heavy use of psychotropic drugs for their
clients’ aberrant behavior and related health problems. Such defenses have
rarely gained traction in military or civilian courtrooms, but Burke’s case
provides the first important indication that military psychiatrists and
court-martial judges are not blind to what can happen when troops go to work
medicated.

After two long-running wars with escalating levels of combat stress, more
than 110,000 active-duty Army troops last year were taking prescribed
antidepressants, narcotics, sedatives, antipsychotics and anti-anxiety
drugs, according to figures recently disclosed to The Times by the U.S. Army
surgeon general. Nearly 8% of the active-duty Army is now on sedatives and
more than 6% is on antidepressants < an eightfold increase since 2005.

“We have never medicated our troops to the extent we are doing now…. And I
don’t believe the current increase in suicides and homicides in the military
is a coincidence,” said Bart Billings, a former military psychologist who
hosts an annual conference on combat stress.

The pharmacy consultant for the Army surgeon general says the military’s use
of the drugs is comparable to that in the civilian world. “It’s not that
we’re using them more frequently or any differently,” said Col. Carol
Labadie. “As with any medication, you have to look at weighing the risk
versus the benefits of somebody going on a medication.”

But the military environment makes regulating the use of prescription drugs
a challenge compared with the civilian world, some psychologists say.

Follow-up appointments in the battlefield are often few and far between.
Soldiers are sent out on deployment typically with 180 days’ worth of
medications, allowing them to trade with friends or grab an entire fistful
of pills at the end of an anxious day. And soldiers with injuries can easily
become dependent on narcotic painkillers.

“The big difference is these are people who have access to loaded weapons,
or have responsibility for protecting other individuals who are in harm’s
way,” said Grace Jackson, a former Navy staff psychiatrist who resigned her
commission in 2002, in part out of concerns that military psychiatrists even
then were handing out too many pills.

For the Army and the Marines, using the drugs has become a wager that
whatever problems occur will be isolated and containable, said James Culp, a
former Army paratrooper and now a high-profile military defense lawyer. He
recently defended an Army private accused of murder, arguing that his mental
illness was exacerbated by the antidepressant Zoloft.

“What do you do when 30-80% of the people that you have in the military have
gone on three or more deployments, and they are mentally worn out? What do
you do when they can’t sleep? You make a calculated risk in prescribing
these medications,” Culp said.

The potential effect on military personnel has special resonance in the wake
of several high-profile cases, most notably the one involving Staff Sgt.
Robert Bales, accused of murdering 17 civilians in Afghanistan. His
attorneys have asked for a list of all medicines the 38-year-old soldier was
taking.

“We don’t know whether he was or was not on any medicines, which is why [his
attorney] has asked to be provided the list of medications,” said Richard
Adler, a Seattle psychiatrist who is consulting on Bales’ defense.

***

While there was some early, ad hoc use of psychotropic drugs in the Vietnam
War, the modern Army psychiatrist’s deployment kit is likely to include nine
kinds of antidepressants, benzodiazepines for anxiety, four antipsychotics,
two kinds of sleep aids, and drugs for attention-deficit hyperactivity
disorder, according to a 2007 review in the journal Military Medicine.

Some troops in Afghanistan are prescribed mefloquine, an antimalarial drug
that has been increasingly associated with paranoia, thoughts of suicide and
violent anger spells that soldiers describe as “mefloquine rage.”

“Prior to the Iraq war, soldiers could not go into combat on psychiatric
drugs, period. Not very long ago, going back maybe 10 or 12 years, you
couldn’t even go into the armed services if you used any of these drugs, in
particular stimulants,” said Peter Breggin, a New York psychiatrist who has
written widely about psychiatric drugs and violence.

“But they’ve changed that…. I’m getting a new kind of call right now, and
that’s people saying the psychiatrist won’t approve their deployment unless
they take psychiatric drugs.”

Military doctors say most drugs’ safety and efficacy is so well-established
that it would be a mistake to send battalions into combat without the help
of medications that can prevent suicides, help soldiers rest and calm
shattered nerves.

Fueling much of the controversy in recent years, though, are reports of a
possible link between the popular class of antidepressants known as
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) < drugs such as Prozac,
Paxil and Zoloft, which boost serotonin levels in the brain < and an
elevated risk of suicide among young people. The drugs carry a warning label
for those up to 24 < the very age of most young military recruits.

Last year, one of Culp’s clients, Army Pfc. David Lawrence, pleaded guilty
at Ft. Carson, Colo., to the murder of a Taliban commander in Afghanistan.
He was sentenced to only 12 1/2 years, later reduced to 10 years, after it
was shown that he suffered from schizophrenic episodes that escalated after
the death of a good friend, an Army chaplain.

Deeply depressed and hearing a voice he would later describe as
“female-sounding and never nice,” Lawrence had reportedly feared he would be
thrown out of the Army if he told anyone he was hearing voices < a classic
symptom of schizophrenia. Instead, he’d merely told doctors he was depressed
and thinking of suicide. He was prescribed Zoloft, for depression, and
trazodone, often used as a sleeping aid.

The voices got worse, and Lawrence began seeing hallucinations of the
chaplain, minus his head. Eventually, Lawrence walked into the Taliban
commander’s jail cell and shot him in the face.

“They give him this, and they send him out with a gun,” said his father,
Brett Lawrence.

Up until the Burke case, there had been few if any recent rulings
exonerating military defendants claiming to be incapacitated by medications.

Burke’s case may have marked a turning point. Four Army doctors concluded
that he wasn’t mentally responsible for his actions < a finding none of them
would have made had he been merely drunk.

“Three drinks over an entire evening is not enough to black somebody out,
but I don’t remember 99% of what happened over the rest of that evening,”
Burke said in an interview. “It was kind of like I was misfiring on the
cylinders.”

***

Both the American Psychological Assn. and the American Psychiatric Assn. in
a 2010 congressional hearing urged the Army to stay the course on
psychotropic drugs.

The real danger, said the psychologists’ spokesman, M. David Rudd, dean of
the college of social and behavioral science at the University of Utah, is
if soldiers are frightened out of access to potentially life-saving
medication.

The Army surgeon general’s office said no one without specific approval is
allowed to go on deployment using psychotropic drugs, including
antidepressants and stimulants, until they’ve been stabilized. Soldiers who
need antipsychotic agents are not allowed to go to combat.

But are those precautions enough? Julie Oligschlaeger said her son, Chad, a
Marine corporal based at Twentynine Palms, came home from his second tour in
Iraq in 2007 complaining of nightmares and hallucinations. He was taking
trazodone, fluoxetine, Seroquel, Lorazepam and propranolol, among other
medications.

“I didn’t realize how many pills he was on until it was too late,” said
Oligschlaeger. “He sometimes would slur his words, and I would think, ‘OK,
are you drinking? What is going on?’ And he’d say, ‘Oh, I’m taking my pills,
and I’m taking them when I’m supposed to.’ I never thought to look.”

In 2008, two months before Chad was scheduled to get out of the Marines,
start college, and marry his fiancee, the young corporal was found dead on
the floor of his room in the barracks. An autopsy concluded the death was
accidental due to multiple-drug toxicity < interactions among too many
drugs.

At the memorial service, Oligschlaeger looked her son’s commander in the eye
and reminded him that Chad had waited in vain for a bed in a combat stress
treatment facility. “I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you have your eyes on your
Marine?’” she said. “He didn’t answer me. He just stood there with his hands
behind his back. And he looked at me.”

By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times

The six are all core members of the terrorist group “East Turkistan Islamic Movement”, according to a statement issued Thursday by the Ministry of Public Security.

They have participated in the organization, planning and execution of terrorist acts against Chinese targets within and outside the country, Xinhua cited the ministry as saying.

The ministry hoped that foreign governments and their law enforcing departments would help to arrest the six and hand them over to Chinese authorities.

The “East Turkistan Islamic Movement” is still conducting propaganda and instigation among members of the “three evil forces” of separatism, extremism and terrorism who live in China, and attempts to stage terrorist acts, the statement said.

The group is the most direct and real safety threat that China faces, said a spokesperson of the Ministry of Public Security.

Militants who received training in terrorist camps in Pakistan set fire to a restaurant and randomly killed civilians in Xinjiang’s Kashgar in July last year, leaving six civilians dead and 15 injured.

An investigation found that the group’s leaders had learned how to make explosives and firearms in camps of the terrorist group “East Turkistan Islamic Movement” in Pakistan before entering Xinjiang to organise terrorist activities.

Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to China’s Muslim Uygur ethnic people.

Officials told the Mao Flag website, named after late leader Mao Zedong, and the Utopia website, also known for a leftist political stance, to close for mectification  the sites said in separate announcements.

Authorities said their postings had maliciously attacked state leaders and given mbsurd views about politics, according to statements posted on the websites.

Those statements, dated Friday, were later removed. The operators could not be reached for comment and content on the sites was unavailable.

The latest crackdown comes after a surge in online rumours in China, including one about a coup led by security chief Zhou Yongkang, following the March dismissal of rising political star Bo Xilai.

Two other sites, China Elections and April Youth, also appeared to be shut on Friday but operators claimed they were down for maintenance and staffing reasons.

The Utopia website was a supporter of the policies of Bo, who was removed as Communist Party chief of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing in mid-March.

During his time in the city, he ran a hardline crackdown on crime and a populist Maoist revival campaign that included singing patriotic songs, which was praised by Utopia.

China launched a sweeping Internet crackdown last week, highlighting official unease ahead of a leadership transition later this year.

Efforts to quell mumour-mongering come as President Hu Jintao and China’s other top leaders step down from their Communist Party posts in a secretive 10-yearly leadership transition that will culminate in early 2013.

Authorities shutdown 16 other websites, arrested six people and slapped temporary curbs on two popular microblog services, preventing users from posting comments.

China, which has the world’s largest online population with over half a billion users, has long blocked content it deems politically sensitive as part of a vast censorship system known as the Great Firewall.

But the rise of social media, in particular Twitter-like microblogs, have proved more difficult to control and have become a popular outlet for expressing discontent towards the government. – Sapa-AFP

While that’s true, these sites have also been a big help
to intelligence and police organizations. This can have fatal consequences
in dictatorships, where the police and intel groups can use data gathering
and analysis tools (developed for marketing via the Internet) to find people
who are protesting or rebelling against the government. Even if these
Facebook users are using codes and pseudonyms to remain hidden, the scanning
and analysis tools can often uncover them. Twitter traffic can also be
analyzed for useful information on who is doing what, and where they are.

Social networking sites are thus a double edged sword. They can be used to
organize, inform and mobilize large groups. But in doing this, you provide
the secret police a lot of information you would rather not share with them.
Islamic terror groups advise their members to avoid social networking sites,
but that has proved hard to enforce. Social networking was designed to be
alluring, as well as useful, especially to the young. For young
revolutionaries, this can be a fatal attraction.

Intelligence agencies, especially in the United States, were quick to adopt
commercial techniques used for BI (Business Intelligence, or corporate
espionage) and data mining operations, and applying it to the massive
quantities of real time data on the Internet. The CIA developed software to
gather all this Internet information, filter and organize it, and then turn
it over to analysts to be sorted out, or, in many cases, translated more
accurately. That last bit was necessary because machine translation software
can automatically translate all those tweets and postings so that stuff can
be identified and put in a data base. But in order to get really useful (to
the CIA) intelligence, you need skilled linguists and analysts to double
check, and also find out if the selecting and sorting software needs to be
tweaked (it often does).

This massive, real-time combing of social media and open (to anyone) message
traffic has yielded a much more accurate and timely analysis of political,
religious, cultural and military trends worldwide. It has also made the
deployment of agents and other scarce resources (reconnaissance and
electronic eavesdropping satellites, aircraft and ships) more effective.

The FBI, Homeland Security and military intelligence have similar data
gathering and analysis systems for gathering all sorts of useful
information. Other nations are establishing similar systems, often using
commercial software sold to marketing firms and large corporations.

No one took credit for the attacks. The site administrators blamed the
attacks on “enemies of Islam”. Usually, such attacks are explained away as
“technical problems.” But these attacks were extensive and persistent and
word got out that it was indeed an attack and not just a technical problem.
This sort of thing is becoming more common. Last year, British intelligence
(MI6) hacked into al Qaeda’s online magazine (“Inspire”) and quietly
replaced bomb making instructions with cupcake recipes, and removed or
modified other information.  There have been a growing number of similar
attacks on pro-terrorist sites, indicating a combination of official (by
military or intelligence agency) attacks along with anti-terrorist hackers.

While some intelligence officials prefer to hack hard and shut down these
sites, outfits like MI6 and the CIA prefer to use sites like Inspire as a
source of intelligence. This can be done by monitoring message boards,
traffic to the site and other, more technical (but useful) information. The
CIA has been suspected of doing what the MI6 did to Inspire, but using more
subtle and lethal methods. For example, bomb making instructions can be
changed in small ways, to make the bombs very dangerous to those making
them. The same with other information on the site, making small changes that
will create arguments or confusion among site users. These two techniques
are ancient intelligence practices. Al Qaeda is particularly vulnerable to
these kinds of attacks because Islamic terrorists have never become a threat
via Internet based attacks and, in general, lack much knowledge of how the
Internet is built and maintained.

For that reason, over a decade of warning about Islamic terrorists using the
Internet to launch attacks has come to nothing. At most, there has been some
defacing of web pages, often by hackers driven more by nationalism than
religion. The Internet Jihad (struggle) has been mostly smoke, and very
little fire.

Attempts by terrorists to recruit hackers have had very poor results. The
Moslem world has much lower levels of literacy, education and computer
proficiency than the West. There are a growing number of programmers and
Internet specialists in the Moslem world, but most of them have legitimate
jobs in software firms, or maintaining software and Internet services for
companies. Some are involved with Internet crime, and a very few are eager
about helping carry out Internet based terrorism going. Nearly all the
Moslem blackhats (criminal hackers) are reluctant to get on a terrorism
watch list, or something worse if they help some Islamic terror outfit.
Moreover, Islamic terrorists recruit mainly from the young and clueless (and
angry and unemployed). Internet penetration in the Islamic world is very
low, as is literacy itself. The Islamic cyber threat is largely fiction,
because the potential pool of Islamic Internet Jihadis is so tiny.

This is somewhat surprising, as there are Cyber War tools available that
even the poorly educated terrorist computer user could operate. For example,
there’s a software program that online gamers use to launch DDOS
(Distributed Denial of Service) attacks on other players they are
particularly angry with. DDOS is used to shut down a web site, or individual
user’s Internet access, with a flood of garbage messages, generated from as
few as fifty “zombie PCs” (machines hackers have earlier seized control of).
Some bot herders (those who control hundreds, or thousands, of zombies) will
rent zombies for these small scale DDOS attacks. The going rate is a few
dollars a day per zombie (fifty will usually do to shut down one person’s
Internet access). Several thousand zombies are needed to shut down a web
site, and criminals use that many to blackmail online businesses. This sort
of thing happens every day, but it is rarely used by Islamic terrorists.

Counter-terrorism organizations know why there have not been more of these
attacks by al Qaeda, or any other self-proclaimed Islamic warriors. The fact
is that the Islamic terrorists are not nearly as well organized or skilled
as the mass media would lead you to believe. There are many types of
attacks, not just those involving the Internet, that terrorists could carry
out, but don’t. It doesn’t happen because the terrorists cannot get it
together sufficiently to do it. That should tell you something. The
potential is there, and that is scary. But the reality has to be recognized
as well, and that’s a lot less scary.