[Marxism] US plans for war on and against Internet: how this affects Cuba

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Below is an important discussion of 
the issues related to Cuba and the Internet, well worth
reading to the end. 

It helps to explain some of the latest
round of propaganda attacks on Cuba related to its
policies with the Internet. Specifically, there is
an extended discussion of blogger Yoani Sanchez, who she
is, her funding and publicity sources. She has
been dubbed - by the anti-Cuba media - as a major
threat to the Cuban government.
=====================================================

Weekend Edition
May 8-10, 2009
More of the Same?
Cyber Command and Cyber Dissident
By ROSA MIRIAM ELIZALDE
http://www.counterpunch.org/elizalde05082009.html

The news is spreading fast around the globe. The Obama administration is
ready to premiere a new cyber-space army. The Wall Street Journal and The
New York Times report that the goal of this cyber command is to secure
military computer networks in the United States, networks now threatened by
intrusive hackers linked to countries such as China and Russia.

Public opinion is forced to swallow in a single capsule the pretext for
killing the specter of a foreign enemy, as well as the details of the murder
weapon (a cyber command that will watch over the planet to eventually launch
into action). As Tom Burghardt finds in Global Research , the United States
is using the subterfuge of cyber security as a pretext for a cyber war, a
project initiated well before September 11th 2001. It began to jell by 2003,
with a leaked secret document signed by Donald Rumsfeld, ex Secretary of
Defense, ordering the creation of this special command.

Since then, the military arsenal has been preparing to intervene servers,
commit network espionage, bribe cybernetic mercenaries, criminalize
navigators in the name of war, bend the arms of telecommunication companies
and even launch an electronic bomb in March of 2003 in Iraq: a bomb capable
of incapacitating all targeted electronic systems at once.

The creation of this cyber-military is not without precedent; what is new is
that the functions of this electronic war, which previously were split among
ten Pentagon operations and other centers of intelligence, including the Air
Force, are now under a single umbrella, thus expanding the area of
operations of Bush?s ?holy war? - ?you are either with us, or you are with
the terrorists?. The enemy is not limited to certain countries, but extends
to corporations, groups and individuals, that are to be hunted down like
rabbits within the tentacles of globalization.

For reasons that have yet to be revealed, the new cyber-command is within
the structure of the National Security Agency. However, in 2003 the
cyber-command was introduced under the Air Force?s umbrella. It was to be
given autonomy in October 2008, with an operational budget of $2,000 million
for its first year.

The Air Force?s General Robert Elder , who at the time was in charge of the
cyber-command, explained in November of 2006 during a press conference the
reason for the expansion into cyberspace: ?the cultural change lies in that
we will treat the Internet as a war zone, we will concentrate on this area
and will prioritize actions in cyber space?.

It is evident that there is nothing new either in the cyber-command, or in
the self-advertising by new Pentagon Chief who is simply following the path
of his predecessors from the Bush administration. There is also nothing new
in its use as offensive-weapons. The United States has employed repression
and subversion for decades. It is now simply readjusting its strategy to the
new information era, with the Internet as its spinal column.

GET OUT OF WAY. THIS SPACE IS MINE

In March 2007, USA Today reported on one of cyber-war?s favorite strategies:
pirate attacks on Internet sites critical of the Bush administration. The
Air Force?s Investigation Laboratory had $40 million at its disposal to
address this issue. But the key to this offensive was the creation of
websites and cyber-dissidents that would echo the rhetoric favored by U.S.
troops and reinforce their military interventions.

A year later, that same publication revealed that the Pentagon ?is creating
a global network of websites in foreign languages, including a website in
Arabic for Iraqis; they hire local journalists to write on any daily event
that promotes US interests, and to spread a message against insurgents? .

The daily added that ?news websites are part of the Pentagon?s initiative to
expand ?information operations? on the Internet?. USA Today reported that
some of the sites created by the Pentagon include the Iraqi site
www.mawtani.com, the Balkan site www.setimes.com, and the Maghrebi site
www.magharebia.com.

What do all these sites have in common, according to USA Today?

* They are written by local journalists who are hired to come up with
stories akin to the Pentagon?s objectives 

* Military personnel or their contractors supervise their stories to ensure
that the stories published are compatible with their purposes 

* The journalists are paid for their stories 

And of course, they are all maintained with the utmost discretion in order
to conceal the website hosts and domain registries, as well as the money
trail that pays for translators, journalists and technical personnel. USA
Today revealed the preparation for the launch of similar sites aimed at
Latin America, and in particular a website managed by the Southern Command,
whose name and characteristics remain secret.

Strange coincidences

A simple exercise in comparison of the domains belonging to the websites
discovered by USA Today, and which garnered a great deal of publicity during
the first few months of 2008 yields the following results:

TO SEE CHART, GO TO THE COUNTERPUNCH WEBSITE:
http://www.counterpunch.org/elizalde05082009.html

Although not mentioned by USA Today, another common element is that their
domains are registered with the corporation GoDaddy, which provides for
anonymous registrations. The corporation charges a premium for this, of
course. The owner and only shareholder of this corporation is Bob Parsons,
ex-Marine and Vietnam veteran. Parsons is wealthy and known to have an
appetite for advocating extreme methods of interrogation for prisoners at
Guantanamo .

GoDaddy has an extensive track record of closing down its clients? sites
without notification, and like other north American companies dedicated to
the registry of domains, it may not offer its services to individuals or
companies linked to countries blacklisted by the Department of Treasury?s
OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control). Cuba is a sanctioned country,
according to OFAC.

The United States government forbids electronic commerce with any of the
countries or entities on the blacklist. In fact, in March 2007, the United
States? Government, ordered through OFAC the shutdown of 80 websites,
belonging to a tourism operator who lives in Spain and does business in the
United Kingdom. Without prior notice, the program Enom blocked 80 domain
names belonging to him, including some websites exclusively dedicated to
cultural exchanges, such as www.cuba-hemingway.com.

Despite OFAC?s clear prohibitions relating to Cuba linked domains, GoDaddy
maintains an allegedly Cuban website. It belongs to a rock group called
?Porno para Ricardo?, an openly anti-government website, that encourages
users to send money to its musicians, so that they can ?purchase musical
instruments.? Porno para Ricardo calls itself a Cuban website. But much like
many other websites set up to spread propaganda against the Cuban government
on the Internet, it is not administered on the island, its servers are not
in Cuban territory, it does not use national domains, its owners do not seem
to be anywhere in the Caribbean, and the sophisticated administrative tools
of the web -like a paying Gateway, or the provision of an electronic system
of money transfer made by credit cards- could not possibly be administered
by a truly independent Cuban journalist without the support and financing of
the United States government.

Add to this the overwhelming publicity campaign made on behalf of this and
other Cuban ?dissident? sites, especially through the Internet?s search
engines. Such a campaign could not be launched and managed from Cuba, since
the United States blockade against the island prevents Google from allowing
it. In other words, if the United States prevents Cubans on the island from
using credit cards to pay for a marketing campaign through Google?s Adwords,
will the directors of the famous search engine help track the money trail
that circulates through the Internet, promoting these websites and the
sudden stars of global cyber dissidence?

Cyber dissidents

Military academicians are another important variable in the information war
waged through the Internet. In order to try to turn fiction into fact,
information is personalized, with images and other ?evidence? that proves
that the person who makes the statement is effectively where she says she
is.

Military Review , the Pentagon?s official journal, has extensively analyzed
the strategic importance of blogs and cyber dissidents. They put a human
face on the political rhetoric designed by the U.S. military, particularly
aimed at areas where the use of Internet is on the rise.

As they create websites, they also create a la carte cyber dissidents. A
controversial case was that of Iraqi blogger Salam Pax, who mysteriously
kept writing on his anti Saddam and anti Bush blog during the U.S. invasion
of Iraq. There is also evidence of suspicious cyber dissidents in
Yugoslavia, China, Vietnam, Iran, and Syria?

With regards to Cuba, it is worth mentioning the meteoric stardom of blogger
Yoani Sanchez, who meets all the conditions required by Pentagon experts.
The design of her blog is based upon several falsehoods: the name of the
hosting website www.desdecuba.com suggests that her Internet connection
originates in Cuba. Yet, the server is in Germany and registered to somebody
named Josef Biechele. Who is this man and why does the blogger never mention
this generous sponsor? The website itself enjoys resources that are not
available to the average blogger, let alone to a Cuban blogger, who does not
have the local administrative tools necessary to host a blog and also has to
battle with an extremely slow network to connect to international sites like
www.blogger.com and others.

The technical support provided by this particular website, which works
almost exclusively for her blog, is custom-made and costs hundreds of
thousands of dollars. The marketing strategy, through Google and other
digital and traditional media, is also top of the line.

The blog´s content is manipulative. The blogger tries to organize mass
mobilizations through www.twitter.com, social forums, and versions of the
web 2.0 which are almost unknown in Cuba, a country with a severely limited
bandwidth and extremely weak Internet facilities, since Internet connection
on the island is via satellite. The United States blockade prohibits has
prohibited Cuba from installing a much-needed underwater telecommunications
cable, and Washington has banned for years electronic commerce and access to
digital technology. Consequently, those who connect to the Internet in Cuba,
at the average speed of 30-40 Kbps, can barely manage to check email, and
other priorities that are light years away from Yantis negativism. 

Who is this woman addressing then? It is obviously not a Cuban audience. Is
she speaking to those outside Cuba, who are often bombarded with the type of
biased discourse she favors? Is her objectivity guaranteed by the fact that
she is in Cuba?

She also claims to be apolitical, not committed to any system, yet the tags
used to identify her blog on the Internet say that www.desdecuba.com is a
?political and independent review. It offers a different view than the one
given by the Cuban government?. In her writings there are abundant
references to the outdated political discourse used by the Department of
State to justify including Cuba in its blacklist. Her notes are peppered
with allusions to a 1950?s aesthetics, thus strengthening the stereotype of
a ?Havana in ruins?, a way to show Cuba in the worst possible light.

Lately, the blogger does not even seem to hide her ultra-right wing
excesses, something that must certainly bother her handlers, as this is not
the role she has been asked to play. Her comments now are more akin to what
a digital Luis Posada Carriles would say, than those of a pacifist blogger
and likely candidate to the Nobel Peace Prize. For example, in a note about
?the night of the long knives that will befall on the island?, she
explicitly adheres to the ?license to kill? attitude often invoked from
Miami:

People waiting, with a stick or a knife under the bed for a day they can use
them. Entrenched hatred against those who betrayed them, denied them a
better job, or made sure their youngest child couldn?t study at the
university. There are so many waiting for possible chaos to give them the
time necessary for revenge, that one would wish not to have been born in
this age, when one can only be a victim or victimizer, when so many yearn
for the night of the long knives. (Yoani Sanchez, 25th April 2009)

If we follow the logic of U.S. strategists, the face of today?s anti-Cuban
discourse is the least important issue. Yoani and those will come afterwards
are paving the way for the promotion of their point of view on the billion
people who get their information through the Internet, including the
thousands of Cuban youths and children who, thanks to the efforts to educate
them in the latest digital technology, will enjoy increasing access to the
Internet.

The strategy of using the Internet as a tool of political intervention has
been developing for at least five years, experiencing a crescendo during the
past months, culminating with the recent announcement made by the Obama
administration. He inherited from Bush the idea of directing funds to
subversive activities against Cuba through the telecommunications arena. The
fact that this is nothing new is confirmed by the note published by Paul
Ritcher on 7th May 2008 in Los Angeles Times:

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which oversees the program,
is trying to persuade Central European and Latin American nongovernmental
groups to join U.S. organizations in applying for its grants. A chief goal,
officials say, is to spend most of the $45-million budget on communications
equipment, such as cell phones and Internet gear, that possibly could be
smuggled into Cuba to increase its people's exposure to the outside world.

Could part of these funds have been allocated to financing the
disproportionate campaign of Cuban cyber dissidence? Which European
institutions are receiving funding from the United States? Do the 15,000
euros given the Cuban blogger by the Spanish group Prisa come from there? Is
it a coincidence that Prisa, Yoani?s main marketing agency in Europe, also
owns Noticias 24, one of the most aggressive anti-Chávez blogs in Venezuela?

Whichever the answer, it will be more of the same. The cyber command is not
new, neither are the prefabricated cyber-dissidents and their webs, nor
their political collaboration designed to try and destroy our government.

Rosa Miriam Elizalde is a Cuban journalist who lives and works in Cuba. She
edits a Cuban publication called Cubadebate, writes frequently for the
newspaper Juventud Rebelde, and is the author of several books, including
Chávez Nuestro. She has twice won the Juan Gualberto Gómez Prize, Cuba's
most prestigious journalism award.

Notes.

BURGHARDT, Tom (2009): ?The Pentagon's Cyber Command: Formidable
Infrastructure arrayed against the American People?. In Global Research,
April 26, 2009. Available at
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13354

RUMSFELD, Donald (2003): Information Operations Roadmap, United-States
National Security Archive, October 30, 2003. Available at
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/info_ops_roadmap.pdf (PDF 2,3
Mb)

WOOD, Sara (2006) "New Air Force Command to Fight in Cyberspace". In:
American Forces Press Service. U.S. Department of Defense, November 3, 2006.

MICHAELS, Jim (2007): ?U.S. Military Beefs Up Internet Arsenal?. In: USA
Today, March, 28, 2007.

EISLER, Peter (2008): "Pentagon launches foreign news websites". In USA
Today, May 1, 2008

In June 2005, Parsons sparked controversy by writing in his blog that the
methods used by the United States in Guantanamo were "incredibly soft. All
detainees receive regular medical attention?. PARSONS, Bob (2005): "Close
Gitmo? No Way", 19th June 2005. Available at

The so-called Torricelli Law or Law of Authorization and National Defense
for the fiscal year 1992, allowed the island to connect to the Internet on
the condition that every megabyte would have to be hired from north American
companies or their subsidiaries, with express authorization from the
Treasury Department. Connections would be limited and sanctions were
established -$50,000 for each violation- for those who facilitate electronic
commerce or any economic benefit to the island, whether within our outside
the USA, This has been rigorously enforced, and the OFAC has been expanding
the ?blacklist?. In April 2004, the OFAC informed the Congress that while
four of its 120 employees had been assigned to track Bin Laden?s finances,
almost two dozen employees worked towards the enforcement of the embargo
against Cuba. They admitted that they used the Internet as their fundamental
source to track payments. By the way, in the recent announcement made by
Obama, nothing has been mentioned about electronic financial transfers. In
this sense, the embargo remains intact.

There are numerous examples in this publication that theorize about
information wars and the use of new technologies. We recommend, for example,
the article "Partnering with the Iraqi media" In: Military Review,
july-august 2008. Available at
http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/milreview/English/JulAug08/DeCarvalhoEngJulAug08.
pdf

Luis Posada Carriles, Venezuelan citizen of Cuban origin. A self-confessed
terrorist, responsible for blowing up a civilian plane, killing 73 people,
and for the series of explosions in Cuban hotels during the 1990?s, which
killed an Italian tourist. Posada Carriles lives in Miami.

RICHTER, Paul (2008): ?Cuba USAID Program Gets Overhaul? In: Los Angeles
Times. May 7, 2008. Available at
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/07/world/fg-uscuba7

=========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Los Angeles, California
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
======================================



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