Last night on his show, Glen Beck had as a guest a person who suggested that:

The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.

Of course, Beck slapped him down:

Yep.  Which is why I was thinking this weekend that if I was him that would be the last thing I would do right now.

So the United States lost to Brazil in the final of the FIFA Confederations cup, in that thrilling but painful tale of two halves, with the U.S. up 2-0 only to see Brazil roar back (or rather dance and prance and glide with balletic ferocity) and win 3-2. All I can say is, thank god.

For the past sixty years, the powerhouses of international soccer (a.k.a. football) either have been empires past their prime and on the decline or countries that dream fruitlessly of empire - England, France, Italy, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain. To bestride the world as a soccer power is to not bestride it as an economic or military power. In its period of global hegemony, the United States was manifestly not a global powerhouse in soccer. It was mighty in everything but the sport that is played by more people in every corner of the world than any other. And so if the United States had magically defied the odds and the gods and beaten Brazil, it would have been the final sign that American is indeed in decline.

The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled today in Al Franken's favor and just now, Norm Coleman conceded the race. As a Minnesotan and a Democrat, all I can say is, FINALLY!!! I am doing a modified snoopy dance as I listen to the news.

New Orleans may sink into the sea by 2100. Much of Florida may also be underwater by then. Drought will likely become the norm out West, meaning California could no longer provide the food we depend upon. Las Vegas may become downright inhabitable.

No, I'm not fabricating any of this. These will be the consequences of inaction if we continue to delay implementing the solutions we need to solve the coming climate crisis. But for some reason, may of our supposedly wise lawmakers in Capitol Hill are either willfully ignorant of the facts or downright lying about our future.

Seriously, we can't allow any more of this.

The Iranian regime has crossed the Rubicon in its reaction to nonviolent protest and citizen dissent and is currently executing a slow-motion coup d'état which may usher in a new leadership dedicated to exercising the totalitarian power of the state.

In spite of the role played by connectivity in reporting the abuses of power and the violent repression of its citizens, the West seems unable to exercise any meaningful influence on the perpetrators of murderous violence.  Opposing them merely exacerbates the propaganda of the autocratic authors of this repression.  Web-based repositories hosted in the US and the world at large have become targets of the Iranian security establishment seeking to identify individuals who have opposed the state, a matter of arguably life-threatening urgency for those involved.  If they want to act like a military junta then they should be treated as such.  They clearly are using the Western infrastructure of the Internet for their own doubtful, and internationally criminal, purposes.

Cut Off the Internet
From the network map illustrated it appears, as confirmed by RIS database searches, that the primary Internet provider in Iran, DCI Autonomous Systems, owned and operated by the state and the source of all filtering and censorship, has worldwide connectivity through six transit providers, Turk Telecom (TTNet, AS9121), FLAG (AS15412), Singapore Telecom (AS7473), PCCW (AS3491), Telia (AS1299), and Telecom Italia Sparkle (AS6762).  The regime itself blocked access to five out of six of these providers as part of their premeditated communications blackout on the eve of the announcement of the election results, as shown.  The connectivity through TTnet at the time may have been an oversight.  This demonstrates the ease with which a total Internet blackout can be accomplished either overtly or covertly on either side of the Internet Exchange Point.

If they seek to use the Internet as cultural candy for their population, to be dialed up, down or off at will, it seems that our infrastructure is being used by the regime to relieve a tension which they are incapable and unwilling to manage themselves.  There is also the issue of the economic impact of such a blockade, which would render the economic sanctions the UN seems unwilling to impose irrelevant by interdicting the normal flow of inbound and outbound business related traffic.  The Internet is a development of the enlightened and pluralistic culture which the Iranian leadership has consistently defined as their ideological enemy.  One wonders why they should be permitted to utilise it for their own totalitarian purposes, both domestically and internationally.

It's interesting to note that in spite of legality issues regarding cyber-warfare there seem to be no international conventions regarding the manipulation of routing information and BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) database management.  This is evidenced by recent incidents:

In early 2008, at least eight US Universities had their traffic diverted to Indonesia for about 90 minutes one morning in an attack kept mostly quiet by those involved. Also, in February 2008, a large portion of YouTube's address space was redirected to Pakistan when the PTA decided to block access to the site from inside the country, but accidentally blackholed the route in the global BGP table.

BGP hijacking and transit-AS problems Wikipedia

Obviously this would also restrict international access to PressTV, IRNA and IRIB websites hosted domestically in Iran, thereby cutting off the flow of regime propaganda to the rest of the world.  Shucks.

Whether this is something which could or should be done formally or covertly, either by international convention, unilateral action or at a grass-roots level along the lines of the DDoS attacks on Iran in recent weeks is an open question.  But it's fair to say that international law is several decades behind the technology at this point, creating an opportunity for direct action.  Whether this is done uniformly, sporadically or as a sequence of 'rolling blackouts' in response to Iranian intransigence and behaviour are all options to be considered.  It's times like these when one wishes that in a parallel universe there was an IWW local worldwide of Internet traffic engineers, network administrators and security professionals willing to embark on such an activity.

If my experience is any guide, Iranians outside Iran are living some of the most intense days of their lives. Since the first, disputed results of the presidential election were announced soon after the polls closed on 12 June 2009 and the protests almost immediately started, my waking hours are absorbed- hour-by-hour, even minute-by-minute - in gathering computer-delivered news about what is happening in my homeland

It is compulsive, and also complicated. The intense emotional engagement brings with it far more unease than satisfaction. The process of digesting the news from family and friends in Iran that clogs my inbox, of following multiple links to blogs,of watching sometimes horrific videos, leaves me at once outraged and energised yet also sickened and paralysed into inaction and silence. If there is a pattern to these feelings, it lies in an often wild pendulum-swing between a vague sense of hope and elation, and deep shame and depression.  

The LA Times is confirming the sad news that Michael Jackson has died of a massive heart attack.

For someone of my age, Michael defined a generation. From early days as a child singer he went through several amazing metamorphoses, some increasingly bizarre. But he was gifted. And he was always there.

Thoughts, tributes, regrets. Anything welcome in this open thread

 

Human Events, of all places, has a remarkably sane summation of the Iranian situation written by, of all people, Pat Buchanan.

"Ten Days That Shook Tehran" asks the question:

Where do the ayatollah and Ahmadinejad go from here?

Fresh open thread for the coming day here in the States. We've got several folks here on Motley Moose doing a spectacular job keeping track of events overseas. Being less twitter-savvy than some of you, I sometimes find it a struggle to keep up, and perhaps tend to rely on Nico a bit too much. But I wanted to say, I'm proud of The Moose, and I'm proud to know all of you. The passion I've seen here for the Iranian people is breathtaking in its own way.

It is Sunday morning in Iran now.  Dawn has crept across the land and is chasing away the shadows that hide the truth.

Here's hoping that our friends in Iran made it through the night OK and that the day brings them peace and freedom.

You can't forget the eyes.

For all the horror of the blood, and consternation and panic in the crowd at the gruesome murder of this young woman, what draws us are those beautiful big eyes, dimmed and then extinguished, forever.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gave a speech today.  The content boils down to: "I'm worried.  I'm not sure what to do.  Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."