Warning given to North Korean cyberwarriors?

A week ago, it was reported that two South Korean companies had their computers hijacked.

Korean police and their U.S counterpart began a joint investigation as several computers of an army unit under the U.S Air Force Space Command (SPACECOM) were hacked by an individual in a third country via a Korean firms’ computers in mid-February.

Today, I came across the news that North Korea's cyberwarfare unit has been stepping up its activities recently.

The Defense Security Command, the military unit responsible for overseeing the army's internal affairs and for counter-espionage, has been operating a specialized unit designed to combat potential cyber attacks from North Korea. According to Lieutenant-general Song Young-keun, who commands the Defense Security Command, North Korea operates a special cyber warfare unit. The special unit is said to have been established under the direct orders of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. It is responsible for collecting intelligence on South Korea's governmental and research organizations, and for building a capability to launch cyber attacks against the South.

While the report stops short of an open accusation, apparently for diplomatic reasons, the public reporting of such details serves as a warning.

Though, it is possible that the apparently failed probe of SPACECOM was launched by other countries known to be developing cyberwar capabilities (e.g. China), the timing is suggestive.

The real reason for the rise of American conservative churches?

I ran across this article in Christianity Today which had a thought-provoking examination of the underpinnings of this growth. The dominant view is that ideological strictness has been the reason. However, dissenting sociologists point to a different underlying basis: demographics.

Earlier I also ran across a paper in PDF format titled "Growth and Decline of Religious Subgroups" by John Hayward presenting systemic models for growth via conversion, starting off with a simple model of unlimited enthusiasm, then elaborating by accounting for births and deaths, reversions, then finally the impact of lessening zeal over time. The simulations and the resulting diagrams are illuminating, and in my view provide additional plausibility to the demographic hypothesis. Show and tell, right?

The logical consequence of this model is that social conservatives looking at the big picture should consider supporting gay marriage or civil union. If the liberal reproduction rate is diminished, then conservatives gain a demographic advantage and will rise in relative influence in a few generations.

Iran's military-industrial complex?

I saw this EurasiaNet report on Iran's Revolutionary Guard getting more politically active. This sentence raised a red flag for me:

Prior to taking on a higher political profile, the Revolutionary Guards established itself as an economic force in the country, launching a vast array of financial and economic enterprises.

The report's conclusions seem too conservative to me. With economic clout, political clout soon follows. Combined with the prestige from their nuclear program, the Revolutionary Guard has evolved into a military-industrial complex. This would not be unprecedented. China's People's Liberation Army followed a similar route of branching into business and emerging as a military-industrial complex in the 1980s and onward.

Napoleon is said to have stated that an army marches on its stomach. Today, that logistical stomach in peacetime is the capacity to fund its operations. The military-industrial complex is one solution to this funding problem; when successful, it's less of a drain of government coffers. This model is likely being replicated in other countries as well.

Ineffective

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the alleged sarin round that was detonated in Iraq has been deemed not a credible threat. It was designed to mix properly only when fired as an artillery round.

However, when the [binary chemical] round is used in an improvised explosive device, Kimmitt said, the chemicals don't properly mix, so they produce only "very, very small traces" of sarin gas. "When you rig it as an IED, it just blows up and you have … minor amounts (of the chemical) going in different directions," he said. "It's virtually ineffective as a chemical weapon."

GM food is here to stay

The EU lifted a 6-year ban on GM food to permit the import of GM corn from Swiss-base Syngenta. Sure, US agro will potentially benefit from the lifting of the ban, but I can't help thinking that the ban was in place strategically to prevent the EU from being locked in to buying US GM seed.

The UN food agency recently gave the nod to GM food. Last year, the Vatican approved of GM food after apparently skewing a conference in order to get the requisite support.

I suppose the logic is inevitable. There are an increasing number of people in the world, and GM crops offer the hope of feeding them. However, these varieties tend to be energy-intensive, in that they require more fertilizer. Much of the manufacture of modern fertilizer relies on petroleum. Oil is food.

Assuming for the moment that pesticide-resistant genes from GM food doesn't eventually escape into the wild, there's apparently an unintended consequence happening right now. Coastal water dead zones are being created, apparently triggered by fertilizer runoff.

I don't have any easy answers.

Not so fast with that disinfo, bub

I ran across this piece about 50 alleged anomolies about the Berg video.

My intuition says no on this one.

The piece references a bunch of blog links, and media sites talking about the list. Totally self-referential, which makes me suspicious right out of the gate.

I'd like to see independent confirmation on some of those alleged discrepancies. For one, I doubt a professional intelligence agency would be that sloppy.

I suppose I trust a newspaper a bit more when it comes to vetting because reporters and even editors can be canned if they go over the line. Witness the UK newspaper editor stepping down over alleged staged Iraqi prison abuse photos portrayed as the real deal.

I guess it doesn't help their case that the original author(s) misspelled "Zarqawi" as "Zaraqawi" either.

In fact, I cannot find a single independent reference on the net that Zarqawi has a tattoo even. The terms "zarqawi tattoo" only led me to 273 links on Google, all apparently spurious or else repetitions of the 50 alleged points (i.e. only single-sourced). That's a damning lacuna, suggesting at least that one point was outright manufactured.

Even the alleged prosthesis isn't confirmed. It's intelligence. And I'm sure Zarqawi isn't about to correct any misconceptions about himself. Alternet as a whole surely has no vested interest in confirming the official American story. Look at this bit from 2003:

From there on, rumors have Zarqawi and his new (but unconfirmed) prosthesis visiting the Ansar group in northern Kurdistan to see how their poisons were coming along; traveling to the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia; and attending a "terrorist summit" in south Lebanon. While in Bangkok, he is also alleged to have ordered the assassination of a USAID official in Jordan.

So no tattoo. So much for point 40. Even the prosthesis is in doubt. And that's merely one point I picked at random to hunt down on the net.

I grabbed a reasonable quality version of the video floating around the filesharing network. I watched it. Didn't seem that blurry to me, all in all, so I'd dispute point 23. There was plenty of blood on the ground; bye-bye point 16. Reality is more prosaic than the sensibilities of said piece's author(s). Points 19 and 25 are inconsistent when taken together: the time gap (as evident from the clock in the lower right) of over a minute during the beheading accounts for the apparent speed of beheading. Can't have it both ways, claiming that the beheading was in fact too fast and that the relevant sequence was cut. The lack of motion as alleged in point 17 is due to Berg being bound and pinned; no mystery there.

I'll stop here. It's just not worth it anymore. Not even a challenge.

I'd say the 50 "anomalies" are an excellent case study of disconfirmation bias to the point of overreaching in an effort to disprove something because it disagrees with the author's or authors' existing beliefs. There's not even a serious attempt to ensure that the line of argument is self-consistent. With respect to logic, the author(s) did a judo throw on themselves. Game over.

Al Qaida sleepers in the Saudi National Guard?

Or is it an outright low-intensity civil war in Saudi Arabia? According to this report in The Independent, former Vinnell trainers of the Saudi National Guard who were injured in the attack of May 2003 claim that there was inside help and that both Vinnell and the Saudi royal family did nothing to heighten security after repeated warnings of such an attack being planned. Benign neglect? Not good if true. Attacks indicate that al Qaida seeks to destabilize the pro-Western kingdom.

For the record, Vinnell, as US company, has been in Saudi Arabia since 1975 training their national guard. Apparently, al Qaida's first attack in 1995 targeted Vinnell. It's unclear to me how much Osama bin Laden was outraged by the nepotism of the royal family and US support thereto.

Saudi Arabia has problems. It's a monarchy, fueled by oil wealth. They filters the Internet to censor criticism of the royal family. They only recently openly acknowledged that poverty is a serious problem. Combined with a population boom underway, they are in need oil revenue to pump their economy up and provide sufficient employment. The situation is not sustainable as is, so change is underway, albeit slowly. Time will tell if it will be too slow or not. On the economic side, they need to diversify further from reliance on oil wealth.

While outright democracy might seem an obvious solution from a Western standpoint, some policy makers are also concerned that attempts at political reform might lead to an anti-US government. Not all the royals are fond of the USA.

While the country isn't about to topple overnight in an Islamic revolution, the situation remains uncertain. It is perhaps telling that the USA pulled troops from Saudi Arabia. Technically this move was appeasement of al Qaida. That US air base, set up in 1991 during the first Gulf War, was specifically mentioned early on in Osama bin Laden's fatwa of 1998, which deemed its seven-year presence in Saudi Arabia to be an occupation.

Not the first

Poor Nick Berg. This isn't the first beheading on video in recent times. Daniel Pearl was beheaded on video; mercifully, most haven't seen it. Abu Sayyaf also made a videotape of Philippine soldiers being beheaded, apparently for internal consumption. There's also apparently a video floating around of a Russian soldier being beheaded (or at least murdered up close and personal) by Chechens, but I haven't verified it. All these details one can check via a search engine.

I'll chalk beheading up to a fad, with terrorist groups try to outdo each other for ferocity.

Beheading is still a method of capital punishment in Saudi Arabia, though they try to get it done in one swift cut. Those not into public specatcle should avoid "Chop-Chop" Square in Riyadh on Fridays.

What would John Boyd do?

From a seminar at National Defense University:

Boyd would have criticized the US strategy after major combat operations had ended. As part of his strategy, Boyd stated that a proper exit strategy is needed that will end the conflict on favorable terms, and will not sow the seeds for future conflict. His criticism would revolve around the fact that US strategic planners had not anticipated the "underlying self-interests, critical differences of opinion, internal contradictions, frictions, and obsessions" of the Iraqi people, and until the US gains a grasp of these conditions, a climate for a favorable outcome in the campaign cannot be achieved. Boyd would say today, that the US must now conduct operations in Iraq to break the guerrillas' moral-mental-physical hold over the population by analyzing and operating inside the OODA loop of the Iraqi guerrillas.

John Boyd also had a strategy for combatting guerrilla warfare. It's a shame more people aren't aware of it.

Better buckle up and hope the USA learns fast on the fly, or else it could be a rough ride ahead.

Unsolicited advice on Iraq

After reading an interview with an Iraqi researcher about the situation there, I have some constructive advice. Be warned, it's worth what you pay for it here.

Firstly, some sort of detainee oversight system based on checks and balances will help with building trust, a key requirement for rule of law. Perhaps permitting periodic prison inspections by the UN or some other third-party deemed neutral would be a workable diplomatic solution. It won't fix things, but it would signal a willingness to combat the problem of prisoner abuse, and thus engender Iraqi trust that political systems and institutions can meet their needs.

This conflict has a moral front, an aspect the USA has to deal with more proactively and not shy away from.

If the US is to move out of policing urban areas, either local constabulary and/or troops from other countries (possibly a UN banner) will have to fill the security gap. It's not going to happen overnight.

Nevertheless, time is of the essence. I would recommend that US primary reconstruction contracts be opened to all countries willing to put up significant numbers of peacekeeping forces. Relying on moral suasion alone isn't cutting it. Having a stake would be greater incentive to take the risk of sending troops, as well as being something with a vested interest for them to protect and not pull out and away from.

It goes without saying that care must be taken to ensure the Iraqi security force is viable and trustworthy. However, it's also important that it not be overly dependent upon coalition and/or UN assistance. The goal here is long-term stability and self-sufficiency; liberation, not caretaking.

Sensitivity training is an overused term. However, maintaining an increased geopolitical awareness on the part of US troops is key to adherence with grand strategy. The more they are appraised of the big picture of what US goals are, the better they can align their actions to meet that mission.

Dollar hegemony doesn't hold oil

The notion that the USA invaded Iraq to bolster dollar hegemony by ensuring Iraq wouldn't price in Euros is baseless. Witness the grumblings out of OPEC from January 12:

Several members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are seeking formal talks on using the euro, as well as the U.S. dollar, when determining price targets for crude, a senior oil minister within the cartel said Monday...
Mr. Ramirez did not specify which OPEC members are pushing the proposal, but much of the impetus is believed to come from Persian Gulf producers.
They have seen their purchasing power in Europe pinched as the U.S. dollar loses ground against the euro — including touching a record low Monday.

Clearly, invasions don't eliminate the fundamental economic incentive to price oil in Euros, spurred by the decline of the US dollar relative to the Euro. You can't fight the market.

This gold bug site noted that the price of crude oil has been steady against the Euro from 2001-2003. (It's also worth observing that while gold may be appreciating against the US dollar recently, it's been essentially range-bound against the Euro during that same span.)

The market has a simple message: that Euro has dictated the effective price of oil and gold since 2001, not the US dollar. The Euro is a price-stabilizing influence in the global economy, evidence of its emergence as an economic locus.

O'Reilly on Canada: bankrupt?

From O'Reilly's glib summarization from December 11, 2003:

Canada can't help us anyway. They have no military to speak of. And the socialistic system they have there has nearly bankrupted them. So Chretien is history. A new administration is upcoming. We should be trying to work things out with Canada.

Bankrupted? From December 3, 2003:

The federal government's coffers brimmed with a surplus of $7 billion for the last fiscal year, Finance Minister John Manley reported Wednesday. The entire surplus will go to pay down the national debt.
The surplus for the 2002-2003 fiscal year, which ended on March 31 was the sixth straight year that Ottawa's books have been in the black...

Canada has been underfunding its military for years, but that's been a deliberate policy choice of where to apply budget cuts. The current Prime Minister, Paul Martin, was part of that, having served as Finance Minister from 1993 to 2002. Nor is this budget surplus new, as implied by this UK columnist critical of said underfunding and its impact upon the equipment for Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

With regard to bankruptcy, some perspective is needed. A quick check of the public debt per capita in Canada versus the USA for 2002 reveals that it's $24,892 and $21,937 respectively after adjusting for purchasing power parity. Only 13.5% more bankrupt per capita.

That being said, with an election in the offing, don't expect Canada to ramp up its military spending any time soon. It's just not in the cards. Healthcare funding is higher on the domestic agenda.