France, Sep 8th, 1940

He knew this was no ordinary cave. He knew it. The others scrambled into the chamber and stood close, well within the weak light of the lantern. Marcel studied the ground and took a step. Another. The ceiling was low. There was a wall to his left. He lifted the lantern and a great white bull appeared, arching over him. He stepped back
“Mais, c’est quoi ca?”
He raised his arm again and they all looked up. A stampede of creatures ran out along the wall.
“C’est des animaux,” whispered Simon.
This was no ordinary cave.
Open-mouthed, the four boys walked from room to room, calling out the names of the animals they saw. Stag. Bison. Bear. Horse. Bird. Like young gods naming their world. The first visitors to a gallery, reopened after more than fifteen thousand years of darkness.



Polaroid art: Don Ng (click on image for larger image)

No art

We stand.
We wait.
Our costumes are heavy but we do not move. The ceremony will begin when everything is as it should be. There is no art here. There is no politic.
So many of us that we make the silence resonate. Who will be the first to speak?
We look at each other. Or we look away.
Only our faces show. The costumes are heavy, though made of feathers, and we do not move.
The ceremony will begin when everything is as it should be.


Polaroid art: Don Ng (click on image for larger image)

Logic Bombs

In November last year the BBC news site ran an article detailing a new arena in global conflict. (Age of cyber warfare is 'dawning') According to a report published by McAfee, the world’s largest internet security company, we should be preparing ourselves for “cyber warfare.”

The language used in the piece is bristling with militaristic references. Many countries are “arming to defend themselves in a cyber war and readying forces to conduct their own attacks.” Apparently, there is evidence that recent instances of hacking were carried out as "reconnaissance" for “future conflict.”
Greg Day, primary analyst for security at McAfee Europe, is quoted as saying, "There are at least five countries known to be arming themselves for this kind of conflict."

Oh? Such as? The UK, Germany, and France. OK. And China. Worrying. Also mentioned is North Korea. Cue the alarm bells. What is cyber-speak for Def Con One?

But this is nothing new. The US employed “hack attacks alongside ground operations during the Iraq war.” There is even an operating manual “governing the rules and procedures of how it can use cyber warfare tactics.” Which prompts the question, what is out of bounds in cyberspace?

Interestingly, we are told many of the recent instances of hacking “were mounted with a explicitly political aim.” One expert goes on to say “most people can easily find the resources that could be used in these kind of attacks.” Yet the word terrorist does not appear once in the article.

The piece goes on to quote Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer at Veracode, a company that advises many governments on security: "In physical warfare it's pretty clear who has which weapon and how they are using them." - Is this man suffering from short-term memory loss?

A weapon of choice we can expect to see become more prevalent in this brave new world war is the logic bomb. A logic bomb is a hidden code designed to execute (explode) when a specific piece of program logic is activated. A virtual sleeper cell. The name, like the previous decade’s “smart bomb,” is an oxymoron. Whatever uses it is put to, logic itself is a benign thing – the idea of logic exploding serves to undermine the supposed certainties of the digital age.

A search for examples of logic bombs throws up a number of failed attempts, one of which, in 2008, was targeted at the, now infamous, mortgage corporation Fannie Mae by a disgruntled IT employee. A celebrated case of a suspected logic bomb takes us all the way back to 1982 and the Trans-Siberian Pipeline incident. The story goes that the KGB stole the computerised control system for the gas pipeline from a Canadian company. To avenge this theft, the CIA planted a logic bomb in the system that caused the pipeline to explode, resulting in the largest non-nuclear blast and fire ever seen from space. It later emerged that the whole thing was an April Fool’s Day hoax.

Forward now to 14th January, 2010, and another BBC article. (Google 'may pull out of China after Gmail cyber attack') “Internet giant Google has said it may end its operations in China following a ‘sophisticated and targeted’ cyber attack originating from the country.”

It is good to see that Google are reconsidering their decision to censor the services they provide in China, but, coming hot on the heels of the earlier warning, one must question the timing of this action. Firstly we are warned that China are “arming themselves” for cyber warfare, then, a few months later, we are informed of cyber attacks coming from China.

Today, 22nd Jan, two news items stand out. The first is China’s response to the support the US government has shown Google, and the warning that it may harm ties between the two countries. China, showing they fully understand the Newspeak of the digital age, has accused America of "information imperialism.” The second news item relates the fact that China is about to overtake Japan as the world’s second biggest economy. Second only to America.



POSTCRIPT:

On the same day the cyber warfare article appeared, another item was posted on the BBC news site. (Pakistan 'captures Taliban bases') In a video report by Orla Guerin, we are shown weapons seized by Pakistani troops fighting the Taliban in southern Waziristan. Amongst the usual ordnance, bullets, machine guns, shells, etc, are examples of improvised devices, the IEDs so familiar to American and British soldiers. One in particular stood out. A computer tower had been rigged with an anti-personal mine packed with three hundred ball bearings. The device was designed to explode when the computer was touched, triggered by a pressure mechanism underneath. A very real, and very lethal logic bomb.

+++ Virtual Assassin +++

A novel about personal responsibility in a corrupt society …

Virtual Assassin is a tense thriller with powerful political and moral implications from new author Simon Kearns. It tracks the story of successful young graphic designer, Lee Coller, sickened with the Iraq war and the no-regrets position of Tony Blair. When he hears a VIP is about to visit his office, he obsesses it might be Blair and chalks out a plan of revenge. But will Blair visit after all? And will Lee do the unthinkable? Can one act of violence make up for so many others?

click here for an extract

click here for the publishers - Revenge Ink

click here to get the book via Amazon

Obama, Nobel & Hope

“With your feet on the air
And your head on the ground,
Try this trick, and spin it. Yeah. YEAH!”

Pixies – Where Is My Mind?



We are truly living in the age of Newspeak. In the novel 1984, Orwell’s Big Brother reinforced his message that “War is Peace.” Throughout the War on Terrorism the American population has been continually reminded that the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are being waged so as to assure peace in the Homeland. War is Peace. It is no different in the UK; Brown habitually speaks of “the security of our country” in relation to the ongoing hostilities in both theatres.
When announcing the deployment of 30,000 extra troops to fight in Afghanistan, at the Military Academy at West Point, that nursery of belligerents, President Barack Obama gave us a Newspeak twist on a familiar phrase. He stated,
“We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure, and a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes."
Right makes might. He was quoting the closing lines of Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Cooper Union Address concerning the abolition of slavery. It is a clever reference point, Lincoln went on to take the presidency and abolish slavery, now, 149 years later, the first black president uses his words to strengthen the morality of his decision to deploy troops.
“Might makes right” was first used by the American abolitionist Adin Ballou in 1846 to deride the warmongering of politicians. Ballou was a pacifist. His distillation of human nature into a three-word sound bite has now been contorted so as to reinforce the message of war. This is spin at its most devious, take a well-known sentiment and twist it so that its sense is reversed. But, what is truly impressive about this piece of spin is the fact it gives the audience the illusion that the government’s course of action has been morally sanctioned. We all know that “might makes right” is wrong, but “right makes might” gives the casual listener the impression that the use of force has been justified. We are in the right. This is a just war.

It is no longer just words that are being spun; events are contorted so as to buttress the new world order. Obama has accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace. The surge was officially confirmed in the weeks between the announcement of his winning, and his receiving of the award today. Not an auspicious beginning to this laureate’s record. Ostensibly we are told that the Nobel committee chose Obama in recognition of his agenda, believing that to award him the prize now will anticipate the realisation of his intentions. It is an award of hope, the very idea that carried Obama’s election campaign. Hope, all that remains in the jar after the evils and ills have already been released.

The Cuckoo's Post

I have always wanted two passports but for now I content myself with my many email addresses. Four at the last count. And then there are the sites I manage, a blog, a myspace page, the authonomy profile. For each of these locations an avatar, a screen name, a password. It gets difficult to keep track of all this information, perhaps our children are already adapting, but I began with pen and paper – and it wasn’t that long ago.
Now, what are the odds that one of my sign in names and another of my passwords, to me unrelated, in fact correspond to those chosen by a different web user? Highly improbable perhaps, but not impossible.
Let us for the moment imagine that I mistakenly enter these corresponding units of information and arrive at someone else’s page. Would I click back and try again, or would I snoop? Would I tinker? What would you do?
Of course I haven’t actually written this entry, not the “I” you think I am. The owner of this page is in for a surprise.
Maybe he will like it.

From an email I have just received:

“Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog.
“Blogs engaged in this behaviour are called spam blogs and can be recognised by their irrelevant, repetitive or nonsensical text."

Oh dear. I read on.

“Spam blogs cause various problems beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own.

“You won't be able to publish posts to your blog until one of our humans reviews it and verifies that it is not a spam blog”


This communiqué has given me some food for thought. As it says – spam blogs can be recognised by their irrelevant, repetitive or nonsensical text. I must await judgement from one of the systems “humans”. My writing is to be assessed but, for better or worse, my writing often employs “irrelevant, repetitive or nonsensical text”. And what, in the end, is any kind of writing but the scraping of others ideas, “using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own?”