China: Shenzhou-10 Mission rocket travels to launch centre by train

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Dangerous stunts: Dare-devil acrobat Eskil Ronningsbakken performs on China's Aizhai bridge

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Hundreds of Chinese sign up to travel to Mars

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'MOST LETHAL' FLU: Bird Flu Strain Now Outside China Baffles Scientists

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Kerry in Japan: US ready to ’reach out’ to North Korea

 

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Deadly China bird flu outbreak raises fears of pandemic

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Chinese authorities have closed some live bird markets in an attempt to stop the spread of a deadly strain of bird flu. A vendor, above, washed a chicken stall in a poultry market in Hefei, China, shortly before it was due to be closed Thursday.

By Li Le and Ian Johnston, NBC News

BEIJING -- It began in late February when an 87-year-old man started coughing up phlegm. A high fever followed, he struggled to breathe and was dead just 13 days later. His death in Shanghai, China, was one of 11 fatalities out of 41 known cases to date of a new form of bird flu that experts warn may pose a "serious human health risk." On Saturday, China's center for disease control announced the first case in Beijing, and outside of eastern China. The seven-year-old girl, whose parents work in the live poultry trade, was stable in a hospital in the capital, media reports said. Around the world, scientists are now beginning to examine samples of the virus with a significant question in mind: Could this strain of the disease cause a global pandemic? This international network of scientists keeps constant watch for good reason. In 1918 and 1919, a flu pandemic killed between 20 million and 40 million people, more than the total death toll of World War I, more in a year than the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. More recently, an H1N1 swine flu pandemic was blamed for more than 284,500 human deaths worldwide between April 2009 and August 2010. So far, the signs are that this is a localized outbreak. The number of cases is low and the virus -- an H7N9 strain -- does not appear to be capable of jumping from one person to another. But each case represents a chance for the virus to mutate into one that is highly infectious in humans. And it is an unusual strain -- normally avian diseases make birds sick first, giving an early warning sign, but this one does not.

More than 1,000 dead ducks have been fished out of a river Sichuan, China. The discovery comes as the country deals with anger over the dumping of over 16,000 pigs elsewhere in China. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

Scientists have established it is from an "avian reservoir" but still don't know the precise source. Chinese officials have dismissed suggestions of a connection with the large number of dead pigs and other animals found recently in rivers. Many in China are understandably worried, with some deciding to avoid eating chicken, even though it poses no threat if properly cooked. KFC’s parent company Yum reported on Wednesday that sales in its Chinese restaurants had dropped by 13 percent in March, saying “publicity associated with avian flu in China has had a significant, negative impact.” Even Jiangsu Zoo, just north of Shanghai, reportedly stopped feeding chicken to animals such as lions and tigers and started giving them a traditional medicinal herb called ban lan gen. Xie Li, an accountant in Shanghai, admitted she was “kind of nervous.” “Now, we only eat vegetables," she said. "My daughter's school is measuring students' temperatures. We were told that we should eat less eggs or not touch eggs because they might have some excrement from chickens." But others in the city of 23 million people were more sanguine.

A farm in China has admitted to dumping more than 6,000 pigs corpses into Shanghai's Huangpu River, according to China's official Xinhua news agency. NBCNews.com's Alex Witt reports.

Yan Zhanlin, a 40-year-old businessman, said he was “not scared, because there are not many cases, and the number of deaths is not high” and the virus had not yet spread between people. “Today, I went to a train station, and I only saw few people wearing masks,” he said. But even he said he had stopped eating “poultry, pork and other meat.” Tang, a company manager in his late 20s, who declined to give his full name, was also relatively unconcerned. “I do not fear [the virus] at all. It is just a kind of flu, and will pass quickly,” he said. Avoiding poultry was “not too bad, because it forces us to eat vegetables and fish, which are nutritious,” he added. 'Watching very carefully'Perhaps in a sign of the country's nervousness, People's Liberation Army Colonel Dai Xu claimed the U.S. was behind the outbreak, saying the U.S. had used "bio-psychological weapons" to cause the deadly 2003 Sars outbreak and the current flu one, The South China Morning Post reported. Such allegations aside, this apparently local problem is being treated seriously on a global scale. Samples of the virus – or non-infectious nucleic acid from it — are being sent to scientists in up to 140 national influenza centers recognized by the World Health Organization, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Work has already started in the U.S. to make a vaccine against the new strain -- just in case. Scientist John McCauley, of the U.K.’s National Institute for Medical Research, received his consignment on Thursday. “We’re watching very carefully the events there [in China] because we are aware although there’s no human-to-human transmission, these are unusual infections people have been getting from an avian reservoir,” he said. “China will need to identify the source and hopefully be able to control the cross-species transmission,” he said. “We’re watching very carefully to see how it does.”

The outbreak of a new strain of bird flu has now infected at least 18 people, and killed six in China. NBC's Robert Bazell reports.

“In the meantime, the national influenza centers around the world are developing their ability to detect this newly emerging virus” and also working on vaccines, McCauley said. Experts needed to find out how vaccines would perform “in case this virus becomes pandemic,” he said. Coincidentally, John Oxford, a professor of virology and an expert on the 1918 flu pandemic, was in Shanghai about eight weeks ago -- roughly the same time that the elderly man first fell ill – for a meeting about hygiene, important in the fight against viruses such as flu. He said the situation in China was “getting a little more worrying.” “I don’t like the sound of it. Every day I open up the reports and find out someone else has died,” he said. “I just don’t like to see the figures going up day after day.” “So far there’s no human-to-human transmission. What’s tomorrow going to bring, what’s the next day going to bring? You don’t know and I don’t know,” he added. But Oxford, of the U.K's Queen Mary, University of London, stressed there was “no need for anyone to start flapping at the moment.” “I don’t think we should start thinking of 1918 scenarios, definitely not,” he said.

A group of Chinese scientists, writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, also warned that the “pandemic potential of these novel avian-origin viruses should not be underestimated.” “Severe avian influenza A (H7N9) infections, characterized by high fever and severe respiratory symptoms, may pose a serious human health risk,” it added. “We are concerned by the sudden emergence of these infections and the potential threat to the human population.” However – mirroring the split on the streets of Shanghai – other experts were less worried. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, a microbiology professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and principal investigator for the Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis, said while it was “too early to be able to conclude anything …  the probabilities are very low” that a global pandemic is looming. He was comforted by the lack of a surge in the numbers of people with the disease. “It’s not that it’s increasing by ten times per week, I think right now the number of cases is what you would have expected from the original numbers,” he said. “Right now there are no major indications to become highly alarmed.” Ian Johnston reported from London.

Girl rescued from deep hole on construction site in Yulin, China

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Is THIS real reason Obama’s confronting North Korea?

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JERUSALEM – Is the Obama administration’s military build up in the Pacific part of the president’s so-called pivot-toward-Asia strategy, a move that could demonstrate the biggest shift in world power since World War II?

Specifically, is Washington using the North Korean nuclear standoff as an excuse to shift massive military might to Asia just as China and other powers seek to create a new economic order that would rival the Western-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund?

It is difficult for most seasoned observers to explain why Obama is suddenly responding to North Korean aggression when the White House did little in 2008 when North Korea refused to allow United Nations inspectors into its nuclear plants.

The Obama administration also took little action when North Korea in 2009 carried out at least two nuclear tests, one of which is believed to have been the cause of a magnitude 4.7 seismic event.

The White House did not allow the U.S. military any significant response when in 2010 North Korea torpedoed a South Korean navy ship, killing 46 sailors. North Korea then shelled a South Korean island with little U.S. reaction.

Now, purportedly in response to aggressive action by North Korea’s new leader, the White House is sending to Singapore a new class of warship designed to fight in coastal waters.

The Pentagon also announced that it will deploy a missile defense system to the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam to strengthen regional protection against a possible attack. This after the Obama administration largely canceled a similar defense system intended for Europe.

U.S. warplanes, including fighter jets, U-2 spy planes and an A-10 attack jet, were seen flying in South Korea yesterday as part of a massive joint military exercise.

The U.S. says it stands “poised to respond” at the border of North and South Korea, where American troops are on high alert amid possible further Pentagon build-up in the region.

U.S. military ‘rebalance’

Why is the U.S. now responding to North Korea?

Time magazine says the “U.S. pivot toward Asia – and the potential for confrontation with China – became a little more real this week with the arrival of a new class of warship designed to fight in coastal waters.”

That pivot has been declared by the Obama administration itself – a professed strategy of putting a greater focus on the Asia region.

Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel “made clear the U.S. and the Department of Defense remain committed to the rebalance towards the Asia-Pacific region,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said after a meeting between Hagel and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Hagel told Loong that “in the future there will be even more opportunities for closer collaboration between the US and Singapore,” Little said.

‘New economic world order’

The U.S. military shift comes as the so-called BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – seek to create a monetary system to rival and even surpass the West.

While it received little U.S. media attention, last week at its fifth annual summit the BRICS group unveiled what it said was a new development bank aimed at breaking the monopoly held by Western-backed institutions.

The bank would use $50 billion of seed capital shared equally between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa but would clearly be dominated by China.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave support for the bank while India’s trade minister said BRICS will “have a defining influence on the global order of this century.”

“It’s done,” said Pravin Gordhan, South African Finance Minister, last Tuesday, adding that “we made very good progress” on the formation of a World Bank-analogue development agency

Iran’s Press TV described the deal this way: “The BRICS bank will present an alternative solution to the Western-dominated global banking system comprised of the Bretton Woods institutions – the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“The new bank will provide a collective foreign exchange reserve and a fund for financing developmental projects in order to address the needs of emerging and poor economies.”

Press TV reported, “BRICS members say the current global balance of power is unworkable, with institutions such as the WB, the IMF and the United Nations Security Council irrelevant in addressing matters concerning global economics.”

Under the deal, the two largest economies of the emerging power groups, China and Brazil, agreed to remove nearly half of their trade exchanges out of the U.S. dollar zone – a significant blow to the U.S. dollar.

Some in the U.S. are skeptical the BRICS moves will actually work.

Joseph S. Nye, a professor at Harvard University, wrote in The Australian newspaper: “Tellingly, the meeting in Durban failed to produce any details of the structure of the proposed new development bank, suggesting that little progress had been made in the year since the BRICS’ last meeting in New Delhi, where the plan was announced.”

Continued Nye: “In fact, despite a commitment to launch “formal negotiations” to establish the bank, disagreements about the size and shares of the bank’s capital have not been resolved.”

The New American took the other side, arguing the BRICS bank is a step closer toward a world government.

“Aside from a planetary fiat currency and central bank, the erection of a true world government was at the heart of BRICS regimes’ machinations outlined in their final agreement.”

The publication pointed out the BRICS declaration at the end of last week’s summit included, “We reiterate our strong commitment to the United Nations (UN) as the foremost multilateral forum entrusted with bringing about hope, peace, order and sustainable development to the world.”

See a report on the BRICS summit:

The BRICS statement added, “[W]e reaffirmed our commitment to the promotion of international law, multilateralism and the central role of the United Nations.”

BRICS clearly sees a reshaped economic world in which government-run companies play a significant role.

“We acknowledge the important role that State Owned Companies (SOCs) play in the economy and encourage our SOCs to explore ways of cooperation, exchange of information and best practices,” the declaration states.

“As the global economy is being reshaped, we are committed to exploring new models and approaches towards more equitable development and inclusive global growth.”

With additional research by Joshua Klein.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/is-this-why-obamas-responding-to-north-korea/#0vA1fxswZ4KKlO1p.99

Chinese children climb ladders to get home from school

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Mysterious sea of clouds covers mountains in China

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No white smoke in China everybody know: Xi Jinping president 4 months after he took charge of the Communist party

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China's democracy: Premier elected on 99% of vote

but still some cubans guys are talking cuba  will be a democratic country soon. 
------------------

China Daily via Reuters

China's newly-elected Premier Li Keqiang (left) shakes hands with former Premier Wen Jiabao as China's President Xi Jinping, seated right, and other delegates applaud Friday. Li was once friends with democracy activists, but a dissident accused him of covering up an HIV scandal.

Reuters

By Sui-Lee Wee

BEIJING -- China's legislature formally chose Li Keqiang as premier on Friday, installing an English-speaking bureaucrat as the man in charge of the world's second-largest economy.

The largely rubber-stamp National People's Congress chose Li, 57, to replace Wen Jiabao.

Nearly 3,000 delegates gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People to vote on Li's appointment, putting the final stamp of approval on a generational transition of power.

Li drew only three no votes and six abstentions from the carefully selected parliament.

China's parliament named Xi Jinping as president four months after he took charge of the Communist party pledging reform. John Sparks, Channel Four Europe reports.

He rose and shook hands with Xi Jinping, who was elected president by the legislature on Thursday, as legislators applauded.

While Xi is the country's top leader, Li heads China's State Council and is charged with executing government policy and overseeing the economy.

A reformer?
As premier, Li is faced with one of the world's widest gaps between rich and poor.

"I believe that in this class (of new leaders), his intent to reform is quite strong," said Chen Ziming, an independent political commentator in Beijing. "He has a close relationship with reform-minded economists."

More than any other Chinese party leader until now, Li was immersed in the intellectual and political ferment of the decade of reform under Deng Xiaoping, which ended in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that were crushed by troops.

As a student at Peking University, Li befriended ardent pro-democracy advocates, some of whom later became outright challengers to party control.

His friends included activists who went into exile after the June 1989 crackdown.

"He has a better understanding of how Westerners think," a source familiar with China's foreign policy told Reuters.

Li, who has a degree in law and a doctorate in economics, will take the reins of an economy whose growth slowed in 2012 to a 13-year low, albeit at a 7.8 percent rate that is the envy of other major economies.

Both Xi and Li will need to deliver a blueprint to stabilize the real estate market. They need to do this quickly to calm a market in which real estate prices have soared 10-fold in major cities during the last decade.

Dissident beaten up
Across China, people are resentful of the widening income inequality gap.

China has 2.7 million U.S. dollar millionaires and 251 billionaires, according to the Hurun Report.

However, 13 percent of its people live on less than $1.25 per day, according to United Nations data. The average annual urban disposable income is just $3,500.

During his time in central Henan province from 1998 to 2004, Li was criticized by activists for helping to cover up the extent of an HIV/AIDS crisis there, when hundreds of thousands of impoverished farmers became infected through botched blood-selling schemes.

Leading dissidents, Hu Jia told Reuters he was detained in Henan, while Li was governor, for four days in 2002, when Hu was advocating for rural victims of AIDS.

"When the AIDS epidemic exploded, everything that Li Keqiang did was with the aim of covering it up," Hu said. "He didn't allow the ordinary people to go to Beijing to petition, meet the media, and didn't allow Aizhixing, the institute I was working at, [to] enter Henan to examine and report on the reality of the AIDS situation."

Hu said two state security officers beat and kicked him on Thursday till his head bled. He was summoned by police on a charge of "provoking quarrels and making trouble." The Dongcang police station, where Hu was held, could not be reached for comment.

Un castro-maoista en Miraflores: El curriculum politico de Nicolas Maduro

Pablo Alfonso/ martinoticias.com

El camino hacia Miraflores comenzó mucho tiempo atrás y fue tejido en las redes de influencia castrista que lo situaron desde un principio como el sucesor por excelencia del presidente Hugo Chávez.

Este es el Nicolas Maduro que no todos conocen.

Hijo de un militante de izquierda, Maduro, nació el 23 de noviembre de 1962 en el sur de Caracas.

Durante sus años de estudiante de secundaria ingresó  a la Liga Socialista, partido en el que inició su actividad política . A mediados de la década del 80 la Liga lo envió a La Habana, y durante un año cursó estudios en la escuela Ñico López de formación de cuadros del Partido Comunista de Cuba.

Es durante esa etapa cuando conoce al dirigente cocalero boliviano Evo Morales, quien recibía cursos políticos en la capital cubana y que hoy integra como presidente de su país el grupo de países del ALBA.

De regreso a Caracas, Maduro se destaca como dirigente estudiantil de grupos maoistas en la Universidad Central de Venezuela, y aunque no hay registros de su matrícula en esa Universidad, algunas fuentes aseguran que cursó dos años en la Escuela de Administración.

Concluido su activismo político estudiantil, Maduro comienza a trabajar en 1988 como conductor de buses del Metro de Caracas, donde poco tiempo después organiza el Nuevo Sindicato del Metro de Caracas (Sitrameca).

A principios de la década de los noventa, Maduro se unió al Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario (MBR-200), fundado en 1982 por Hugo Chávez Frías, poco antes del fallido golpe militar en 1992.

Tras el arresto de Chávez  y otros jefes militares implicados en el complot, Maduro, entonces, se enroló en una campaña por la liberación de los militares golpistas, liderada por su hoy esposa Cilia Flores, Procuradora General de la República, ex diputada y presidenta de la Asamblea Nacional .

Fue a través de Cilia Flores, quien entonces era abogada de la Policía de Caracas, que Maduro conoció a Chávez  y cuanto éste fue indultado en 1993 Maduro era miembro de la Dirección Nacional del MBR-200.
En 1997, Maduro estuvo junto  a Chávez en la fundación del Movimiento Quinta República (MVR), que un año después ganó las elecciones presidenciales.

Elegido diputado de la Asamblea Constituyente de 1999, fue elegido diputado para la Asamblea Nacional en 2000 y reelecto en 2005, ocupando en ese período la presidencia del órgano legislativo venezolano.

En el año 2006 Chávez lo nombró ministro de Relaciones Exteriores y el pasado año vicepresidente ejecutivo, cargo que le dejó el camino libre para acceder a la presidencia de la República, manejando los hilos del fraude institucional que le tejió meticulosamente La Habana.

Publicado en El Timbeke el 11 de marzo del 2013

More than 2,800 dead pigs found in Chinese river

behindthewall

By Le Li, Producer, NBC News

BEIJING -- Thousands of dead pigs, a number of them diseased, were found in Shanghai's major drinking water supply in the last two days, officials said.

According to Xinmin newspaper, 2,813 pigs were fished out of the Huangpu River, which provides drinking water for Shanghai's 23 million people, on Sunday and Monday. When contacted for up-to-date information on the number of pigs retrieved from the river, officials referred NBC News to the local news report.

Some of the pigs were infected with porcine circovirus (PCV) virus, according to an official statement by the Shanghai Agriculture Committee. The statement posted on China's Twitter-like social media service Weibo said that the disease would not infect humans. 

A water management officer said by telephone that results of hourly water tests were normal.  

"We are adding more chlorine as an action to protect water safety," said the official who would only identified herself as Zhu.

Water pollution, usually created by fertilizer run-off, chemical spills and untreated sewage, is a big problem in China. According to Reuters, the government will invest $850 billion over the next decade to improve the water supply system.

People from the Songjiang area of Shanghai, where many of the pigs were found, said this was not the first time they had seen the carcasses floating in the river.

“Am I scared? I have been hearing this kind of news all the time, so I am immune,” said Songjiang resident Ma Leiying, 42, who works as a clerk at a state-owned company. “I’m sure other cities have the same problems, but the difference is the incidents have not been reported yet.”

Some expressed outrage via Weibo.

"Have we been drinking dead-pig-polluted water? We are already panicked by the polluted air now we have to worry about poisoned water too,” one user wrote.

Xinmin News, Shanghai’s most popular newspaper paper, reported that labels on some of the carcasses indicated that the animals had come from Zhejiang and Jiangshu provinces.   

According to Jiaxing Daily, many pigs have died in the area in recent several months. In Zhulin village alone, there were 10,078 dead pigs in January, 8,325 in February, it reported.  The newspaper added that the cause of death was down to the cramped conditions the animals were kept in.

The Associated Press reported that the surge in the dumping of dead pigs came after a police campaign to curb the illegal trade in sick pig parts.

Diputados chinos se quedaron dormidos durante discurso del primer ministro (Fotos)

listos para servirlos en bandeja de plata como paticos pekineses.
---------------------------- 
lapatilla

 

Varios diputados chinos de la Asamblea Nacional Popular (ANP) que asistieron hoy al discurso de despedida del primer ministro, Wen Jiabao, en la apertura del plenario que elegirá nuevos jefes de Gobierno, se quedaron dormidos durante la alocución, como mostraron algunas imágenes publicadas por la prensa.

Las imágenes de nueve de estos diputados (de un total de 2.987), mientras sestean o bostezan, se han publicado en diarios como el “South China Morning Post” y también han llegado a las redes sociales chinas, donde algunos han criticado a los delegados por su falta de interés en un encuentro tan importante para la política china.

“Con tantos delegados durmiendo en las reuniones, ¿cómo se va a decidir el futuro de China?”, señalaron los internautas chinos en las redes sociales, mientras otros ironizaban con el hecho de que “no todo el mundo puede darse el lujo de dormir en el Gran Palacio del Pueblo”, sede de las reuniones de la ANP.

En favor de los somnolientos políticos podría decirse que el discurso de Wen, de 34 páginas, estuvo cargado de mucha retórica, con muchas llamadas a aguantar “las embestidas de la crisis económica mundial”, mantener el pensamiento socialista y otras frases a veces repetidas hasta la saciedad.

La foto siembra dudas entre los chinos sobre el verdadero cometido de los asistentes estos días a las reuniones de la ANP y de la Conferencia Consultiva Política, definidas como “los dos encuentros políticos más importantes del año” pero en los que muchos representantes parecen asistir sólo como “turistas”.

Estas dudas se han extendido a raíz de que una delegada de 83 años (la más veterana de la ANP, y miembro de ella desde la fundación de esta institución en 1954) admitiera en una reciente entrevista que nunca había votado en contra de nada en estas reuniones anuales.

Otro delegado fue sorprendido en una foto buscando en un equivalente chino a Google información sobre lo que un asistente a estas reuniones tenía que hacer, mostrando escaso conocimiento en labores políticas, y un tercero, finalmente, admitió ante periodistas chinos que no sabía exactamente cuál era su función. EFE

China's new super cargo jet takes to the skies

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The REAL Obama Agenda – the Destruction of US Nuclear Defense – the Long Overdue Fightback Begins

NewZeal

By Trevor
At a meeting in Seoul Korea, March 2012, with then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, US President Barack Obama leaned toward Medvedev, thinking he was off mike and said, “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [Prime Minister Vladimir Putin] to give me space.” He added, “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

That was the single most important statement made by Obama in his entire first term of office.

The destruction of the US nuclear deterrent and the American military has been Moscow’s, Beijing’s and Havana’s number one dream for decades.

It is what Obama’s communist mentors such as Frank Marshall Davis, Alice Palmer and Bill Ayers, have always worked relentlessly towards. Now their protege has the power to make that hellish fantasy a reality.

At last some in Washington seem to be taking the US’ looming national suicide seriously.

NATIONAL SECURITY LEADERS TO PRESIDENT OBAMA: STOP THE UNILATERAL DENUCLEARIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES

February 22, 2013

(Washington, D.C.): A group of former senior military and civilian national security professionals today called on President Barack Obama to abandon his reported intention to make further, deep and apparently unilateral reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Press accounts indicate that the President was planning on announcing a cut of as much as one-third of the American deterrent during his State of the Union address on February 12th. He evidently decided to postpone the unveiling of this initiative, however, when North Korea conducted on that same day it latest nuclear test – an event that underscored the fact that only the United States is, under his administration, engaging in denuclearization.

The authors, who include two former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and eighteen others with “decades of experience with national security policy and practice,” declare:

“It is now clear that, as a practical matter under present and foreseeable circumstances, this agenda will only result in the unilateral disarmament of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. That will make the world more dangerous, not less.

In our professional judgment…America’s “Triad” of nuclear-armed land-based and submarine-launched missiles and bomber-delivered nuclear weapons have promoted strategic stability and discouraged proliferation. Steps that raise uncertainty about the viability, reliability and effectiveness of our deterrent will have the opposite effect.”

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy which facilitated this letter, observed:

“As President Obama meets today with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he is expected to emphasize the United States’ commitment to its most important Asian ally at a time when the threat to Japan from China and North Korea is growing by the day. The single most tangible thing Mr. Obama could do to give substance to such rhetoric would be to eschew further weakening of the U.S. nuclear arsenal – and the extended deterrent or “nuclear umbrella” it has constituted for nearly seventy years. The signers of this letter have rendered an incalculably important service by challenging the myth that doing otherwise in pursuit of a “world without nuclear weapons” is either achievable or desirable under present and foreseeable circumstances.”

Signers of the letter were:

• Adm. Thomas B. Hayward, USN (Ret.), Former Chief of Naval Operations
• Gen. Carl E. Mundy, Jr., USMC (Ret.), Former Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps
• Adm. Jerry Johnson, USN (Ret.), Former Vice Chief of Naval Operations
• Adm. James “Ace” Lyons, USN (Ret.), Former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet
• Vice Adm. Robert Monroe, USN (Ret.), Former Director, Defense Nuclear Agency
• Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, USAF (Ret.), Former Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force
• Hon. R. James Woolsey, Former Director of Central Intelligence
• Hon. John R. Bolton, Former U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
• Hon. Douglas J. Feith, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
• Dr. William R. Graham, Chairman, General Advisory Committee on Arms Control, 1981-1985; Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, Executive Office of the President, 1986-1989
• Lt. Gen. E.G. “Buck” Shuler, USAF (Ret.), Former Commander of the Eighth Air Force (Strategic Air Command)
• Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, USA (Ret.), Former Deputy Commanding General, U.S. Army, Pacific
• Rear Adm. Robert H. Gormley, USN (Ret.), Former Chief of Studies, Analysis and War Gaming, Joint Chiefs of Staff
• Hon. Kathleen Bailey, Former Assistant Director, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
• Hon. Henry F. “Hank” Cooper, Former Director of the Defense Strategic Initiative (SDI); Former U.S. Representative to the Defense and Space Talks
• Hon. Samantha Ravich, Former Deputy National Security Advisor, Office of the Vice President
• Hon. Troy Wade, Former Director, Defense Programs, Department of Energy
• Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy
• David J. Trachtenberg, Former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy
• Fred Celec, Former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs

Expert: US in cyberwar arms race with China, Russia

openchannel

Rick Wilking / Reuters file

First Lt Michael Newman examines a server rack that is isolated from the Internet at the Air Force Space Command Network Operations & Security Center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., in July 2010.

By Robert Windrem, Senior Investigative Producer, NBC News

The United States is locked in a tight race with China and Russia to build destructive cyberweapons capable of seriously damaging other nations’ critical infrastructure, according to a leading expert on hostilities waged via the Internet.

Scott Borg, CEO of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit institute that advises the U.S. government and businesses on cybersecurity, said all three nations have built arsenals of sophisticated computer viruses, worms, Trojan horses and other tools that place them atop the rest of the world in the ability to inflict serious damage on one another, or lesser powers.

Ranked just below the Big Three, he said, are four U.S. allies: Great Britain, Germany, Israel and perhaps Taiwan.

But in testament to the uncertain risk/reward ratio in cyberwarfare, Iran has used attacks on its nuclear program to bolster its offensive capabilities and is now developing its own "cyberarmy," Borg said.

Borg offered his assessment of the current state of cyberwar capabilities Tuesday in the wake of a report by the American computer security company Mandiant linking hacking attacks and cyber espionage against the U.S. to a sophisticated Chinese group known as “Peoples Liberation Army Unit 61398.

In today’s brave new interconnected world, hackers who can defeat security defenses are capable of disrupting an array of critical services, including delivery of water, electricity and heat, or bringing transportation to a grinding halt. U.S. senators last year received a closed-door briefing at which experts demonstrated how a power company employee could take down the New York City electrical grid by clicking on a single email attachment, the New York Times reported.

U.S. officials rarely discuss offensive capability when discussing cyberwar, though several privately told NBC News recently that the U.S. could "shut down" the electrical grid of a smaller nation -- Iran, for example – if it chose to do so.

Borg echoed that assessment, saying the U.S. cyberwarriors, who work within the National Security Agency, are “very good across the board. … There is a formidable capability.”

“Stuxnet and Flame (malware used to disrupt and gather intelligence on Iran's nuclear program) are demonstrations of that,” he said. “… (The U.S.) could shut down most critical infrastructure in potential adversaries relatively quickly.”

China, Russia have different prioritiesBorg said China and Russia have similar capacity to cause mayhem, but have different priorities and skill sets.

“Russia is best at military espionage and operations,” he said. “That's what they have focused on for a long time. China is looking for crucial business information and technology. China's main focus is stealing technology. These things quite separate. You use different tools on critical infrastructure than you use for military espionage and different tools again on stealing technology."

Borg said that each has its strong suit. "The Russians are technically advanced. The Chinese just have more people dedicated to the effort, by a wide margin,” he said. “They are not as innovative or creative as the U.S. and Russia. China has the greatest quantity, if not quality."

Borg said the group featured in Mandiant’s report, the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398, may be one of the most important groups working in China, but not necessarily the most important.

"There are at least two dozen groups carrying out aggressive operations against the U.S.,” he said. “They get in each other’s way and trip over one another, but they are all operating with the tacit approval of the Chinese government.

"They're not cooperating with each other because they don’t share capabilities," he added. "One group has good programming, but is bad at access or targeting." 

The Chinese hacking efforts are so broad, Borg said, that the highest-ranking Chinese officials “almost certainly do not know what all the groups are doing,” or the consequences. As a result, he added, they have been embarrassed by reports like the one in Tuesday’s New York Times, which first reported on the Mandiant assessment.

China is the most likely of the superpowers to leave a calling card, making their work the easiest to track. "China is very arrogant in its authorship of cyberweapons,” Borg said. “It does little to conceal its identity."

That’s in sharp contrast to the Russians, who he noted are not above writing code in Chinese to throw off investigators.

While the U.S. could respond to ongoing cyberattacks from China and Russia by shutting down the power grid of "any of its adversaries” and causing severe physical damage, Borg said it is encumbered by several factors.

One is its vulnerability to cyberwarfare as the world’s most networked nation, he said.

And from a geopolitical standpoint, Borg said, the U.S. would not want to badly damage the economy of either China or Russia. In fact, he said, the U.S. would almost certainly have to incorporate protections for critical systems like the power grid in any cyberattack.

Also, detecting the source of hostilities is not always easy, Borg said, as cybertracks are not as easy to follow as missile tracks. That means “mutually assured destruction,” the main strategic tenet of the Cold War, is problematic at best when talking about cyberwar, he said.

"It might be difficult to determine proportionate response,” he said. “It might not be simple to attack the attacker.”

For example, policymakers may think an attack has been carried out by the Chinese, when it was actually the work of the Russians or a rising power in the cyber world, like Iran. That is why intelligence -- getting insight into these operations -- is more important in a crisis than cyberforensics, which can take longer and not be as certain.

"There is no MAD in the Cold War sense," he said, "You can’t be 'assured' of attribution. The attack can be anonymous. It can be spoofed," or disguised as coming from another source. 

Iran developing 'serious capability'The U.S. first began to develop its own offensive capabilities 20 years ago when several strategic thinkers, particularly at the Naval Post-Graduate School, began to see the possibilities. It was not so much a strategic priority, but more "people familiar with electronics and hackers exercising their imagination." (Borg says one of those thinkers, Winn Schwartau, used fiction to discuss the threat and the possibilities, in a 1991 book, "Terminal Compromise.")

While the U.S. has the means to respond and to defend itself, Borg notes that some countries have no recourse. He cited the Russian invasion of the Republic of Georgia in August 2008, when the Georgian government and media infrastructure was quickly compromised.

What was particularly interesting, Borg said, was that the Russian military and intelligence services weren’t directly involved.

"The first wave was carried by organized crime," he noted. "The second wave was carried out by a (hacker) group organized though social media.” He said Russian hackers could download the attack software from a variety of popular sites, including dating and gun-collecting websites.

In both cases, Borg concluded, the organizers apparently were tipped off early about the timing of Russian military operations, he said.

The attack on Georgia also illustrated another aspect of cyberwarfare, Borg said, noting that Georgia, Estonia and Lithuania afterward formed a cyberalliance, leaving them in a better position to deal with future assaults.

That also appears to be the case with Iran, which recently announced that it decided to establish cyber army and claimed to have 4,000 to 5,000 military personnel involved in defensive and offensive operations. That isn’t all bluster, Borg said, noting that when the U.S. leveled new sanctions on Iranian banks last year, U.S. banks suddenly came under attack.

"Iran is developing a serious capability," said Borg. “It's exaggerating the present capabilities, but it’s working toward the future."

That’s especially troubling because the risk of smaller nations waging cyberwar against one other may be higher than with the online superpowers, he said.

He cited reports indicating that Iran may have been behind what he called one of the more serious cyberattacks to date -- an assault last August on the Saudi Aramco computer network that disabled more than 30,000 computers used to control the flow of Saudi oil. The Saudi Interior Ministry blamed "foreign countries" for the attack.

Borg said he believes the attack was an "Iranian fundamentalist attack ... at some point loosely the under auspices of Iran, and blessed by Iran. The fundamentalist group made a claim of responsibility. ... “Based on technical analysis, the claim has credibility."

For that reason, Borg says he is less worried about the possibility of China or Russia launching a catastrophic attack against the U.S. than he is about the emerging cyberpowers.

“What I’m really concerned about isn’t Russia or China, but attacks from Iran or terrorist groups working with state actors,” he said.

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