One of the jihadist Web sites cautioned its readers to "Beware of Google!!!" with specific warnings about its relatively new product Google Toolbar...

The posting advised Internet cafe users to set up a proxy -- a software program that erases digital footsteps such as Web addresses or other identifiable information -- before Web surfing...

"This kind of tradecraft is essential to survival," Hoffman said.

And now, your moment of zen....

"From a jihadist perspective, they are absolutely right. They should avoid Google like the plague," Brandt said.

Terrorists' Web Chatter Shows Concern About Internet Privacy

It sounds eerily like the Cold War - and that is no mistake.

The "Long War" is the name Washington is using to rebrand the new world conflict, this time against terrorism.

The War on Terror has been re-branded again. I like this one much better than the "struggle against violent extremism". "The Long War" could stick.

And now, your moment of zen:

"I'm an artillery officer, and I can't fire cannons at the internet," he says, referring to what he sees as one of the key weapons of the modern age.

BBC | Planning the US 'Long War' on terror

J. Cofer Black, vice chairman of Blackwater USA told the Special Operations Forces Exhibition (Sofex-2006), that his company could supply private soldiers to any country. Black, a former U.S. State Department counter-terrorism coordinator, said Blackwater has been marketing the concept of private armies for low-intensity conflicts.

In his presentation in Amman, Jordan, on March 27, Black said Blackwater could supply peace-keeping forces. He said the company was capable of providing a brigade-sized force on alert.

One option, Black said, was for Blackwater to provide forces for Sudan's Darfour province. He said the company could bolster existing peace-keeping forces from the African Union.

"I believe there is a contribution to be made by a small force," Black said. "The issue is who's going to let us play on their team?"

Black said Blackwater would not participate in conventional military operations. He said he has discussed his concept with the United States and NATO.

"There is clear potential to conduct security operations at a fraction of the coast of NATO operations," Black said. "It's unusual and that's why I'm raising it. This is not what you do if your objective is more money."

Blackwater offers 'private armies' for low-intensity conflicts

Googling around for Younis Tsouli produces some interesting links including this one:

TrackingTheThreat.com is database of open source information about the Al Qaeda terrorist network, developed as a research project of the FMS Advanced Systems Group. Our goal is to apply new technologies and software engineering approaches to open source intelligence while providing researchers and analysts with information about Al Qaeda.

This site has some interesting features:

Use the Network Navigator to perform graphical link analysis on the Al Qaeda network.

Also, take a look at the product suite that FMS Advanced Systems produces.

trackingthethreat.com

The agency entrusted with protecting the U.S. homeland is having difficulty safeguarding its own headquarters, say private security guards at the complex.

The guards have taken their concerns to Congress, describing inadequate training, failed security tests and slow or confused reactions to bomb and biological threats.

For instance, when an envelope with suspicious powder was opened last fall at Homeland Security Department headquarters, guards said they watched in amazement as superiors carried it by the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff, took it outside and then shook it outside Chertoff's window without evacuating people nearby.

Another described how guards flunked a test by the Secret Service, which sent vehicles into the compound with dummy government identification tags hanging from inside mirrors. Guards cleared such vehicles through on two occasions, this guard said, and one officer even copied down the false information without realizing it was supposed to match information on the employee's government badge.

Further down the article, it says the reason the powder wasn't of concern was because all the mail is irradiated. That still doesn't justify that kinda ball dropping. If it was anthrax, you'd still want to assume the irradiation didn't do the trick, and preserve any evidence that might allow you to learn about its source.

I seriously hope this is just false information or something...

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Guards Say Homeland Security HQ Insecure

Another tape from al-Zawahri has surfaced and been aired on Al-Jazeera.

"(Muslims have to) inflict losses on the crusader West, especially to its economic infrastructure with strikes that would make it bleed for years," said Zawahri, an Egyptian."

The strikes on New York, Washington, Madrid and London are the best examples," he said.

"We have to prevent the crusader West from stealing the Muslims' oil which is being drained in the biggest robbery in history," he added. It was not clear if the tape was made before the failed al Qaeda attack last month on a major Saudi oil facility.

"Reaching power is not a goal by itself ... and no Palestinian has the right to give away a grain of the soil," said Zawahri in comments directed at Hamas. "The secularists in the Palestinian Authority have sold out Palestine for crumbs... Giving them legitimacy is against Islam."

He described the cartoons as part of a U.S.-led "crusader" campaign. "An example of the hatred of the crusaders led by America ... are the repeated offences against the personality of the Prophet Mohammad, may peace be upon him," Zawahri said.

The AP has more quotes:

"The insults against Prophet Muhammad are not the result of freedom of opinion but because what is sacred has changed in this culture," he said. "The Prophet Mohammed, prayers be upon him, and Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, are not sacred anymore, while Semites and the Holocaust and homosexuality have become sacred."

"In the eyes of the West, they have the right to occupy our land, rob our wealth and then insult us and our religion, and humiliate our Quran and our prophet, prayers be upon him," al-Zawahri said. "After that they give us lessons in freedom, justice and human rights."

"Recognizing those people is against Islam's principles. They are criminals in the Islamic balance," he said. "Palestine is not their own property that they can give up."

Speaking of Palestine and Iraq, al-Zawahri said: "We have to be aware of the American game called 'political process.'"

"Bush, the caller for democracy, threatened Hamas in his State of the Union speech to cut assistance unless it recognizes Israel, abandons Jihad and abides by the agreements of surrender between the (Palestinian) Authority and Israel."

"I would like to tell my brothers in Palestine that reaching power is needed to implement Islamic rule," he said.

Al Qaeda's Zawahri calls for strikes against West | Reuters.com

The recent escape of 23 suspected al-Qaeda inmates from a maximum security facility in Yemen has spawned some baroque theories about their prison break. One theory presently circulating in Yemen is that the escape was orchestrated to transfer them into U.S. custody, thereby circumventing extradition laws.

One of the most corrupt states in the world, Yemen is plagued with embezzlement, smuggling, mismanagement, and corruption, which in the aggregate have ruined its economy. Unemployment and poverty rates are very high. Land ownership, business ownership, political and military power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small elite.

The E.U. has called Yemen "the forgotten crisis."

Of the four million children under the age of five, half are physically stunted from malnutrition, half never enter first grade, and 11 percent die before their fifth birthday-about half of those deaths from diarrhea. Nearly 90 percent of the population does not have access to clean water.

Yemen has good odds of developing into a giant problem at some point. Calling the government corrupt isn't strong enough. This article uses the term "kleptocracy".

So far to the best of my knowledge, we have only appeased Yemen in order to get cooperation from them. It doesn't look like its been working. They seem to view terrorist insurgent style fighters as a key national asset. Fitting for the ancestral homeland of Osama Bin Laden... Yemen continues to be one of the largest sources of foreign fighters in places like Iraq. Yemen is also one the the major arms trading ports in the world, and does business with some of the nasty nasties. I remember back in 2002 a vessel was stopped shipping SCUD missiles (hidden under concrete slabs) to Yemen from North Korea. The ship was let go after determining that there wasn't a way we could legally stop it.

Yemen was not, in the opinion of the United States, "looking for missiles for terrorism," a senior administration official told CNN, adding that Yemen is "in an area of the world where respect, prestige and protection come from the barrel of a gun."

Well gee.. When taking that into account, I guess that since Yemen has an AK-47 for every man, woman, and child, they are attempting to build their society based on fundamental respect for all people. Maybe I should stop being so darn ethnocentric.

The Two Faces of Yemen

Is this an Information Operation? I'd like some other opinions about this. Something doesn't add up...

We know that Al Qaeda works like a MNC, but its only really useful as an analogy. MNCs don't make people swear oaths of loyalty and require them to lay down their lives for jihad. There is a point where the analogy stops. Its somewhere around a Keiretsu. Al Qaeda is not a "professional career". I noticed the employment contract didn't specify a pension that includes a bunch of virgins in the afterlife. However, I'm 100% positive that such a thing figures into every Al'Q's view of the "employment" bargin. I wonder how much of this is being placed in order to get more of an upper hand in the "PR battle" Bush has been speaking of lately. Or rather, to make Al'Q appear cooky, while Al'Q gets the idea that we don't know which way is up...

Much of this sounds exactly like the type of thing that we would not want to leak unless there was a strategic reason for it. Let me reference the last lines of this article, which resemble bullets in a Powerpoint presentation, for an example of why:

* Jihadists look for insights in Western thought and U.S. strategic planning.

According to the study, the United States should counter these efforts by "establishing a think tank staffed with highly trained experts on the Middle East and counterinsurgency whose sole purpose would be to identify the major jihadi thinkers and analyze their works."

"We would appreciate it if you would continue to conduct your own information operations, because from what we have seen of your speeches and how they have effected the western public, you are not that good at it. Just keep paying attention to what we are saying and assuming we are very, very, very stupid."

I think Al'Q looks to CNN too. I have no doubt that CIA DI is looking over al-Zawahiri's last spoken word album. And for that matter, every damn Islamist cleric that they can find. I'm also sure Al'Q has already assumed thats the case. The result of that line of study is an understanding of the ideology, not the strategic and tactical thinking of the operational groups planning attacks. Not making efforts to counter the ideology would be stupid, and I can't buy into the idea that anyone in psyops would be ignoring it.

Going with the assumption that the other bullets here all have intended secondary effects...

* Direct engagement with the United States has been positive for the movement because it rallies locals, drains U.S. resources and puts pressure on Washington's allies.

To counter the first trend, the study says the United States "should avoid direct, large-scale military action in the Middle East. If such fighting is necessary, it must be done through proxies whenever possible."

"We can safely assume the infidels are going to do the same damn thing they have done in the past."... [ Read More (0.5k in body) ]

CNN.com - Studies: Al Qaeda both complex and dull - Feb 16, 2006

This is a roundup about the new book by James Risen, "State of War : The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration", published on January 3 and currently in the overall top 50 on Amazon and number 16 on the NYT nonfiction list.

In the latest issue of The New York Review of Books, Thomas Powers reviews the book and offers additional commentary in his article, The Biggest Secret. He writes:

Far from being a "vital tool," as described by President Bush, the program was a distracting time waster that sent harried FBI agents down an endless series of blind alleys chasing will-o'-the-wisp terrorists who turned out to be schoolteachers. And far from saving "thousands of lives," as claimed by Vice President Dick Cheney in December 2005, the NSA program never led investigators to a genuine terrorist not already under suspicion, nor did it help them to expose any dangerous plots. So why did the administration continue this lumbering effort for three years? Outsiders sometimes find it tempting to dismiss such wheel-spinning as bureaucratic silliness, but I believe that the Judiciary Committee will find, if it is willing to persist, that within the large pointless program there exists a small, sharply focused program that delivers something the White House really wants. This it will never confess willingly.

...

The systematic exaggeration of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq and the flouting of FISA both required, and got, a degree of resolution in the White House that has few precedents in American history. The President has gotten away with it so far because he leaves no middle ground—cut him some slack, or prepare to fight to the death.

The book is also reviewed, here by Walter Isaacson, in today's New York Times.

This explosive little book opens with a scene that is at once amazing and yet not surprising. It is riveting, anonymously sourced and feels slightly overdramatized, but it has the odious smell of truth.

Risen appears to feel that if something is secret and interesting, it should be exposed.

Risen's archvillain is George Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, whom Risen portrays, through a brutal procession of leaked anecdotes, as so eager to be liked by Bush that he prostitutes his agency.

So what are we to believe in a book that relies heavily on leaks from disgruntled sources?

As long as we remember that the truth these days comes not as one pronouncement but as part of a process, we can properly value "State of War" for being not only colorful and fascinating, but also one of the ways that facts and historical narratives emerge in an information-age democracy. So let the process begin!

NYT offers an excerpt from ... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

'State of War' Roundup

Iran has started moving its foreign exchange reserves out of Europe in a bid to shield the country from the threat of sanctions, reports suggest.

9/11 may have caught you by suprise, but whatever goes down with Iran, say you knew it was coming...

The 20th Anniversary of the Chernobyl Disaster comes around this April. Prepare for a blitz of documentaries on the History Channel, CNN, and other media outlets remembering this horrible event. Expect it all to be spun into reasons why Iran shouldn't have access to nuclear energy. Say you read about it on MemeStreams first.

The meme will go something like this: "If we can't build more plants ourselves to get out of our energy bind, why the hell should Iran? NUCLEAR ENERGY IS DANGEROUS!"

BBC NEWS | Business | Iran 'moves assets out of Europe'