America’s Cyber Vulnerabilities

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Cyber is the newest branch of warfare. Even in its baby stages, it has the potential to cripple the United States.

On the afternoon of Dec. 23, 2015, Ukrainian engineers from a Prykarpattya Oblenergo power station stared at a computer screen while the cursor progressed on its own across the monitor. The mouse on the table had not moved. But the cursor hovered over the station’s breakers, each one controlling power to thousands of Ukrainian citizens. Then, with one mouse click at a time, the hackers now in control of the power station began shutting off power to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.

At the same time, Kyivoblenergo employees watched as dozens of substations shut down, one by one. In their case, there was no phantom mouse. A computer on their network that they could not locate was being used by someone to shut down the power—and there was nothing they could do.

China Sends One of the West’s Most Critical Materials Soaring

Photographer: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

 

• Tungsten prices have jumped 50 percent in the last two months
• China is enforcing output quotas for the steel-hardening metal

The price of one of the most critical materials for the Western world’s economy and defenses is spiking faster than any major commodity.

Britain’s Islamic Domino

The current wave of Islamic terror seen in Manchester and London, only reinforces the general feeling that the excessive  political correctness of recent years by the Obama Presidency, by the British Labor party, and the European media has fostered and festered productive breeding grounds for Islamic terrorists in the heart of England. London’s current Mayor Sadiq Khan, a practicing Muslim, could have a significant impact on the minds and hearts of many of England’s young Muslims should he decide to express what should have been said years ago to Muslims living in England and throughout the Western World.

Vatican Warning: Don’t Be Pontius Pilate

Don’t abrogate the responsibility to prevent radical Muslims from murdering Christians.

Western people and institutions could do more to prevent the slaughter of Christians, a Vatican cleric implied on the day after al-Shabaab’s Muslim militants besieged a university in Garissa, Kenya, and discriminately killed Christians.

Russian Defiance Could Lead To A Multipolar World

Russia’s recent defiance of the United States and NATO has convinced some analysts that we now live in a multipolar world. Sunil Dasgupta, however, isn’t so sure. For such a world to exist, India and China must side with Russia in its confrontation with the West. That’s something they remain reluctant to do, at least openly.

One of the lasting questions in post-Cold War international relations has been the enduring preponderance of the United States as the sole remaining superpower. The Realist School of thought, which was predicated in significant measure on the idea of the balance of power, failed to explain why other nations did not rise or come together to balance the United States. To explain the discrepancy, die-hard realists such as Robert Pape of the University of Chicago proposed the idea of a transitional period of ‘soft’ or ‘hidden’ balancing by countries such as Russia, China, and even Europe before a period of hard balancing returned.

Top general: ‘Islamists embedded in White House?’

Please see the source for the video interview with retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Tom McInern.

 

In the wake of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, beheading 21 Coptic Christians in Libya, retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Tom McInerney is slamming the Obama administration for failing to take obvious military steps to destroy the terrorists and identify radical Islam as the motivating factor for the atrocities committed throughout the region.

…

“I think the air campaign is not nearly the intensity we needed,” McInerney said. “It’s not even an air campaign. It’s somewhere between seven and 15 sorties a day when we absolutely need upward of 100-200 sorties a day. I’m calling for 200. We need to be attacking the ISIS capital of Raqqa (Syria) 24/7. We need to close the highway between Raqqa and Mosul, Iraq.”

Pegida: The New German Revolution

Every Monday evening since last October, thousands of citizens have marched through the city of Dresden as well as other German cities to protest the Islamization of their country. They belong to an organization, established only three months ago, called Pegida, the German abbreviation for “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.”

Pegida is a democratic grassroots organization, without origins in the far-left, far-right or links to any political parties, domestic or foreign. The French Front National [FN] of Marine Le Pen even made it clear that it wants nothing to do with “spontaneous initiatives” such as Pegida. According to the FN, “something like Pegida cannot be a substitute for a party.”

Study Predicts More Frequent And Severe Blackouts In The Coming Years

A new assessment from a British and New Zealand research team has concluded that the worldwide electrical grid will suffer more frequent and significant outages if current trends continue.

In their report, which was published in the Social Space Scientific Journal, the two authors noted that nearly three quarters of American transmission lines are more than 25 years old.

The Muslim Brotherhood as Partners

CAIRO/BERLIN (Own report) – Mass protests with numerous casualties are casting a shadow over Egyptian President Muhammad Mursi’s visit to Berlin, which begins tomorrow. Already last week, while preparations for the upcoming talks were being made in the German capital, hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Egypt, against Mursi’s Islamist government. The Egyptian president’s Berlin visit seeks particularly to promote German business in this North African country. Egypt’s economy is, at the moment, in ruins, but, according to assessments by German business circles, holds long term lucrative opportunities. Cooperation with Mursi – and, behind him, the Muslim Brotherhood – was initiated by the German government in the early aftermath of the revolts at the beginning of 2011. This cooperation draws on concepts developed by German think tanks along with US organizations in the aftermath of the Muslim Brotherhood’s 2005 electoral success. Experts are explicitly warning against a “positive assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood.” “Authoritarian tendencies” within their ranks “are evident.”