Journal: Yemen, Guns, Tribes, & Deja Vu

02 China, 03 India, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence, Policy

Three Guns for Every Person

Only Fools Rush Into Yemen

By PATRICK COCKBURN January 11, 2010

The mounting crisis in the country only attracted notice when a Nigerian student is revealed to have been “trained” in Yemen by al-Qa’ida to detonate explosives in his underpants on plane heading for Detroit. But this botched attack has led to the US and Britain starting to become entangled in one of the more violent countries in the world. The problems of Yemen are social, economic and political, and stretch back to the civil war in Yemen in the 1960s, but Gordon Brown believes solutions can be found by holding a one day summit on Yemen to “tackle extremism.”

Al-Qa’ida in Yemen is small, its active members numbering only 200-300 lightly armed militants in a country of 22 million people who are estimated to own no less than 60 million weapons. Al-Qa’ida has room to operate because central government authority barely extends outside the cities and because it can ally itself with the many opponents of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in office since the 1970s.

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2010/01/122010/01/12

Journal: Yemen and the “Great Game”

02 China, 03 India, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Peace Intelligence, Threats

The real motives behind the increasing US involvement in Yemen are obscure, to put it charitably. M.K. Bhadrakuma, retired Indian diplomat, presents a complex and fascinating — and no doubt controversial — hypothesis in this regard. Bhadrakuma, a prolific writer, is an astute observer of the Central and South Asia, and judged by his writings, he is by no means a toady of the Indian government.

Chuck

UPDATED to add critique of the below article by a colleague of Chuck Spinney's (below the fold).

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Obama's Yemeni odyssey targets China

By M K Bhadrakumar Asia Times 9 January 2010

It's all about China
Most important, however, for US global strategies will be the massive gain of control of the port of Aden in Yemen. Britain can vouchsafe that Aden is the gateway to Asia. Control of Aden and the Malacca Strait will put the US in an unassailable position in the “great game” of the Indian Ocean. The sea lanes of the Indian Ocean are literally the jugular veins of China's economy. By controlling them, Washington sends a strong message to Beijing that any notions by the latter that the US is a declining power in Asia would be nothing more than an extravagant indulgence in fantasy.

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2009/12/302009/12/30

Journal: One World, Region by Region, Tribe by Tribe

02 China, 03 India, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Policies

Phi Beta Iota: Chuck Spinney's flagging of the below piece supports the point we were making with the post on dynamic planning. For fifty years the USA has been throwing its weight around on the basis of partisan, ideological, and often illegimiate purposes, and it has been able to get a way with it because in an Industrial Era, might does make right. We are no longer in an Industrial Era. We've entered an era in which information asymmetries are being extinguished, while power asymmetries are emergent–demographic power trumps everything else when you get right down to it. This entire web site makes that point in the aggregate. On a sidenote, Kashmir is about water but no one seems to acknowledge that. Water is one of the things we are going to have to figure out how to do in a non-zero fashion. Hence, for the USA to dig itself a grave in Central Asia without giving any thought to the ten high-level threats to humanity as a whole, and the twelve policies, and the eigth demographic challengers, and to calculate a non-zero course through this maze, is nothing more than idiocy on steriods.

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The Afghan Triangle: Kashmir, India, Pakistan

Graham Usher

Graham Usher is a writer and journalist based in Pakistan and a contributing editor of Middle East Report.

For the last 61 years the fight has been fought, mostly, in and for Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK): the territory Delhi and Islamabad have contested since the 1947 partition cleaved them into two states—and Kashmir into “Pakistani” and “Indian” parts. Sometimes (1947, 1965, 1971, 1999) the war has been hot. More often it has been waged via Pakistani proxies against a standing Indian military. Since 1989, it has been channeled through a low-intensity, Pakistan-backed separatist-Islamist insurgency that has killed 50,000 people and incurred an Indian military occupation three times the size of America’s in Iraq and three times as lethal.

See also:

Scott Atran

Professor and author

Posted: December 30, 2009 11:57 AM

The Terror Scare

2009/12/132009/12/13

Officers Call: A Conversation About Iraq II

02 China, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 10 Security, Analysis, Ethics, IO Sense-Making, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Sir,

There's nothing inherently wrong with the analysis of Al Qaeda (I just glanced at it, if you wish I can read in detail today). The PROBLEM lies not so much in how we analyze support to terrorism (state, crime, other) but rather in the way we analyze (or rather do NOT analyze) EVERYTHING.

Here's what I have thrown together for you, in six pages with links.

Summary of Contents (OC Iraq II)

Why We Missed the Threat
Terrorism is Threat Number Nine Out of Ten
Terrorism is a Tactic, Al Qaeda an Interest Group
Without Legitimacy Forget About Stabilization
Rebalancing the Instruments of National Power
Three Things Secret Intelligence Cannot Do
Advise & Assist Transition to Exit Menu
- Strategic Communications
- Inter-Agency Professionals
- Regional Concordat
- Faith Brigades
- Redirect Funds Toward Waging Peace
- Contain Israel
- Make Nice with China

Officers Call on Iraq I

Semper Fidelis, Robert

2009/12/022009/12/02

Journal: Brazil Whacks US via WTO on Cotton

01 Agriculture, 01 Brazil, 02 China, 03 India, 06 Russia, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government

Brazil Wins WTO Approval to Sanction U.S. Over Cotton (Update2)

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) — Brazil won the World Trade Organization’s approval to start retaliating against the U.S. because of subsidies paid to American cotton farmers.

The WTO gave Brazil permission in August to impose $294.7 million in sanctions against U.S. goods — the second-highest amount ever permitted by the Geneva-based trade arbiter — and Brazil’s government earlier this month released a list of 222 products that may be subject to increased duties. The list includes cotton and other agricultural and textile products as well as U.S. exports such as electronics, cosmetics, ketchup, cars, chewing gum, medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.

WTO judges found in September 2004 that as much as $4 billion in annual U.S. payments to cotton farmers violated global trade rules by encouraging excess production and driving down world prices. In June 2008, they upheld a finding that the U.S., the world’s largest exporter of the fiber, hadn’t done enough to scrap aid to its cotton producers.

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2009/11/302009/11/30

Journal: China, Gold, Silver, and the Future

02 China, 03 Economy, Civil Society, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government

How and why China will flood the gold market

Number is even more striking for silver

Phi Beta Iota: Three points:

1. An audit of Fort Knox will probably disclose that USA has half its claimed holdings in gold.

2. China is leveraging the considerable buying power of its multi-billion population in a very clever manner.

3. China has 80% or more of all the other precious metals including those needed to create green energy, still in the ground–the rest of the world will pay dearly for them The USA has failed to do a current strategic resources survey and has no strategy for getting into the future in any semblance of peace and prosperity for all.

Below the Fold: Reference Links on Chinese Strategic Minerals

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2009/11/262009/11/27

Journal: China May Demand Physical Gold

02 China, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Ethics, Government

SPECIAL FROM OUR SOURCES IN ASIA

Gold could be about to get disorderly also as it approaches the key $1200 call option strike. The strong rumour is the large $1200oz Dec call owner is the Peoples Bank of China. Gold traders increasingly believe that China will force physical delivery of 2.8moz of gold instead of the usual cash settlement. My contacts suggest short-term mayhem may be about to break out in gold for a few days as those who have sold the call and get exercised scramble to buy physical for delivery. To put this in context 2.8moz is around 80 tonnes of gold. Yes, it's that big and you can see why there is short-covering everywhere in gold.

Phi Beta Iota: If John Mack becomes Secretary of the Treasury, we anticipate China having a subtle but respected influence on the US Treasury as a condition for selective cover-ups, and China managing the situation so it ultimately gets compensation for all the gold stolen by Japen and confiscated by the US to create the Treasury Black Eagle Trust and Golden Lily slush funds. China did NOT sign the San Francisco Treaty and is on solid ground. We respect John Mack, he might possibly be the first truly multinational Secretary of the Treasury, and if he can make a commitment to Open Money and Real Wealth as a future path for the global economy, he could conceivably be the single most important person in the 21st Century. For background see

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