Iraq: For the record. The Iraqi Defense Ministry disabled al Qaida's “biggest electronic website,” a spokesman for the ministry said on 9 December. The Iraqi army discovered the location of Al-Furqan website and seized its devices and equipment, the spokesman said. He said Arabs operated the website, which Iraq considers al Qaida's ministry of information for the world.
Reference: America’s War on Islam by Patrick Seale
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Analysis, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Officers Call, Policy, Strategy
NIGHTWATCH Extract: Japan and Search for Rare Earths (e.g. Lithium)
01 Brazil, 02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, StrategyJapan and the Search for Rare Earth Elements
India: The Japanese trading house Toyota Tsusho Corporation announced that it will begin construction of a rare earth processing plant in India in 2011 in an effort to secure suppliers beyond China, Kyodo reported.
The group company of Toyota Motor Corp. will build the plant in Orison State with plans to launch by the end of 2011. The plant will be constructed in collaboration with Indian Rare Earths Ltd., an affiliate of state-owned Nuclear Power Corp. of India, and with Japan's Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Japan hopes the plant will produce and export 3,000 to 4,000 tons of rare earth elements each year beginning in 2012.
Bolivia: Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and Bolivian President Eva Morales agreed during a meeting in Tokyo to cooperate on the development of commercial lithium extraction in Bolivia. Japan would like to help Bolivia develop its resources, Kan said.
Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akihiro Oat said Japan was prepared to supply technology and infrastructure. Tokyo is also ready to contribute to the development of Bolivia's human resources, Oat said. Morales, who arrived in Tokyo on the 7th and Kan also confirmed their cooperation on a geothermal power plant project in Bolivia. Japan will extend loans to fund that project, Kyodo reported.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: Japan is taking long term action to reduce its dependence on Chinese supplies of rare earth elements, which China chose to manipulate for political purposes during the Senkaku Islands dispute. Japan is implementing its own version of economic colonialism in India and Bolivia to ensure secure supplies in the long run.
Phi Beta Iota: While India is an obvious location poised to compete for Central Asian rare earths as well as help accelerate India's own discoveries, Bolivia is even more interesting because of its closeness to Chile, which is the only country we know of that is immediately capable of achieving infinite free energy. For Chile (and Brazil) to fail to see the importance of leveraging near-by sources of rare earths is a strategic error of substantial import.
See Also:
NIGHTWATCH Extract: Sudan Denounces NGOs
08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Corporations, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, IO Mapping, Methods & Process, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Non-Governmental, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, StrategySudan: Sudanese media broadcast the following decree on Monday.
Marshal Umer Hassan Al-Bashir the President of the Republic, the president of the National Congress Party has authorized the state governors to expel NGOs and persons that do not respect the country's sovereignty, work guidelines within 24 hours. He added we respect the NGOs that come to assist us and we reject whoever intends to control us. He indicated that some NGOs have spread rumors that they work in Sudan without the need of the government approvals. He directed the governors to expel the NGOs that do not adhere to their authorities on the same day.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: The government in Khartoum remains highly suspicious of western aid organizations that it suspects of encouraging separatism in Darfur and the South. This decree is a manifestation of that suspicion because it mentions rumor mongering. A government has a right to control foreigners without further justification. Odd behavior…
Phi Beta Iota: This is the beginning of the end for predatory NGO's including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and of course all the religious NGOs and the corporate pseudo-NGOs. They have lost all trust for a good reason. On the one hand, they have been spending less than 10% of what they have collected under the various guises (Katrina, Haiti, etcetera) and on the other they are now demonstrably untrustworthy and ineffective. The next big step forward will be hybrid arrangements in which public intelligence both validates every move, every expense, every bona fides, and harmonizes a diversity of efforts toward a common publicly-appraised and accepted purpose.
Journal: Two Denied Area Intelligence Failures
02 China, 08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, Military
The first of two on IC failures….as if we didn't need any more proof. DefDog
Reports indicate China's fifth generation jet fighter rollout far ahead of U.S. intel projections
East-Asia-Intel.com, December 1, 2010
Chinese military Internet reports indicate that China may roll out its first fifth generation fighter as early as this month, far earlier than the Pentagon projected China would have the advance warplane.
Second report…..
Series of U.S. intelligence failures on North Korea highlighted by tour of enrichment facility
East-Asia-Intel.com, December 1, 2010
North Korea's recent disclosure of a new uranium enrichment facility with
a light water reactor and centrifuge cascade is seen as a serious U.S.
intelligence and policy failure that goes back over a decade.
Phi Beta Iota: We do not control what our various contributors post, while reserving the right to comment. These are both serious intelligence failures, both indicative of the inability of the US Intelligence Community to do its job across the board, from collection to processing to analysis. There are many other failures, for example with respect to China's new superiority in submarine stealth (able to sneak past an entire carrier battle group to pop up immediately astern the central carrier), and their overwhelming superiority in cyber-space, where they have mastered, among many other capabilities, the art of riding electrical power circuits into US military computers from Peterson AFB to Fort Meade MD. As troubling as these failures are, they are actually the least of our worries. Of greater importance to the over-all security of the US is the culture of corruption, not just at CIA but at all the agencies including DIA, the FBI, and the NRO, as well as within the service intelligence centers. Just as General Mike Flynn is on record as saying that US Intelligence is “irrelevant” in Afghanistan, so also can it be said that US intelligence is “irrelevant” across the board–it is not contributing anything warranting its $90 billion a year budget, with nothing to show at the strategic, operational, tactical, or technical (acquisition) levels. We need not be this incapacitated. We are choosing to be ineffective, and that is most troubling of all.
Journal: Egypt Elections–Muslim Brotherhood Loses, Internet Wins
08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Mobile
Professor and Director of Project on Information Technology and Political Islam
Posted: December 3, 2010 10:57 AM
EXTRACT:
But Mubarak's real enemy is no longer the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a complex, fractured umbrella group, and the practice of faith and opposition to Mubarak may not be enough to hold it together much longer. There is also the Kefaya movement, a loosely organized network of cosmopolitan Nasserites, Islamists, and leftists, that has organized some successful protests but has lost some momentum.
Mubarak's real opponents are tech-savvy activists and wired civic groups.
In the last few years, the internet has become the primary incubator of democratic political conversation. The state has never had this role, and the Muslim Brotherhood is no longer the exclusive provider. Instead, civil society in Egypt has moved online, using the information infrastructure of digital media as the place for difficult political conversations about regime change, gender and political life, and transnational Islamic identity.
This infrastructure is beyond the reach of the state.
Journal: December Theater of the Absurd
08 Wild Cards, Officers Call
Note: This Reuters report provides additional relevant information. A pdf copy of the referenced ICG report can be downloaded from this link: Afghanistan: Exit vs. Engagement
Chuck Spinney
December 2, 2010
The Unmentioned Question
Staying the Course in Afghanistan
By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY
Counterpunch
A report, “Afghanistan: Exit vs. Engagement” released on 28 November 2010 by the International Crisis Group (ICG), an organization biased to advocate the neo-imperialistic policy of “humanitarian intervention,” is very important and should be studied carefully for at least two reasons:
First, and most importantly, the ICG makes a concise, and I think accurate, summary of how badly things have gone wrong in Afghanistan, particularly at the all-important grand strategic level of conflict, where the destructive effects of a military strategy must be harmony with, but subordinate to, the constructive aims of the larger political strategy. The ICG’s devastating indictment reveals in considerable detail the extent to which the United States and its Nato lackeys have thoroughly gomered up their nine-year intervention in Afghanistan.
Second, the ICG report is obviously written to influence the so-called policy review that the Obama administration will make in December. Obama’s review is likely to simply rubber stamp the “stay-the-course” non-decisions made in the recent NATO conference in Lisbon. What is revealing about the ICG report is that, in stark contrast to its detailed analysis of our policy mistakes, it contains no concrete recommendations for evolving a corrective pathway into the future.
Phi Beta Iota: Immature intelligence, non-existent strategy, and partisan politicized decision-making processes combine to create the theater of the absurd. Ten threats, twelve policies, eight demographic players–either think about them together, simultaneously, or abandon all pretense of being qualified to govern.
