From Mother Jones:

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (PDF) gives the president the ability to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of national security.” The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency. That definition would be left to the president.

The bill does not only add to the power of the president. It also grants the Secretary of Commerce “access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.” This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws.

Now, only a project, it has been presented by the Senators Rockefeller (Dem) and Stowe (Rep).

Hope and Change?

The five detainees at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison camp charged with plotting the September 11 attacks have filed a document expressing pride at their accomplishment and accepting responsibility for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The five detainees at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison camp charged with plotting the September 11 attacks have filed a document expressing pride at their accomplishment and accepting responsibility for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The document, which the newspaper said may be released publicly on Tuesday, describes the five men as the “9/11 Shura Council,” and says their actions were an offering to God, according to excerpts of the document read to a reporter by an unidentified government official, the report said.

“‘To us,’ the official read, ‘they are not accusations. To us they are a badge of honor, which we carry with honor,’” the paper said.

The document is titled “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations,” the military judge at the U.S. Naval base said in a separate filing, obtained by the Times, that described the detainees’ document.

via Guantanamo detainees say they planned September 11: report | Reuters.

Christopher has posted more about this:

“Your intelligence apparatus, with all its abilities … failed to discover our military attack plans before the blessed 11 September operation … Why then should you blame us, holding us accountable and putting us on trial?”

They criticize the U.S. for fighting “from behind roadblocks, trenches and warplanes” rather than face-to-face and describe Islam as “a religion of fear” for Jews, Christians and pagans.

“We are terrorists to the bone. So, many thanks to God,” they write.

Gee, so, the culprit of an attack is not the terrorist but the policemen who didn’t prevent it. 

Islam = religion of fear for Jews, Christians and pagans. WOW!!! Even Wilders wouldn’t have said something soooo striking. Are they also going to punish them for “Islamophobia”?? You know, for hating Islam, presenting it as something different from the mantra-logo-slogan “Islam is Peace, Islam is the Religion of Peace”.

So, what is going to do Obama now? I don’t think these guys want to have a normal civilian life and I really don’t believe want to be a part of US society. Sooo?

President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.

The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.

via NYT: Obama offered deal to Russia in letter – The New York Times- msnbc.com.

He sent that without firstly asking US Senate about the terms of the letter. And in secrecy.  This is purely Hope and Change!!!

UPDATE: Looks like Medvedev has said there was nothing concrete in the letter.

The letter contained an assessment of the situation, but there were no concrete proposals about any mutually binding decisions,” Natalya Timakova, Medvedev’s spokewoman, told reporters during a visit by Medvedev to Spain.

Well, that’s something… funny: what about the intention? Obama answered a letter without reporting about its content to the Senate in a so important and delicate matter. He answered it secretly, with a deal: I give you this and you give that. Isn’t that concrete enough??

UPDATE 2: An Audaciously Bad Missile Deal @ Heritage Foundation via Twitter:

With these facts in mind, the Obama Administration quid pro quo raises some troubling issues:

• First, what the U.S. wants for not deploying systems to protect us is Russian diplomacy that ensures the Iranian ballistic missile and nuclear programs are terminated. That could take years and then it could only be verified with inspectors on the ground in Iran–an unthinkable concession. In the interim, Iran could easily build and test and we would have no defense. Indeed, not building defenses now may encourage the Iranians to speed-up their program. That’s a bad deal.
• Second, Russia’s complaints about missile defense are rooted in their belief that they should be able to control and threaten the countries on their borders. Agreeing to negotiate on missile defense concedes that point–that is a bad idea.
• Finally, if hitting the “reset” button on US-Russian relations mean the United States has to make itself intentionally vulnerable to a potential Iranian threat–that’s a really bad deal.

It’s not Spanish King Juan Carlos the only person who asks Chávez to shut up. Now his doctors (via Twitter) have told him the same, though for other reasons. He says that it’s because of “the permanent use of the cannon I have here”.

And in good time, because after winning the referendum, he feels more secure and has ordered the invasion of the rice plantations because some business are ignoring price regulations imposed by the Government (what a photo! ).

He has also menaced US President Obama, cautioning the latter against “messing with him”. The reason? Obama accused him of not fighting against drug trafficking. Chávez has answered that there is only one country that is supporting drug trafficking, and that’s USA, whose President is Obama “although I doubt Obama governs at all”, he has added.

“Hillary Clinton, who heads to Asia next week on her maiden mission, is bowing to an increasingly powerful region in order to tackle the global economic crisis, climate change and nuclear weapons.

The new US secretary of state’s choice of travel to Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China, reflects the quest for a long-term strategy to deal with the changing dynamic in world economic, political and military power, analysts say.

Her predecessors usually traveled first to Europe or the Middle East.

For Michael Green, a former Asia adviser to president George W. Bush, Clinton is right to now focus the ‘US government on the challenges and opportunities’ in Asia.

To be sure, he told reporters at a gathering here organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the crises of the moment are in the world financial markets, the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.”

Meanwhile:

A Christian defender of human rights in China – whom authorities detained last week – detailed state-sponsored torture he suffered in 2007 in an open letter released on Monday (Feb. 9), the same day advocacy groups criticized a U.N. review of China’s treatment of Christians and other minorities for omitting serious abuses. (…)

The letter gives a detailed account of torture he suffered in September and October of 2007. Gao said his official captors – some of whom he recognized – referred to a report he had written earlier on the torture of Falun Gong members and warned him that he was about to experience the same treatment. They urinated on Gao and repeatedly prodded his body, mouth and genitals with electric shock batons. Other methods used were too graphic and “horrible” to describe, Gao said.

Officials later asked Gao to write articles cursing Falun Gong and praising the government. When he refused, they pressured him to write a statement saying that Falun Gong practitioners had given him false evidence of torture, and that – despite constant harassment – the government had treated him and his family well. Gao said he signed this statement, as well as others in which he confessed to sexual impropriety, after beatings that left him unrecognizable and the insertion of toothpicks into his genitals.

Looks like a wonderful country to mention Human Rights’ abuses, doesn’t it?

In a message posted on online jihadist forums, the Taliban also called on Obama to close all “evil” US detention centers for militants (sic), “completely withdraw” from Iraq and Afghanistan and “stop defending Israel.”

via Weasel Zippers.

If you remember, Obama promised to raise the number of soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. The problem is that European leaders are not so willing.

they are proving just as reluctant to contribute more soldiers or money to the NATO-led operation as they were during President George W. Bush’s last years in the White House.

And:

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer warns European leaders that the United States can’t be expected to give on Gitmo, climate change, and other European issues in exchange for nothing additional besides encouragement in the war against the Taliban.

Uuuhhhh, what strong words!! Is he really implying that European leaders are asking too much of USA? Well, it’s not that… it’s just that European leaders do not see this as their war, they see this a Bush’s or, at least, as a US war. So why on earth they have to contribute??

Whatever Obama (and US democrats) say about it, it’s not surprising.

Related: France: No More Troops for Afghanistan.

The curious thing of this “new” movement is precisely that it is not only aimed at people coming from countries outside Europe but also from other parts of Europe.

Sometimes it is just ridiculous. Italian city Lucca has ordered that all restaurants should have an Italian decoration, waiters should wear elegant clothes and speak English and (the important thing) they should serve Italian food. While the first requirements weren’t very much disputed, the latter has caused a lot of criticism. The opposition has even considered this as “meal racism”, or “racism considering that the restaurants that are going to be closed serve non-Italian meals”. Of course, the mere consideration from a etimological point of view of “meals/cooking’s racism” is just a total absurd. But the real thing is that the opposition is worried mainly about the Turkish döner kebabs but not about French, Spanish or Hindu restaurants, which normally tend to be owned by Italians, or about McDonalds or Burger King’s which are also included in the measure

Meanwhile, in Great Britain the situation is not as “ridiculous” but rather is much more worrying. Expat Yank points out the real problem:

Absolutely disgraceful reporting on the part of the Beeb. For as of that 11:10 report, nowhere in that piece is it made clear that those “overseas” and “foreign” workers are Italian EU nationals. Nor was it mentioned in yesterday’s initial piece. Nor is it gently pointed out that the protesting British workers themselves clearly don’t understand that those Italians have as much right to those jobs as do Britons.

What happens? A part of an oil refinery was being constructed, work which was won by IREM, an Italian-based contractor, which brought in its own workforce. So the workers from the Oil Refinery, even if no redundacy was going to be caused by those Italians, went on an unofficial strike. They can’t understand that, under European Union regulations, European citizens, can move throughout the territory of the EU, without restraint, to work.

But the worrying thing is that the BBC, paid by the British taxpayer and under the Government’s supervision, precisely attacks this idea of free movement. The double standard is so worrying that, after the BBC has been reporting in a “italians-are-stealing-British-jobs” mode, Gordon Brown can afterwards say this:

Brown Warns Global Economy Is Slipping into Financial Protectionism

to afterwards saying:

what we’ve got to do over time, as I’ve always said, is that where there are jobs in this country, we need people with the skills, developed in this country”…

In Spain, we have a similar problem. Spanish Industry Minister, Miguel Sebastian, said that we should buy “Spanish products”, to help Spanish producers. So a journalist asked Zapatero if he supported that. As he was in a press conference with Portuguese Primer Minister, our cosmic leader from the Alliance of Civlizations President answered “I chose the ibéricos“, referring to both Spanish and Portuguese products, but not taking into account that in Spain that expression refers to this.

But the problem is aggravated by the influence of the Autonomous Communities. After financing an association which sends letters to firms menacing them with fines in case they don’t write commercial signs in Galician, and after Galician President, Touriño, has spent huge quantities of money in highly luxurious items (nearly €4 million in the reform of three meeting rooms, €26.284 in a table; €2.269 for each chair he bought; €170.212 in the windows of another room and €480.000 in an official car), his Vicepresident, Galician independentist Anxo Quitana, has asked the people to buy Galician products. Why don’t you lower the taxes to help those “producers”?? 

So the question is: are we really for a globalised economy with the natural competitiveness that it brings or rather are we going to go back to old protectionism? The economical crisis is going to point out which direction we are taking. But seeing President Obama calling for “Buy American products” is not a really good sign.