Month: December 2010

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NIGHTWATCH Extracts: Self-Delusions About AF-PK

08 Wild Cards, Officers Call

Afghanistan: A Coalition officer told the US press today that “There is no practical way to secure the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and the U.S. military will fight insurgents outside Afghan villages where they are vulnerable.” The officer remarked that securing the border would take an inordinate amount of resources and would require more cooperation from tribes inside Pakistan.

NIGHTWATCH Comment: NightWatch Readers should understand that the fight in Afghanistan primarily is waged by Afghan Pashtun fighters who live in Afghanistan and hate foreigners, especially from Christian nations. The data show that Pakistan is important as the channel for logistic support to the Afghan fighters. Pakistan is not a recruitment base for anti-government fighters in Afghanistan and not a winter refuge.

The Afghan Pashtuns fight where they live. They get ammunition and supplies from Pakistan. They do not spend the winter in Pakistan, which well informed Readers and old hands recognize as complete nonsense.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH Extracts: Self-Delusions About AF-PK”

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Journal: Aid Groups Question US Claims on Taliban Set-Backs

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption
DefDog Recommends...

KABUL, Afghanistan — Citing evidence that Taliban insurgents have expanded their reach across Afghanistan, aid groups and security analysts in the country are challenging as misleading the Obama administration's recent claim that insurgents now control less territory than they did a year ago.

“Absolutely, without any reservation, it is our opinion that the situation is a lot more insecure this year than it was last year,” said Nic Lee, the director of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, an independent organization that analyzes security dangers for aid groups.

Read rest of article….

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Tom Atlee Sends: 10 Hopeful, 5 Overlooked Stories

11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence

5 Overlooked Stories (CSM)

1. Stuxnet
2. TARP is Cheap
3. Common School Standards
4. Rise of Natural Gas
5. Twilight of the Desktop

20 Hopeful Stories (YES! Magazine)

1.    Climate Crisis Response Takes a New Direction
2.    Wikileaks Lifts the Veil
3.    Momentum is Building for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons
4.    Resilience is the New Watchword
5.    Health Care—Still in Play
6.    Corporate Power Challenged
7.    A local economy movement is taking off
8.    Cooperatives Make a Comeback.
9.    A Turn Away from Homophobia
10.   Social Movements Still Our Best Hope

Full details below the line

Continue reading “Tom Atlee Sends: 10 Hopeful, 5 Overlooked Stories”

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2011 OSINT Discovery Toolkit–Reuser’s Repertorium

Blog Wisdom, Book Lists, Briefings (Core), Fact Sheets, Handbook Elements, Historic Contributions, IO Multinational, Methods & Process, Tools, White Papers

This is THE toolbox, available in both long and short versions, we recommend you start with the long and then rapidly migrate to the short.  Arno is THE “dean” of OSINT for government, and the “dean” of the advanced librarian discovery movement.

LONG VERSION

SHORT VERSION

We strongly endorse Arno Reuser as an individual, and recommend his training offerings available directly from him.  By-pass the external vendor training link at the Repertorium and send him a direct email.

Arno's Profile

Worth a Look: Arno Reuser OSINT Wizard

Journal: Seriously Weird, & Then There Is Arno

When InterNET is InterNOT

2006 Reuser (NL) on Virtual Open Source Agency

2003 Reuser (NL) on Intelligence Librarian Tradecraft

Journal: Librarians and The Accessibility Paradox

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Journal: Analysis of STUXNET, Iran, and US Vulnerability

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement
Berto Jongman Recommends...

David Albright, Paul Brannan, and Christina Walrond

22 December 2010, Preliminary Assessment

Did Stuxnet Take Out 1,000 Centrifuges at the Natanz Enrichment Plant?

10 pages

Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS)

Phi Beta Iota: US Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) computer systems are still on the Internet and still very vulnerable to internal and external interference, as well as the standard 50% “errors and omissions” that come with sloppy computer work so characteristic of US vendors.  Many sounded the alarm in 1990 (Winn Schwartau, Peter Black) through 1994 (Robert Steele, various field grade officers at the Air War College) but no one wanted to listen.  The US is as close to a complex melt-down (political-legal, socio-economic, ideo-cultural, techno-demographic, natural-geographic) as we have witnessed in our lifetime.

See Also:

1998 TAKEDOWN: Targets, Tools, & Technocracy

1995 Military Perspective on Information Warfare: Apocalypse Now

Although other papers have been written since then, the three “originals” in the author's view are Major Gerald R. Hust, “Taking Down Telecommunications”, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1993); Major Thomas E. Griffith, Jr., “Strategic Attack of National Electrical Systems”, School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1994; and H. D. Arnold, J. Hukill, and A. Cameron of the Department of the Air Force, “Targeting Financial Systems as Centers of Gravity: ‘Low Intensity' to ‘No Intensity' Conflict”, in Defense Analysis (Volume 10 Number 2, pages 181-208), 1994.

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Journal: US Corporations Growing Outside US, No Jobs In US

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

I received this email from a close friend, a Republican of the old school:

“When 50+ years ago Engine Charlie Wilson said what's good for General Motors is good for America, he was mostly right. Now corporations have turned that aphorism on its head.”

Tuesday, Dec 28, 2010 08:03 ET

Where are the jobs? Overseas, of course

American consumers have little to do with the big profits many top American corporations are now racking up

By PALLAVI GOGOI, Associated Press

Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn't anyone hiring?

Actually, many American companies are — just maybe not in your town. They're hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.

EXTRACT: Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria worries that the trend could be dangerous. In an article in the November issue of the Harvard Business Review, he says that if U.S. businesses keep prospering while Americans are struggling, business leaders will lose legitimacy in society. He exhorted business leaders to find a way to link growth with job creation at home.

Other economists, like Columbia University's Sachs, say multinational corporations have no choice, especially now that the quality of the global work force has improved. Sachs points out that the U.S. is falling in most global rankings for higher education while others are rising.

“We are not fulfilling the educational needs of our young people,” says Sachs. “In a globalized world, there are serious consequences to that.”

Read complete article at Salon.com….

See Also:

Reference: 2011 Brave New Dystopia

Search: US fraud tri-fecta

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Journal: Special Forces, Gay Men, and Co-Ed Showers

Cultural Intelligence, Military
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Army invited attention to following article in this morning's daily “Stand-To” e-mail.

Special forces wary of ‘don't ask, don't tell' repeal

By Rowan Scarborough

The Washington Times

6:39 p.m., Monday, December 27, 2010

Read full article…

EXTRACT: The working group's report contained this observation: “These survey results reveal to us a misperception that a gay man does not ‘fit' the image of a good warfighter – a misperception that is almost completely erased when a gay service member is allowed to prove himself alongside fellow warfighters.

“Anecdotally, we heard much the same. As one special-operations force warfighter told us, ‘We have a gay guy [in the unit]. He's big, he's mean, and he kills lots of bad guys. No one cared that he was gay.' ”

Said Adm. Worthington: “It just depends on how they comport themselves. If they start breaking out the bows and the earrings in the barracks, that might cause a little trouble. That becomes a good order and discipline sort of thing. The services are going to have to tighten up on regulations.”