TIMBUKTU, Mali (AP) — A year before he was caught on an intercept discussing the terror plot that prompted this week's sweeping closure of U.S. embassies abroad, al-Qaida's top operative in Yemen laid out his blueprint for how to wage jihad in letters sent to a fellow terrorist.
In what reads like a lesson plan, Nasser al-Wahishi provides a step-by-step assessment of what worked and what didn't in Yemen. But in the never-before-seen correspondence, the man at the center of the latest terror threat barely mentions the extremist methods that have transformed his organization into al-Qaida's most dangerous branch.
Instead, he urges his counterpart in Africa whose fighters had recently seized northern Mali to make sure the people in the areas they control have electricity and running water. He also offers tips for making garbage collection more efficient.
“Try to win them over through the conveniences of life,” he writes. “It will make them sympathize with us and make them feel that their fate is tied to ours.”
The power of the web is a hot topic for business journals and Internet startups, notably its ability to turn a simple idea into a powerful force by leveraging existing social interactions and letting people share what’s important to them. No longer do we rely on a few experts and advertisers to dole out information according to their own priorities, and passively consume that information. On the contrary, content can be created and curated by literally thousands of ‘average’ people with above average interest and insight, and spread across huge aggregations of likeminded people.
I’ve been watching closely the up-and-coming site “One Hundred Tables,” a restaurant listing site that’s built on a simple idea: one hundred featured restaurants in each of one hundred cities. Founder Tony Akston has created a million-dollar business model by charging just $100 to be listed, a sum a restaurant can recoup by snagging just one new regular. The concept is simple, the site is low in cost to host and maintain, and it offers something every entrepreneur strives for: overwhelming value for the customer. The price point is almost unthinkably reasonable given the opportunity for return – a rare business “no brainer.” The real earning potential is in the exponential multiplication of small transactions – a staple concept for web-based businesses.
Who Are They? What Do They Want? Why Do They Fight?
This paper presents the results of 78 in-depth interviews conducted with self-identified Afghan insurgents. If the interviewees are indeed representative of broader Taliban sentiments, then the future of Afghanistan is grim. It appears that only the return of a ‘pious’ Islamic government will satisfy them.
Hot on the heels of my last blogpost “Israel: The contrarian agenda” comes this. Michael Scheuer – the ex CIA man who is throwing his word around the world on media and at International book festivals as if he is some “guru” of the Intelligence world – which, being ex CIA, I guess he has the right to think so.
EXTRACT:
2. Michael Scheuer is a jesuit
Scheuer was born in Buffalo and graduated from Canisius College in 1974, and went on to earn an M.A. from Niagara University in 1976 and another M.A. from Carleton University in 1982. He also received a Ph.D. in British Empire-U.S.-Canada-U.K. relations from the University of Manitoba in 1986.
My good friend Pierre Sprey emailed me the attached article by Jonathan Latham along with his introduction. While this truly frightening critique applies to genetics, the politicization of science is a widespread phenomenon that is now undermining our contemporary culture. It can be seen many fields ranging from defense science to climate science. With Pierre's permission I am his forwarding introductory comment and as Latham very important essay to you.
—-[Begin Pierre's email]—-
I commend to you this excellent article, a most interesting example of negative marginal returns in science research:
The third and fourth paragraphs from the end are particularly telling:
“Not sufficiently understood by outsiders is the fact that most of science is essentially now a top-down project. There persists a romantic notion (retained by many scientists) that science is a process of free enquiry. In this view, the endless grant applications and the requests for applications are merely quality control measures, or irritants imposed by bureaucrats.
But free enquiry in science is all but extinct. In reality, only a tiny proportion of research in biology gets done outside of straightjackets imposed by funding agencies. Researchers design their projects around funding programs; universities organize their hiring around them, and every experiment is carefully designed to bolster the next grant application.
The consequences of this dynamic are that individual scientists have negligible power within the system; but more importantly it opens a route by which powerful political or commercial forces can surreptitiously set the science agenda from above.”
Needless to say, the article in toto is a reminder that the despicable Progressive penchant for eugenics–so fulsomely admired by Hitler and so eloquently excoriated by Alexander Cockburn–is once again flourishing among us.
Can it be a coincidence that this eugenic resurgence comes just when our ever-present native American fascist undercurrents are rising on a perigean spring tide of metasticizing secret surveillance, police aggrandizement, corporate kleptocracy, Judeo-Christian fanaticism and racist xenophobia?
Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth — serious people on a serious mission.
The 9/11 Consensus Panel, co-founded by David Ray Griffin, lends its support to the ReThink911 Ad campaign; Scale models of the WTC complex highlight the new items added to the AE911Truth Store; Senator Tammy Baldwin and other politicians struggle to respond to key 9/11 questions from CSPAN callers; ReThink911 is now approved for ads in San Francisco, London and Sydney – donate to make them a reality!
Despite consumer confidence at a six-year high, the latest AP survey of the real America shows a stunning four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, are near poverty, or rely on welfare for at least parts of their lives amid signs of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among whites about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987.
“Poverty is no longer an issue of ‘them', it's an issue of ‘us',” as ‘the invisible poor' – lower income whites – are generally dispersed in suburbs (Appalachia, the industrial Midwest, and across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains) where more than 60% of the poor are white.
More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four – accounting for more than 41% of the nation's destitute – nearly double the number of poor blacks and as one survey respondent noted “I think it's going to get worse.”
