For the first time, NSA chief and head of the U.S. Cyber Command Gen. Keith Alexander admitted America is ready to attack in cyberspace. Never before has a U.S. official acknowledged that the U.S. government is working on or is in possession of malware capable of attacking a foreign nation in a cyber conflict, despite the fact that at least one attack — the famous Stuxnext worm — has been attributed to the U.S.

SHATTERED ATOMS, SHATTERED ISLANDS

■ The first thermonuclear explosion ever to occur on the earth, Ivy Mike,was detonated by the US Military on Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands on 1st November 1952. The device itself weighed 60 tons and was housed in a six-storey structure containing the massive cooling apparatus needed to produce a temperature of minus 250 degrees Centigrade whereby the deuterium used to fuel the bomb could be liquified. ■ Sixteen months later, the explosion of Castle Bravo on Bikini atoll marked the beginning of a second series of thermonuclear tests staged with the express purpose of creating a much lighter "deliverable" thermonuclear weapon in the megaton range. ■ Promethean Hubris offers an account of the events surrounding these tests, and describes the human and environmental consequences of such tests from the perspective of the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands. Special attention is given to the effects of Castle Bravo, the first of six thermonuclear tests that were conducted as part of Operation Castle between 1st March and 22nd April 1954. ■ The voices heard in this program include J. Robert Oppenheimer, Holly Barker, Tony de Brum, Stephen Osborn, Martini Gotje and Vincent Di Stefano. ■ The music heard in this program includes that of A. Coe, Alexander Sitnikov, Steve Kahn and Rob Mounsey, Dead Can Dance, Doc & Lena Selyanina, and Archie Roach. ■ An essay contextualising much of the information presented in Promethean Hubris can also be accessed here. ■ Please write to vincent@thehealingproject.net.au.

Ben Emmerson, UN special rapporteur, says they violate Pakistani sovereignty. - The US drone war in Pakistan is illegal because it violates Pakistani sovereignty, according to the head of a United Nations team investigating civilian casualties from drone strikes. Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, secretly visited Pakistan with a team of investigators and found that Pakistani authorities do not consent to drone strikes on their territory, contrary to claims made by US officials.

Alex Lantier: UN says US drone war in Pakistan violates international law

The CIA is considering a secret contingency plan to expand the US assassination drone strikes to Syria, former and current American officials say. - The officials said the Counterterrorism Center, which runs CIA’s drone operations in Pakistan and Yemen, has recently tasked some of its agents to collect further intelligence on the situation in Syria, the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday. The targeting officers, who are based at CIA headquarters in Langley, have formed a unit with US intelligence agents in Iraq, to examine purported threats against "the US’ interests in Syria," the report said. The unit is closely working with Saudi, Jordanian and other regional spy services, according to the report.

France24: "CIA may target Syrian extremists with drones: report"
Al-Akhbar: US weighs drone strikes in Syria: report
PressTV: Militants trained by US cross into Syria

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires who was elected Pope by the papal conclave on Wednesday, was intimately involved in Operation Condor’s “Dirty War” in South America. - Bergoglio headed up the Catholic church during the successful effort by the globalists to dismantle Argentina’s economy. The country’s military dictatorship was supported by Wall Street bankers and David Rockefeller. “One of the key appointments of the military junta (on the instructions of Wall Street) was the Minister of Economy, Jose Alfredo Martinez de Hoz, a member of Argentina’s business establishment and a close friend of David Rockefeller,” writes Michel Chossudovsky. “The neoliberal macro-economic policy package adopted under Martinez de Hoz was a ‘carbon copy’ of that imposed in October 1973 in Chile by the Pinochet dictatorship under advice from the ‘Chicago Boys’, following the September 11, 1973 coup d’Etat and the assassination of president Salvador Allende.”

Bill Van Auken: The “Dirty War” Pope - [Some] of Bergoglio’s harshest critics come from within the Catholic Church itself, including priests and lay workers who say he handed them over to the torturers as part of a collaborative effort to “cleanse” the Church of “leftists.” One of them, a Jesuit priest, Orlando Yorio, was abducted along with another priest after ignoring a warning from Bergoglio, then head of the Jesuit order in Argentina, to stop their work in a Buenos Aires slum district.