f passed, the
"cumulative effect" of slashing social spending in FY2011 will be "much
greater" over time. In fact, according to estimates, "the House
Republican plan would result in social spending that is $1 trillion
lower over ten years."
Grand Theft Wall Street
While
legislators in a score of states are slashing unemployment benefits,
medical care and educational opportunities for Americans hit hardest by
the crisis,
Zero Hedge reports
that at the beginning of the 2008 financial meltdown the largest U.S.
banks "scrambled to the Fed to soak up any and all available liquidity
after confidence in the entire ponzi collapsed."
Hardly a shocker considering that investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, as
McClatchy revealed,
"peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000
risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting
that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those
securities plummeting."
As investigative journalist Greg Gordon reported, "Goldman's
clandestine wagers" completed just before the overinflated housing
bubble burst like a putrescent boil, "enabled the nation's premier
investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a
flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies."
According to Zero Hedge,
once the system entered full crisis mode, with share prices plummeting
and pension funds, insurance firms, labor unions and overseas financial
houses facing catastrophic losses and potential collapse, Federal
Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke mandated that the Primary Dealer
Credit Facility be "downgraded to accept collateral of any type," and
that the very institutions responsible for the crisis "had the temerity
to pledge bonds that had defaulted (i.e. had a rating of D)." In fact, Zero Hedge revealed, "the Fed would accept Defaulted bonds as collateral: or 'assets' that have no value whatsoever"!
Within a few weeks "this practice became pervasive, with virtually
every banker pledging defaulted bonds in exchange for money good cash
with which to pretend these banks were doing just fine (not to mention
that $71.7 billion in collapsing equities represented nearly half the
total collateral of $164.3 billion pledged to receive $155 billion in
cash.)"
And whom, pray tell, with a wink and a nod from Bush, and now Obama
administration "deficit hawks" gamed the system best? Why Goldman Sachs
and JP Morgan Chase of course!
It gets better.
ProPublica tells
us that while teachers, nurses and other greedy public sector workers
(you know, Leona Helmsley's "little people") have their rights stripped
away, pay for bank executives "seems to have been immune to the
recession and unaffected by the bailouts."
According to a report in
American Banker cited
by the investigative news site, "in 2003, the banking industry's 1.3
million full-time employees took home $78.3 billion. In 2010, its 2.1
million employees took home $168.1 billion."
ProPublica's Marian Wang
informs us "that the point here is the trend, not the actual average.
The figure mixes the modest wages of bank tellers with the big bonuses
for top execs and investment bankers."
"CEOs, of course," notes Wang, "are still pulling in millions." Bank
of America for example "made headlines this week for what seemed to be a
cut to CEO Brian Moynihan's compensation. But the $1.94 million he's
reported to have taken home in 2010 doesn't include the more than $9
million in deferred compensation that he's due to receive this year."
A sweet deal if you can get it, which of course, you can't.
Instead, for misplaced loyalties to a system intent on grinding us underfoot and charging us for the privilege,
The Wall Street Journal reported
that despite an alleged "improvement in the labor market, many workers
are barely treading water as their wages fail to keep up with rising
prices."
"Compared with a year earlier," the Journal avers, "average inflation-adjusted wages have declined."
Unsurprisingly,
"the weakness in wages comes amid surging corporate profits and
continued productivity gains. With unemployment still high--8.8% in
March--employers are finding so much labor available that they are able
to keep a tight lid on wages."
These latest outrages come hard on the heels of reports that arms,
nuke plant and media giant (can you say Fukashima Daiichi 1-6 and NBC),
General Electric, will pay no federal income taxes this year despite
"earning" some $14.1 billion in 2010 profits. Under Congress' watchful
eye, GE stands to rake in a $3.2 billion tax credit for offshoring U.S.
jobs to low wage platforms in various managed democracies.
Rather rich considering that our Grifter-in-Chief, hope and change
huckster Barack Obama, named GE's CEO Jeffrey Immelt to head the
president's Council on Jobs and Economic Competitiveness back in
January,
Bloomberg News reported.
No surprise here once you learn, as
OpenSecrets.org did, that GE doled out some $39.2 million in 2010 lobbying the best Congress money can buy.
The World Socialist Web Site avers,
with troglodytic Republicans demanding some $61 billion in social
spending cuts at the behest of crazed Tea Party groups bankrolled by
billionaires, "progressive" Democrats have agreed to meet their henchmen
half-way across the aisle, a process called "splitting the difference"
that will result in "cuts of approximately $33 billion."
"A bipartisan group of 64 senators, 32 from each party, signed a
joint letter to Obama," Martin observes, urging the president "to
'engage' personally in talks on long-term deficit reduction, which would
include major cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the three
most costly federal social programs."
Want to guess who's demanding more from an ever-dwindling federal
pie, largely the result of multiple imperial wars to steal other
people's resources, corporate bailouts, tax cuts for the filthy rich and
a National Surveillance State that views the American people as their
deadliest enemy?
All Aboard the "Cybersecurity" Gravy Train
As Antifascist Calling has
frequently reported, with various cyber panics now supplementing secret
state scaremongering over terrorist threats from a score of shady
actors, more often than not off-the-shelf "irregular forces" who, when
not murdering official U.S. enemies, i.e., leftists, human rights
campaigners, trade unionists and other opponents of Empire, do a brisk
business trafficking arms, drugs, human organs, women, whatever.
Orwell reminds us: "All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and
lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." But
that doesn't mean they can't make a killing when opportunity comes
knocking. After all, as
Market Research Media reported,
"with a cumulative market valued at $55 billion (2010-2015), the U.S.
Federal Cybersecurity market will grow steadily--at about 6.2% CAGR over
the next six years."
Panic sells, and once the terms of the debate have been set by
interested parties adept at feathering their nests, well, it's all
aboard the "cybersecurity" gravy train!
Last month,
NextGov disclosed
that "protecting military networks" in FY2012 will "cost nearly $1
billion more than the Pentagon publicly reported last month, an increase
that reflects the growing number of programs being re-categorized as
cybersecurity-related, agency officials said."
When the Obama administration released its 2012 budget back in
February, "the Pentagon announced it was requesting $2.3 billion to
bolster network security within the Defense Department and to strengthen
ties with its counterparts at the Homeland Security Department, which
is responsible for overseeing civilian cybersecurity," reporter Aliya
Sternstein wrote.
But as I
reported last year, "strengthening ties" amongst civilian and military cyber warriors means that the "
Memorandum of Agreement"
struck between the Department of Homeland Security and the National
Security Agency will inevitably lead to a marked increase of Pentagon
control, in profitable alliance with major defense and security firms,
over America's telecommunications and electronic infrastructure.
A reflexive power-grab by the Pentagon is not however, a sign that
the internet and related telecommunications' platforms are being
absorbed by that scarecrow beloved by neoliberals, libertarians and
other "free market" fanatics: "big government." As Marxist social media
critic Christian Fuchs
points out:
Foucault characterized surveillance in the following
way: "He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information,
never a subject in communication." With the rise of "web 2.0," the
Internet has become a universal communication system, which is shaped by
privileged data control by corporations that own most of the
communication-enabling web platforms and by the state that can gain
access to personal data by law. ... By being subjects of communication
on the Internet, users make available personal data to others and
continuously communicate over the Internet. These communications are
mainly mediated by corporate-owned platforms, therefore the subjects of
communication become objects of information for corporations and the
state in surveillance processes. ... In web 2.0, corporate and state
power is exercised through the gathering, combination, and assessment of
personal data that users communicate over the web to others, and the
global communication of millions within a heteronomous society produces
the interest of certain actors to exert control over these
communications. In web 2.0, power relations and relationships of
communication are interlinked. The users are producers of information
... but this creative communicative activity enables the controllers of
disciplinary power to closely gain insights into the lives, secrets, and
consumption preferences of the users. (Christian Fuchs, "Web 2.0,
Prosumption, and Surveillance," Surveillance & Society, Vol. 8, No. 3, p. 304)
In this light, the Pentagon's obsessive secrecy, particularly as
it relates to "cybersecurity" and programs designed for offensive cyber
war, its management-driven cult of controlling informational flows and
pathological aversion to democratic decision-making processes are
anything but antithetical to a
neoliberal regime that commodifies everything and values nothing.
Rather, the broader militarization of society and social relations as a
whole, characterized by endless imperial wars and a system of
generalized plunder must be viewed as an expression, albeit a sinister
one, of capitalism's drive to privatize and commodify the state itself
as a profit-generating center.
This is clearly the case when it comes to Defense Department
inflation of their FY2012 cybersecurity budgets. While it is certainly
true that the military is the "consumer" of cyber-related "products," it
is the producers of those
products, defense and security corporations who drive market demand. As
investigative journalist Tim Shorrock uncovered in his landmark study,
Spies For Hire,
"the bulk of this $50 billion [intelligence] market is serviced by one
hundred companies, ranging in size from multibillion-dollar defense
behemoths to small technology shops funded by venture capitalists that
have yet to turn a profit."
In a follow-up piece,
NextGov revealed
while "the White House proposed spending $2.3 billion on cybersecurity
at the Defense Department ... simultaneously Air Force officials
announced their cybersecurity request would be $4.6 billion."
For their part, the "Army and Defense Information Systems Agency
referred inquiries about their proposed cyber spending to
department-level officials." And "Navy officials said they could not
provide a top-line budget figure, since funding that supports Navy
cybersecurity activities is scattered across several line items, as well
as multiple programs, organizations and commands."
As Sternstein points out, while "the area surrounding
'cybersecurity' funding is gray ... the various interpretations of
cybersecurity spending translate into real-world financial and national
security costs, budget and technology."
Defense Department spokeswoman April Cunningham told NextGov,
that the Air Force "included things that we, [at the department's
office of the chief information officer] categorize as IT
infrastructure, or other activities--not directly information
assurance."
"According to the department," Sternstein writes, "information
assurance consists of five programs, including public key
infrastructure, or digital certificates, as well as defense industrial
base cybersecurity for private sector assets that support the military."
Cunningham said that "activities at the Air Force and other services
that Defense considers to be 'information assurance-cybersecurity' are
captured in the total $3.2 billion figure." And "based on this formula"
the Army is seeking $432 million and the Navy are lusting after $347
million in FY2012.
However, other Defense agencies "including DISA, the National
Security Agency and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--are
asking for a cumulative $1.6 billion. Details on proposed cyber spending
at all Pentagon components are shared with Congress in a classified
budget book, she said."
Which means, given the Pentagon's propensity to quietly hide their
most controversial programs within the dark folds of the black budget,
Congress, let alone the American people, really have no idea what such
programs entail, who benefits from black contract outlays and
ultimately, how they'll be deployed.
NextGov reported that the
revised budget request "also includes funding for noninformation
assurance activities" that the Pentagon claims "are integral to the
military's cyber posture, specifically cyber operations, security
innovations and forensics."
Additionally, "the budget assigns $159 million to the relatively new
U.S. Cyber Command, and distributes $258 million among science and
technology investments targeted at cyber tools," and that "some" of the
proposed funding will go "toward a new partnership with the Homeland
Security Department, which oversees civilian cyber operations."
"Any way you measure it," Sternstein writes, "Defense funding for
cybersecurity dwarfs that of Homeland Security. The fiscal 2012 budget
for DHS information security is $936 million."
And given the fact
that "some cybersecurity funding is classified at Defense components
such as the NSA," the Pentagon satrapy with the brief to driftnet spy on
Americans' communications and potentially, through U.S. Cyber Command,
carry out offensive operations against selected domestic targets in
tandem with corporate partners, as the
HBGary emails and documents leaked by Anonymous seem to suggest, total cybersecurity spending is an immense black hole.
As investigative journalist Nate Anderson revealed in
Ars Technica,
the HBGary hack demonstrated how the U.S. government is now "in the
position of deploying the hacker's darkest tools--rootkits, computer
viruses, trojan horses, and the like."
Indeed, Anderson reports, in 2009 "HBGary had partnered with the
Advanced Information Systems group of defense contractor General
Dynamics to work on a project euphemistically known as 'Task B.' The
team had a simple mission: slip a piece of stealth software onto a
target laptop without the owner's knowledge."
HBGary's CEO Greg Hoglund was focused on delivering such tools in
tandem with defense giant General Dynamics "which a later e-mail makes
clear was for a government agency."
"Hoglund's special interest was in all-but-undetectable computer 'rootkits'," Ars Technica reported,
"programs that provide privileged access to a computer's innermost
workings while cloaking themselves even from standard operating system
functions. A good rootkit can be almost impossible to remove from a
running machine--if you could even find it in the first place."
According to a 243 page report by HBGary, "Windows Rootkit Analysis Report," posted by the secrecy-shredding web site
Public Intelligence, Hoglund averred that "combining deployment of a rootkit with a BOT makes for a very stealth piece of malicious software."
A companion document published by
Public Intelligence,
"Proposal for Project C," informs us that "General Dynamics has
selected HBGary Inc to provide this proposal for development of a
software application targeting the Windows XP Operating System that,
when executed, loads and enables a covert kernel-mode implant that will
exfiltrate a file from disk (or other remotely called commands) over a
connected serial port to a remote device."
We're informed that the "enabling kernel mode implant will cater to a
command and control element via the serial port," which "as part of the
exploit delivery package, a usermode trojan will assist in the loading
of the implant, which will clearly demonstrate the full capability of
the implant."
In plain English: private contractors, including some of the largest
U.S. defense and security firms, are busy as proverbial bees designing
malware for the secret state; insidious, undetectable applications that
can transform an individual's laptop or smart phone into a component of a
malicious botnet under cover of "cyber defense."
Try finding those line items in the Defense Department's FY2012 budget!
