Source: Threat Tactics Report: Boko Haram (31-pg PDF)
Showing posts with label Terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terrorism. Show all posts
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Friday, October 23, 2015
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Monday, September 28, 2015
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Monday, July 7, 2014
Recycle...
In September 2013 we were treated to an expose of the "... very mysterious..., very powerful..." commander of Iran's Quds Force, General Qassem Suleimani. The Shadow Commander ostensibly stripped the mask off this shadowy figure involved in acts of terrorism around the world, many targeting Americans.
However, there had already been plenty of coverage of this "shadow commander" characterized as being the "... single most powerful operative in the Middle East today, and no one’s ever heard of him.", including for example:
An exhaustively sourced and foot-noted three-part report on Suleimani, from January, March, and July of 2011:
And now, almost a year later, we get Iran’s Top Spy Is the Modern-Day Karla, John Le Carré’s Villainous Mastermind, which recycles the "... single most powerful operative in the Middle East today, and no one’s ever heard of him" quote/meme while also throwing in film and literary allusions ("Keyser Soze", John le Carré’s characters...)
Sunday, July 6, 2014
More nonsense
Came across this article, How the Pentagon Can Track the Taliban 5 Apparently releasing the five Taliban prisoners in exchange for Bowe Bergdah is no big deal, because:
"... researchers say not to worry, big data and a formula that predicts
terrorists’ movements gives the U.S. the ability to forecast some of the
key places where the dangerous former detainees would go next...
Subrahmanian said that the U.S. should be able to track the Taliban 5 by combining the techniques in the Lashkar-e-Taiba study with new data on the family, friends, and associates of the former prisoners...
That predictability is borne of a key network theory phenomenon, our habits become more predictable when we visit people who also have habits, which are predictable. As the Taliban 5 return to their old ways in Afghanistan, their movements will become easier to anticipate because they will have to re-establish contact with known associates...
So long as U.S. had some idea of who the Taliban 5 were, the networks and the people that they worked with, there is no reason why the U.S. shouldn’t be able to predict the likelihood of the gang going to certain key places, or meeting up with certain associates, with as high as 80 percent accuracy, Subrahmanian said..."
Subrahmanian said that the U.S. should be able to track the Taliban 5 by combining the techniques in the Lashkar-e-Taiba study with new data on the family, friends, and associates of the former prisoners...
That predictability is borne of a key network theory phenomenon, our habits become more predictable when we visit people who also have habits, which are predictable. As the Taliban 5 return to their old ways in Afghanistan, their movements will become easier to anticipate because they will have to re-establish contact with known associates...
So long as U.S. had some idea of who the Taliban 5 were, the networks and the people that they worked with, there is no reason why the U.S. shouldn’t be able to predict the likelihood of the gang going to certain key places, or meeting up with certain associates, with as high as 80 percent accuracy, Subrahmanian said..."
What malarkey!
This blogger has already pooh-poohed FAST ("Future Attribute Screening Technologies") to detect 'malintent', or PCASS ("Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System") to detect truth/lies, "Robocop glasses" for facial detection and the distance identification of suspects, and thermal imaging cameras w/software to detect lies... Along with the "Predictioneer" Bruce Buena de Mesquita to forecast the future and Palantir Technology software to investigate terrorist networks, this latest technological silver bullet is probably more sales job than anything else!
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Random picture - "drone memo" author
Also known as the "drone memo" this 41-page memo sets out the justification for the elimination of (American citizen) al-Awlaki. Presumably there is a similar memo for the elimination of his teenaged son, also killed in a drone attack while . "... at a barbecue and
preparing to eat when the U.S. attacked them by air and ended their
lives..." Or perhaps there is no memo for the son, it might be sufficient that he made the fatal mistake of not having "... a more responsible father..."
Friday, January 17, 2014
Great quotes - sycophancy
"...We’re not really concerned about you, Barack, but God forbid some other
guy’s in the office five years from now and there’s another 9/11”
- Richard Clarke, former White House counter-terrorism adviser, who served on President Obama's NSA review panel....
The article 'Obama’s Path From Critic to Overseer of Spying' traces the evolution (on the subject of security and surveillance) of Senator Obama to President Obama...
Going by the quotes from close and trusted folks such as Axelrod and Plouffe it appears that all it took to move Obama's position 180 degrees was a bogus plot against him, "more information"(myriad threats in his daily intelligence briefings), and a strong element of CYA ("...On the other hand, Mr. Obama was acutely aware of the risks of being
seen as handcuffing the security agencies. “Whatever reforms he makes,
you can be sure if there’s another incident — and the odds are there
will be in our history — there’ll be someone on CNN within seconds
saying if the president hadn’t hamstrung the intelligence community,
this wouldn’t have happened,” Mr. Axelrod said...")
Oh, and he also "... trusts himself to use these powers more than he did the Bush administration.” Clearly a man of deep conviction:
'
Sunday, June 9, 2013
The right lesson?
Following the Boston marathon bombings many articles have been written about the swift medical response that occurred and the extraordinary efforts that saved lives. Reading 'Why Boston's Hospitals Were Ready' by Dr. Atul Gawande, this blogger was struck by one aspect of the story:
Per Dr. Gawande "... There’s a way such events are supposed to work. Each hospital has an
incident commander who coordinates the clearing of emergency bays and
hospital beds to open capacity, the mobilization of clinical staff and
medical equipment for treatment, and communication with the city’s
emergency command center... no sooner had he set up his command post and begun making phone calls
then the first wave of victims arrived. Everything happened too fast
for any ritualized plan to accommodate.
So what did you do, I asked him.
“I mostly let people do their jobs,” he said. He never needed to call
anyone. Around a hundred nurses, doctors, X-ray staff, transport staff,
you name it showed up as soon as they heard the news. They wanted to
help, and they knew how. As one colleague put it, they did on a large
scale what they knew how to do on a small scale. They broke up into
teams of six or so people, one trauma team for each patient. A senior
nurse and physician stood at the door to the ambulance bay triaging the
patients going to the teams. The operating-room director handled triage
to, and communication with, the operating rooms. Another staff member
saw the need for a traffic cop and began shooing extra clinicians into
the waiting room, where they could stand by to be called upon....
... at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center... much the same experience there... “But everybody spontaneously knew the dance moves,” he said. He didn’t have to tell people much of what to do at all..."
OK, so one really can't complain about success and things were done extraordinarily well resulting in the optimum outcome... as is very often the case in healthcare. From Katrina to Sandy, and many incidents before, in-between and after, extraordinary efforts by ordinary (and extraordinary) people have often 'saved the day.' However, it is a realization that this has usually been the case (i.e. a reliance on extraordinary efforts plus often a good measure of luck) rather than planning, processes, and systems that has led to the adoption of systems and processes to respond to emergencies.
The Hospital Emergency Incident Command System is the standardized approach designed to help hospitals prepare for and respond to various types of disasters. Clearly this mass-casualty event was precisely the kind of emergency the system was put in place to deal with! Yet we read that these systems were never used, and that everyone immediately reverted to the 'every one pitch in and do what needs to be done' response that has long been typical of the response in health care! Indeed Dr. Gawande appears to dismiss the HEICS as a "ritualized plan" apparently much too slow to be of much use.
Thus although the medical response was a success, clearly the emergency response systems of the various Boston hospitals were found to be wanting... Some work is clearly needed there to ensure that they are more responsive and will work in any future emergencies. Although things ended up working out extraordinarily well on this occasion, they may not the next...
Dr. Gawande ends his article with: "... We’ve learned, and we’ve absorbed. This is not cause for either
celebration or satisfaction. That we have come to this state of
existence is a great sadness. But it is our great fortune. Last year, after the Aurora shooting, Ron Walls, the chief of emergency
medicine at my hospital, gave a lecture titled “Are We Ready?” In Boston, it turns out we all were."
Is this the right lesson to take from what happened? This blogger is not so sanguine.
Some other articles related to hospital response:
Note;It must be observed that the health care folks handled this much better than did the telecommunications sector.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Random chart
Source: The Haqqani Nexus and the Evolution of al-Qa’ida (56-pg PDF at the Combating Terrorism Center)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)