Category: 10 Security

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Journal: Appeal to Obama on Afghanistan

02 Diplomacy, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military
DefDog Recommends...

Obama ‘must talk to Afghan Taliban'

By Staff Reporter
AFP Global Edition

Dec 11, 2010 11:36 EST

A group of influential international experts on Afghanistan Saturday appealed to US President Barack Obama to radically change his strategy in the war-ravaged nation and negotiate directly with the Taliban.

. . . . . . .

“It is better to negotiate now rather than later, since the Taliban will likely be stronger next year.”

“The situation on the ground is much worse than a year ago because the Taliban insurgency has made progress across the country,” the letter said.

“The Taliban today are now a national movement with a serious presence in the north and the west of the country.”

. . . . . . .

“Like it or not, the Taliban are a long-term part of the Afghan political landscape and we need to try and negotiate with them in order to reach a diplomatic settlement. The Taliban's leadership has indicated its willingness to negotiate and it is in our interests to talk to them.”

Full article….

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Reference: Lying is Not Patriotic–Ron Paul

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Media, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Movies, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Videos/Movies/Documentaries, YouTube
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Several truths, nine questions.

Ron Paul on YouTube

Phi Beta Iota: Here are the questions as asked:

01  Do the American people deserve to know the truth regarding the on-going war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen?

02  Could a larger questions be how can an Army private gain access to so much secret information?

03  Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange the publisher and not  our government's failure to protect classified information?

04  Are we getting our money's worth from the $80 billion dollars per year we are spending on intelligence gathering?

05  Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths?  Lying us into war, or WikiLeaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?

06  If Assange can be convicted of a crime for information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the First Amendment and the independence of the Internet?

07  Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?

08  Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death, and corruption?

09  Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?

See Also:

Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both

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Journal: Cyber-Idiocy Wipes Out Productivity

07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Cyberscams, malware, spam, InfoOps (IO), Military, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Standards, Technologies
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Information has never been so free. Even in authoritarian countries information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable. — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, January 21, 2010

So much for that….

Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

By Noah Shachtman, Wired, December 9, 2010  |  7:02 pm<

It’s too late to stop WikiLeaks from publishing thousands more classified documents, nabbed from the Pentagon’s secret network. But the U.S. military is telling its troops to stop using CDs, DVDs, thumb drives and every other form of removable media — or risk a court martial.

Maj. Gen. Richard Webber, commander of Air Force Network Operations, issued the Dec. 3 “Cyber Control Order” — obtained by Danger Room — which directs airmen to “immediately cease use of removable media on all systems, servers, and stand alone machines residing on SIPRNET,” the Defense Department’s secret network. Similar directives have gone out to the military’s other branches.

Read the rest of this sorry tale….

See Also:

Graphic: Cyber-Threat 101

Journal: Army Industrial-Era Network Security + Cyber-Security RECAP (Links to Past Posts)

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Journal: Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists, Internal Al Qaeda Critiques

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, IO Mapping
Berto Jongman Recommends...

Deradicalizing Islamist Extremists

by Angel Rabasa, Stacie Pettyjohn, Jeremy Ghez, Christopher Boucek

RAND Monograph 2010 242 Pages Free Online or $26

Proactive measures to prevent vulnerable individuals from radicalizing and to rehabilitate those who have already embraced extremism have been implemented, to varying degrees, in several Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian, and European countries. A key question is whether the objective of these programs should be disengagement (a change in behavior) or deradicalization (a change in beliefs) of militants. Furthermore, a unique challenge posed by militant Islamist groups is that their ideology is rooted in a major world religion. An examination of deradicalization and counter-radicalization programs in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe assessed the strengths and weaknesses of each program, finding that the best-designed programs leverage local cultural patterns to achieve their objectives. Such programs cannot simply be transplanted from one country to another. They need to develop organically in a specific country and culture.

Broadside fired at al-Qaeda leaders

By Syed Saleem Shahzad

Asia Times, 10 December 2010

ISLAMABAD – A number of senior al-Qaeda members who had earlier opposed the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and some of whom were recently released from detention in Iran, have produced an electronic book critical of al-Qaeda's leadership vision and strategy.

The book, the first of its kind to publicly show collective dissent within al-Qaeda, was released last month. It urges the self-acclaimed global Muslim resistance against Western hegemony to open itself to the Muslim intelligentsia for advice and to harmonize its strategy with mainstream Islamic movements.

Full Article….

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NIGHTWATCH Extract: Japan and Search for Rare Earths (e.g. Lithium)

01 Brazil, 02 China, 03 Economy, 03 India, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Strategy

Japan 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.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

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:

What is rare earth and why is it important?

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Journal: US Internationally Illiterate

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Education, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Key Players

David Del VecchioDavid Del Vecchio

Owner, Idlewild Books, New York City

February 17, 2010 04:10 PM

10 Books 10 Countries: The Best Translated Books of 2009

If you're reading this, it's probably because literature matters to you, because you agree with the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa that literature is “one of the common denominators of human experience through which human beings may recognize themselves and converse with each other, no matter how different their professions, their life plans, their geographical and cultural locations, their personal circumstances.”

Yet here in the United States, we seem to be conversing mostly with ourselves. Even among those of us who love to read, we are largely cut off from the great dialogue that connects so much of the world (and missing some damn good books) due to the fact that less than three percent of what's published in this country is translated from other languages.

Three percent is low: in France and Spain, for example, both of which produce prodigious amounts of their own literature, more than half the new books published in a given year are translated from other languages. And even among the small number of foreign-language books that do make it into 
English in this country, about 300 to 400 titles in an average year, how many do you hear about?

If your main source for book news is mainstream media, the answer is: not many. Nine of the ten books on The New York Times's “Best Books of 2009” list were written by Americans (the tenth was by a Brit), as were nearly all the titles on their year-end list of 100 notable books. And very few of the books reviewed in any major American newspaper come from beyond our borders.

Read full article with list of books by country.

Phi Beta Iota: The author makes an very important point.  Read the entire post to see his thoughtfully selected examples of books Americans should be but are not reading.