A Place to Stand

One sign that our own MSM don't actually do anything but rewrite press releases from approved sources is their treatment of the Stuxnet computer virus that hit Iran.

They haven't actually treated it. There has been no real comment on who did it. The BBC were keen to blame the Russian government for a cyberwar on Estonia, probably wrongly but denigrating Russia is always part of the game. They didn't mention a similar instance in Taiwan.

Over Stuxnet there is agreement that the sophistication of the attack requires a government sized entity backing it. Looking at Iran's enemies that means the USA or Israel. Since I have more respect for the competence of Israel & far more for their ability to keep a secret I think it is them.

Corroborating evidence

• A New York Times report suggests an Israeli fingerprint exists deep within the malware’s code. In trying to peel back Stuxnet’s complexities, the word “Myrtus” appears. Debate continues as to this word’s significance but one possibility is a biblical reference to the Book of Esther. Esther’s birth name was “Hadassah,” meaning “myrtle”—an evergreen shrub of the genus Myrtus, native to the Mediterranean region. A Jewish orphan, Esther was later taken by a Persian king—not knowing her ethnicity—to become his queen. Risking death, she subsequently revealed to the king she was a Jew in a courageous effort to prevent a campaign to exterminate all Jews in Persia. She succeeded as the Jews launched a pre-emptive attack against their enemies. While some experts contend “Myrtus” is an Israeli calling card intended to cause the Iranians to question the ability to control their own nuclear program, others contend it was planted as misinformation.

That is equally compatible with Israel doing it or somebody deliberately planting the word to put the blame on Israel, but I can't see the USA wanting to do that.

I don't blame Israel - the Iranians are threatening them & this looks like a minimum response. We don't know how successfully but I suspect with a fair measure.

I did blog previously on another unexplained piece of piracy in the Baltic which also looks like Israeli hijacking of Iranian missiles. Again the MSM had nothing serious to say.

What gets me here is not lies & censorship to propagandise against whoever the government wants us to hate or fear today, as with Yugoslavia, Russia & the catastrophic warming swindle but simply censorship to hide how inept & powerless our own leaders are. The silence on the Chinese submarine surfacing in the middle of a US carrier fleet is similarly to cover ineptness. However keeping the public in ignorance like that simply means that when real decisions have to be taken, as with Labour's corrupt decision to build 2 carriers in Labour constituencies there is no public pressure against bad decisions. It would be far better for society as a whole if the real news was reported rather than this "move along, nothing to see" attitude was displayed every time something vaguely complicated ot embarrassing came up.

Labels: British politics, Media, Scottish politics