Mark the date, ARSTRAT will host the 10th Annual Army Global IO Conference from 15-19 April 2013. More information will be in the next newsletter.
Berto Jongman: Algeria Fronting for US in Fabricating Al Qaeda Threat and Legitimizing US Military Occupation of Sahara?
Uncategorized
Only noticed now, two years old, but makes more sense now with Mali and Niger in play.
Jeremy Keenan explains how a Saharan front in the ‘global war on terror' was fabricated.
Jeremy Keenan
AlJazeera, 29 Aug 2010
In November 2009, Richard Barrett of the UN's al-Qaeda-Taliban monitoring team said that while attacks by al-Qaeda and its operatives were decreasing in many parts of the world, the situation was worsening in North Africa. He was referring specifically to the Sahel region of southern Algeria, Niger, Mali and Mauritania.
While the UN statement fits the catastrophic image being portrayed of the Sahara-Sahel region by the US, European and other Western interests, the truth is not only very different, but even more serious in that both the launch of the Saharan-Sahelian front in the ‘global war on terror' (GWOT) and the subsequent establishment of al-Qaeda in the region have been fabricated.
These two deceptions have one key feature in common, namely that they were both implemented by Algeria's secret military intelligence service, the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), with the knowledge and complicity of the US.
I will explain each in turn.
Militarising Africa
A Saharan front in the GWOT was planned by the US and Algeria in 2002 and launched in early 2003.
The pivotal incident that justified the launch of the new front was the abduction in February-March 2003 of 32 tourists in the Algerian Sahara, ostensibly by Islamic extremists of Algeria's Groupe Salafiste pour le Prédication et le Combat (GSPC) under the leadership of Amari Saifi (aka El Para). However, it transpired that El Para was an agent of Algeria's DRS and his false flag operation had been undertaken with the complicity of the US department of defence.
David Isenberg: CIA as Consolation Prize
Uncategorized
The Art Of The Deal:
By Andy Johnson
ForeignPolicy.com,November 29, 2012
With the abrupt departure of Director David Petraeus, the revolving door on the CIA's seventh floor continues to spin: The average tenure of the agency's last five leaders has been less than 20 months.
The timing of this leadership upheaval could not have come at a worse time for the agency. The CIA once ruled the operational and analytic fiefdoms of the U.S. Intelligence Community with near-monopolistic control. But bureaucratic reorganization and the expansion of military intelligence during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars brought an end to a half-century of preeminence. The steady diminution of the CIA's influence over the past decade echoes the travails of Microsoft — the spy agency is weakened, beset by competitors, and facing an uncertain future.
The paradox of this post-9/11 reality is that the CIA is now more mission-focused than at any time since the height of the Cold War. Its aggressive, collaborative prosecution of terrorist networks has been wildly successful and saved American lives here and abroad. This was by design, aided in large part by reform efforts to eliminate intelligence agency stovepipes, force information sharing, and enhance paramilitary capabilities. The results have borne out the wisdom of these and other steps to remake the Intelligence Community.
Berto Jongman: Data Without Boundaries YouTube (14:59)
UncategorizedThis is a great documentary illustrating how data collected in one field can be used for explanations in another field.
With the latest visualisation technology a whole lost world can be recreated.
Stone Age Atlantis: Once, the idea of a lost world under the sea was the stuff of legend, but now scientists are rediscovering a sunken land and piecing together the lives of the people who lived there. In Northern Europe, a huge area known as Doggerland disappeared beneath the waves and has remained underwater ever since. But evidence of this lost land is starting to emerge. In this two-hour special, learn why archaeologists believe Stone Age Europeans lived on this land and pioneered an advanced culture.
Steve Aftergood: Chimpanzees at DHS Classify and Block National Academy of Science Report on Electrical Grid Vulnerabilities for Five Years
Uncategorized
ACADEMY REPORT ON ELECTRIC GRID WITHHELD FOR FIVE YEARS
Over the objections of its authors, the Department of Homeland Security classified a 2007 report from the National Academy of Sciences on the potential vulnerability of the U.S. electric power system until most of it was finally released yesterday.
The report generally concluded, as other reports have, that the electric grid is lacking in resilience and is susceptible to disruption not only from natural disasters but also from deliberate attack.
But even though the report was written for public release, the entire document was classified by DHS and could not be made available for public deliberation. Amazingly, it took five years for the classification decision to be reviewed and reversed. As Academy leaders explained in the Foreword to the report:
“DHS concluded that the report would be classified in its entirety under the original classification authority vested in the DHS undersecretary for science and technology. Because the committee believed that the report as submitted contained no restricted information, the NRC [National Research Council] requested the formal classification guidance constituting the basis for the classification decision. That guidance was not provided, and so in August 2010, the NRC submitted a formal request for an updated security classification review. Finally, in August 2012, the current full report was approved for public release, reversing the original classification decision, except that several pages of information deemed classified are available to readers who have the necessary security clearance.”
DefDog: Wired on NYPost Being Retarded – Homework in Class on Terrorism a Threat to National Security – Comment by Robert Steele
Uncategorized
NY Post Pisses Its Pants Over Terrorism Homework; And You Should Too
Ryan Singel
WIRED, 29 October 2012
The New York Post is quivering in fear and outrage over a graduate level course for intelligence analysts that requires students to write a fake terrorism plot, complete with methods of execution, sources of funding, number of operatives needed and the target government’s reaction.
Students, who are training for intelligence and counterterrorism careers, must take into account the “goals, capabilities, tactical profile, targeting pattern and operational area,” the syllabus states — according to the Post‘s harrowing story Monday.
The Post‘s crack investigative team uncovered the covert training of terrorists by obtaining the syllabus of the class offered by NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs.
Penguin: Americans Catching Fire from Sunscreen, Whining About It
Uncategorized
Only in the USA….
RECALL: Banana Boat Recalling Aerosol Sunscreens
According to a report by 6ABC, Banana Boat is recalling a line of its spray on products after reports of people catching on fire after applying the sunscreen.
According to the HuffingtonPost, 23 varieties of Banana Boat UltraMist are being pulled from store shelves “due to the risk that the lotion can ignite when exposed to open flame,” said the 6ABC report.
Sunscreen catches fire, in all the wrong ways
Man, you people complain a lot.
One public-spirited global company, “Energizer Holdings,” is out there on the front lines, trying to protect earthlings from the heinous effects of sunlight, and what do people do?
Whine. About spurious issues such as an extremely limited number of cases in which sunscreen products made by the manufacturer of Banana Boat products have caused people's skin to burst into flames.
