Mandela-isation of Anwar Ibrahim

Mandela-isation of Anwar?
by Azly Rahman


"Man proposes, god disposes"
Thomas a Kempis, 'Of The Imitation of Christ'

While America awaits The Super Bowl, Malaysia awaits The Super Trial II this week to listen to the arguments concerning the predicament of Anwar Ibrahim.

Philosophically, what ought to be the shape of things to come? Where do we go from here, as a nation? Where do we wish to bring this nation that is in need of deep reflection on the meaning of nationhood and democracy?

Maturity after Mahathirism


If we take 1998 as a framework in looking at the changes this country is seeing politically, Anwar can be seen as an embodiment of Nelson Mandela.

His spirit did not die for the six years he was jailed and upon his release a momentum was created that grew in strength to first, become institutionalised in the form of a strong Parti Keadilan Rakyat and next, of Pakatan Rakyat.

Divine intervention and human design propelled such changes - the evolution of a one-party Mahathiristic construct to an emerging two-party counter-hegemonic system that is making the current regime fearful and tremble.

Indeed from 1998 to 2010, Malaysians not also saw an evolution of critical sensibility but waves upon waves of loud protests on the streets, in parliament, in cyberspace, and in the minds of Malaysians against the excesses of the Mahathirist-inspired totalitarianism and autocraticism.

Malaysians have matured, in a way. Only the civil servants and those employed and caressed to obedience by the ruling regime have not fully matured in terms of civil libertarianism. Understandably one cannot bite the hands that feed, as the iron hands will pound violently once bitten.

If twelve to fifteen years ago, Malaysians dared not speak of Malay rights, corruption, controlling interests in Barisan Nasional, definition of bumiputera, and the means and methods of thought-control and sword of Damocles of the ruling regime - the situation has dramatically changed.

It is as if the release of Anwar  from his six years of incarceration signify, as postmodernists such as Frederic Jameson would say, a 'rupture' and the 'waning of effect of the ruling totalitarian regime.

The Internet, a Frankenstein of postmodern times and an avatar of chaos and complexity and a protean technology of both democratic and demagogic thinking, aided the Malaysian revolution in thinking.

What is revealed on the Internet becomes a launching pad for real-time street protests and many times too, prosecution of this or that person for corruption and other forms of 'transgressions' done in the name of politics; transgression ala a political version, Tiger Woods-stylised, in which revelations can become ugly, cancerous and financially disastrous.

Anwar Ibrahim has become a rallying point for this new wave of revolution - not merely a reformation in fact - of a new form of consciousness albeit plagued with consistent cluster-bombing and carpet-bombings done by those who wish to stop it on its tracks, Machiavellian-styled.

Challenging obedience

How has the new consciousness eroded the sense of obedience to authority, particularly of the Malays - often considered the most obedient human beings on Earth?

Like those rallying behind Nelson Mandela circa apartheid in South Africa, Malaysians are seeing the Mandela-isation of Anwar Ibrahim particularly his second trial.

It is not Anwar who is on trial - it is the will of Malaysians of all walks of life, ethnic groups, religious conviction, class, and caste, that are on trial. It is the growing urge to come together and dismantle the excesses of race-based politics and the ugly manifestations of greed via political creed that is on trial.

Beginning from the political 'honey-mooning' years of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and his failure to make reforms to all forms of repressive and intolerable acts right up to this day wherein all's-not-well-ends-not well' is the feature of the present government that is quite certain seeing its demise.

Beginning from the show of arrogance of UMNO particularly to an even worse show of that same arrogance in issues of combating corruption, fixing the judiciary, improving the universities, egalitarian-ising and equilibrium-ising the education system, teaching religious and racial tolerance - Malaysian have seen enough of a breakdown of what once looked like a showcase of 'civil society'.

The rallies, the water cannons, the chemical-laced sprays, the deaths of Altantuya, Kugan, Teoh Beng Hock, and the Perak parliamentary plague - all these are amongst the demonic verses of the narrative of this nation that are inspiring the rise of 'civil disobedience'. "Dissent, is the highest form of patriotism," said the American philosopher-president-statesman Thomas Jefferson - and this is what Malaysians are embodying as a cultural-political philosophy.

Maybe we are seeing the Mandela-isation of Anwar Ibrahim. And we ought to see that as a philosophical global-positioning-system circa the next general election. The coming election will see total rupture after a fierce struggle over the mandate to rule.

Change can be painful, but change must a nation go through. It is through the regimented swallowing of bitter pill can maladies be cured. For too long, especially during the Mahathirist years, Malaysians have been given Prozac and serenaded with feel-good stories of being grateful and not biting the hands that feed to a point of numbness and total obedience, that it takes this country to the verge of destruction for us to wake up and to smell the Napalm in all its morning glory - as our own 'Apocalypse Now'.

It will be an interesting week ahead. May we continue to live in interesting times, as what Chairman Mao Zedong would say. How this weeks' episode will end will depend on how: "Man proposes, God disposes".

Azly Rahman


on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Azly-Rahman/689079971
on twitter: http://twitter.com/azlyrahman
on blog: http://azlyrahman-illuminations.blogspot.com/

The Who -- rocks Super Bowl!

Malaysia too shall overcome ...

African-American History Month-- February, Tribute video #1

J'Accuse ! -- Malaysia's own trial of the (half) century. May Justice prevail ...

Learning from Howard Zinn's historicizing

Learning from Howard Zinn's historicizing
Azly Rahman
Feb 1, 10
12:00pm


"From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble." - Howard Zinn, American historian par excellence.


On Jan 28, 2010 America mourned the passing on of one of her greatest historians whose 50 years of work pioneered not only the style of historicizing that put the oppressed, marginalized, disposed, victimized, and otherwise losers and forgotten in history - into center-stage and hailed as heroes.


Prof Zinn, an alumni of Columbia University's History Department was a radical educator whose work inspired the Civil Rights movement, left a legacy of looking at history through the lens of critical pedagogy.


Zinn can provide a way Malaysian historians can promote the teaching of Malaysian history.


Inspired by Howard Zinn


I was first introduced to Howard Zinn's work, in the early 1980s through a professor of mine who was a close friend of William Ayers, another radical educator whose work centered around the idea of education for social justice.


As part of a required reading for a graduate course in Education and Democracy, alongside seminal works such as John Dewey's Democracy and Education, Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Michael Harrington's Socialism, and a collection of key writings in Marxist theories of education and human liberation, Zinn's work provided a tour de force of American history.


I was introduced to the context of how history ought to also be looked at in relation to how those historied by history ought to be schooled, trained, and most importantly, educated and next, liberated.


I was introduced to the idea of 'a people's history of the United States" and how America was 'founded' as a consequence of the massacre of tens of thousands of Arawak Indians; those massacred a few year after the arrival of Christopher Columbus.


Subsequent epochs saw the wars, as Howard Zinn chronicled, that made America into an empire founded upon the idea that in order to arrive at peace, one must prepare for and wage war.


The war machine that is America progressed well in subsequent centuries with the advancement of technology and the culture of capitalism.


America was not only fuelled by what Marx would call "technological and economic determinism" but also by the experiment in the championing of a strange yet familiar idea of 'democracy'.
Zinn's heroes are the natives, the slaves, the workers, the Civil Rights leaders, and those who oppose war.


America the land of the free and home of the brave has evolved into a powerful military-industrial complex.


Howard Zinn's work became an inspiration in my teachings of The Foundations of Western Civilization and The History of the United States, among the more than 40 course I have taught in seven different departments, particularly in the United States.


Historicizing Malaysia


Malaysia's history is written by those who are paid by the feudal lords or the sultans and the bourgeoisie class who have become an appendage to the modern neo-feudalistic Malay state.


Malaysian history, a basis of the violently disseminated idea of Ketuanan Melayu, as an apology to the idea of economic dominance of the Malay-dominated National Front, favours the powerful and the wealthy as heroes of history.


Tun Sri Lanang, court writer for the Malay Annals or Sejarah Melayu, wove tales of the overblown glory of the Malacca Sultanate with phantasmagoric and avatar-like conception of heroism of Malay warriors with Chinese-sounding names, foremost among them was Hang Tuah, the epitome of a blind-follower of istana/royal court orders; one who can be categorized in sci-fi genre as a Malay drone with android characteristic created out of the need to showcase what idiotic pride means.


The narratives of Malacca was well-preserved and well-transmutated into what is now Malaysian history, claimed as "a body of historical facts" embalmed in Malaysian history textbooks to be devoured by the curious young minds of Malaysians; children whose minds are like filtered funnels ready to accept whatever the State deemed necessary and "Official Knowledge" not to be questioned but to be regurgitated as immutable facts at the end-of-year examinations.


Much of what is happening in Malaysian schools is the teaching of history devoid of critical historicizing let alone the reading of history written from the point of view of 'the people's history of Malaya'.


Missing from the textbooks, are chronicles of the natives enslaved by the feudal lords, narratives of the indentured serfs from China and India, stories of the robbery of land in Sabah and Sarawak, the chronicle of the struggle between the workers and the capitalist class, the real story behind the Communist insurgency, and in recent times the voices of liberation and freedom against the excesses of the modern Malaysian authoritarian state.


History has not been kind to Malaysians. Historians have been kind to the paymasters in history.


In the end, history textbooks not only become a literary graveyard for the losers in the historical march of Capital, but as postmodern blinders - for the closing of the Malaysian mind.

Rest in peace, Howard Zinn. Yes, we cannot be neutral on a moving train.

Farewell, Howard Zinn American historian extraordinaire ...

Howard Zinn, Historian who Challenged Status quo, Dies at 87

by Mark Feeney and Bryan Marquard


Global Research, January 28, 2010
The Boston Globe - 2010-01-27

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Howard Zinn, the Boston University historian and political activist who was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam and whose books, such as "A People's History of the United States," inspired young and old to rethink the way textbooks present the American experience, died today in Santa Monica, Calif, where he was traveling. He was 87.

His daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn of Lexington, said he suffered a heart attack.

"He's made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, said tonight. "He's changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can't think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect."Chomsky added that Dr. Zinn's writings "simply changed perspective and understanding for a whole generation. He opened up approaches to history that were novel and highly significant. Both by his actions, and his writings for 50 years, he played a powerful role in helping and in many ways inspiring the Civil rights movement and the anti-war movement."

For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. "A People’s History of the United States" (1980), his best-known book, had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers -- many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out -- but rather the farmers of Shays' Rebellion and union organizers of the 1930s.

As he wrote in his autobiography, "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train" (1994), "From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."

Certainly, it was a recipe for rancor between Dr. Zinn and John Silber, former president of Boston University. Dr. Zinn, a leading critic of Silber, twice helped lead faculty votes to oust the BU president, who in turn once accused Dr. Zinn of arson (a charge he quickly retracted) and cited him as a prime example of teachers "who poison the well of academe."

Dr. Zinn was a cochairman of the strike committee when BU professors walked out in 1979. After the strike was settled, he and four colleagues were charged with violating their contract when they refused to cross a picket line of striking secretaries. The charges against "the BU Five" were soon dropped.

In 1997, Dr. Zinn slipped into popular culture when his writing made a cameo appearance in the film "Good Will Hunting." The title character, played by Matt Damon, lauds "A People’s History" and urges Robin Williams’s character to read it. Damon, who co-wrote the script, was a neighbor of the Zinns growing up.

"Howard had a great mind and was one of the great voices in the American political life," Ben Affleck, also a family friend growing up and Damon's co-star in "Good Will Hunting," said in a statement. "He taught me how valuable -- how necessary -- dissent was to democracy and to America itself. He taught that history was made by the everyman, not the elites. I was lucky enough to know him personally and I will carry with me what I learned from him -- and try to impart it to my own children -- in his memory."

Damon was later involved in a television version of the book, "The People Speak," which ran on the History Channel in 2009, and he narrated a 2004 biographical documentary, "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train."

"Howard had a genius for the shape of public morality and for articulating the great alternative vision of peace as more than a dream," said James Carroll a columnist for the Globe's opinion pages whose friendship with Dr. Zinn dates to when Carroll was a Catholic chaplain at BU. "But above all, he had a genius for the practical meaning of love. That is what drew legions of the young to him and what made the wide circle of his friends so constantly amazed and grateful."

Dr. Zinn was born in New York City on Aug. 24, 1922, the son of Jewish immigrants, Edward Zinn, a waiter, and Jennie (Rabinowitz) Zinn, a housewife. He attended New York public schools and was working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he met Roslyn Shechter.

"She was working as a secretary," Dr. Zinn said in an interview with the Globe nearly two years ago. "We were both working in the same neighborhood, but we didn't know each other. A mutual friend asked me to deliver something to her. She opened the door, I saw her, and that was it."

He joined the Army Air Corps, and they courted through the mail before marrying in October 1944 while he was on his first furlough. She died in 2008.

During World War II, he served as a bombardier, was awarded the Air Medal, and attained the rank of second lieutenant.

After the war, Dr. Zinn worked at a series of menial jobs until entering New York University on the GI Bill as a 27-year-old freshman. He worked nights in a warehouse loading trucks to support his studies. He received his bachelor’s degree from NYU, followed by master’s and doctoral degrees in history from Columbia University.

Dr. Zinn was an instructor at Upsala College and lecturer at Brooklyn College before joining the faculty of Spelman College in Atlanta, in 1956. He served at the historically black women’s institution as chairman of the history department. Among his students were novelist Alice Walker, who called him "the best teacher I ever had," and Marian Wright Edelman, future head of the Children's Defense Fund.

During this time, Dr. Zinn became active in the civil rights movement. He served on the executive committee of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the most aggressive civil rights organization of the time, and participated in numerous demonstrations.

Dr. Zinn became an associate professor of political science at BU in 1964 and was named full professor in 1966.

The focus of his activism became the Vietnam War. Dr. Zinn spoke at many rallies and teach-ins and drew national attention when he and the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, another leading antiwar activist, went to Hanoi in 1968 to receive three prisoners released by the North Vietnamese.

Dr. Zinn’s involvement in the antiwar movement led to his publishing two books: "Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal" (1967) and "Disobedience and Democracy" (1968). He had previously published "LaGuardia in Congress" (1959), which had won the American Historical Association's Albert J. Beveridge Prize; "SNCC: The New Abolitionists" (1964); "The Southern Mystique" (1964); and "New Deal Thought" (1966).

He also was the author of "The Politics of History" (1970); "Postwar America" (1973); "Justice in Everyday Life" (1974); and "Declarations of Independence" (1990).

In 1988, Dr. Zinn took early retirement to concentrate on speaking and writing. The latter activity included writing for the stage. Dr. Zinn had two plays produced: "Emma," about the anarchist leader Emma Goldman, and "Daughter of Venus."

On his last day at BU, Dr. Zinn ended class 30 minutes early so he could join a picket line and urged the 500 students attending his lecture to come along. A hundred did.

"Howard was an old and very close friend," Chomsky said. "He was a person of real courage and integrity, warmth and humor. He was just a remarkable person."

Carroll called Dr. Zinn "simply one of the greatest Americans of our time. He will not be replaced -- or soon forgotten. How we loved him back."

In addition to his daughter, Dr. Zinn leaves a son, Jeff of Wellfleet; three granddaughters; and two grandsons.

Funeral plans were not available.

Global Research Articles by Mark Feeney

Global Research Articles by Bryan Marquard

Malaysian students speaking up... may freedom of speech bring progressive changes

PHILOSOPHY: Epistemology, The Matrix, What is real?

On Cyber-terrorism

Remarks by

Barry C. Collin
Institute for Security and Intelligence

Terrorism to CyberTerrorism

The definition of "terrorism" has been well studied, defined, and documented. There is also a degree of understanding of the meanings of CyberTerrorism, either from the popular media, other secondary sources, or personal experience. This paper examines the future of CyberTerrorism - a term the author coined a decade ago, as the indicia of technological dependence and frailty were forming in our New World disOrder. Indeed, that future has come to fruition, today.
The face of terrorism is changing. While the motivations remain the same, we are now facing new and unfamiliar weapons. The intelligence systems, tactics, security procedures and equipment that were once expected to protect people, systems, and nations, are powerless against this new, and very devastating weapon. Moreover, the methods of counter-terrorism that our world's specialists have honed over the years are ineffectual against this enemy. Because, this enemy does not attack us with truckloads of explosives, nor with briefcases of Sarin gas, nor with dynamite strapped to the bodies of fanatics. This enemy attacks us with one's and zero's, at a place we are most vulnerable: the point at which the physical and virtual worlds converge. Let us first define theses two domains.

The Physical World

The physical world is matter and energy - light, dark, hot and cold, all physical matter - that place in which we live and function.

The Virtual World

The virtual world is symbolic - true, false, binary, metaphoric representations of information - that place in which computer programs function and data moves.
The physical and virtual worlds are inherently disparate worlds. It is now the intersection, the convergence, of these two worlds that forms the vehicle of CyberTerrorism, the new weapon that we face.

Reliance and Dependence

This convergence of the physical and virtual worlds, this lattice, is growing larger and more complex as we venture further into technological dependence. Each day, we move ahead with blinding speed into the computerization of every task and process that we face. We are becoming ever more inextricably reliant and dependent on the convergence of these two worlds.

Points of Convergence

What are some of the more obvious points of convergence?

• A garage door opener.
• A heart pacemaker.
• The computer chip in a late model car.
• A microwave oven.

These are all things taken for granted. Yet, as we progress into a far more technological world, what other points of convergence are taken for granted?

• Food processing plants
• Pharmaceutical processing plants
• Electric and natural gas utilities
• Train crossings and traffic control systems
• Next generation air traffic control systems
• Virtually all modern military equipment
• Military and public safety communications
• Civilian communications

Convergence Drivers

What is driving the convergence of these two worlds? There are three goals:

1.Access: the goal of universal, ubiquitous interface;

2.Control: the goal of remote administration; and
3.Mining: the goal of knowledge acquisition.

Convergence Vehicles

To achieve these goals, there are four vehicles:

• Transmission: longer lines across land and through space;
• Connections: more links to more points;
• Aggregation: more information centralized, and disconnected information linked; and
• Retrieval: more ways of retrieving information, and more importantly, knowledge.

Achieving CyberTerrorist Goals

So how does a CyberTerrorist achieve his mission? Like any terrorist, a CyberTerrorist actively exploits the goals of the target population in areas in which they take for granted.
There are three potential acts in CyberTerrorism at the point of convergence:

1.Destruction;

2.Alteration; and

3.Acquisition and retransmission (these are a unit).

As we will see, these three types of acts are most heinous at the point where the physical and virtual worlds converge.
To achieve a true terrorist goal, as we know, we must have scale and publicity. So how does the CyberTerrorist approach a new age - an age of convergence of the physical and virtual worlds? An age where, thanks to our goals, he can perform his CyberTerrorist acts from his living room, undetected, from 8,000 kilometers away?

Cracker or CyberTerrorist?

A great deal of "cracks" are committed for the purposes of anarchy, humor, or as often stated by the perpetrators, "to be annoying." However, is this the mindset of a CyberTerrorist? Does the CyberTerrorist make a garage door go up and down? Does he change an Internet web site to say a country's government is evil? Does he hack into a major corporation's voice mail system to make long distance calls? No - that is not the domain of the CyberTerrorist - that is the domain of the amateur cracker community that exists worldwide.
A CyberTerrorist's mindset is quite different. A CyberTerrorist would not alter a voice mail, or even abuse credit cards.

Potential CyberTerrorist Acts

Let us examine some example CyberTerrorist acts. Based on the definitions of terrorism, a determination can be made if they in fact constitute terrorism:

• A CyberTerrorist will remotely access the processing control systems of a cereal manufacturer, change the levels of iron supplement, and sicken and kill the children of a nation enjoying their food. That CyberTerrorist will then perform similar remote alterations at a processor of infant formula. The key: the CyberTerrorist does not have to be at the factory to execute these acts.
• A CyberTerrorist will place a number of computerized bombs around a city, all simultaneously transmitting unique numeric patterns, each bomb receiving each other's pattern. If bomb one stops transmitting, all the bombs detonate simultaneously. The keys: 1) the CyberTerrorist does not have to be strapped to any of these bombs; 2) no large truck is required; 3) the number of bombs and urban dispersion are extensive; 4) the encrypted patterns cannot be predicted and matched through alternate transmission; and 5) the number of bombs prevents disarming them all simultaneously. The bombs will detonate.
• A CyberTerrorist will disrupt the banks, the international financial transactions, the stock exchanges. The key: the people of a country will lose all confidence in the economic system. Would a CyberTerrorist attempt to gain entry to the Federal Reserve building or equivalent? Unlikely, since arrest would be immediate. Furthermore, a large truck pulling along side the building would be noticed. However, in the case of the CyberTerrorist, the perpetrator is sitting on another continent while a nation's economic systems grind to a halt. Destabilization will be achieved.
• A CyberTerrorist will attack the next generation of air traffic control systems, and collide two large civilian aircraft. This is a realistic scenario, since the CyberTerrorist will also crack the aircraft's in-cockpit sensors. Much of the same can be done to the rail lines.
• A CyberTerrorist will remotely alter the formulas of medication at pharmaceutical manufacturers. The potential loss of life is unfathomable.
• The CyberTerrorist may then decide to remotely change the pressure in the gas lines, causing a valve failure, and a block of a sleepy suburb detonates and burns. Likewise, the electrical grid is becoming steadily more vulnerable.

In effect, the CyberTerrorist will make certain that the population of a nation will not be able to eat, to drink, to move, or to live. In addition, the people charged with the protection of their nation will not have warning, and will not be able to shut down the terrorist, since that CyberTerrorist is most likely on the other side of the world.
Sadly, these examples are not science fiction. All of these scenarios can be executed today. As you may know, some of these incidents already have occurred in various nations. More of such acts will take place tomorrow. Are you prepared?

CyberTerrorists: Who, Where, and Why?

The purpose of this paper is to help you understand the threats that exist, and hopefully, to help you prevent these types of atrocities. But know this - there are people out there with very different goals, who are our real threats, and who are, or will be, attacking us. Make no mistake, the threats are real, today.
Who are the CyberTerrorists? There a great many poor movies and too many works of fiction about the hacker and cracker communities. In the popular media, there recently was the Kevin Mitnick incident, where one cracker broke into another cracker's systems. This spawned endless press and at least two best selling books. While this incident received much attention, the events amounted to meaningless children's games.
By and large, the cracker community, based primarily in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and in the nations of the former Soviet Union, is composed of individuals who see the cracking process merely as a challenge, a brain teaser, a puzzle. They view themselves as not only being innocent of any crime, but perhaps even doing something righteous, something to counter the dark monoliths of the corporate and government worlds. They believe they are being persecuted. These individuals believe that what they are doing is not doing any true damage. At its least harmful, these crackers just look at information. However, privacy issues and military secrecy can render such infiltrations acts of terror.
Sometimes crackers make minor changes, just for fun, to be annoying, or to make a statement. The potential for damage here is enormous.

Crackers as Facilitators

Individuals with a background in intelligence are aware that a frequent element of case execution is enlisting the indigenous, sometimes called "facilitators," to assist in a campaign. At the convergence of the physical and virtual worlds, the indigenous are the crackers.
There is the incorrect assumption in the cracking community that they, the crackers, are so sophisticated or so knowledgeable as to know when they are being approached for a truly illicit reason (e.g., to be enlisted as a facilitator to commit an act of terrorism). However, despite cracker arrogance, these individuals are easy targets for enlistment.
What about those crackers who actively wish to cross the line, or more basically, need money? To a teenager, a $1,000 U.S. can purchase a good many compact disks, a new modem, and a great deal of libation. Beyond youths, there are professionals in this arena as well.
Historically, individuals engaged in the practice of terror tended not to be people working upon a computer 20 hours per day. Terrorists have not been in the business of tracking the latest holes found in UNIX or an obscure government telnet opportunity. There are people, however, who are in that business - for illicit as well as good cause. As stated, just as indigenous people may be turned into soldiers, so can crackers be turned into CyberTerrorists. Sometimes such a transition may be motivated by money or prestige. Usually, this transition will occur without the cracker's cognizance. The potential threat from such transitions is mind boggling, considering the damage even one mis-directed cracker can cause.
Further, as young, educated people are brought into the folds of terrorist groups, this new generation will have the talent to execute the acts of CyberTerrorism of which we have spoken.
We are going to see increasing levels of in-house expertise, and concomitant exponential increases CyberTerrorism. Unlike other methods of terrorism, CyberTerrorism is safe and profitable, and difficult to counter without the right expertise and understanding of the CyberTerrorist's mind. Combine our increasing vulnerability, with the explosive increases in the level of violence, and increasing expertise available inside terrorist organizations through new blood and outside through facilitators, and we can see that at the point where the physical and virtual worlds converge, the old models of managing terrorism are obsolete.

Methods of Protection: No Easy Answers

We must consider the following elements when building a counter-CyberTerrorist program:

• We must accept that while the theories of terrorism stand true, the way in which we approach counter-terrorism, in this case, counter-CyberTerrorism, must change.
• We must cooperate and share intelligence in ways we have never have before.
• We must enlist the assistance of those individuals who understand the weapons we are facing and have experienced fighting these wars.
• We must learn the new rules, the new technologies, and the new players.

Unfortunately, one cannot learn how to fight this very unconventional warfare from someone who hasn't been there, nor from someone whose experience is in the old ways and old technologies. The old data processing, auditing, and computer security models in use today are obsolete. On this battlefield, against this weapon, the terrorist is already far ahead. The building of a counter-CyberTerrorist team must be real-time and dynamic, as the weapons will continually change, to morph, in an attempt to beat you, your systems, and your people. There is no re-machining, and unlike other terrorists, if the CyberTerrorist loses today, he does not die - he learns what did not work, and will use that information against you tomorrow.

Conclusion

If a computer security advisor states that you, your organization, and your country are safe behind firewalls, behind a system put into place by people who have never fought cyberbattles, behind audit trails, passwords, and encryption, then a great and dangerous fallacy (or fantasy) is being perpetrated upon you. The only solution is the quick deployment of a counter-CyberTerrorist - someone who knows what you are up against today, someone who lives in the world of the people who are, and will be, attacking - someone who can train the people who must fight the battles.

Ex Post Facto

An effective auditing system will only inform the target manager that they have taken a hit; perhaps a fatal hit. By that point, it is too late. Now is the time to take action. Unfortunately, due to this open nature of this document, specific counter-CyberTerrorism measures cannot be discussed. Those discussions must be reserved for secured facilities.
Counter-terrorists of all backgrounds are duty-bound to save property, and more importantly, save lives. However, we are not isolated. We are all increasingly connected, dependent, and vulnerable. The very basic things we take for granted (e.g., food, medicine, energy, air, freedom of movement, communications, freedom from violence) are being threatened by the new weapon of CyberTerrorism.
If we do not work together, we will be responsible for the outcome. If we fail to be ready when and where the virtual and physical worlds converge, then all that will be left is terror - in one's and zero's.

---

for further information

Institute for Security and Intelligence
P.O. Box 9877
Stanford, CA 94309-9877 USA

isi@hooked.net