Chinese defence paper warns of US “hegemonism”

By John Chan, wsws.org

The Chinese defence ministry issued a major white paper on Tuesday, in what amounts to a response to the aggressive US “pivot” to Asia. Entitled, “The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces,” the document warns of the danger of US “hegemonism.”

Confronted by the Obama administration’s efforts to undermine China strategically, as well as diplomatically and economically, Beijing is being forced to rethink its military doctrine, and prepare for a potential nuclear war instigated by Washington.

As part of the “pivot,” the Pentagon’s Air/Sea Battle strategy envisages a massive bombardment using conventional weapons of China’s basic command and communications infrastructure and missile forces to cripple the Chinese military. Aided by key allies such as Japan and Australia, the US would blockade the Chinese mainland by cutting key shipping routes through South East Asia for energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East.

For the first time, Beijing’s latest white paper stresses the protection of China’s maritime territories, overseas investments and shipping routes. “With the gradual integration of China’s economy into the world economic system, overseas interests have become an integral component of China’s national interests,” it states. “Security issues are increasingly prominent, involving overseas energy and resources, strategic sea lines of communication (SLOCs), and Chinese nationals and legal persons overseas.”

Without naming the US, the paper refers to a country that “has strengthened its Asia-Pacific military alliances, expanded its military presence in the region, and frequently makes the situation tenser.” Japan, the principal US Asian ally, is specifically accused of “making trouble” over the disputed Diaoyu/Senkakus islands in the East China Sea.

The paper points to “signs of increasing hegemonism… and neo-interventionism.” This is a reference to the repeated military interventions led by the US, in particular since the late 1990s, from the bombing of Serbia to the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the violent toppling of the Libyan regime in 2011, and the mounting intervention in Syria.

The paper also nominates threats to China’s “national unification.” Among them are “terrorism, separatism and extremism”—that is, separatist movements among national minorities such as Tibetans and Xinjiang’s Uyghur Muslims that could be exploited by the US and other imperialist powers. At the same time, the paper warns that “Taiwan independence” forces and their activities are still “the biggest threat to the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations.”

China continues to maintain a large military presence along its coastline facing Taiwan, including hundreds of thousands of Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) troops and an estimated 1,000 tactical ballistic missiles. The Obama administration, although aware of the extreme sensitivity of China’s claims over Taiwan as its integral territory, has begun selling billions of dollars of weapons to Taiwan. The US is also including Taiwan in its Asia-Pacific anti-ballistic missile network, which is part of the Pentagon’s preparations for a potential nuclear war against China.

The white paper refers to the first ever large-scale overseas evacuation mounted by China. During the Libyan war in 2011, some 35,860 Chinese nationals were pulled out with the assistance of Chinese warships and air force transport planes. As a result of the US- and European-led “regime change” operation, billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese investments were lost in Libya.

Yue Gang, a former officer in the PLA General Staff, noted on Sina.com that China has huge economic interests at stake. Total Chinese investment overseas has reached $US500 billion, and is projected to reach $1 trillion by 2020. He said 81 million Chinese travelled overseas each year, half a million seamen were working around the world, and China operated a merchant fleet of 3,300 ships—the fourth largest in the world. As 55 percent of China’s energy production depended on imports and 93 percent of its exports relied on sea shipment, protecting China’s maritime routes was a vital question.

Yue noted that China’s military had only begun to face these tasks and lacked sufficient aircraft carriers or amphibious assault ships, as well as large transport planes capable of the “strategic lifting” of forces to distant regions.

In an effort to counter the mounting US threat, China’s military spending has steadily risen during the past decade, from $20 billion in 2002 to $114 billion this year. China has made some breakthroughs in military equipment. It is testing two prototype stealth fighters, the only nation to do so, apart from the US.

However, the US military budget of more than $680 billion dwarfs China’s. Moreover, the US possesses more than 5,100 nuclear warheads, compared to China’s estimated 240-400. The US has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, while the Chinese navy has just one conventionally-powered carrier, and will take years to form a functional battle group with warplanes and escort warships. The US also has military bases and alliances throughout Asia and around the world.

The US media has focused on the fact that the white paper makes no mention of China’s long-standing “no first use” nuclear warfare policy. Beijing’s longstanding pledge not to launch a first nuclear strike has been reiterated in all previous defence white papers. Its omission from the latest indicates deep concerns that the US is developing the capacity to knock out China’s entire nuclear arsenal.

The US has never relinquished its “first strike” nuclear war doctrine. Moreover, it is clearly constructing the anti-ballistic missile systems to enable it to invoke that doctrine with impunity, by neutralising any Chinese counter-attack with nuclear weapons.

The Chinese white paper is another sign that Beijing is being compelled to respond to the Obama administration’s “pivot” that is aimed at preventing China from becoming a future threat to American global domination. Washington’s aggressive policies have dangerously inflamed flashpoints in Asia such as the Korean Peninsula and are fuelling an arms race throughout the region that can only lead to conflict and war.

The High Cost of Cheap Meat

What DNA Tests on Lasagne Can’t Reveal

When you count just the physical/economic costs without their pervasive and ugly externalities, let alone the moral costs, the price paid by humanity for meat today is an illusion.

A chunk of clean-looking meat denie sthe connection with its source, and gives no idea about its real cost to the planet.

A chunk of sanitized-looking meat denies the connection with its once living source, and gives no idea about its real cost to the planet.

by AGNES STIENNE / Monde Diplomatique/Counterpunch

Nothing changes — whatever familiar measures are announced after every food scandal, once the politicians, manufacturers and retailers have made their claims and counterclaims, and after we’ve gone through the ritual demands for transparency, traceability and labelling. What we really need to do is widen our focus from the contents of “beef” lasagne to the intersecting routes of the current global agricultural system.

It has been developed with the single goal of large-scale production for export, with centres of specialisation to maximise profits. In emerging countries, greater wealth has led to an increase in demand for meat, and therefore a need for agricultural land to feed livestock. In China, meat consumption per person has increased 55% in 10 years (1). To feed its battery hens, China has to import soya grown in Latin America; to grow food for human and animal consumption, it has started to grab land in Africa. Raw ingredients are grown in one continent, bought by another, and exported to a third, just like the global supply chains of manufacturing industry.

For several decades, the food industry has persisted with an approach that has damaged small farmers, biodiversity, soil, water resources, and the health of producers and sometimes consumers, without managing to feed the planet — in 2011 a billion people did not have enough to eat. The meat industry exemplifies the problem. It accounts for less than 2% of global GDP but produces 18% of greenhouse gas emissions and uses huge amounts of natural resources, land and agricultural produce. Should cereals be grown to feed people or to fatten livestock? It takes at least seven kilograms of grain to produce one kilogram of beef, four for a kilogram of pork and two for a kilogram of chicken.

Pasture takes up 68% of all agricultural land (and 25% of it is already exhausted and infertile), while growing fodder takes up 35% of arable land: so in all, livestock requires 78% of all agricultural land. This dedication of land to the production of poor quality meat (plus further land demands for biofuels) directly affects the poorest. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s 2006 annual report says: “Feed production as well as imports have increased. Total feed imports have surged … giving rise to fears that the expansion of China’s livestock industry could lead to price hikes and global shortages of grains, as has been predicted many times in the past.” We know what happened next: food riots in 2008 in Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Indonesia and the Philippines, caused by the unprecedented rise in the cost of raw materials on the international market.

Pushing millions into poverty

Early in the financial crisis, political leaders should have banned speculation on basic foodstuffs, but didn’t. Despite a reduction in the real cost of cereal production, prices kept going up (2). In February 2011 The World Bank warned: “Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions … The price hike is already pushing millions of people into poverty, and putting stress on the most vulnerable, who spend more than half of their income on food” (3).

Most cattle are grazed, and while a small herd of black and white Pie Noir cows chewing the cud in the shade of cider apple trees in the Breton countryside might not be a problem, environmental damage increases as herd density rises. In South America over the past few years, overgrazing has left the soil sterile and saturated with animal manure. Producers easily resort to illegal logging to clear fresh land, especially in Brazil, which is the world’s biggest producer and exporter of beef and leather, supplying 30% of the global market. It exports primarily to Russia and the EU. A 2009 Greenpeace report revealed that Brazil’s 200 million head of cattle were responsible for 80% of the deforestation of the Amazon (4) — 10m hectares of forest destroyed in 10 years, to the detriment of small farmers and native peoples. For 40 years Survival International has condemned the killing of indigenous people by ranchers in Brazil’s forests.

The Amazonian rainforest is being destroyed primarily to produce biofuel and cattle feed. According to the peasant movement Via Campesina: “Soybean monocultures … now occupy a quarter of all agricultural lands in Paraguay and … have grown at a rate of 320,000 hectares a year in Brazil since 1995. In Argentina, where soybeans occupy around half the agricultural land … 5.6 million hectares of non-agricultural land was converted to soya production between 1996-2006. The devastating impacts that such farms have had on people and the environment in Latin America are well documented and acknowledged” (5).

Cereals and oil-producing plants, cultivated and harvested in Latin America with the help of chemicals, are transported across the Atlantic to the huge silos of agribusiness multinationals in Europe, ready to be turned into concentrated feed for millions of battery-farmed pigs and chickens around the world — in 2005 they consumed 1,250m tons.

Factory farms supply processors and supermarkets internationally. The industry tries to minimise costs by “rationalising” the production and distribution chain, reducing the workforce, automating tasks, standardising products and mechanically recovering meat slurry for cheap processed meals. The system is there to meet the demands of agribusiness and the big supermarkets.

Assembly-line animals

Processed food makers produce sausages as if they were assembling a car from components; and in a way, the animals they use have become artificial, the product of agricultural research, selectively bred to accelerate muscle development and boost reproductive performance, their vital organs reduced to the point where they are not able to function properly. They are extremely vulnerable to illness, and producers try to remedy this by heating the buildings in which they are raised, although this is often not enough to avoid infections, so they are given antibiotics. The liquid manure they produce, a dangerous mix of nitrogen and phosphorus, is disposed of by spreading on land that is already oversaturated. In Brittany, cyanobacteria pollution of groundwater, rivers and shores caused by the pig industry, is now endemic.

Traditional farming takes account of how much feed is available locally. Pastureland is nurtured, grass regrowth protected from too many hooves, and animal waste prevented from affecting soil and water quality. Animals are reared in symbiosis with cereal and vegetable crops: green waste with peas, lupins and field beans makes a balanced and healthy fodder, straw provides bedding for the animals, and manure fertilises the soil, completing the cycle. A new generation of farmers who want to produce local healthy food that does not damage the planet have been inspired by traditional practices; they have studied, tested, improved and modernised them, and some have moved into agroforestry, as recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, in which trees shelter crops from the wind and sun and contribute to soil fertility, while tree roots keep water at the base of the plants.

Translated by Stephanie Irvine.

Agnès Stienne is a graphic designer.

Notes.

(1) “The State of Food and Agriculture”, FAO, Rome, 2009.

(2) See Jean Ziegler, “Speculating on hunger”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, February 2012.

(3) “Rising food prices have driven an estimated 44 million people into poverty”, The World Bank press release, Washington, 15 February 2011.

(4) “Slaughtering the Amazon”, Greenpeace International, 1 June 2009.

(5) “The World Bank funding land grabbing in South America”, open letter from Via Campesina, 7 July 2011.

This article appears in the excellent Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features two or three articles from LMD every month.

Throwing BRICS at the U.S. Empire

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
History has placed the BRICS nations on the path of confrontation with a superpower in decline. Washington is prepared to strangle the world into submission, or drown it in chaos. “Objectively, the United States has positioned itself as the great and implacable impediment to global development.”

“They have no choice but to resist Washington’s policies of coercion and the threat of strangulation.”

The meteoric rise of the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – now concluding their fifth annual summit meeting in Durban, became inevitable once the imperial powers began moving the world’s industrial production to the Global South, decades ago. From that point on, the options available to the “West” began to shrink, leading inexorably to the current historical juncture, in which U.S.-led imperialism relies almost entirely on its overwhelming military superiority to maintain itself.

“By 2020,” according to United Nations Development Program, “the combined economic output of three leading developing countries alone — Brazil, China and India — will surpass the aggregate production of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the U.K. and the United States.” The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, comprised of the world’s richest countries, predicts that China will surpass the United States as the world’s biggest economy by the end of 2016. By some measures, China actually overtook the U.S. back in 2010.

“The essential question facing the Global South, is to what extent, and how long, will they shore up the crumbling old Euro-American edifices.”

Brazil’s economic development bank is bigger than the World Bank. Last year, BRICS nations sent $75 billion to the IMF [21] to help bail out European financial institutions – so, these countries can well afford to capitalize a BRICS development bank, as they agreed to do, in principle, this week in Durban. It is a question of political will.

U.S. and western European economic decline is an irreversible fact. The essential question facing the Global South, with the BRICS in the lead, is to what extent, and how long, will they shore up the crumbling old Euro-American edifices – in which they also have huge investments and which are backed by a war machine that strives for full spectrum dominance of the planet.

We are living at a crossroads of history. The productive center of the world is shifting back to where it was before western Europe began its 500-year war against the rest of humankind: to China and India, the economic powerhouses of the pre-colonial planet. Europe used force to organize the world to its own, absolute advantage, depopulating a whole hemisphere and much of Africa in the process. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, which was fueled by colonization and slavery, most of the world’s people enjoyed similar living standards. The great global imbalance in the human condition, largely along lines of color, is the product of half a millennium of predation.

The gory enterprise could not, however, forever contain the human impulse toward self-determination, or escape the laws of political economy. Unable to export the contradictions of dwindling rates of profit in a decolonizing world, western financial capitalists exported their industrial capacity, instead. Power must shift, as well. This is the central quandary of the BRICS, and of U.S. imperialism.

“Washington is betting its global hegemony on military coercion, pure and simple.”

The United States, firmly in the grip of hyperactive finance capital, has acquiesced to its diminishing role in world trade. It doesn’t seriously attempt to directly compete with the core BRICS countries in Africa and Latin America. Washington is betting its global hegemony on military coercion, pure and simple. The U.S. is now the “indispensable nation” only in the sense that it refuses to tolerate a world in which it is not treated as such. Under Presidents Clinton, Bush and, especially, Obama, the U.S. has waged an escalating war against international legal order, largely under the pernicious doctrine of “humanitarian” military intervention. National sovereignty is treated as a dead letter, and trade sanctions are quickly followed by armed, barely covert assaults on unoffending governments. The U.S. publicly announces possession of new systems of warfare that can annihilate targets with a conventional weapon anywhere on the globe in half an hour [22]. The message is clear, repetitive and meant to be terrifying: No nation, or combination of nations, will be allowed to challenge U.S. dominance in the world, as defined by Washington.

“The U.S. swarms over Africa, to secure political obedience despite its economic eclipse on the continent.”

The superpower in decline is not only willing to throw the world into chaos to preserve its artificial position at the top, it is actively doing so in Syria, following up its decapitation of Libya. It swarms over Africa, to secure political obedience despite its economic eclipse on the continent. Objectively, the United States has positioned itself as the great and implacable impediment to global development.

Therefore, when the BRICS say that their summit is motivated by “a shared desire for peace, security, development, cooperation, respect for international law and sovereignty,” as was announced [23] at the 5th BRICS Academic Forum, earlier this month, they are placing themselves in opposition to the U.S. juggernaut. It is not a place that these nation’s governments want to be. But, if they are to continue on the road to self-determination and achievement of their own national goals – including their capitalistic aspirations – they have no choice but to resist Washington’s policies of coercion and the threat of strangulation.

It is not up to the BRICS to save the world. But, in order to save their own parts of the planet, they will be forced to confront U.S. imperialism. The monster must be removed from humanity’s path. Only then can we truly begin to clear out the rubble of the 500-year war, and build a new global society.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [24].

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New BRICS Development Bank Announced

by Stephen Lendman

In September 2006, four original BRIC nations met in New York. On May 16, 2008, Yekaterinburg, Russia hosted a full-scale diplomatic meeting. In June 2009, Brazil, Russia, India and China again met in Yekaterinburg. Early steps were taken to end dollar supremacy. Eventual plans may replace it with a global currency or basket of major ones.

In 2010, South Africa joined the BRIC alliance. It was formally invited to do so. The group was renamed BRICS. Annual summits are held. On March 26 and 27, Durban, South Africa hosted the group’s fifth one. More on that below.

Their “mechanism aims to achieve peace, security, development and cooperation. It also seeks to contribute significantly to the development of humanity and establish a more equitable and fair world.”

America’s economic supremacy is declining. BRICS countries are some of the world’s fastest growing. They comprise a significant economic and political block. They account for over 20% of world GDP.

They’re on three continents. They cover more than one-fourth of the world’s land mass. Their population exceeds 2.8 billion. It’s 40% of the world total. By 2020 or earlier, China may become the world’s largest economy.

By mid-century or sooner, India’s predicted to be number three, Brazil number five and Russia number six. Between 2000 and 2008, BRICS contributed about half of global growth. In the late 1990s, Russia’s debt default and Brazil’s currency crisis rocked world economies. Today they have vast foreign exchange reserves.

BRICS have more global trade than America. China’s the world’s largest exporter. India’s an information technology powerhouse. Brazil’s a dominant agricultural exporter. It’s highly competitive. It has vast amounts of fertile land. It’s known as “the world’s biggest farm.” Russia is oil and gas rich.

South Africa holds resources worth an estimated $2.5 trillion. It’s rich in gold, platinum, uranium, chrome and manganese ore, zirconium, vanadium, and titanium. Two key institutions emerged from Durban’s summit. A BRICS Joint Business Council (JBC) and Development Bank were announced.

JBC formerly functioned as a forum. It encourages free trade and investment. Two meetings will be held annually. Rotating chairmen will head them.

Each BRICS country chose five top business executives to represent them. They’ll coordinate relations between member states and private sector players.

Separately, China and Brazil agreed to a bilateral currency swap line. It permits them to trade up to $30 billion annually in their own currencies. Doing so moves almost half their trade out of US dollars. It suggests other BRICS partners will make similar moves. They endorsed plans to create a joint foreign exchange reserves pool. Initially it’ll include $100 billion. It’s called a self-managed contingent reserve arrangement (CRA).

It’s a safety net precaution. It’s to strengthen financial stability. It’s an additional line of defense. They agreed to establish a new Development Bank. The idea was proposed last year in New Delhi.

“It’s done,” said South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. BRICS leaders “will announce the details,” he added. South African President Jacob Zuma said:

Ahead of the summit, officials said each country may contribute $10 billion for starters. It’s aim is to fund infrastructure and other development projects. It’ll operate separately from Western international lending agencies. It’ll challenge their global dominance. It’ll test how they do business. They prioritize neoliberal harshness.

It includes privatizing state enterprises, selling them at a fraction of their worth, mass layoffs, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, wage freezes or cuts, unrestricted market access for Western corporations, business-friendly tax cuts, trade unionism marginalized or crushed, and harsh recrimination against non-believers.

It strip mines nations for profit. It shifts wealth from public to private hands. It destroys middle class societies. It turns workers into serfs. It substitutes debt peonage for freedom. A race to the bottom follows. An elite few benefit at the expense of most others. It sacrifices economic growth for private gain. It’s the worst of all possible worlds. Nations are transformed into dystopian backwaters.

BRICS have other ideas in mind. They seek a multipolar world. Much work remains to be done. Agreement on details must be finalized. It’ll take time to begin operations. It’ll be a second alternative to Western debt bondage. In December 2006, Hugo Chavez proposed a Bank of the South (Banco del Sur).

A November 2007 summit launched it. In September 2009, it was established. Its members include Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay. Plans are to increase initial capitalization. Member countries pledge to contribute. Full operations are expected to begin later this year. At issue is representing the needs of the South. It’ll contribute to its development. It’ll do so free from debt bondage.

BRICS Development Bank intends no one country to dominate. Voting rights will reflect equality. Economic growth matters most. India’s Minister of Commerce, Industry and Textiles, Anand Sharma, said:

“We are creating new axis of global development. The global economic order created several decades ago is now undergoing change and we believe for the better to make it more representative.”

BRICS trade today exceeds $360 billion. By 2015, it should reach $500 billion. Continued longterm growth is expected. Mutual cooperation helps sustain it. Each member country benefits. It remains to be seen how plans unfold. Hopefully global changes for the better will follow. They’re long overdue. Dominant emerging economies will play leading roles. They’re laying the groundwork to do so.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/new-brics-development-bank-announced/

The Great Cyber-Warfare Scam

China-bashing made easy

by Justin Raimondo, ANTIWAR.COM

The War Party never sleeps: there are always new variations of war propaganda coming ’round the bend. With the coming of the internet, the latest manufactured “threat” to rear its head is “cyber-warfare,” which is now being touted by the Obama administration and its media fan club as the Next Big Scary Thing – but what are the facts?

The first fact we need to integrate into our analysis is that “cyber-security” isn’t a science, it’s an industry: that is, the entities issuing alarming reports of this lurking threat are for profit companies mainly if not exclusively concerned with selling a product. And while the “threat landscape,” as the jargon phrases it, is potentially very diverse, with a number of countries and non-state actors potential combatants, our cyber-warriors have targeted China as the main danger to our cybernetic security – the Yellow Peril of the Internet Age. They’re stealing our technology, our secrets, and infiltrating our very homes! This is largely baloney, as Jeffrey Carr, founder of Project Grey Goose and Taia Global, a cyber-security firm, and author of Inside Cyber Warfare, points out:

“[I]t’s good business today to blame China. I know from experience that many corporations, government and DOD organizations are more eager to buy cyber threat data that claims to focus on the PRC than any other nation state. When the cyber security industry issues PRC-centric reports like this one without performing any alternative analysis of the collected data, and when the readership of these reports are government and corporate officials without the depth of knowledge to critically analyze what they’re reading (i.e., when they trust the report’s authors to do the thinking for them), we wind up being in the position that we’re in today – easily fooled into looking in one direction when we have an entire threat landscape left unattended. We got into that position because InfoSec vendors have been left alone to define the threat landscape based upon their product offerings. In other words, vendors only tell customers to worry about the threats that their products can protect them from and they only tell them to worry about the actors that they can identify (or think that they can identify). This has resulted in a security awareness clusterfuck of epic proportions.”

The “cyber-threat” from China has been much in the news lately, and any number of self-proclaimed “experts” with a financial stake in hyping this latest bogeyman have been pointing an accusing finger at Beijing whenever some government agency or big corporation discovers cyber-vandals in its domain. The latest is a report issued by a private cyber-security firm, Mandiant, which claims these attacks are occurring under the auspices of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). It is, of course, just a coincidence that this accusation limns a recent National Intelligence Estimate, which – according to the New York Times, itself supposedly victimized by Chinese hackers – “makes a strong case that many of these hacking groups are either run by army officers or are contractors working for commands like [PLA] Unit 61398.”

Yet, as Carr discusses here, the Mandiant report has several analytic flaws. To begin with, the “mission area,” i.e. the nature and alleged goal of these intrusions, is supposed to identify China as the culprit because the latest APT (cyber-security jargon for “advanced persistent threat”) “steals intellectual property from English-speaking organizations,” and that these thefts coincide with the technical requirements of China’s current Five-Year Plan.

This kind of “logic” ought to make your BS-detector go haywire, recalling Carr’s warning that there’s a bad case of perception bias at work here: that’s because other nations, and non-state actors such as criminal gangs, also launch cyber-attacks on English-speaking organizations, which in many instances parallel the interests contained in China’s Five-Year Plan. Russia, France, Israel, and a number of other countries have advanced cyber-warfare capabilities, and haven’t hesitated to use them for purposes of industrial espionage, among other reasons: Eastern European gangsters are also players in this game. Yet there is no mention of these alternatives in the Mandiant report: according to them, it’s all about China.

Mandiant claims that because the rash of recent intrusions have involved operations requiring hundreds of operators, that only a nation-state with “military-grade operations” could possibly have carried them out. Yet more than 30 nations are currently running “military-grade” operations, as Carr informs us: why pick on China?

Well, says Mandiant, because the intrusions they analyzed used a Shanghai phone number to register an email account, for one. Yet this proves exactly nothing. Okay then, what about the fact that “two of four network ‘home’ Shanghai blocs are assigned to the Pudong New Area,” where the PLA’s Unit 61398 is located? This also proves exactly nothing: the Pudong New Area has over 5 million inhabitants. It is smack dab in the center of China’s booming commercial and hi-tech metropolis. Ask yourself how many IP addresses originate from this area. Oh, but one of the “PLA” hackers’ “self-identified location is the Pudong New Area.” Really? So what? Aside from the demographic information supplied above, one has to wonder if these people really believe everything they see on the Internet is true. C’mon, guys!

The New York Times has been pushing the Yellow Cyber-Peril theme ever since their computer system was hacked, but the question of who exactly was responsible for that intrusion is by no means proved. In a Times piece on the subject – with the rather whiney headline “Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months” – we again come across Mandiant pointing to the Chinese military as the culprit, but their case against the PLA falls apart under the most cursory inspection. For example, Mandiant’s “analysis” is based in part on the observation that these alleged Chinese

“Hacker teams regularly began work, for the most part, at 8 a.m. Beijing time. Usually they continued for a standard work day, but sometimes the hacking persisted until midnight. Occasionally, the attacks stopped for two-week periods, Mandiant said, though the reason was not clear.”

Bull hockey. There are a number of other countries in the same time zone that have active hacker communities. The idea that the timing of these attacks somehow pinpoints “Chinese hackers” associated with the PLA is laughable. As Carr puts it:

“The hackers could have been from anywhere in the world. The time zone that Mandiant imagines as a Beijing workday could easily apply to a workday in Bangkok, Singapore, Taiwan, Tibet, Seoul, and even Tallinn – all of whom have active hacker populations.”

Mandiant – hired by the Times to investigate the intrusion, and currently in negotiations with the New York Times Company over a possible ongoing business relationship – cites the fact that the intrusions supposed originated at some of the “same universities used by the Chinese military to attack U.S. military contractors in the past.” Yet there are many universities located in the Jinan area Mandiant homes in on, and geolocation in this instance, as Carr says, “means absolutely nothing.” He also raises an important point: if the Chinese military was behind the Times hack, then why would they launch these attacks from a location previously identified with the PLA? That’s seems rather too obvious, especially in view of the lengths to which hackers go to cover their tracks. Wouldn’t China’s Ministry of State Security, their official intelligence agency, be assigned that task? Yet their facilities are located in Beijing, over 200 miles away from Jinan.

Most people are ignorant of the technical details utilized by commercial enterprises like Mandiant to gin up an alleged “threat.” One supposedly scary tool used by the “Chinese” hackers is a Remote Access Tool, and we are told that the specific methods used in the past by alleged Chinese hackers are matched to the Times intrusion. This is just plain wrong, however, as Carr explains:

“The article mentioned the hackers use of a Remote Access Tool (RAT). One such widely used tool is called GhostRAT. The fact that it was used in an attack against the Dalai Lama in 2008 (GhostNet) doesn’t mean that all of the later attacks which used this tool originated with the same group. In fact, even the GhostNet researchers refrained from attributing this attack to China’s government.

“Another tool whose use is often blamed on Chinese hackers is the ‘xKungFoo script.’ Like GhostRAT, the xKungFoo script is widely available for anyone to use so even if it was originally created by a Chinese hacker, it doesn’t mean that it is used by Chinese hackers in all instances. I personally know Russian, English, and Indian hackers who write and speak Chinese.”

This is simple logic: you don’t have to be a cyberwarfare “expert” to realize there are many possibilities when it comes to identifying the people behind the methods. If you’ve already decided who is the perpetrator, however, then Mandiant’s accusations directed at Beijing fit neatly into the available “evidence.” That’s how confirmation bias works.

The major piece of “evidence” supposedly pointing to the Chinese government is the timing of the intrusion: just as research for a Times story on the financial dealings of a top Chinese government official, Wen JaiBo, was “nearing completion.” According to the Times, the hackers gained access to email accounts belonging to Shanghai bureau chief David Barboza, author of the Wen expose, as well as Jim Yardley, bureau chief covering South Asia. Yet the Wen connection is contradicted in the very next paragraph of the Times‘s own account, which says:

“’Computer security experts found no evidence that sensitive e-mails or files from the reporting of our articles about the Wen family were accessed, downloaded or copied,’ said Jill Abramson, executive editor of The Times.”

So what’s the connection to the Wen story? In addition, Yardley had nothing to do with the Wen story, and yet his email was also breached, along with the passwords of 53 employees who are not in the Times newsroom. So what does this add up to? A big fat zero, as far as evidence of China’s involvement is concerned. China is merely the go-to cyber-villain of the moment, and this is certainly true where Mandiant is concerned.

The same kind of dicey “evidence” is being used to accuse Iran – you saw this coming, didn’t you? Again, the tech-ignorant New York Times is in the lead, with a story echoing the claims of US officials that Tehran was behind the recent cyber-attacks launched against several American banks. You can almost hear the spooky music in the first two paragraphs of the piece, by Nicole Perlroth and Quentin Hardy, which gives an account of how the hackers slowed down and disabled banking sites, and then goes on to say:

“There was something disturbingly different about the wave of online attacks on American banks in recent weeks. Security researchers say that instead of exploiting individual computers, the attackers engineered networks of computers in data centers, transforming the online equivalent of a few yapping Chihuahuas into a pack of fire-breathing Godzillas.”

Godzilla’s on the loose! And it’s an Iranian Godzilla! Yikes!

“The skill required to carry out attacks on this scale has convinced United States government officials and security researchers that they are the work of Iran, most likely in retaliation for economic sanctions and online attacks by the United States.

“’There is no doubt within the U.S. government that Iran is behind these attacks,’ said James A. Lewis, a former official in the State and Commerce Departments and a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.”

The skill required to carry out these attacks was minimal. As Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Labs, put it:

“We can confirm that the attacks being reported are happening; however, the malware being used, known as ItsOKNoProblemBro, is far from sophisticated. It’s really rather simple. It’s also only one part of the puzzle but it seems to be effective, which is all that matters to the attackers. Going strictly by the publicly known technical details, we don’t see enough evidence that would categorize this operation as something only a nation-state sponsored actor could pull off.”

More “evidence” offered in support of the “Iran-did-it” theory is that these attacks did not garner any information: no data systems were breached. It was, in short, pure cyber-malice directed at American banks. If this is supposed to somehow prove the Iranians are the culprits, then it is weak tea indeed: because there are any number of groups who hate American bankers, including, I would venture, the vast majority of the American people. These DDOS attacks seem more like the sort of thing we might expect from a group like “Anonymous” than from a state actor such as Iran.

Of course, the paucity of evidence didn’t stop Sen. Joe Lieberman from declaring:

“I don’t believe these were just hackers who were skilled enough to cause disruption of the websites. I think this was done by Iran … and I believe it was a response to the increasingly strong economic sanctions that the United States and our European allies have put on Iranian financial institutions.”

As is the case with Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, which our own spooks have said does not presently exist, the technical details are obscure to most of us, and therefore this realm is given over to “experts,” both real and imagined. To Sen. Lieberman and all too many in the media, it’s just a matter of picking and choosing your “experts,” and making the “facts” fit your preconceived notions.

Aside from ginning up conflict with the War Party’s chosen targets, the whole cyber-war scare-mongering campaign, whether the alleged “threat” is said to be emanating from China, Iran, or wherever, is also very convenient for proponents of Internet regulation who want to install back doors on every web site, and every software system, so the feds can “trace” these alleged “cyber-terrorists.” It is, in short, a scam, part and parcel of a political campaign to rein in the wild and wooly – and largely unregulated – Internet, and make it more amenable to the interests of our wise rulers.

The mystification of science, and the culture of “expertise,” has greatly aided the War Party in their propaganda efforts. Instead of making up stories about babies being bayoneted in their cribs – although there is still some of that – we are given mind-numbingly technical explanations that point to purported acts of “cyber-terrorism” carried out by China, Iran, or the villain-of-the-moment. Except that the supposed “evidence” turns out to based on non-credible assumptions and faulty technical analysis.

Remember, we’ve been through this sort of thing before: all the “intelligence” supposedly pointed to the irrefutable “fact” that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction,” which it was about to launch against its neighbors. That turned out to be a lie. Much of this baloney came wrapped up in impressive-sounding technical jargon, and was validated by the media’s chosen “experts.”

Has anybody learned anything from that experience? I’m thinking in particular of the members of the Fourth Estate, otherwise known as “journalists.” The answer, unfortunately, seems to be no.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].

addendum

Cyberwarfare: US uses Hacking Allegations to Escalate Threats against China

By Barry Grey, World Socialist Web Site

Theme: US NATO War Agenda

The Obama administration is utilizing unsubstantiated charges of Chinese government cyber-attacks to escalate its threats against China. The past two days have seen allegations of hacking into US corporate and government web sites, hyped by the US media without any examination of their validity, employed to disorient the American public and justify an expansion of the Obama administration’s drive to isolate China and prepare for an eventual military attack.

The accusations of hacking against China will also be used to justify increased domestic surveillance of computer and Internet communications, as well as an expanded use of cyber warfare methods internationally.

The New York Times, functioning once again as a conduit for the Pentagon and the CIA, has taken the lead in the latest provocation against Beijing. On Tuesday it published a bellicose front-page article headlined “China’s Army Seen as Tied to Hacking Against US,” and carrying the ominous subhead “Power Grid is a Target.”

The article drips with cynicism and hypocrisy. It is well known that the United States is the world’s most ruthless practitioner of cyber warfare. The article itself acknowledged that the US worked with Israel to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program by introducing the Stuxnet virus into Iran’s computer systems. That bit of sabotage—itself an illegal act of aggression—was accompanied by a series of assassinations of Iranian scientists carried out by Israel with Washington’s support.

The sprawling front-page article, which continued on an entire inside page of the newspaper, was based on a 60-page report released that day by a private computer security firm with close ties to the Times, as well as to the US military and intelligence agencies. The report by Mandiant—founded by a retired Air Force officer and based in Alexandria, Virginia—provides no real evidence to substantiate its claim that a unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army based in Shanghai is directing hacking attacks on US corporations, organizations and government institutions.

In its report, Mandiant claims to have tracked 141 cyber attacks by the same Chinese hacker group since 2006, 115 of which targeted US corporations. On the basis of Internet footprints, including Internet provider addresses, Mandiant concludes that 90 percent of the hacking attacks come from the same neighborhood in Shanghai. It then notes that the headquarters of Unit 61398 of the People’s Liberation Army is located in that neighborhood. From this coincidence, Mandiant draws the entirely unwarranted inference that the cyber-attacks are coming from the PLA building.

As the Times admits in its article, “The firm was not able to place the hackers inside the 12-story [PLA Unit 61398 headquarters] building…” The newspaper goes on to report that “Mandiant also discovered an internal China Telecom memo discussing the state-owned telecom company’s decision to install high-speed fiber-optic lines for Unit 61398’s headquarters.” One can only assume that Mandiant “discovered” this memo by carrying out its own hacking of Chinese computers.

Chinese spokesmen have denied any involvement by the government or the military in hacking attacks and dismissed the Mandiant report as lacking any proof of its charges. The Chinese Ministry of Defense released a statement Wednesday pointing out that Internet provider addresses do not provide a reliable indication of the origin of hacking attacks, since hackers routinely usurp IP addresses. A Foreign Ministry spokesman pointed out that China is constantly being targeted by hackers, most of which originate in the US.

The Chinese position was echoed by Dell Secureworks cyber-security expert Joe Stewart, who told the Christian Science Monitor: “We still don’t have any hard proof that [the hacker group] is coming out of that [PLA Unit 61398’s] building, other than a lot of weird coincidence pointing in that direction. To me, it’s not hard evidence.”

The Obama administration followed up the Times article, which sparked a wave of frenzied media reports of Chinese cyber-attacks, by announcing on Wednesday that it would step up diplomatic pressure and consider more punitive laws to counter what it described as a wave of trade secret theft by China and other countries. The Associated Press reported that the administration was discussing “fines, penalties and tougher trade restrictions” directed against China.

The latest propaganda attack points to an escalation of the US offensive against China that went by the name “pivot to Asia” in Obama’s first term. That policy included whipping up territorial disputes in the East China and South China seas between China and a series of countries in East Asia, including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.

It has also included the establishment of closer military ties and new US installations in a number of countries, including India and Australia, to militarily encircle China.

The Times concluded its article by reporting that “The mounting evidence of state sponsorship… and the growing threat to American infrastructure are leading officials to conclude that a far stronger response is necessary.” It cited Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as saying that Washington must “create a high price” to force the Chinese to back down.

In an editorial published Wednesday, the Times noted that the administration has decided to give US Internet providers and anti-virus vendors information on the signatures of Chinese hacker groups, leading to a denial of access to US networks for these groups. It also reported that President Obama last week signed an executive order authorizing increased sharing of information on cyber threats between the government and private companies that oversee critical infrastructure, such as the electrical grid.

The Wall Street Journal in its editorial called for “targeted sanctions” against Chinese individuals and institutions.

The background to this new salvo of anti-China propaganda underscores that it is part of an aggressive expansion of US military capabilities, both conventional and cyber-based. Obama raised the issue of cyber war in his February 12 State of the Union address, accusing US “enemies” of seeking to “sabotage our power grid, our financial institutions, our air traffic control systems,” and insisting that action be taken against such attacks.

In the same speech, he defended his drone assassination program, which is based on the claim that the president has the unlimited and unilateral power to order the murder of anyone anywhere in the world, including US citizens.

Last October, Obama signed an executive order expanding military authority to carry out cyber-attacks and redefine as “defensive” actions that would previously have been considered acts of aggression—such as the cutting off of computer networks. Around the same time, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta gave a bellicose speech in which he warned of a “cyber Pearl Harbor.” Panetta told Time magazine: “The three potential adversaries out there that are developing the greatest capabilities are Russia, China and Iran.”

At the end of January, the New York Times accused Chinese authorities of hacking into its news operations, a charge that was quickly seconded by the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. That same week, the Washington Post reported that the US military had approved a five-fold increase of personnel in its Cyber Command. Days later, the Times reported on its front page that the Obama administration had concluded that the president had the power to authorize pre-emptive cyber war attacks.

This bellicose posture toward China and expansion of cyber warfare methods goes hand in hand with growing threats to democratic rights at home. The cyber war plans include options for military action within the US. The Times reported earlier this month that the military “would become involved in cases of a major cyber-attack within the United States” under certain vaguely defined conditions.

Efforts to increase government control of the Internet and surveillance of Internet communications are being stepped up. Just last week, Rep. Rogers of Michigan and Democratic Senator Dutch Ruppersberger of California reintroduced the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The bill died in the Senate last year in the midst of protests over provisions allowing the government to spy on emails and other Internet-based communications.