Cybersecurity Chief Resigns

By SIOBHAN GORMAN

WASHINGTON -- The government's coordinator for cybersecurity programs has quit, criticizing what he described as the National Security Agency's grip on cybersecurity.

Rod Beckstrom, a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, said in his resignation letter that the NSA's central role in cybersecurity is "a bad strategy" because it is important to have a civilian agency taking a key role in the issue. The NSA is part of the Department of Defense. (Read Mr. Beckstrom's resignation letter.)

The power battles Mr. Beckstrom describes in his resignation letter illustrate the challenges ahead for the Obama administration as it plans its defense against governments and terrorists who might try to disrupt U.S. computer systems, cybersecurity specialists said. One issue is what part or parts of the government should lead the effort.

The Bush administration last year started a cybersecurity initiative to protect government networks, which was estimated to cost at least $6 billion in 2009 and $30 to $40 billion over the next several years. The Obama administration is conducting a 60-day review of that effort and related policies. The reviewers, led by the official who started the cyber initiative for the Bush administration, are expected to issue recommendations next month.

Mr. Beckstrom's National Cybersecurity Center, created last March to coordinate all government cybersecurity efforts, answered to the secretary of homeland security.

In reality, "NSA currently dominates most national cyber efforts," Mr. Beckstrom wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Thursday. "While acknowledging the critical importance of NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds."

He added that "the threats to our democratic processes are significant if all top level government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization (either directly or indirectly)." That echoed the view of some privacy advocates who worry about a government agency having too much information on individuals.

NSA spokeswoman Marci Green declined to comment on the resignation letter. Mr. Beckstrom declined to comment.

Some Homeland Security officials said Mr. Beckstrom's criticism stemmed from personality clashes and an inability to adapt to the way business is done in Washington.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said that the Department of Homeland Security has "a strong relationship" with the NSA. Homeland Security "continues to work in close collaboration with all of our federal partners on protecting federal civilian networks, and is fully engaged in the 60-day cybersecurity review," she said.

Ms. Kudwa declined to respond to Mr. Beckstrom's specific critiques. "We thank Rod for his service, and regret his departure," she said.

In his letter, Mr. Beckstrom said his office was funded for just five weeks out of the past year and had just five people working in it. During the rest of the period, he borrowed staff and office space from other agencies.

Despite the lack of funding, Mr. Beckstrom said his center delivered a number of cybersecurity tools, The White House's Office of Management and Budget declined to comment.

Wikipedia scrubs Obama eligibility

Mention of citizenship issues deleted in minutes, 'offending' users banned

By Aaron Klein

Wikipedia, the online "free encyclopedia" mega-site written and edited entirely by its users, has been deleting within minutes any mention of eligibility issues surrounding Barack Obama's presidency, with administrators kicking off anyone who writes about the subject, WND has learned.

A perusal through Obama's current Wikipedia entry finds a heavily guarded, mostly glowing biography about the U.S. president. Some of Obama's most controversial past affiliations, including with Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weathermen terrorist Bill Ayers, are not once mentioned, even though those associations received much news media attention and served as dominant themes during the presidential elections last year.

Also completely lacking is any mention of the well-publicized concerns surrounding Obama's eligibility to serve as commander-in-chief.

Where's the proof Barack Obama was born in the U.S. or that he fulfills the "natural-born American" clause in the Constitution? If you still want to see it, join more than 300,000 others and sign up now!

Indeed, multiple times, Wikipedia users who wrote about the eligibility issues had their entries deleted almost immediately and were banned from re-posting any material on the website for three days.

In one example, Wikipedia user "Jerusalem21" added the following to Obama's page:

"There have been some doubts about whether Obama was born in the U.S. after the politician refused to release to the public a carbon copy of his birth certificate and amid claims from his relatives he may have been born in Kenya. Numerous lawsuits have been filed petitioning Obama to release his birth certificate, but most suits have been thrown out by the courts."

As is required on the online encyclopedia, that entry was backed up by third-party media articles, citing the Chicago Tribune and WorldNetDaily.com

The entry was posted on Feb. 24, at 6:16 p.m. EST. Just three minutes later, the entry was removed by a Wikipedia administrator, claiming the posting violated the websites rules against "fringe" material.

According to Wikipedia rules, however, a "fringe theory can be considered notable if it has been referenced extensively, and in a serious manner, in at least one major publication, or by a notable group or individual that is independent of the theory."

The Obama eligibility issue has indeed been reported extensively by multiple news media outlets. WorldNetDaily has led the coverage. Other news outlets, such as Britain's Daily Mail and the Chicago Tribune have released articles critical of claims Obama may not be eligible. The Los Angeles Times quoted statements by former presidential candidate Alan Keys doubting Obama is eligible to serve as president. Just last week, the Internet giant America Online featured a top news article about the eligibility subject, referencing WND's coverage.

When the user "Jerusalem21" tried to repost the entry about Obama's eligibility a second time, another administrator removed the material within two minutes and then banned the Wikipedia user from posting anything on the website for three days.

Wikipedia administrators have the ability to kick off users if the administrator believes the user violated the website's rules.

Over the last month, WND has monitored several other attempts to add eligibility issues to Obama's Wikipedia page. In every attempt monitored, the information was deleted within minutes and the user who posted the material was barred from the website for three days.

Angela Beesley Starling, a spokeswoman for Wikipedia, explained to WND that all the website's encyclopedia content is monitored by users. She said the administrators who deleted the entries are volunteers.

"Administrators," Starling said, "are simply people who are trusted by the other community members to have access to some extra tools that allow them to delete pages and perform other tasks that help the encyclopedia."

According to Alexa.com, Wikipedia is the seventh most trafficked website on the Internet. A Google search for the words "Barack Obama" brings up the president's Wikipedia page in the top four choices, following two links to Obama's official websites.

Ayers, Wright also missing in Obama's bio

The entire Wikipedia entry on Obama seems to be heavily promotional toward the U.S. president. It contains nearly no criticism or controversy, including appropriate mention of important issues where relevant.

For example, the current paragraph on Obama's religion contains no mention of Wright, even though Obama's association with the controversial pastor was one of the most talked about issues during the presidential campaign.

That paragraph states: "Obama explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand 'the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change.' He was baptized at the Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988 and was an active member there for two decades."

Ayers is also not mentioned, even where relevant.

WND monitored as a Wikipedia user attempted to add Ayers' name to an appropriate paragraph. One of those additions, backed up with news articles, read as follows:

"He served alongside former Weathermen leader William Ayers from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project, and also from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Joyce Foundation. Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995 to 2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to 1991. Ayers was the founder and director of the Challenge."

Within two minutes that Wikipedia entry was deleted and the user banned from posting on the website for three days, purportedly for adding "Point of View junk edits," even though the addition was well-established fact.

What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

All this talk about "stimulus packages" and "bailouts"...

A billion dollars...

A hundred billion dollars...

Eight hundred billion dollars...

One TRILLION dollars...

What does that look like? I mean, these various numbers are tossed around like so many doggie treats, so I thought I'd take Google Sketchup out for a test drive and try to get a sense of what exactly a trillion dollars looks like.

We'll start with a $100 dollar bill. Currently the largest U.S. denomination in general circulation. Most everyone has seen them, slighty fewer have owned them. Guaranteed to make friends wherever they go.

A packet of one hundred $100 bills is less than 1/2" thick and contains $10,000. Fits in your pocket easily and is more than enough for week or two of shamefully decadent fun.

Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it.

While a measly $1 million looked a little unimpressive, $100 million is a little more respectable. It fits neatly on a standard pallet...

And $1 BILLION dollars... now we're really getting somewhere...

Next we'll look at ONE TRILLION dollars. This is that number we've been hearing so much about. What is a trillion dollars? Well, it's a million million. It's a thousand billion. It's a one followed by 12 zeros.

You ready for this?

It's pretty surprising.

Go ahead...

Scroll down...

Ladies and gentlemen... I give you $1 trillion dollars...

(And notice those pallets are double stacked.)

So the next time you hear someone toss around the phrase "trillion dollars"... that's what they're talking about.

President Barack Obama declares America should be ready to talk to the Taliban

By Ben Farmer in Kabul

American forces are prepared to make overtures to moderate Taliban commanders using an approach that saw insurgents in Iraq turn against al-Qaeda, President Barack Obama has said.

President Obama said the military was not winning the counter insurgency war in Afghanistan as he opened the door for peace negotiations.

By persuading Iraqi Sunni insurgents to turn on al-Qaeda extremists, US commanders engineered a sharply drop in violence in Iraq.

President Obama said deals similar to those implemented by General David Petraeus in Iraq could be cut in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq." "There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and the Pakistani region, but the situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex," he told the New York Times.

Coalition military commanders have repeatedly stressed the increasingly violent insurgency in Afghanistan cannot be solved by military means.

Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, has called for peace talks with members of the country's former Taliban regime and offered Mullah Omar, it's fugitive leader, safe passage for negotiations.

The Saudi Arabian royal family has also attempted to sponsor talks between insurgents and the Afghan government, but little public progress has been made.

Analysts say the insurgency of disparate groups of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, foreign fighters, former jihadi commanders, alienated tribal leaders, drug barons and common bandits could be too fractured for negotiations.

Last year was the bloodiest since the Taliban government fell in 2001.

President Obama conceded that conditions had deteriorated and fighting is expected to be heavier this year as the first of 17,000 US reinforcements enter the fight.

"The Taliban is bolder than it was. I think ... in the southern regions of the country, you're seeing them attack us in ways that we have not seen previously," President Obama said. "The national government still has not gained the confidence of the Afghan people. And so it's going to be critical for us to not only, get through these national elections to stabilize the security situation, but we've got to recast our policy so that our military, diplomatic and development goals are all aligned to ensure that al-Qaeda and extremists that would do us harm don't have the kinds of safe havens that allow them to operate."

N. Korea warns intercepting 'satellite' will prompt counterstrike+

PYONGYANG/BEIJING, March 9 (AP) - (Kyodo)—North Korea warned Monday that any move to intercept what it calls a satellite launch and what other countries suspect may be a missile test-firing would result in a counterstrike against the countries trying to stop it.

"We will retaliate (over) any act of intercepting our satellite for peaceful purposes with prompt counterstrikes by the most powerful military means," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted a spokesman of the General Staff of the Korean People's Army as saying.

If countries such as the United States, Japan or South Korea try to intercept the launch, the North Korean military will carry out "a just retaliatory strike operation not only against all the interceptor means involved but against the strongholds" of the countries, it said.

"Shooting our satellite for peaceful purposes will precisely mean a war," it added.

North Korea earlier announced it is preparing to put a communications satellite into space, but outside observers suspect it may in fact be a test-firing of a long-range ballistic missile.

The United States, Japan and South Korea have said that even if Pyongyang calls the launch a missile test, it would violate existing U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The same North Korean statement said the country's military will cut off communications with its South Korean counterparts during the U.S.- South Korean exercises for the duration of the exercises beginning Monday.

A separate, more rare statement by the KPA's Supreme Command was quoted by the KCNA as saying that its soldiers are under orders to be "fully combat-ready" during U.S.-South Korean military exercises beginning Monday.

The North's armed forces have been ordered to "deal merciless retaliatory blows" should there be any intrusion "into the sky and land and seas of the DPRK even an inch."

DPRK stands for Democratic People's Republic of Korea, North Korea's official name.

North Korea has demanded a stop to this month's U.S.-South Korean exercises, and said earlier it cannot guarantee the security of South Korean civilian airplanes flying through its territorial airspace while they are under way.

Mexican cartels infiltrate Houston

By DANE SCHILLER

Recent arrests in a mistaken killing point to the perilous presence of gangs

The order was clear: Kill the guy in the Astros jersey.

But in a case of mistaken identity, Jose Perez ended up dead. The intended target — the Houston-based head of a Mexican drug cartel cell pumping millions of dollars of cocaine into the city — walked away.

Perez, 27, was just a working guy, out getting dinner late on a Friday with his wife and young children at Chilos, a seafood restaurant on the Gulf Freeway.

His murder and the assassination gone awry point to the perilous presence of Mexican organized crime and how cartel violence has seeped into the city.

Arrests came in December when police and federal agents got a break in the 2006 shooting as they charted the relationship and rivalries between at least five cartel cells operating in Houston. A rogue’s gallery of about 100 names and mug shots taken at Texas jails and morgues offers a blueprint for Mexican organized crime.

Houston has long been a major staging ground for importing illegal drugs from Mexico and shipping them to the rest of the United States, but a recent Department of Justice report notes it is one of 230 cities where cartels maintain distribution networks and supply lines.

At Chilos, the real crime boss was sitting at another table, as were two spotters. The hitman waited in the parking lot for Perez to leave the restaurant.

“I just remember that guy coming up to us and he started shooting and shooting and shooting and never stopped,” said Norma Gonzalez, Perez’s widow. He was hit twice.

“I know they will pay for what they have done, maybe in the next life,” she said of Perez’s killers. “I don’t know what is going to happen to them in this life.”

Problem ‘far-reaching’

The gangster — captured on surveillance video — blended in with other customers as they gawked at the aftermath. A few months later, he was dead too, gunned down two miles from the restaurant.

“It is here and it has been here, but people don’t want to listen,” Rick Moreno, a Houston police homicide investigator working with the Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI, said of the cartels’ presence in Houston. "It is so far-reaching>"

Washington is taking notice, even if the toll on U.S. streets is nowhere near as pervasive as in Mexico, where cartels are locked in a war against one another and with the government.

“International drug trafficking organizations pose a sustained, serious threat to the safety and security of our communities,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said. “We can provide our communities the safety and the security that they deserve only by confronting these dangerous cartels head-on without reservation,” he said.

When it comes to tearing into the cartels in Houston, an investigation later code-named Operation Three Stars got quietly under way three years ago, as an undercover DEA agent stood in line at a McDonald’s in north Houston. He listened to a drug trafficker using a two-way radio to set up delivery of $750,000; the man was with his wife and kids, ordering Happy Meals while making the deal.

Shifting alliances

Since then, more than 70 people in Houston have been prosecuted as a result of the ongoing operation and more than $5 million has been seized, as well as about 3,000 pounds of cocaine, according to court documents and law enforcement officers.

How many people are involved in cartel business is unknown, authorities said. Alliances shift quickly, as can the need to shut down to evade the law. Federal agents concede that numbers garnered by the operation pale compared to the cash and drugs pumped through Houston, but contend they’ve headed off countless crimes.

“The public never gets the full picture, they don’t understand these murders, these kidnappings, these violent crimes are directly tied to these organizations,” said Vio­let Szeleczky, spokeswoman for the DEA regional office in Houston. “A lot of these guys are just real dirtbags.”

Hard to spot connections

In the murky underworld, it takes time and luck to connect dots.

The accused mastermind of the Chilos attack, Jaime Zamora, 38, is charged with capital murder. He lived modestly, worked for Houston’s Parks and Recreation Department and was a Little League volunteer. State prosecutor Colleen Barnett said in court that such a profile was how he avoided detection.

Paul Looney, Zamora’s lawyer, contends the government can’t prove his client has ever touched drugs or drug money, or that he is a crime boss. He added that Zamora had never before been arrested.

“I don’t think there is a chance in hell (the prosecutor) is right about her theory of the case,” Looney said.

Court documents indicate Steven Torres, 26, one of the men charged with helping Zamora with the 2006 killing, confessed “his part involving arranging the murder.” In 2002, he was sentenced to 10 years probation after being convicted of a murder he committed when he was 16.

His lawyer could not be reached.

Authorities, saying it’s tough to spot cartel connections because the gangsters work in several jurisdictions, point to at least seven homicides in the Houston area since 2006, as well as nine home invasions and five kidnappings tied to cartels. They believe there are many more.

Among the unsolved local killings is the death of Pedro Cardenas Guillen, 36, whose last name is considered trafficking royalty. He was shot in the head and left in a ditch off Madden Road, near Fort Bend County.

His uncle is Osiel Cardenas Guillen, reputed head of the powerful Gulf Cartel. He was extradited from Mexico and awaits trial in Houston on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and threatening to kill federal agents.

Third attempt succeeded

Other victims of what authorities believe are cartel-related murders include a husband and wife who were tortured and shot in the head on Easingwold Drive, in northwest Houston. About 220 pounds of cocaine were later found in their attic.

Some victims were in the drug business and may have owed money; others could be relatives of criminals or innocent victims, authorities say. Santiago “Chago” Salinas, 28, the crime boss who escaped death at Chilos, was killed six months later.

High on cocaine as he answered the door of a room at the Baymont Inn on the Gulf Freeway, he was shot three times in the head.

It was the third and final attempt on the life of the man who’d once been shot in the neck and left for dead in Mexico. His killing may have been the latest payback between rivals slugging it out.

Chago’s brother-in-law was killed in Mexico, as was Zamora’s younger brother, who was known as “Danny Boy” and who was a lieutenant in a trafficking organization, according to authorities. Danny Boy’s boss, a major player in the Sinaloa cartel, also was murdered in Mexico.

Survivors remember

Those who survive the wrath of cartel gangsters don’t forget.

“I thought I was going to die for sure,” recalled David DeLeon, a used-car dealer who was kidnapped on Airline Drive and severely beaten while being held for ransom, also in 2006. He was rescued by Houston police, but not before he was punched, kicked and thrown across a room so much that his face was unrecognizable.

Authorities say the kidnappers were low-ranking thugs working for a cartel cell.

In another instance, men armed with assault rifles attacked a Houston home. The resident used a handgun to kill one and wound another before the survivors left.

Norma Gonzalez, whose husband was killed at Chilos, said she believes he used his body to shield his 4-year-old daughter and infant son. Leaning over her husband in the parking lot, she whispered, “Everything is going to be OK.”

He died minutes later.

Malmö, Sweden: Muslims riot over Israeli player in Davis Cup Match

by Robert Spencer

"Davis Cup, pro-arabic anti-israeli demonstration, riots and hate," by Ted Ekeroth, March 7 (thanks to Kasper):

The demonstration against the tennis game between Israel and Sweden took place today in Malmö. Well, it wasnt just about tennis of course it was about hating everything Israel is, lying through their teeth about what Israel has done and hasn’t done, advocating for Hamas and in general hating Israel.

Around 5000 people showed up; leftwingers and muslims side by side once again. They first started with some speeches at Stortorget (where the arabic mob chased and attacked a peaceful pro-israeli rally a month before). The speakers said the normal jibberish; lies about the Gaza war, lies about “international law” and who breakes it, lies about numbers and totally insane logic in their reasoning. Nothing new about that....

Read it all. And Pamela has much more: details, photos, more video.

Vaccine maker's snafu sparks pandemic scare

By Drew Zahn

An Illinois-based vaccine manufacturer is being investigated after an experiment gone very wrong led scientists to discover the company had released a contaminated product feared capable of starting a world-wide avian flu pandemic.

The Canadian Press reports that Baxter International's European research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria, supplied materials contaminated with the deadly avian H5N1 influenza virus to a research company that then sent portions to labs in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.

The labs thought they were receiving the less deadly, but more readily communicable, human H3N2 virus. When the Czech facility, however, injected a group of ferrets with the virus, the animals died – something that does not happen with H3N2 – prompting scientists to realize an error.

What the scientists were dealing with, in fact, was something far more dangerous.

Make an informed decision about your family's health by watching "Vaccines: The Risks, The Benefits, The Choices."

Baxter's Austrian lab had sent a mix of H3N2 seasonal viruses and unlabeled, live H5N1 viruses. H3N2 is highly communicable, but less harmful. H5N1 is less easily transmitted to humans, but often lethal. If both strains, scientists fear, were to incubate in a single subject, a hybrid virus could be birthed capable of both sweeping the globe and killing in its wake.

Baxter International

, which is based in Deerfield, Ill., said the contamination was the result of an error in its Austrian research facility.

Christopher Bona, Baxter's director of global bioscience communications, explained it as the result of a combination of "just the process itself, (and) technical and human error in this procedure."

As for the feared mixing of the viruses, called reassortment, an official of the World Health Organization's European operation believes the potential disaster was contained.

"We have no evidence of any reassortment, that any reassortment may have occurred," said medical officer Roberta Andraghetti. "And we have no evidence of any increased transmissibility of the viruses that were involved in the experiment with the ferrets in the Czech Republic."

The Canadian Press reports the 36 or 37 people exposed to the virus have received medical attention and do not appear to be infected.

Bona further told reporters that Baxter assisted in destroying the contaminated material and cleaning up the European laboratories where it was distributed. He says his company has determined where the error occurred and has taken steps to ensure it doesn't happen again.

"For this particular incident," said Dr. Angus Nicoll of the European Center for Disease Control, "the horse did not get out (of the barn)."

Dr. Nicoll, however, also pledged that the ECDC and WHO are taking the matter "seriously."

The Canadian Press reports investigations are ongoing in each of the four countries where the viruses were shipped, all under the watch of the ECDC and WHO.

The Press also reports that a number of biosecurity experts have expressed dissatisfaction with the explanation of simple error. As a biosafety level 3 facility (out of a maximum of four established safety levels, each requiring different safety precautions), the experts insist, the co-mingling of human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses should not be allowed to happen.

The H5N1 virus, Reuters reports, has infected over 400 people in 15 countries since 2003, killing 254 of them and leading to the culling of millions of birds around the world to contain it.

Baxter International makes flu vaccines – including a human H5N1 vaccine in process of being approved – at a facility in the Czech Republic.