Google's Revolution Factory; Alliance of Youth Movements: Color Revolution 2.0

Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

In 2008, the Alliance of Youth Movements held its inaugural summit in New York City. Attending this summit was a combination of State Department staff, Council on Foreign Relations members, former National Security staff, Department of Homeland Security advisers, and a myriad of representatives from American corporations and mass media organizations including AT&T, Google, Facebook, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and MTV.(pdf).

One might suspect such a meeting of representatives involved in US economic, domestic and foreign policy, along with the shapers of public opinion in the mass media would be convening to talk about America's future and how to facilitate it. Joining these policy makers, was an army of "grassroots" activists that would "help" this facilitation.

Among them was a then little known group called "April 6" from Egypt. These Facebook "savvy" Egyptians would later meet US International Crisis Group trustee Mohamed ElBaradei at the Cairo airport in Februrary 2010 and spend the next year campaigning and protesting on his behalf in his bid to overthrow the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

The Alliance of Youth Movements mission statement claims it is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists to build their capacity and make a greater impact on the world. While this sounds fairly innocuous at first, even perhaps positive, upon examining those involved in "Movements.org," a dark agenda is revealed of such nefarious intent it is almost difficult to believe.

Movement.org is officially partnered with the US Department of State and Columbia Law School. Its corporate sponsors include Google, Pepsi, and the Omnicon Group, all listed as members of the globocrat Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). CBS News is a sponsor and listed on the globocrat Chatham House's corporate membership list. Other sponsors include Facebook, YouTube, Meetup, Howcast, National Geographic, MSNBC, GenNext, and the Edelman public relations firm.

Movement.org's "team" includes Co-Founder Jared Cohen, a CFR member, Director of Google Ideas, and a former State Department planning staff member under both Condoleezza Rice and Hilary Clinton.

Founding Movements.org with Cohen is Jason Liebman of Howcast Media which works with mega-corporate conglomerates like Proctor & Gamble, Kodak, Staples, Ford, and government agencies such as the US State Department and the US Defense Department, to create "custom branded entertainment, innovative social media, and tardeted rich-media campaigns." He was also with Google for 4 years where he worked to partner with Time Warner (CFR), News Corporation (FoxNews, CFR) Viacom, Warner Music, Sony Pictures, Reuters, the New York Times, and the Washington Post Company.

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FROM THE NATIONAL

EXCLUSIVE: White House to Cut Energy Assistance for the Poor

Budget proposal would cut billions from aid program.By Marc Ambinder


It's the biggest domestic spending cut disclosed so far, and one that will likely generate the most heat from the president's traditional political allies. Such complaints might satisfy the White House, which has a vested interest in convincing Americans that it is serious about budget discipline.  

One White House friend, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said earlier today that a Republican proposal to cut home heating oil counted as an "extreme idea" that would "set the country backwards." Schumer has not yet reacted to Obama's proposed cut. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., declared: “The President’s reported proposal to drastically slash LIHEAP funds by more than half would have a severe impact on many of New Hampshire’s most vulnerable citizens and I strongly oppose it." A spokesman for Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., declared similarly: “If these cuts are real, it would be a very disappointing development for millions of families still struggling through a harsh winter.”

In a letter to Obama, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., wrote, "We simply cannot afford to cut LIHEAP funding during one of the most brutal winters in history. Families across Massachusetts, and the country, depend on these monies to heat their homes and survive the season."

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, would see funding drop by about $2.5 billion from an authorized 2009 total of $5.1 billion. The proposed cut will not touch the program's emergency reserve fund, about $590 million, which can be used during particularly harsh cold snaps or extended heat spells, three officials told National Journal.

In 2010, Obama signed into law an omnibus budget resolution that released a total of about $5 billion in LIHEAP grants for 2011. Pointing to the increasing number of Americans who made use of the grants last year, advocates say that LIHEAP is already underfunded. The American Gas Association predicts that 3 million Americans eligible for the program won't be able to receive it unless LIHEAP funding stays at its current level.  

How many people, if any, might actually lose the assistance is difficult to determine. Officials were quick to point out that LIHEAP spending has grown significantly over the past several years as the government tried to keep up with rising gas prices. In 2008, the government spent $2.6 billion on LIHEAP. In 2009, the figure jumped to $8.1 billion. So the cut from that high level restores LIHEAP to something close to where it was before Obama took office. Other circumstances, such as the weather and fuel prices, could affect the distribution of benefits.

"In real terms, under our budget, LIHEAP funding will be at levels similar to the Clinton administration," a senior administration official said.

Still, despite the uncertainties surrounding the proposed cut, it is dramatic. LIHEAP has been semi-sacred for most Democrats and many Republicans -- a program that carries an emotional resonance as it was designed to keep poor people, particularly older poor people, cool in the summer and warm in the winter. “A lot of people in the Northeast are going to be unhappy,” an administration official briefed on the budget said. That's one reason why Republican senators like Scott Brown of Massachusetts plus Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine would probably join Democratic efforts to keep funding levels higher.

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FROM THE NEW SCIENTIST

The cyberweapon that could take down the internet

A new cyberweapon could take down the entire internet – and there's not much that current defences can do to stop it. So say Max Schuchard at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and his colleagues, the masterminds who have created the digital ordnance. But thankfully they have no intention of destroying the net just yet. Instead, they are suggesting improvements to its defences.

Schuchard's new attack pits the structure of the internet against itself. Hundreds of connection points in the net fall offline every minute, but we don't notice because the net routes around them. It can do this because the smaller networks that make up the internet, known as autonomous systems, communicate with each other through routers. When a communication path changes, nearby routers inform their neighbours through a system known as the border gateway protocol (BGP). These routers inform other neighbours in turn, eventually spreading knowledge of the new path throughout the internet.

A previously discovered method of attack, dubbed ZMW – after its three creators Zhang, Mao and Wang, researchers in the US who came up with their version four years ago – disrupts the connection between two routers by interfering with BGP to make it appear that the link is offline. Schuchard and colleagues worked out how to spread this disruption to the entire internet and simulated its effects.

Surgical strike

The attack requires a large botnet – a network of computers infected with software that allows them to be externally controlled: Schuchard reckons 250,000 such machines would be enough to take down the internet. Botnets are often used to perform distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which bring web servers down by overloading them with traffic, but this new line of attack is different.

"Normal DDoS is a hammer; this is more of a scalpel," says Schuchard. "If you cut in the wrong places then the attack won't work."

An attacker deploying the Schuchard cyberweapon would send traffic between computers in their botnet to build a map of the paths between them. Then they would identify a link common to many different paths and launch a ZMW attack to bring it down. Neighbouring routers would respond by sending out BGP updates to reroute traffic elsewhere. A short time later, the two sundered routers would reconnect and send out their own BGP updates, upon which attack traffic would start flowing in again, causing them to disconnect once more. This cycle would repeat, with the single breaking and reforming link sending out waves of BGP updates to every router on the internet. Eventually each router in the world would be receiving more updates than it could handle – after 20 minutes of attacking, a queue requiring 100 minutes of processing would have built up.

Clearly, that's a problem. "Routers under extreme computational load tend to do funny things," says Schuchard. With every router in the world preoccupied, natural routing outages wouldn't be fixed, and eventually the internet would be so full of holes that communication would become impossible. Shuchard thinks it would take days to recover.

"Once this attack got launched, it wouldn't be solved by technical means, but by network operators actually talking to each other," he says. Each autonomous system would have to be taken down and rebooted to clear the BGP backlog.

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THE MOSCOW NEWS

Russia to splash out billions on anti-diving device

by Andy Potts at 11/02/2011

Once upon a time diving was just an ordinary Olympic sport – but when Sochi hosts the 2014 winter games there will be a sinister new focus on underwater antics.

Such are the fears of sub-aqua saboteurs that Russia is about to spend 14 billion roubles ($476 million) on a special “crustacean” weapon to painlessly disperse frogmen from the beaches of the Black Sea.

But maritime Spetsnaz officers may not have much luck with attempts to use hi-tech sonar pulses to thwart unwanted guests – many experts have dismissed the plans as unworkable and unjustified.

Safety first

The plan is to commission an underwater weapon which sends a targeted shockwave towards any suspect intruders as they swim to shore.

From a distance of 80 metres, saboteurs would be hit with a force equivalent to 15 atmospheres, generated by sonar pulses. If the devices operated out of the water, the sound waves would be at around 215 dB, gzt.ru reported.

Effectively, therefore, the device is a giant megaphone conditioned to send powerful ripples through water rather than amplify noise through the air.

And it is hoped that this will be safer than the current “best practice” of launching grenades at renegade divers.

Why bother?

There are growing fears that terrorists could use divers to prepare an attack on a major event like the winter Olympics.

And sabotage swimmers have been blamed by some for the destruction of the warship Novorossiysk in 1955 in one of the most famous Soviet maritime mysteries.

More recently, the Philippines’ military claimed in 2005 that it had evidence that South-East Asian terrorist groups with links to Al Qaeda were planning scuba divers for attacks at sea.


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FROM THE RAW STORY

Group plans to beam free Internet across the globe from space

By Eric W. Dolan

The charity group A Human Right said it was planning to purchase a satellite that would provide free basic Internet access to developing countries around the world.

The group, which was founded by 25-year-old Kosta Grammatis, is currently raising money to buy the TerreStar-1, the largest commercial communications satellite ever built. TerreStar, the company that owns the satellite, filed for chapter-11 bankruptcy protection in October 2010, opening the possibility that the satellite may be up for sale.

The group hopes to raise $150,000 to finalize a business plan, investigate the legal and business aspects of submitting a bid for the satellite, and hire engineers to turn the plan into a reality. After this initial phase, the group plans to develop an open source low cost modem that could be used to connect to the satellite and finalize plans with partner governments.

"We believe that Internet access is a tool that allows people to help themselves - a tool so vital that it should be considered a universal human right," the website for Buy This Satellite stated. "Imagine your digital life disconnected. Without access to the 100 million man-hours that have been put into Wikipedia, how much do you actually know?"

Nearly 5 billion out of the world's 6.9 billion people don't have access to the Internet.

A Human Right plans to finance their satellite by allowing telecommunication companies to purchase bandwidth, while providing basic service for free to everyone. "Our goal is to not only get everyone online, but also facilitate the growth of an industry," their website said.

The group has already managed to raise $44,781.

"The idea for global connectivity was born in Berlin, Germany in an innovation 'Do-Tank' called Palomar 5," according to the group. "Thirty people under the age of thirty came together to innovate on what the future might look like, and how to address some of the worlds problems."

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FROM FAST COMPANY

CIA's Revamped Website Has Flickr Stream, New Kids' Games, YouTube Puppy-Cam Vids!

BY JENARA NERENBERGTue Feb 8, 2011The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) wants the world to know that it loves social media--and just re-vamped its site to prove it. The K-9 cam video is the cutest thing since Keyboard Cat.

The CIA has launched a re-vamped website, complete with a YouTube channel and Flickr photo stream, as well as games and an interactive timeline of the agency's history.

“The idea behind these improvements is to make more information about the Agency available to more people, more easily,” Director Leon E. Panetta said. “The CIA wants the American people and the world to understand its mission and its vital role in keeping our country safe.”

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