Portside

The Pandora's Box Award to Israel and the U.S. for launching the world's first cyber war and creating a monster in the process. In 2010 both countries secretly released the Stuxnet virus to disable Iran's nuclear energy program, in the process crashing thousands of Teheran's centrifuges.

According to a report by the security company Cylance, "Stuxnet was an eye-opening event for the Iranian authorities, exposing them to the world of physical destruction via electronic means. Retaliation for Stuxnet began almost immediately."

The Financial Times now reports that "Iranian hackers have penetrated dozens of international organizations, including six top-tier oil and gas companies, six international airports, seven airlines, a blue-chip U.S. defense contractor, 10 prestigious universities, and the government computer systems of several Gulf states."

An Iranian hacker program dubbed "Cleaver" has, according to Cylance, "extracted highly sensitive materials" from governments and key companies in Canada, China, France, Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Britain, China, Germany, India, Mexico, Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.

What ye sow, so shall ye reap.

The Golden Scold Award to Germany and Chancellor Andrea Merkel for lecturing the Greeks on profligate spending and forcing Athens to swallow crippling austerity measures, while at the same time bribing Greek military officials to spend billions of dollars on useless weapons.

According to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, arms dealers-mostly German, but also French, Swedish, and Russian-handed out close to $3 billion in bribes to secure $68 billion in weapons contracts over the next decade. One arms dealer dropped off a suitcase with over $800,000 in it at the Greek Arms Ministry.

Athens spent $2.3 billion to buy 170 German Leopard II tanks, which are largely useless for fighting in Greek terrain. In any case, the tanks were sent without any ammunition (although this past August The Greek Defense Ministry coughed up $69.9 million to buy ammunition from the German company Rheinmetall)

The Greeks also paid more than $4 billion to purchase German submarines that are still in dry dock, and, from all accounts, are very noisy. It is not good to be noisy in the silent service. According to Der Spiegel, the German company that makes the U-214 shelled out over $2 million in bribes to land the contract.

In the meantime, the austerity policies forced on Greece by the "troika" of international lenders-the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, and the European Union-has impoverished millions of people and driven the unemployment rate to over 20 percent (50 percent for those under 25). Since 2008, Greek infant mortality has risen 21 percent and child mortality is up 43 percent. Suicides are up 45 percent.

In exchange for the military spending, the Greeks got submarines that sit on the land, tanks they can't use, and lectures from Merkel about saving money.

The Misplaced Priorities Award goes the Indian government for spending $33 million on a nearly 600-foot bronze statue of Indian independence leader Vallabhbhai Patel, while, according to the UN, 213 million Indians are undernourished-the most for any country in the world and constituting one out of every four hungry people on the planet. Some 48 percent of children under five are below weight, and India and Nigeria account for almost one-third of deaths among children under five. Inequality in earnings is worse in India than in any other emerging economy in the world. Life expectancy is actually better in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Independent investigative journalist P. Sainath, who has covered rural India for decades, writes that "A total of 2,960,438 farmers have committed suicide since 1995." In virtually every case the cause was debt to moneylenders and landlords.

Dispatches suggests Indian government leaders design a program to aid farmers, feed the poor, and take a moment to read Percy Shelley's poem "Ozmandias."

The Shoot-In-The-Foot Award to the Obama administration for ending the purchase of Russian-made RD-180 rocket engines as part of U.S. sanctions leveled at Moscow over the crisis in the Ukraine. The RD-180-a cheap, reliable workhorse engine that has lifted U.S. Atlas III and Atlas V rockets into space since 1997-will cost $1.5 billion and six years to replace. A new engine means that launch vehicles will also need to be re-designed and satellite programs delayed. In the end, that could cost $5 billion.

In retaliation for the RD-180 ban, Russia will no longer lend its Soyuz rockets to supply the international space station. Asked how astronauts will get to the station, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin suggested they "use a trampoline."

The European Space Agency (ESA) will also take a hit. Besides losing the Soyuz taxi service to the space station, the ESA will lose access to the RD-180 engine as well, and will have to accelerate its troubled Ariane VI rocket program to replace the Agency's Ariane V. The "VI" has been criticized as too big, too inflexible, and much too expensive-$4. 2 billion.

Russia announced it would shift monies it spends on the International space station to joint space projects with China.

The Dog Ate My Homework Award to the British Foreign Office for "accidentally destroying" documents which would have shown that London was deeply-and illegally-involved in the U.S. CIA's rendition program. Renditions moved terror suspects to countries that allowed torture, or kept the suspects in secret "black bases" where the CIA carried out its own torture program.

Britain allowed over 1,600 CIA flights in and out of the country and permitted suspects to be held at the British-controlled island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Complicity with the rendition program is a violation of British domestic laws against kidnapping, arbitrary detention, and the right to a fair trial. It also violates international laws against torture.

"It's looking worse and worse for the UK government on Diego Garcia," says Cori Crider, director of the human rights organization Reprieve. "They need to come clean about how, when, and where this evidence was lost."

Foreign Office Minister Mark Simmons says the records were lost due to "water damage."

The Mouse That Roared Award to the Marshall Islands for hauling the nuclear armed powers-the U.S., China, Russia, France, Britain, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea-before the International Court of Justice at Hague for violating Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Article VI calls for the "cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and nuclear disarmament." India, Israel and Pakistan are not treaty members-North Korea withdrew-but its hard to argue with the Marshallese on the subject of nukes: in 1954 the U.S. vaporized Bikini Atoll with a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb and irradiated thousands of islanders.

Over a period of 12 years, the U.S. detonated some 67 nuclear warheads with an aggregate explosive power of 42.2 megatons in the Marshalls. The Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons. The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal found the U.S. liable for $2 billion in damages, but so far Washington has only paid out $150 million.

It wasn't just Marshall Islanders who got zapped either. The Center for Investigative Reporting found that the U.S. Navy decommissioned some of the ships that had taken part in those tests at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. The Navy then buried the nuclear waste around the island, creating numerous "hot spots." Some 2,000 low-income or homeless San Francisco residents-who live in subsidized housing on the island-were assured there was nothing to worry about, and then instructed not to let their children dig in front or back yards ("Look, Mom, this rock glows in the dark!").

Nuclear contamination was also found at several other California bases, including Alameda Naval Air Station, Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, and McClellan Air Force Base near the state's capital, Sacramento.

Radiation, the gift that keeps on giving.

Golden Lemon Award once again goes to Lockheed Martin for its $1.5 trillion F-35 stealth fighter-bomber-the most expensive weapon system in U.S. history-that can't get its software to work, won't fly in the rain, and burns up trying to get off the ground. In fact, foreign buyers are beginning to have second thoughts about buying the plane at all. Canada just tested the F-35 against the old U.S. F-18 Super Hornet, the Eurofighter Typhoon, and France's Dassault Rafale and found the only difference was that the F-35 was much more expensive: between $116 million to $160 million per plane, vs., respectively, $60 million, $90 million, and $64 million apiece.

The U.S. was forced to cancel the F-35's debut at the prestigious Farnborough International Air Show in Britain because a plane caught fire trying to take off from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. The F-35 has since been restricted to lower speeds and three hours flying time, not enough to make the hop across the Atlantic.

Lockheed Martin and Austal USA also scored big in the Lemon category with their Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), the USS Freedom and the USS Independence. The $37 billion LCS program will build a fleet of shallow draft, high-speed warships that, according to a recent Pentagon study, won't survive combat. The Defense Department's Director of Operational Testing and Evaluation, Michael Gilmore, says Lockheed Martin's USS Freedom and Austal's USS Independence, are "not expected to be survivable in a hostile combat environment and are not intended to be employed in a manner that puts them in harm's way."

Translation: if they get in a fight, they're toast.

But that might not be a problem because the LCSs high maintenance requirements means the ships can't get to where the action is anyhow. The USS Freedom spent 58 percent of its time in Singapore port-more than twice the average for U.S. Navy ships-and the USS Independence spent most its time tied up in San Diego.

A Farewell to Fred Branfman, who died from Lou Gehrig's disease at 72. Branfman helped expose the secret U.S. air war against Laos that killed tens of thousands of civilians and sowed that tiny country with millions of unexploded bombs, weapons that continue to inflict pain and death on Laotians today. The U.S. carried out 580,000 bombing missions over Laos, dropping almost a ton of bombs for every person in that country. Branfman help to found the Indochina Resource Center, which documented what he had seen in Laos as an aid worker. He later wrote "Voices From the Plain of Jars: Life Under an Air War."

Presente!

[Conn M. Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, and an independent journalist. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. He oversaw the journalism program at the University of California at Santa Cruz for 23 years, and won the UCSC Alumni Association's Distinguished Teaching Award, as well as UCSC's Innovations in Teaching Award, and Excellence in Teaching Award.  He was also a college provost at UCSC, and retired in 2004. He is a winner of a Project Censored "Real News Award," and lives in Berkeley, California. For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.]

Thanks to the author for sending this to Portside.