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    Posted on May 18th, 2012

    Kaspersky says cyber-attacks could “take us back to the pre-electric era”

    SCADA is so vulnerable, Kaspersky told the AusCERT audience: “It’s not possible to protect. Stuxnet told us that modern systems are not protected at all. SCADA could be very easy victims – the result of an attack could be like Stuxnet but everywhere.”

    He said his company’s research suggests that malware costs the world economy $US100 billion each year, and noted other vendors estimates of the total trillion-dollar cybercrime industry mean that, “because of cybercrime, we have the equivalent of two or three Japanese tsunamis a year” of economic damage.

    People “need to understand the danger of cyber-weapons and of cyber-war to ruin national infrastructure. Transportation, power-grids, power plants … it would take us back to the pre-electric era.”

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  • 0
    Posted on May 18th, 2012

    US ready to attack Iran, says envoy to Israel

    Iran Israel Conflict

    Iran Israel Conflict

    The US has plans in place to attack Iran if other measures fail to stop it developing nuclear weapons, Washington’s envoy to Israel says.

    Dan Shapiro said the US hoped diplomacy and sanctions would persuade Iran to alter its nuclear programme, but a military option was “ready”.

    US President Obama has previously said military action has not been ruled out.

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  • 0
    Posted on May 18th, 2012

    MUST READ: Greece’s options: a rock, a hard place, and oblivion

     

    Euro Crisis

    RUNS on banks. Mattresses stuffed with cash. Borders closed. Hyperinflation. Riots. Shortages of food, medicine and oil.  It’s not hard to envisage disaster scenarios for Greece if it exits the euro currency and returns to the drachma, a possibility that has spawned a new phrase: ”Grexit”.

    There are roughly three ways it could happen. First, Greece could voluntarily leave. Second, other eurozone nations could eject Greece. Or, third, perhaps most worrying at present, it could happen by accident through a widespread run on Greek banks.

  • 0
    Posted on May 18th, 2012

    Defiant Message From Greece

    The head of Greece’s radical left party—throwing down a gauntlet that could increase tensions between Greece and its frustrated European creditors—said he sees little chance Europe will cut off funding to the country but that if it does, Athens will stop paying its debts.

    A financial collapse in Greece would drag down the rest of the euro zone, said Alexis Tsipras, the 37-year-old head of the Coalition of the Radical Left, known as Syriza, and potentially the country’s next prime minister. Instead, he said, Europe must consider a more growth-oriented policy to arrest Greece’s spiraling recession and address what he called a growing “humanitarian crisis” facing the country.

    “Our first choice is to convince our European partners that, in their own interest, financing must not be stopped,” Mr. Tsipras said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. He said Greece doesn’t intend to take any unilateral action, “but if they proceed with unilateral action on their side, in other words they cut off our funding, then we will be forced to stop paying our creditors, to go to a suspension in payments to our creditors.”

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Emergency Preparedness
0
Posted on March 8th, 2012

Urban Danger Film

Urban Danger Trailer

See all 3 Episodes!

Civil Unrest • Depression • SHTF Anarchy
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0
Posted on May 18th, 2012

Moody’s downgrades 16 Spanish banks

Economic Crisis

Economic Crisis

Moody’s Investor Service carried out a sweeping downgrade of 16 Spanish banks on Thursday, including Banco Santander, the euro zone’s largest bank, citing a weak economy and the government’s reduced ability to support troubled lenders.

All the banks’ long-term debt ratings were downgraded by at least one notch, and some suffered three-notch cuts.

Spain’s banks, awash in bad loans after a real estate boom went bust, are at the heart of the euro zone debt crisis because markets fear a state bailout would put a severe strain on the country’s already stretched public finances.

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Euro Crisis • Featured • Spain
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0
Posted on May 15th, 2012

A last roll of the dice for the euro – and a gathering storm that should terrify us all

Get Ready

With every passing day, the chances recede that Spain will escape the kind of meltdown that has afflicted Greece and Ireland. With every passing day, too, the chances of the eurozone surviving dwindle still further. A Greek exit would send shock-waves through the eurozone. Portugal and even Spain would probably come under fierce market pressure in their turn.

What’s more, there is no guarantee that France will escape the European contagion. For it is becoming increasingly and disturbingly clear that there are huge problems across France’s Pyrenean border.

Portugal is in a terrible mess. After a €78?billion bailout last year, Lisbon slashed welfare spending, cut public sector pay and put up taxes.

will know what happened the last time the world economy collapsed in ruins.

With capitalism and democracy in retreat, many European countries turned to military strongmen, extremist agitators and xenophobic demagogues. Barely eight years after the continent’s banks had collapsed, the world was at war.

Austerity • Civil Unrest • Euro Crisis • Featured
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0
Posted on May 15th, 2012

Moody’s Downgrades 26 Italian Banks, Outlook Negative

Euro Crisis

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the long-term debt and deposit ratings for 26 Italian banks on Monday, citing the country’s recession and rising bad debt levels.

The banks were all downgraded by at least one notch, and for some, by as many as four notches, Moody’s said, adding all of the banks affected have a negative outlook.

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Economy • Euro Crisis • Italy
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0
Posted on May 10th, 2012

“We Are Preparing For Massive Civil War,” Says DHS Informant

… private investigator Doug Hagmann said high-level, reliable sources told him the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing for “massive civil war” in America.

Hagmann goes on to say that his sources tell him the concerns of the DHS stem from a collapse of the U.S. dollar and the hyperinflation a collapse in the value of the world’s primary reserve currency implies to a nation of 311 million Americans, who, for the significant portion of the population, is armed.

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Civil Unrest • Conspiracy Theories • Decline of the US • Department of Homeland Security • Depression • Featured • Hyperinflation
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0
Posted on May 10th, 2012

Greek turmoil deepens Europe’s debt crisis

Euro Crisis

The deepening political turmoil in Greece has begun reverberating throughout the global financial markets as Athens’ failure to form a government last weekend threatens to further undermine the battered European economy and banking system.

On Thursday, Greece’s fragmented political leadership failed in another last-ditch effort to form a government, all but assuring another round of elections next month. Voters swept from power the two major parties that had engineered a painful austerity plan with Europe’s wealthier countries, led by Germany, in exchange for an ongoing financial lifeline.

With no government in place to enforce spending cuts, the European Union temporarily cut off a portion of that lifeline, raising the likelihood that Greece will be forced to leave the 17-nation compact that shares a common currency. The Athens government is due to run out of cash in June.

Investors are also warily watching the looming “fiscal cliff” facing the biggest borrower of all, the U.S. government. Unless Congress and the White House can steer away from it, massive tax hikes and spending cuts are scheduled to take effect at year-end. Economists have warned the combined impact could cost the U.S. economy between 2.5 and 5 percent of gross domestic product, stopping the anemic recovery in its tracks.

Euro Crisis • Featured • Greece • Spain
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0
Posted on May 10th, 2012

Feds Warn of Cyber Attack Targeting Natural Gas Firms

Federal officials recently uncovered a cyber plot to infect various natural gas pipeline companies with malware.

A report from the Homeland Security Department’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) said this “active series of cyber intrusions” is related to a single spear-phishing campaign that dates back to December.

Back in November, DHS and the FBI shot down reports that a cyber attack took down a pump at an Illinois public water utility. That came about a month after a DHS memo suggested that hacker collective Anonymous might one day target industrial control systems (ICS) in the U.S., though it is not yet organized enough for the endeavor.

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Cyber-Terrorism • Power Grid
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0
Posted on May 9th, 2012

Nouriel Roubini, Europe Slow Motion Trainwreck

Nouriel Roubini, Euro-Zone Break Up

Euro Crisis • Featured
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0
Posted on May 3rd, 2012

Voting Out Austerity in Europe

Euro Crisis

In Greece, on the same day, parliamentary elections will produce a hammer blow to the existing two-party system and will significantly increase the strength of the anti-Europeans on the far left and the extreme right. These elections will be held in the context of a continuously worsening economic picture in the continent, which has convinced almost everyone—with the crucial exception of the Germans—that the current recipe of one-size-fits-all austerity is leading to catastrophe and needs to be modified before it causes irreparable harm.

Francois Hollande has long made it clear that he will not be the obedient junior partner to Angela Merkel that Nicolas Sarkozy has been. In particular, he has issued calls for a renegotiation of the fiscal compact agreed by 25 out of 27 EU members earlier this year, to make it more growth-friendly. He has insisted that without a supplementary package of pro-growth measures, he will refuse to ratify it. Read More…

Austerity • Euro Crisis • Featured • Greece
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0
Posted on May 3rd, 2012

State support hides ugly European bank ratings

Economic Crisis

Economic Crisis

An assumption that governments will bail them out is keeping European banks’ debt above junk status in the opinion of major rating agencies, but such implicit reliance on state aid is clouding future attempts to raise capital from private investors.

StarMine, a Thomson Reuters company which calculates default probabilities using quantitative data, however rates the debt of major banks across Europe at no higher than ‘speculative grade’ or ‘junk’.

That contrasts with more flattering headline ratings from large credit ratings agencies, which take into account factors like state support for banks which are seen as too big to fail, effectively ruling out a default.

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Credit Ratings • Euro Crisis • Featured
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