Mike Russell's Weblog

Tea at Trianon: Turcakey

mikerussell — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 20:27:21 +0000

Tea at Trianon: Turcakey.

Turcakey! How a casual Facebook exchange about a culinary novelty became a viral web sensation: http://is.gd/hPYJc

Thanksgiving Pie Chart

mikerussell — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 04:24:29 +0000

via 27bslash6.com

There are few things better in this life than an aesthetically-pleasing, self-explanatory infographic.

Actually, there are quite a few more things, but a good pie chart can kick you a few levels up Maslow’s pyramid, too.

AFCEA/KGS Global Intelligence Update: 11/03/10

mikerussell — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 07:32:20 +0000

AFCEA/KGS Global Intelligence Update: 10/28/10

mikerussell — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 06:19:37 +0000

AFCEA/KGS Global Intelligence Update: 10/25/10

mikerussell — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 05:15:19 +0000

FTC Nails Work-at-Home Scammers Claiming Bogus Ties to Google

mikerussell — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:32:44 +0000

From today’s WSJ: Finally, the individuals behind one of the myriad, fraudulent “work-at-home” scams that prey on the unemployed and underemployed get something approachig their just deserts. One down, 10,0000+ more to go.

By JOHN KELL

An online marketer that falsely claimed ties to Google Inc. has been forced to stop operations as part of a Federal Trade Commission action that also resulted in the defendants giving up about $3.5 million in cash and other assets.

As part of a broader operation on scammers that bilk consumers through a variety of schemes—the FTC initially announced a complaint in 2009 against several defendants that allegedly sold a bogus work-at-home product under names including “Google Money Tree,” “Google Pro,” and “Google Treasure Chest.”

By using the name and logo of the search giant and falsely promising that consumers could earn $100,000 in six months, the defendants lured consumers into divulging their financial account information to pay a modest shipping fee for a work-at-home kit. The FTC claims the defendants failed to disclose adequately, however, that buying the product would trigger automatic monthly charges of $72.21 for another product, and that those charges would continue until the consumer took steps to cancel.

The complaint charged that the defendants violated the FTC Act by failing to adequately disclose that consumers would be subjected to monthly charges; by making false or unsupported claims that consumers were likely to earn substantial income; and by falsely claiming that they were affiliated with Google.

The settlement includes a $29.5 million judgment against defendants Jonathan Eborn; Michael McLain Miller; Tony Norton; Infusion Media Inc.; West Coast Internet Media Inc.; Two Warnings LLC; Two Part Investments LLC; and Platinum Teleservices Inc.

A fourth defendant, Stephanie Burnside, is subject to a judgment of $741,900, the FTC said. The defendants will give up cash and other assets that include two cars, interests in a Harley-Davidson Inc. motorcycle and a boat, and a gun collection—which total about $3.5 million. The unpaid portions of these judgments are suspended based on the defendants’ inability to pay.

Under the settlement agreement, which was proposed in the U.S. District Court in Nevada, the defendants are banned from selling products through “negative option” transactions—in which the seller interprets consumers’ silence or inaction as permission to charge them. The defendants also are barred from making misleading or unsupported claims while marketing or selling any product or service.

Write to John Kell at john.kell@dowjones.com

via online.wsj.com

AFCEA/KGS Global Intelligence Update: 10/6/10

mikerussell — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 06:59:20 +0000

NightWatch

For the Night of 6 October 2010

Japan-US-China: A U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia said 6 October that the security alliance shared by Washington and Tokyo needs to be in good working order to cope with a rapidly changing Asia. According to this US official, it critical that American policymakers focus on the changing security environment and not leave U.S.-Japan relations behind. He added that the United States did not play a role in facilitating dialogue between China and Japan in their dispute over the arrest of a fishing boat captain as it would not have been appropriate.

Comment: Actually, the assistant secretary misspoke because his boss, the Secretary of State, made a strange but strong statement in support of Japan that was not backed up by the Department of State. That disjointed behavior indicates policy disarray in the US when Chinese bullying has become the norm in East and Southeast Asia.

The US must stand with the Allies or accept that China now dominates northeast Asia. There are no in-between positions; no room for subtle balancing acts. The normal condition is that Asian states take responsibility for their own security. Restoring that normal condition has been the direction of international security developments since the end of World War II.

The US is not an intrinsic part of that formula. If the US chooses to remain consequential in the outcome of Asian disputes, it must demonstrate the post-War rules remain in effect. The Secretary of State’s statement showed an instinct for this truth. In the end, the US did not back Japan. The Chinese will take careful note.

Japan-China: Update. Two Chinese fisheries patrol boats withdrew from waters near the Senkaku Islands, a Japanese coast guard spokeswoman stated. This action is a start in restoring normal security conditions around the islands. The Japanese coast guard is said to be using radar to monitor the Chinese ships.

South Korea-North Korea: For the record. The government in Seoul may consider sending a special envoy to North Korea if it leads to peace on the peninsula, South Korean national security aid Kim Song Hwan said at a confirmation hearing for his nomination as foreign minister. Kim also dismissed speculation that North Korea and South Korea are secretly pushing for a summit. Exchanges between the two countries would speed up if North Korea were to take responsibility for the sinking of a South Korean warship last March, Kim added

Comment: Kim’s statements indicate the North is not yet ready to restore dialogue and bilateral cooperation with the South as they were before the Party Conference. The North’s leadership is not confident at this time of its ability to manage complex international affairs.

North Korea-South Korea: For the record. The South Korean Secretary for National Strategy Kim Tae Hyo, at a forum on the future of Northeast Asia, said North Korea’s nuclear program is evolving at a very fast pace.

Seoul believes North Korea is currently operating all its nuclear programs, including highly enriched uranium processing and the nuclear facility in Yongbyon, Kim stated, adding that North Korea is constantly working on making its weapons smaller. The dilemma is that strong neighboring countries may not faithfully cooperate with Seoul when North Korea might be harboring a nuclear weapon, Kim said.

Comment: As momentum towards nuclear talks builds, the South Koreans seem to want to ensure the North does not get a pass on its proliferation activities just because it is willing to resume talks conditionally. South Korea wants the North to apologize for sinking the corvette Cheonan before nuclear talks resume.

On the other hand, new construction at Yongbyon indicates new investment in that facility. It is axiomatic in despotic regimes that the successor pays tribute to the predecessor by honoring him with greater undertakings. Kim Chong-il outdid his father Kim Il-sung but creating missiles and nuclear weapons, though the real decedent directive from father to son concerned unifying the Koreas, not polarizing them.

Any new nuclear successes, such as uranium enrichment to weapons grade, would be proclaimed in the name of the successor. The South’s accusations almost certainly have a core of fact that is a matter of national security concern, independent of the political maneuvering over nuclear talks.

Russia-Vietnam: For the record. The Russian Navy has proposed to re-establish a logistics base for Russian warships in the Vietnamese port of Cam Rahn Bay, formerly the largest Russian base outside Russian territory, Interfax reported 6 October. The Navy completed a report justifying the base’s restoration, the completion of which could be finished within three years should a political decision be made, a source in the navy command said.

The primary purpose of the base is to support Russian naval vessels combating piracy in the Indian and Pacific oceans, former chief of the navy’s General Staff Viktor Kravchenko said, adding if Russia still considers itself a maritime power, the restoration of such bases is “inevitable.”

Russia-India: For the record. Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov began a two-day visit to India on 6 October to attend the Russian-Indian intergovernmental commission on military-technical cooperation, Itar-Tass reported. A protocol will be signed that will address military-technical cooperation.

Discussions will touch on repairs and upgrade of the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov; production of Su-30MKI aircraft and T-90C tanks in India; the joint development and production of fifth-generation fighter aircraft and of multipurpose transport aircraft; and the joint development and production of BrahMos cruise missiles. Serdyukov will meet with Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony.

Comment: The timing of the Vietnam, India and Algeria initiatives, infra, indicates the Russians are making a bid to rebuild the weapons client base of the Soviet Union.

Pakistan-US: Update. Today, the US Ambassador to Pakistan apologized for the 30 September helicopter attack that killed Pakistani Frontier Corps soldiers at their post opposite the Afghan border. The Ambassador said a joint investigation has established that the US helicopter crews mistook the soldiers for insurgents they had been pursuing. The ambassador extended deepest apologies to Pakistan and the families of the Frontier Corps who were killed and injured. The Ambassador promised the US government will coordinate better with Pakistan to ensure such actions do not happen again.

Comment: This apology should save face for the government in Islamabad and start convoys moving through Torkham, assuming promises of compensation accompanied the apology.

Pakistan-NATO: The closure of the northern border crossing point at Torkham continued today. In Nowshera, about 40 NATO fuel tankers were set on fire by rocket-propelled grenade fire.

The status of the southern bordering crossing site at Chaman, on the road to Kandahar, has received scant reporting. Today, Pakistan’s Dawn News reported that Pakistani customs officials detained 152 trailers and oil tankers with supplies for NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, after officials detected document tampering. U.S. officials in Pakistan approached customs officials 5 October with a request to release the trailers and tankers, but were told they would not be allowed to go to Afghanistan until the documents were cleared.

Comment: There are many ways to use border crossing procedures for political signaling. It now appears Pakistan has been using transit through both primary border points to Afghanistan for conveying its message that armed helicopter flights in Pakistani airspace cross the line of tolerable US actions inside Pakistan.

This incident and its aftermath have multiple significant implications. One is that the US has found a red line that Pakistan cannot afford to let the US cross. Mistakes from drone attacks are more forgivable than helicopter attacks inside Pakistani airspace. The latter humiliate the Pakistan armed forces, the only dependable institution promoting stability at this time.

Another implication is a lesson the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban will learn. A week-long cutoff of supplies at two border crossing points in Pakistan is enough to generate action by the US to have the border choke points reopened. That is enormously useful information.

A third is that US helicopter crews along the border do not necessarily know in which country they are flying. A fourth is that they cannot distinguish attacks from warning shots. There are others about the training, cultural and situational awareness of US and Pakistani forces.

Afghanistan- International Security Assistance Force (ISAF): ISAF announced it will use an alternate supply route from Russia and Central Asia to bypass the main supply routes through Pakistan, The News reported on 6 October. The US Central Command’s decision reportedly was based on Pakistan’s refusal to give a timeline for the resumption of the NATO supplies at the Torkham border. The alternate route will carry supplies from Riga, Latvia, through Russia, around the Caspian Sea, through Kazakhstan and south through Uzbekistan.

Comment: Islamabad also has demanded $600 million in compensation for using the country’s road network.

Readers also should expect Pakistan to demand contractual, consequential and punitive damages as the result of the US apology for the 30 September attack. That seemingly modest, honest concession will open the flood gates to multiple high-dollar law suits for losses in Pakistani courts because the US has admitted liability.

Algeria-Russia: For the record. Russian President Medvedev and Algerian President Bouteflika signed a joint statement on 6 October for more coordination and communication between the two countries, Itar-Tass reported. The statement said the two countries’ heads of state will meet regularly and that their foreign ministers will hold at least one meeting a year. The statement also said that there will be more coordination in the energy sector between the nations, considering the problems of energy security and resources in the world. Defense technology and military coordination were also mentioned in the statement.

Mexico: For the record. Fernando Larios, chief of a municipal police station in Ciudad Juarez, was shot to death by an armed group 6 October, El Universal reported. Larios was traveling in his personal vehicle when the group fired at least 50 shots at him.

Note: This is a reminder the drug cartels finally have figured out that assassinations of public officials — mayors and police chiefs – are good for business.

Mexican President Calderon will sign an initiative restructuring the country’s police departments into a unified command 6 October, the Mexican daily El Financiero reported. The proposal would consolidate Mexico’s 2,200 local police departments in an effort to streamline their work in counter narcotics operations, according to the press.

Comment: The larger benefits of a national force are stricter control of recruitment; uniform pay and performance standards and reduced vulnerability to wholesale subornment of police departments by drug cartels.

End of NightWatch for 6 October

NightWatch is brought to you by Kforce Government Solutions, Inc. (KGS), a leader in government problem-solving, Data Confidence® and intelligence. Views and opinions expressed in NightWatch are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of KGS, its management, or affiliates.

http://www.kforcegov.com

A Member of AFCEA International

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via kforcegov.com

Tessa, my assistant, grabs a cat nap while I work late…

mikerussell — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:57:17 +0000

via twitpic.com

These days, Tessa the Russian Blue prefers to perch high atop the corner Ikea bookcase in my home office.

AFCEA/KGS Global Intelligence Update: 9/29/10

mikerussell — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 07:03:03 +0000

Lawrence of Afghanistan?

mikerussell — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:04:54 +0000

Guerrilla of Arabia: How one of Britain’s most brilliant military tacticians created the Taliban’s battle strategy

By Neil Faulkner

GETTY IMAGES
Action man: TE Lawrence, the archaeologist, author and military leader, wrote a series of seminal treatises on guerrilla warfare

The aim of Operation Moshtarak in February was to capture the city of Marjah in Afghanistan’s war-torn Helmand province. Fifteen thousand troops, mainly American, British and Afghan, were to take on between 400 and 1,000 Taliban insurgents holed up in a city of 80,000 people.

Commanders talked of a “new model war”. An Afghan administration and police force would move into Marjah behind the soldiers. Engineers would maintain power and water supplies. “We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in,” said the then-US General Stanley McChrystal.

But as the offensive unfolded, reported Taliban casualties were few, and Marjah turned out not to exist. Faithfully reported by global news media, it was in fact invented by US military officials. “This is all a war of perceptions,” McChrystal said. As The Washington Post reported, the decision to launch the offensive was intended to influence US public opinion on the effectiveness of military action in Afghanistan by showing it could win a “large and loud victory”. In reality, Marjah is a vaguely-defined area of villages, markets and family compounds. If there are tens of thousands of people, they are spread across 125 sq miles. Marjah was invented because a military operation has to have a clear-cut goal to be deemed a victory. President Obama had doubled the total US troop deployment, but public support was waning. The generals needed a victory, so they created Marjah and planned Operation Moshtarak to capture it.

A phantom city was needed because the enemy is a phantom. A task force is assembled and motors into bandit country. If it is too small, it risks annihilation. If it is too big, it finds itself punching the air. A golden rule of guerrilla warfare is that you fight only if you are certain to win. So the invaders of Afghanistan are waging a war against an enemy who is never there.

“Suppose we were (as we might be),” wrote T E Lawrence, “an influence, an idea, a thing intangible, invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. We might be a vapour, blowing where we listed… Ours should be a war of detachment. We were to contain the enemy by the silent threat of a vast, unknown desert …”

Lawrence was a young officer who had spent the first two years of the First World War in the intelligence department in Cairo. On a diplomatic mission to the Hijaz region of western-central Arabia in 1916, he had formed a personal relationship with Prince Faisal, a commander now ranged in revolt against Ottoman rule. Faisal asked that Lawrence be attached to his service as a British liaison officer. Lawrence’s superiors agreed. The Ottoman Empire, though much reduced, still controlled a vast territory from south-eastern Europe to the Caucasus, the Tigris, the Yemen, and the Suez Canal. Plunging into the world war, this ramshackle traditional empire, though fighting a war on four fronts, against the Russians in the Caucasus and the British in Gallipoli, Sinai, and Mesopotamia, proved a tougher opponent than its enemies predicted.

The Arab Revolt, led by the Emir of Mecca, had been encouraged by secret British diplomacy as a source of military and ideological support for the Allied cause. But after momentary success – principally the capture of Mecca itself, along with the Red Sea ports of Jidda and Rabegh – the Revolt stalled. Medina remained in Ottoman hands, and the city’s 10,000-strong garrison was receiving reinforcement. When the Turks went on to the offensive, the Arabs fell back, and the tribal irregulars forming the army began to melt away. In late 1916, the Revolt hung by a thread.

Lawrence, newly arrived in the Hijaz, was witness to this looming disaster. His response appears to have been a radical re-conceptualisation of the war. He turned conventional military thinking on its head and created a new theory of modern guerrilla warfare. What if the Arabs ignored the Turks? What if they simply marched away from them into the desert? What if they constituted themselves as a “silent threat” and waged a “war of detachment”?

This they did. In fact, even before Lawrence had worked it out, they had made a start by marching 200 miles north – away from the Turks threatening them around Medina – and establishing a new base at Wejh. Supplied here from the Red Sea by the Royal Navy, they then staged a series of raids on the Hijaz Railway. Running through 1,000km of desert, a lifeline on which the Ottoman grip on Arabia depended, the Turks had to defend it. But against an enemy who could appear suddenly out of the desert haze at any point to defend the line at all was to defend all of it. So instead of a concentration of force at the decisive point – at Medina, from which a thrust towards Mecca might have snuffed out the rebellion – the Turks were forced to plant 100, 200 or 300 men every few kilometres.

Then, in June 1917, Faisal’s Northern Army, inspired by its brilliant British military adviser, leapt forwards again, some 250 miles to Aqaba. But they did not go direct: following a 500-mile route through the desert, a small commando group appeared north-east of Aqaba, raised the local tribes in revolt, and rolled up the Ottoman positions all the way to the coast.

With a new forward base, the insurgency could be supplied as it spread into Syria. British intelligence reports from 1918 reveal its success. The Arab armies comprised about 5,000 regulars and a fluctuating force of up to 20,000 tribal irregulars. Yet more Turks were deployed against them than there were fighting General Allenby’s army of 340,000 men west of the Jordan in Palestine.

In fact, given that most of the serious fighting was done by Faisal’s Northern Army, which was never more than 8,000-strong, often as low as 3,000, the imbalance was extreme. The raw statistics imply that one of Faisal’s guerrillas was 35 times more effective in tying down Turkish troops than one of Allenby’s Tommies.

Lawrence’s ideas on guerrilla warfare were touched upon in his “Twenty-seven Articles”, which appeared in an internal British intelligence bulletin in 1917. They were then developed in three post-war treatises. Reading closely, one can identify 15 distinct principles of guerrilla warfare (see box). They are extraordinary. They invert many principles of conventional military theory, such as concentration of force, and the centrality of pitched battle to destroy the enemy’s main forces and will to fight. In this sense, they are the work of a brilliant maverick – an unconventional intellectual who had not even undergone the military training given to volunteer wartime officers (though he probably learnt something as a member of the Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps).

They draw on the traditional tactics of the “eastern way of war” – as embodied in Bedouin tribal raiding – yet elevate this into a strategy for what would later be called a “national liberation struggle”. The Arab leaders’ emphasis was on creating a regular army, not on guerrilla warfare. Again, just as Lawrence was not hidebound by British military tradition, nor was he constrained by Arab political ambition.

The third striking thing about the 15 principles is how seminal they are. Guerrilla warfare is as old as human conflict, but Lawrence’s treatises represent the first systematic conceptualisation of its strategy. And this conceptualisation is remarkably comprehensive. Later theorists of guerrilla warfare – notably Mao, Nguyen Giap and Che Guevara – have added little of substance. Lawrence is the real teacher of the guerrilla fighter.

The fourth remarkable thing is lack of recognition for the intellectual achievement. Despite the central significance of guerrilla warfare in the last century of world history, Lawrence has rarely been acknowledged. Robert Taber’s 1965 book, The War of the Flea: A Study of Guerrilla Warfare, Theory and Practice, has no mention of Lawrence nor the Arab Revolt. Only recently has awareness grown – notably among US Army officers – of Lawrence’s significance as a military theorist.

The exigencies of imperial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made the study of guerrilla warfare a necessity, and officers have been encouraged to read Lawrence’s 1922 treatise Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Leading counterinsurgency specialist Lieutenant-Colonel John Nagl echoed Lawrence in the title of a recent book Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (2002). His point – “to make war upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife” – encapsulates the challenge of foreign invaders fighting guerrillas.

But Seven Pillars of Wisdom, however carefully read by US officers, is likely to be the book of their defeat in Afghanistan. The counterinsurgent regular cannot replicate the tactics of the insurgent guerrilla. The former is an invader. The guerrilla is embedded in local society. This basic dichotomy manifests itself in a dozen practical, and potentially deadly, ways. The regular is imposed on the military landscape and is dependent on heavy equipment, modern communications, and external supply. Intelligence depends on observation posts, patrols, and interrogation, and security entails the full panoply of fortified posts, armoured vehicles, and firepower. The invaders are therefore highly visible, relatively immobile, and poorly informed.

Compare the guerrilla. He is largely self-sufficient, highly mobile, with superb intelligence from his social network, and indistinguishable from the civilian population of which he is part. He is almost invisible, yet has the capacity to strike anywhere, anytime. The regular strives to dominate landscape by visible threat and heavy firepower. But wherever he is, the guerrilla is not.

The guerrilla dominates the landscape, for his embeddedness makes him an invisible, secure, and ineradicable presence. He is powerful because he is a phantom. Let the last word go to Lawrence. He could be describing Operation Moshtarak – 15,000 men chasing phantoms out of a non-existent city in Afghanistan. But, of course, it is the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918. “It [the rebellion] had a sophisticated alien enemy, disposed as an army of occupation in an area greater than could be dominated effectively from fortified posts… The active rebels had the virtues of secrecy and self-control, and the qualities of speed, endurance, and independence of arteries of supply… The presence of the enemy was secondary. Final victory seemed certain, if the war lasted long enough for us to work it out.”

Military mastermind: Lawrence of Arabia’s 15 principles of modern guerrilla warfare

1. Strive above all to win hearts and minds

2. Establish an unassailable base

3. Remain strategically dispersed

4. Make maximum use of mobility

5. Operate mainly in small, local groups

6. Remain largely detached from the enemy

7. Do not attempt to hold ground

8. Operate in depth rather than en face (i.e. not in lines)

9. Aim for perfect intelligence about the enemy

10. Concentrate only for momentary tactical superiority

11. Strike only when the enemy can be taken by surprise

12. Never engage in sustained combat

13. Always have lines of retreat open

14. Make war on matériel rather than on men

15. Make a virtue of the individuality, irregularity, and unpredictability of guerrillas

Dr Neil Faulkner is editor of the new ‘Military Times’ magazine (out now), and co-director of the Great Arab Revolt Project. For details, visit Military-times.co.uk

This article (less my comments and links) was published in The Independent.