Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink…..
NAIROBI, 9 November 2010 (IRIN) – Fighting between two sub-clans over grazing pasture and water has left 20 dead and thousands of families displaced from several villages in central Somalia, say locals.
“In my own town of Galinsor, about 1,300 families [7,800 people] have been displaced, out of a total population of 5,500 families,” Osman Abdi, an
elder, told IRIN on 9 November. “Many of the families have fled to surrounding villages and are living in the open or sheltering under trees.”
An aid worker in the region told IRIN many of the displaced were nomads who were forced to flee their water sources. “They are now in areas where there are no water points,” he said.
The US commander in Afghanistan, David Petraeus, has drafted a timetable for the handing over of control of its provinces to local security forces. The news emerged as officials recovered the bodies of five of 16 policemen who vanished a week ago after an apparent Taliban attack on their remote base.
General Petraeus's colour-coded map includes a small number of ”green” areas, designated for handover within six months, the London newspaper The Times reported.
The plan, which will be presented to NATO leaders at a summit in Lisbon on November 19, indicates that the western province of Herat will be handed over early, while NATO forces are expected to remain in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand for at least two more years.
A federal judge is set to hear arguments on Monday in a lawsuit
challenging an alleged secret Obama administration plan to use lethal
force against an American-born Islamic cleric hiding in Yemen.
In July, US authorities listed al-Awlaki as a “specially designated global terrorist.” According to press reports, he is on a US government “kill list.”
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of al-Awlaki’s father by the American Civil Liberties Union, challenges the government’s authority to carry out the
intentional killing.
This is just too cool. The smart guys always went into artillery, where you had to be able to count not just spell. As upset as one might be with all the high end waste, fraud, and abuse within our military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC), this short film is a celebration in combat effectiveness. Go Army! [The Marines still do not have Naval Gunfire Support, the Navy decided a couple of decades ago it really doesn't give a shit about supporting Marines, and multiple Commandants of the Marine Corps have let them get away with it.]
“Net neutrality” and “freedom to connect” might be loaded or vague terminologies; the label “Open Internet” is clearer, more effective, no way misleading. A group of Internet experts and pioneers submitted a paper to the FCC that defines the Open Internet and explains how it differs from networks that are dedicated to specialized services, and why that distinction is imortant. It’s a general purpose network for all, and can’t be appreciated (or properly regulated) unless this point and its implications are well understood. I signed on (late) to the paper, which is freely available at Scribd, and which is worth reading and disseminating even among people who don’t completely get it. I think the meaning and relevance of the distinction will sink in, even with those who don’t have deep knowledge of the Internet and, more generally, computer networking. The key point is that “the Internet should be delineated from specialized services specifically based on whether network providers treat the transmission of packets in special ways according to the applications those packets support. Transmitting packets without regard for application, in a best efforts manner, is at the very core of how the Internet provides a general purpose platform that is open and conducive to innovation by all end users.”
Press release:
Numerous Internet and technology leaders issued a joint statement last night encouraging the FCC to expand its recent analysis of open Internet policy in a newly fruitful direction.
In the statement, they commend the agency’s recent request for input on “Two Underdeveloped Issues in the Open Internet Proceeding” for its making possible greater recognition of the nature and benefits of the open Internet — in particular, as compared to “specialized services.” In response to the FCC’s request, their submission illustrates how this distinction dispels misconceptions and helps bring about more constructive insight and understanding in the “net neutrality” policy debate.
Longtime network and computer architecture expert David Reed comments in a special blog posting: “It is historic and critical [to] finally recognize the existence of ‘the Open Internet’ as a living entity that is distinct from all of the services and the Bureaus, all of the underlying technologies, and all of the services into which the FCC historically has partitioned little fiefdoms of control.”
Another signer, John Furrier of SiliconANGLE, has publicized the statement, stating “the future Internet needs to remain open in order to preserve entrepreneurship and innovation.”
The statement’s signers are listed below. Please reply to me, Seth Johnson (seth.p.johnson@gmail.com), to request contact information for those available for comment.
LONDON — Months after he was released from Guantánamo Bay, Abdul Rahman was back in the company of terrorist leaders along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But he was a double agent, providing Taliban and al Qaeda secrets to Pakistani intelligence, which then shared the tips with Western counterparts.
The ruse cost him his life, according to a former Pakistani military intelligence official, Mahmood Shah. The Taliban began to suspect him, and after multiple interrogations executed him.
The case of Rahman, which Shah recounted to The Associated Press, falls in line with a key aspect of the fight against terror — Western intelligence agencies, with help from Islamic allies, are placing moles and informants inside al Qaeda and the Taliban. The program seems to be bearing fruit, even as many infiltrators like Rahman are discovered and killed.
It was a tip from an al Qaeda militant-turned-informant that led international authorities to find explosives hidden in printer cartridges from Yemen to the United States a week ago, Yemeni security officials say. Officials say the explosives could have caused a blast as deadly as the Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people.
Phi Beta Iota: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) done right, in the context of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) done right, is the cheapest, fastest, and most effective means of creating intelligence (decision-support) at all levels from strategic to tactical. After ten years of letting CIA get away with doing both badly, and ten years of the Pentagon's recovering from treating its HUMINT and CI people like shit, it appears that adults are finally back in charge. We continue to under-budget for operational HUMINT and OSINT, and we continue to grossly over-spend on contractor vapor-ware for technical capabilities that simply do not deliver 96% of what what we need, but that is a separate issue. It is good to see HUMINT (not OSINT) making some progress. However, the continued absence of a strategic analytic model and honest governance means that these capabilities are not being focused on transnational crime or on white collar crime, where the most significant gains in the public interest are to be achieved.
