Monthly Archives: January 2008

Tampa: Jihadi Web Site

Posted by

Local Firm Removes Jihadi Web Site
By Howard Altman of The Tampa Tribune

A Tampa Web-hosting company has taken down a Web site used by al-Qaida for communicating in secret and hiding files from investigators.

The company, Noc4Hosts, took the action Monday after it was informed about the site by The Tampa Tribune.

Noc4Hosts, at 400 N. Tampa St., is in an office building that also rents space to the Tampa district of the U.S. attorney’s office.

The Web site includes a graphic interface program that is of special interest to those who monitor jihadi activity. Known as “Mujahideen Secrets 2,” it allows for encryption of messages and files.

“Mujahideen Secrets 2 is designed to allow mujahedeen encrypted communication online using elaborate algorithms and symmetrical and asymmetrical encryption keys,” said Eli Alshech, director of the Jihad and Terrorism Studies Project for the Middle East Media Research Institute, a think tank based in Washington.

The program, Alshech says, “shows their improved level of sophistication.”

Noc4Hosts “is not in cahoots with al-Qaida,” said Steve Eschweiler, the company’s general manager.

The site, he says, was one of several hundred thousand the company hosts. Web hosting companies keep banks of computer servers where individual Web sites are based.

“If there is anything anti-American, we will take them down,” Eschweiler says. “We work closely with authorities any time something like this comes up.”

More here.

War Lawyers

Posted by


Infantry: Why We Hate Lawyers
h/t: Strategy Page

One of the biggest gripes combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have is the Escalation of Force (EOF) and Rules of Engagement (ROE) procedures they must follow when faced with enemy action, or the threat of enemy action.

These rules have gotten more complex year by year, although there have been some attempts to simplify the complications (if that makes any sense.)

Put simply, the ROE/EOF stuff is there to limit civilian casualties, while fighting a foe that wants dead civilians (for their propaganda impact).

Al Qaeda even has an official name for this; “involuntary martyrs.” The U.S. buzzword is “collateral damage.”

Naturally, there’s a big difference between the ROE/EOF stuff that is regularly delivered to the troops (who are supposed to demonstrate that they have memorized them), and what actually happens in combat.

For all the ROE/EOF exhortations directed at the troops, there is also an escape clause. That is, you are always allowed to use any force necessary to protect yourselves.

This does not negate ROE/EOF, and if you kill a bunch of civilians, there will be an investigation. If you cannot make some kind of case that you fired in (what appeared to you at the time to be) self-defense, you will get punished.

The troops know this, the brass know this. No one is sure if the lawyers, who are sometimes brought in to help out with the periodic ROE/EOF training sessions, know this.

Lawyers are generally considered the enemy, since they tend to spend most of their time telling you what you cannot do in combat (whether you’re fighting for your life or not.)

Troops who have spent more than a year in Iraq or Afghanistan have come to believe that the biggest problem with ROE/EOF is that the people who create this stuff have done a very bad job of explaining the cause and effect of it all.

While the troops can understand that, “killing civilians” is usually counterproductive, the brass rarely go to any great lengths to explain the thinking behind the long list of ROE/EOF things you can, or cannot, do.

There is a belief that the ROE/EOF is not well thought out, and the lawyers are sent in to lecture the troops in an attempt to hide that fact.

Definitely a credibility gap here.

Afghanistan: Fewer Landmines

Posted by

Afghanistan Becomes Less Scary

Landmines, as well as unexploded shells and bombs lying about, have caused over 70,000 casualties (killed and wounded) in Afghanistan during the last two decades.

Most of the victims were civilians.

But a massive mine clearing operation, over the past fifteen years, has sharply reduced the number of casualties. Last year there were 581, compared to 821 in 2006.

The Afghan government destroyed the last of its landmine stocks at the end of 2007.

Most of the mines and munitions involved were Russian made, a leftover of the Russian troops who operated in Afghanistan through most of the 1980s.

In Afghanistan, the demining effort has, so far, removed some 350,000 anti-personnel mines, nearly 19,000 anti-tank mines and about seven million pieces of unexploded ordnance (shells, grenades, bombs).

The demining effort should be finished in another four years.

Nearly all the 8,500 de-miners are Afghans, and even the Taliban leave them alone (most of the time).

Related reading here and here.

Man The Rails

Posted by

USSNimitz25Jan08

U.S. Navy sailors man the rails of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz as the ship departs Naval Air Station North Island, Calif., Jan. 24, 2008.

U.S. Navy photo by Seaman Omar A. Dominquez.

How Long Will It Take?

Posted by

Bin Laden Cell Phone
Somewhere, perhaps on the other side of the world, some techie friends of bin Laden have been poring over all the daily web reports of our so-called FISA Court issue.

They are dissecting the various tortuous descriptions and piecing together where and how we work to monitor the communications throughout his far flung network.

How long will it take them to map it all out in sufficient detail?

Then how long will it take them to bring it to the next logical level?

First move the actual phone paths to another venue.

Then leave behind a “false” network on the old paths. It should look and feel like the old network, but only feed us what they want us to get.

You don’t believe that?

We’ll probably see soon enough, one way or another.

Cyber Blackout??

Posted by

Blackout
That “Cyber Blackout” story has stirred up some reaction around the net.


SANS director confirms the CIA confirmed … absolutely nothing:
SPEAKING BREATHLESSLY TO the survivors of Hurricane Katrina, SANS Institute research director Alan Paller “confirmed” that (1) cities have suffered blackouts and (2) some people tried to profiteer from it. And he absolutely knows this for a fact because (3) the CIA told him absolutely nothing. . . . (read more here.)

Hacking Power Networks:
The CIA unleashed a big one at a SANS conference. . . . (read more here.)

And this response (also available in PDF) from Michael Tanji, who wrote the Cyber Threat article:
The Last Cyber Threat Article You’ll Ever Read

By Michael Tanji
I’m tired of hearing about all the “new” things going on in the cyber-war, cyber-terrorism, cyber-insert-your-term-here business. Nothing I’ve read on these issues in the last few years is any different from anything I read fifteen years ago. Issues that make headlines today were actually new when the IBM XT was a hot piece of hardware. So as a public service your author provides you with five factors to evaluate when deciding on whether or not to buy the next book or magazine with an article that suggests iDeath or e-horror is imminent. Take a pass if you detect any two in a scan of the dust jacket or lede.

Nothing is New. Any time someone talks about how new a given cyber issue is, watch out for wet paint. . . . (Read more here.)

Afghanistan: Winter Patrol

Posted by
KunarAfghanistanPatrol - 11Jan08

KunarAfghanistanPatrol - 11Jan08

U.S. Army paratroopers assigned to 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment conduct a patrol to Omar in Afghanistan’s Kunar province Jan. 11, 2008.
U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Brandon Aird

Molding Jihadists

Posted by

The Mosque and Madrasa of Sultan Hassan in Cairo

The development of a jihadist’s mind
TAWFIK HAMID
THE JERUSALEM POST
Jan. 17, 2008

What occupies the mind of a jihad-driven Muslim?

How is such fervor planted in young and impressionable believers? Where does it originate?

How did I – once an innocent child who grew up in a liberal, moderate and educated household – find myself a member of a radical Islamic group?

These questions go to the root of Islamic violence and must be addressed if free societies are to combat radical Islam.

To further this aim, I will explore the psychological development of a jihadi’s mind through my own firsthand experience as a former member of a Muslim terrorist organization.

I was born in Cairo to a secular Muslim family. My father was an orthopedic surgeon and an agnostic at heart; my mother was a French teacher and a liberal. Both considered Islam to be, primarily, an integral part of our culture.

With the exception of my father, we would fast on Ramadan. Even though my father was not religious, he understood our need to fit into the community and never forced his secular views on us. He espoused diverse philosophical ideas but encouraged us to follow our own convictions. Most importantly, he taught my brother and me to think critically rather than to learn by rote.

I never had any doubt, however, that we were Muslim – that Allah was our creator, Muhammad his messenger and the Koran our book. I believed that if I performed good deeds, I would be admitted to paradise where I could satisfy all my personal desires. I also knew, alternatively, that my transgressions would be punished by eternal torture in hell. I absorbed these beliefs largely from the surrounding environment rather than from my parents; they were shared by most children around me.

I attended the private Al-Rahebat primary school in the area of Dumiat, which is about 200 kilometers north of Cairo, when I was six years old. Though managed by Christian nuns, the school was supervised by the Egyptian government and required its Muslim students to attend classes on Islam.

Before each Islamic lesson began, the teacher would dismiss the Christian students, who were then obliged to linger outside the room until the lesson was over. Adding salt to the Christian children’s wounds, many Muslim pupils would tease them for their faith – telling them that they would burn in hell eternally because they ate pork and were “infidels.” This made a strong impression on me. I felt sorry for the Christians, sensing that they must be hurt by being treated as an inferior minority in an Islamic society. In my short life it was the first time I perceived that my Christian friends were not my equals. My parents had never suggested that we were superior to Christians, and I counted many among my friends. We used to play hide-and-seek and other games together.

Not only Christian children in the school were persecuted, however; non-practicing Muslims were scorned as well. Observant Muslim children would gather around those who did not fast during Ramadan and sing, “You who eat or drink during Ramadan are the losers of our religious… the black dog will tear apart your guts.” Such treatment of Christians and nonpracticing Muslims encouraged us to think that nonbelievers were inferior creatures and that it was right to hate them – they did not follow Islam and the Prophet Muhammad and, therefore, deserved to be tortured in hell forever. Though my secular upbringing prevented these thoughts from entirely dominating my mind at the time, other children were affected even more.

Read the rest here.

Dutch Navy: Big Plans

Posted by


Dutch Plan for Their Largest Naval Ship Ever

The backbone of a modern, 21st-century navy isn’t its surface combatants or submarines.

It is the large amphibious and/or logistic support ships it can deploy to trouble spots around the world, carrying helicopters, hospital facilities, an embarked landing force, supplies, fuel and a suite of C4I facilities.

The Netherlands is planning to build its largest ship ever to be able to do just that.

The new ship is designated the Joint Support Ship (JSS) and will have a displacement of 26,000 tons — making it a tight fit to squeeze into Den Helder Naval Base.

Read more here.

Cyber Blackout

Posted by


CIA: Cyber Attacks Turn Out the Lights
By Michael Tanji
h/t: ThreatsWatch

The importance of securing national resources that access cyberspace just got a shot in the arm.

On Wednesday, in New Orleans, US Central Intelligence Agency senior analyst Tom Donohue told a gathering of 300 US [and foreign] government officials, engineers and security managers from [critical infrastructure sectors] asset owners that

“We have information, from multiple regions outside the United States, of cyber intrusions into utilities, followed by extortion demands. We suspect, but cannot confirm, that some of these attackers had the benefit of inside knowledge. We have information that cyber attacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in several regions outside the United States. In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities. We do not know who executed these attacks or why, but all involved intrusions through the Internet.”

Such an event would be problematic at any time, but timed to occur during high-stress periods like during heat waves or inclement weather, the impact could be devastating.

Most “cyber terrorism” noted to date is little more than miscreant mischief, but a concerted effort to conduct a serious attack in this sector could actually cost lives.

The volume may be minor, but the idea that services we take for granted are not under our control is one way to shake people’s confidence in the government’s ability to protect them.

Closure for an Old War

Posted by

Nigeria pays ex-rebels’ pensions

Nigeria has paid the pensions of the former leader of the Biafran secessionist force and 63 rebels as part of efforts to heal wounds from the bloody civil war 40 year ago.

Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu’s pension was stopped after his dismissal from the Nigerian army in 1967 for leading more than 40 million ethnic Igbos in the southeast of the country to secede from the rest of Nigeria.

More than one million Igbos died, mostly from starvation and disease, during the 30-month civil war before the Biafran forces surrendered in January 1970.

Nigerian Defence Minister Yayale Ahmed presented the cheques to Ojukwu and 63 Biafran soldiers or their relations at a ceremony in Abuja yesterday, officials said.

“This event marked the culmination of the re-integration process that started the very moment the civil war ended,” the minister said, recalling the “No victor, No vanquished” policy of the Nigerian government after the war.

“That our highly revered and distinguished leader and brother, Odumegwu-Ojukwu, is here in person to collect his benefit is a testimony to the fact that those who sacrificed their lives on both sides are not only remembered, but are indeed accorded due recognition and respect,” he added.

Hitler’s heirs

Posted by

Hitler’s heirs

From the The Jerusalem Post | Blogs | The Warped Mirror
Posted by Petra Marquardt-Bigman
Before President Bush left Israel last Friday to continue his trip to several countries in the region, he visited Yad Vashem.

In the international press, this visit was widely described as “an emotional tour of Israel’s Holocaust memorial”, and reports highlighted that Bush “stopped in front of an aerial photo of Auschwitz [...] and told his secretary of state that the US should have bombed the death camp to stop the extermination of Jews there”.

Bush described Yad Vashem as “a sobering reminder that evil exists, and a call that when evil exists we must resist it.”

Whether it would have been indeed feasible to bomb Auschwitz is still a controversial question; but what is striking to note in the context of our own times is that, as one expert explained, the Jewish leadership “was afraid to ask publicly for the Allies to bomb the death camps, believing that would turn the conflict into a war for the Jews”.

This can hardly fail to bring to mind that fantasies about wars being fought “for the Jews” have remained quite popular – whether among respected academics, pundits and commentators who worry about the “Israel Lobby”, or among the wider public that shares such concerns.

And when it comes to the Middle East, it is of course entirely acceptable to assert that there “was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it” – and in the context of the Hamas Charter’s Article Twenty-Two there is no need to ask whose “fingerprints” it is all about.

Read More here.

Iran: Severe Winter

Posted by

Gov’t Orders Help To Cold-Hit Regions

SARI, Mazandaran, Jan 11–President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad here Friday ordered a probe into the problems in the northern regions created by the unprecedented cold weather in recent weeks.

Addressing a meeting of the Joint Council of the Natural Disasters Headquarters in Mazandaran, Gilan and Gorgan, he said swift action should be taken to address problems of the regions hit by below-freezing temperatures, IRNA reported.

The president arrived in this northern city Friday on a brief visit. He returned to Tehran after a 4-hour meeting with provincial officials related largely to the latest situation of the people hit by the biting cold.

Mazandaran province, the central and eastern regions in particular, have been suffering from fuel shortages for almost 10 days after Turkmenistan cut off gas supplies apparently for technical reasons.

Provincial authorities and the weatherman have consistently urged the people to stay indoors and travel only if very essential.

At least 28 people are reported to have died in the heaviest snowfall in recent years.

Eight people froze to death as severe blizzards left 40,000 people stranded in their cars, authorities said.

Although most have now been rescued, nearly 20 people are reported to have been killed car crashes due to the freezing weather and treacherous roads.

The mercury has dropped in many regions to -24 degrees Celsius, and for the first time in recent memory snow has fallen on the country’s southern deserts.

There are mounting fears that the severe temperatures may lead to new shortages of gas and heating fuel.

Tehran’s new airport has re-opened but the situation remains chaotic.

What Happened in the Strait of Hormuz?

Posted by

Some history.

On October 12, 2000, the USS COLE was attacked by terrorists in Yemen.

Jamal al-Badawi, who is wanted by the FBI, was convicted in 2004 of plotting, preparing and helping carry out the USS Cole bombing and received a death sentence that was commuted to 15 years in prison.

Yemeni authorities free al-Badawi, on October 12, 2007, the seventh anniversary of the attack on the Cole.

What Happened in the Strait of Hormuz?

Where is al-Badawi these days and what is he doing? He would be a prominent pundit in our world, speaking, teaching, and writing. He would be the resident expert on how to take out a warship with a small boat, an American warship at that.

Would Iran like to tap into that experience?

Think of a basketball coach, drawing plays and ploys on a clipboard, laying out strategy to discern whether the other team is playing zone or man to man. That radio message wouldn’t have to come from the ships. It could have come from the coach on shore, watching GPS images of his team on a laptop and calling the plays “to see what they’ve got.”