20091218

Putin's Russian bear should be regarded as vicious, cautions Soviet-born, Elya Baskin, star of classic movie "2010"

The West should regard Russia as a ruthless competitor and subversive force, warns Latvian-American actor, Elya Baskin.  Russia's proxy battle with the U.S. for hegemony over the Middle East involves Russia's support for Iran, its nuclear (weapons) program, and Islamist terror networks in Palestine and Hezbollah (against U.S. ally-Israel).  Have Westerners, in their Iraq-war-fatigue, become complacent about the insidious rivalry from a disgruntled former-superpower?



Soviet-born star of Russia-U.S. suspense movies, Elya Baskin, explains Russia's rivalry with America, and the revived Kremlin leaders' intent to shift the balance of power by damaging America (in this DemoCast exclusive video interview). 


Twitter's network was by Iranian cyberterrorists on the same day that RIM's Blackberry network went down.  Twitter users encountered the following, hijacked home-page last night:

Iranian Cyber Army
THIS SITE HAS BEEN HACKED BY IRANIAN CYBER ARMY
iRANiAN.CYBER.ARMY@GMAIL.COM
U.S.A. Think They Controlling And Managing Internet By Their Access, But They Don’t, We Control And Manage Internet By Our Power, So Do Not Try To Stimulation Iranian Peoples To….
NOW WHICH COUNTRY IN EMBARGO LIST? IRAN? USA? WE PUSH THEM IN EMBARGO LIST  ;)



These cyberattacks pose a dilemma for the West: what is our threshold to retaliate defensively? And if attacked by proxies, such as independent terror groups, against whom do we retaliate? This applies both in cases of physical and virtual mischief.

Pentagon Preparing for War With The Enemy: Russia by Rick Rozoff in Global Research, May 2009
Last week the head of the U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. Kevin Chilton, told reporters during a Defense Writers Group breakfast "that the White House retains the option to respond with physical force - potentially even using nuclear weapons - if a foreign entity conducts a disabling cyber-attack against U.S. computer networks...."

An account of his talk added "the general insisted that all strike options, including nuclear, would remain available to the commander in chief in defending the nation from cyber strikes." 

Chilton "said he could not rule out the possibility of a military salvo against a nation like China, even though Beijing has nuclear arms," though the likely first target of alleged retaliation against equally alleged cyber attacks would be another nation already identified by US military officials as such:
Russia.

In late April and early May of 2007 the government of Estonia, which was inducted into NATO in 2004 and whose president was and remains Toomas Hendrik Ilves, born in Sweden and raised in the United States (where he worked for Radio Free Europe), reported attacks on websites in the country which were blamed on Russia.

Over two years later no evidence has been presented to substantiate the claim that Russian hackers, much less the government itself, were behind the attacks,
though it remains an article of faith among US and other Western officials and media that they were.

The response from American authorities in the first place was so sudden and severe, even before investigations were conducted, as to strongly suggest that if the attacks hadn't been staged they would need to be invented.

Right afterward Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne stated, "Russia, our Cold War nemesis, seems to have been the first to engage in cyber warfare."