Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
Recently, the 2nd Battalion, 4th Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division stopped a car in the Al Bakir neighborhood in Mosul, Iraq. After searching the car, the Iraqi Army found six improvised explosive devices (IEDs or roadside bombs). A typical IED contains the bomb, a cell phone detonator, and rocks or pieces of iron enclosed to injure or kill as many people as possible. The bomb is triggered by a cell phone call. The bombs are hidden with scents intended to foil bomb-sniffing dogs, in this instance, the bomb smelled like cinnamon. The detonator is labeled, "For use against Coalition forces." The driver has been detained and the Iraqi Army is now looking for the bomb factory.
Researchers have recently raised eyebrows both within academe and in professional circles with their study noting the high incidence of engineers in jihad. One of the most well-known of course is key 9/11 plotter Ayman al-Zawahiri. The study builds on more than just one infamous example of course. In a work entitled, "Engineers of Jihad1," researchers Diego Gambetta, Nuffield College and Steffen Hertog, University of Durham, quote not only al-Zawahiri, “You have trivialized our movement by your mundane analysis. May God have mercy on you,” but their abstract details the research. In the words of their abstract:
We find that graduates from subjects such as science, engineering, and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the Muslim world, though not among the extremist Islamic groups which have emerged in Western countries more recently. We also find that engineers alone are strongly over-represented among graduates in violent groups in both realms. This is all the more puzzling for engineers are virtually absent from left-wing violent extremists and only present rather than over-represented among right-wing extremists. We consider four hypotheses that could explain this pattern. Is the engineers’ prominence among violent Islamists an accident of history amplified through network links, or do their technical skills make them attractive recruits? Do engineers have a ‘mindset’ that makes them a particularly good match for Islamism, or is their vigorous radicalization explained by the social conditions they endured in Islamic countries? We argue that the interaction between the last two causes is the most plausible explanation of our findings, casting a new light on the sources of Islamic extremism and grounding macro theories of radicalization in a micro-level perspective.
At the very least, and despite the hubbub, I wanted to quote them accurately and discover what their research suggested.
Memri, an extremist monitoring site, has documented how the Hamas TV channel Al-aqsa has been broadcasting an "educational" programme for 7-13 year-olds called "Tomorrow's Pioneers." The show is replete with Hamas ideology and although the characters appear to be warm and fuzzy, they are anything but. The message is stridently anti-Zionist and anti-Western, lauding Muslims and conversion to Islam while encouraging holy war and martyrs. The show degenerates to a Mickey Mouse-like figure who fights a holy war.
By using an Oracle database with PowerBuilder from Sybase for the user interface a team at the Getty museum has allowed public access to their holdings. The team made heavy use of Perl and SQR (a reporting and database access language).
The tool the team built, known as the Vocabulary Coordination System (VCS), offered a single production system that allows Getty staff to collect, analyze, edit, merge and distribute terminology generated by Getty departments and contributors at other institutions.
The Getty's technical staff supports the VCS, the Getty Vocabularies on the Web, Web-based forms for the automated contribution of single records, and programs to automatically load batches of contributed data in XML format. The team also supports programs to produce yearly exports in XML, relational tables, and the Marc (Machine-readable Cataloging) format for institutions and commercial entities that license data sets.
The vocabularies average more than 900,000 searches per quarter. The vocabularies are available to the accessible to the public for free at the Getty museum.
The Netherlands has shown some grit and committed the Dutch to greater development in Afghanistan. The Dutch defense minister, Eimert van Middelkoop, stated that a military solution alone will not work.
Middelkoop stated: "A greater commitment of the United Nations and other international organisations and NGOs (non-governmental organisations) is necessary to ensure that progress does not evaporate."
He continued: "Projects such as schools, health clinics, roads and power plants will not only help the economy, but also help the government to assert its authority throughout Afghanistan."
Finally, a bit of a reaction from the Coalition's European allies, and from minuscule Holland no less.
Australian and Dutch troops have been working together for 18 months in a NATO-led mission in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, a former Taliban stronghold.
I wish them well and it would be too much to ask that France and Germany chime in behind them but we can always hope.
In his fussy, The War of the World, Niall Ferguson presents a moral view of the twentieth century reviewing mostly secondary sources to declaim the savagery of the 20th century. Ferguson shows primarily how not only financial difficulties as well as economic progress, in short, economic volatility of any sort, along with decaying empires, psychopathic dictators, and social violence resulted in the wars, and the genocides of what he calls "History's Age of Hatred."
The book was widely acclaimed, Ferguson was interviewed and on podcasts,The New York Times Book Review named War of the World one the 100 Notable Books of the Year and acclaimed by many in 2006.
I am uncomfortable with his moralizing historical analysis which evaluates as much as it relates historical events. He seems to write a fuddy-duddy analysis of repellent dictators and economic troubles. One part of the subtitle, the Descent of the West, seems cloying or perhaps he means the phrase in an ironic nod to Darwin. I'm not sure.
The Islamic State of Iraq swears vengeance on those Yazidis who killed a woman, Dua Khalil Aswad, who converted to Islam. In a brutal killing a crowd stoned her to death all the while filming or recording the event on cell phone cameras. The tape, which circulated on the Internet, provided graphic details of the violence but when the woman's garments reveal too much, the editors tactfully covered it up. Apparently graphic violence is acceptable to the Islamic avengers but a woman's skin is censored.
Yazidis [also Yezidi, Azidi, Zedi, or Izdi] are a syncretistic religious group (or a set of several groups), with ancient origins and comprising Gnostic core belief structure with other elements of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Manicheism, and Islam. Yazidi do not intermarry with outsiders or accept converts. Many Yazidi now consider themselves to be Kurds, while others define themselves as both religiously and ethnically distinct from Muslim Kurds. Most of the 700,000 Yazidi reside in the North of the country. The group remains secretive even today and its teachings are obscure and may not even be fully known even to its own adherents.
Stanford University is beginning this terrific new program in which parents with incomes of less than $100,000 will no longer pay tuition. Parents with incomes of less than $60,000 will not be expected to pay tuition or contribute to the costs of room, board, and other expenses. Under the plan, students will still be expected to contribute their earnings from work during the summer and academic year. In order to access one of the best universities in the country simply contributing their spare time efforts is not a high price to pay. This would be an incredible deal for lower-income parents and a great boost for smart, but poorer students.
Police officers, one of them in a hazardous-materials suit, examined the military recruiting station in Times Square after an explosion damaged the front of the building early Thursday morning. Graphic source: Chip East/Reuters.
This may well be a dry run for a subsequent attack but video reveals a man riding on a bike who set off a small bomb at a recruiting office. The accounts are frustratingly vague on how similar the attack is to previous attacks on U.S. embassies. The bomb is also similar to attacks on recruiting centers elsewhere. On 3 May 2006 for example insurgents embarked on deadly attacks in Baghdad killing 16 people at a police recruitment center in Falluja, an American civilian contractor near Nasiriya and a police officer in Baquba; on 31 May 2007 a suicide bomber killed up to 25 people at a police recruiting center in Fallujah, though the estimated number of number of dead and injured have varied.
US and Iraqi security forces have killed or captured 26 senior leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq's terror network over the past several weeks. Eight of those killed were emirs, or leaders responsible for "a geographic or functional area," five were cell leaders, and 13 were facilitators "involved in supporting the network of foreign terrorists, organizing the movement and security of senior leaders of the terrorist cells, or the making and use of improvised explosives and suicide vests." Those identified highlights how al Qaeda's operations have shifted from Anbar and Baghdad provinces to the northern provinces of Diyala, Salahadin, and Ninewa. Of those al Qaeda leaders identified, five operated in Mosul, two in Tikrit, one in Sharqat, and one in Baqubah, all in the north. Only two of those identified as killed or captured came from Baghdad.
The point of contrast between today's Presidential candidates and the past could not be clearer.
For example, John F. Kennedy was interviewed on 3 January 1960 for the "Meet The Press" show once he announced he was running for President on the Democratic ticket. The interviewers are serious, sober, and ask numerous substantive questions. Kennedy is articulate, has a grasp of history, bases his thinking on sound reasons, he discusses and supports a foundation of thought on constitutional issues, and finally, he does not mince words on even the tough questions posed to him. The questions are directed at the candidate and they get out of the way. The overwhelming numbers of words come from Kennedy.
On the other hand, in a recent disagreement Obama and McCain spout off sound bites vapidly. Yet, the commentators, who dominate the issue, blather on blissfully about how the candidates have finally reached a point of policy and they seem thrilled that the disagreement is dealing with one issue, at least, seriously. Its just pathetic. They are gleefully mugging for the camera and note how exciting and interesting the debate is. They spew out an abundance of words, and no one seems to note that both Obama and McCain seem ignorant of the issue they are discussing. The commentators only seek to heighten the conflict.
Isn't it just by coincidence that the Meet the Press clip are all male interviewers, although it should be noted that the show included females as well, and the contemporary clip is all women?
And now a word from our sponsor.
In short, this is the focus, not any sort of issue or choice that a voter could consider. Its teletainment.
The U.S. airstrike was in fact targetting Al Qaeda leader Saleh in the southern Somalia action. Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a senior operative for al Qaeda's network in eastern Africa, was "found, targeted, and killed" along with an unspecified number of al Qaeda operatives in the town of Dhobley along the southern border with Kenya.
Nonetheless, although news reports have run the story, the U.S. military has not confirmed Saleh's death with DNA and other forensic evidence to confirm the identity of those killed in the attack.
Nabhan is also wanted for involvement in the 1998 suicide attacks against US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The attack in Nairobi, Kenya resulted in 212 killed and more than 4,000 wounded. The attack in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania resulted 11 killed and 85 wounded. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, al Qaeda's operations chief in East Africa, and Abu Taha al Sudani, the leader of al Qaeda's network in East Africa were also behind the attacks.
At the risk of sounding overly technical, I tried to understand how Pakistan could shut down the Internet as the government objected to what it considered disparaging to the Prophet Mohammed. Pakistan used a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) injection. In lay terms, Pakistan changed its Internet routing information for YouTube so that requests would go to Pakistani servers, not YouTube's. But the changed information was also sent to Pakistan's own Internet provider, Hong Kong's PCCW, which accepted it and passed it along to the rest of the world. And the result was that almost instantaneously, YouTube disappeared, for you and I.
The nefarious Pakistani deed took about two hours to correct.
BGP injections won't be fixed nor will they likely be. At times it is by accident, other times spammers or hijackers are sabotaging an address. More ominously, governments keep attempting to censor Web sites, and in the climate we are in, that kind of sabotage is likely to happen more and more.
The basic issue is that for the big network providers, relations between them still runs on trust. And as long as one of them sends out routing information to the others, we presume it to be true.
Computerworld surveyed 7 secure USB drives and concluded that based on features, price, security, and similar concerns, the IronKey Secure was the best of the lot. The item tested, a 4GB version, also available in 1GB and 2GB sizes, is listed at $149.99 with 128-bit AES encryption.
With news that a U.S. airstrike hit an al Qaeda safe house in Somalia the speculation is that the launch targeted Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, among others.
I am pleased to see that the U.S. did not check with Europe for permission before launching the strike. At least I do not know that we asked for permission. This is another individual that would not be a loss for humanity to lose.
The airstrike targeted an al Qaeda safe house in the town of Dobley in southern Somalia, just four miles from the Kenyan border.
The target of the strike has not been identified, but it may be Fazul, and the military believes the strike was successful. At least eight were reported killed and six more are reported to be trapped inside the rubble of the safe house.
This is the fourth known US-led airstrike against al Qaeda operatives in Somalia since the Ethiopian operation to drive the Islamic Courts from power was launched in late December 2006.
The US targeted Fazul Abdullah Mohammad, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, and Abu Tala al Sudani during the early 2007 strikes. Fazul was again targeted in June 2007. They are believed to be sheltering in Somalia, and one or more of them may have been the target of today's strike.
Fazul is al Qaeda's operations chief responsible for planning the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the 2002 car bombing attack in Kenya and missile attack on an Israeli airliner.
The word out on the Marines is that big game hunters are now providing training for Marines sent to Iraq.
Combat Hunter is the name of the program begun at Camp Pendleton which is now being rolled out nationwide. The program is designed to help Marines more keenly become aware of their senses and instincts while stalking and killing insurgents. The Marines are trained to be better observers while accumulating meticulous knowledge of their foes' habits.
This is a primal skill that with the enormous growth of technology in warfighting we may have lost.
On the one hand, the Marines are simply being re-trained to recognize our animal nature. We are animals, even if we are not nothing but animals. And two, they are trained killers anyway so they are no more likely to be a problem adjusting to normal live upon their return. These are two concerns that have been expressed but I believe them to be misplaced.
Although I may share concerns about an erosion of liberty, which I do, I don't see how developing a more lethal military to eliminate our enemies, is a problem.
Furthermore, viewing an enemy, as an animal as we are ourselves, does not lessen the humanity of any Marine. In response to this story, "Anonymous Hollywoood Blacklist Dodger" stated: "Finally an admission from an official goverment agency (the Marines) that we are in fact, bipedal, semi-domesticated, mostly hairless primates." Now, that's funny.
Thomas Friedman, of "Flat World" fame, is interviewed by Charlie Rose while relating the "bubbles" of the '90s to his thoughts on whether it was worth it to get involved in Iraq.
Any casualties are regrettable but what can be stated positively is that U.S. casualties dropped last month.
The official U.S. troop death count in Iraq stands at 29, the third-lowest monthly casualty toll for the U.S. military since the American-led invasion in 2003. The count includes 3 non-combat deaths.
40 were killed in January, a year ago the count was 81. There has been a dramatic decrease in American troop deaths.
Although various criteria measuring violence confirms that there has been a downturn, Iraqi casualties increased which no doubt reflects the greater role that Iraqis are playing in reconstruction.
The three key factors which are widely credited with reducing violence in Iraq over the past six months are: an increase in U.S. troop levels; a cease-fire by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia; and the decision by tens of thousands of Sunni fighters to accept U.S. funding and turn against al-Qaida in Iraq.
U.S. and Iraqi security forces are removing al Qaeda in Iraq from its last urban stronghold in Mosul. Multinational Forces Iraq killed two senior Saudi al Qaeda operatives there. The two, Abu Yasir al Saudi, and Hamdan, were eliminated during a helicopter strike.
Abu Yasir al Saudi was al Qaeda in Iraq’s emir, or leader, of southeastern Mosul. Hamdan was a close associate of Yasir who helped foreign terrorists enter Mosul and led a regional anti-aircraft ring.
142 al Qaeda leaders and operatives have been killed or captured in Mosul since January in this last urban outpost of AQ.
In what is surely a harbinger of disaster for Saudi Arabia, and more importantly for the U.S. unless we cut our ties with the oppressive regime, Saudi nationals make up the largest element of the foreign al Qaeda fighters. Based on documentation found last October, 41% of foreign fighters were from Saudi Arabia. Libyan nationals accounted for the second largest group entering Iraq with about 19% of the total, followed by Syrians and Yemenis each at 8%, Algerians with 7% and Moroccans at 6%.
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Info World: Information Technology News, Computer Networking & Security;
Information Week: Business Innovation Powered by Technology:
Infostor: The Leading Source for Enterprise Storage Professionals;
Infrastructure Insite: Bringing IT Together;
Insurance Technology: Business Innovation Powered by Technology;
Integrated Solutions: For Enterprise Content Management;
Intel Premier IT: Sharing Best Practices with the Information Technology Community;
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Kasser, Rodolphe, The Gospel of Judas;
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Kiplinger's: Personal Finance;
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KM World: Content, Document, and Knowledge Management;
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McCullough, David, John Adams;
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Pimlott, John, The Elite: The Special Forces of the World Volume 1;
Pitre, Brant, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper;
Plutarch's Lives, X: Agis and Cleomenes. Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. Philopoemen and Flamininus (Loeb Classical Library®);
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Potter, Wendell, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans;
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Redmond Magazine: The Independent Voice of the Microsoft IT Community;
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Scholastic Instructor
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Sound & Vision: The Consumer Electronics Authority;
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Sri, Edward, Men, Women and the Mystery of Love: Practical Insights from John Paul II's Love and Responsibility;
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Steyn, Mark, America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It;
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Strassler, Robert B., The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika;
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Swanston, Malcolm, Mapping History Battles and Campaigns;
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Swiderski, Richard M., Quicksilver: A History of the Use, Lore, and Effects of Mercury;
Swift, Jonathan, Gulliver's Travels;
Syme, Ronald, The Roman Revolution;
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Tawil, Camille, Brothers In Arms: The Story of al-Qa'ida and the Arab Jihadists;
Tech Briefs: Engineering Solutions for Design & Manufacturing;
Tech Net: The Microsoft Journal for IT Professionals;
Tech Partner: Gain a Competitive Edge Through Solutions Providers;
Technology & Learning: Ideas and Tools for Ed Tech Leaders;
Tenet, George, At the Center of the Storm: The CIA During America's Time of Crisis;
Thackeray, W. M., Vanity Fair;
Thompson, Derrick & William Martin, Have Guitars ... Will Travel: A Journey Through the Beat Music Scene in Northampton 1957-66;
Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina;
Trento, Joseph J., The Secret History of the CIA;
Twain, Mark, The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today;
Ungar, Craig, House of Bush House of Saud;
Unterberger, Richie, The Unreleased Beatles Music & Film;
VAR Business: Strategic Insight for Technology Integrators:
Virgil, The Aeneid
Virtualization Review: Powering the New IT Generation;
Visual Studio: Enterprise Solutions for .Net Development;
VON Magazine: Voice, Video & Vision;
Wall Street Technology: Business Innovation Powered by Technology;
Wallace, Robert, Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda;
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Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization;
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Website Magazine: The Magazine for Website Success;
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Weiner, Tim, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA;
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Wissner-Gross, What Colleges Don't Tell You (And Other Parents Don't Want You To Know) 272 Secrets For Getting Your Kid Into the Top Schools;
Wissner-Gross, What High Schools Don't Tell You;
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Woodward, Bob, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House;
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Xenophon, The Anabasis of Cyrus;
Yergin, Daniel, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power;
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A tax on toilet paper; I kid you not. According to the sponsor, "the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act will be financed broadly by small fees on such things as . . . products disposed of in waste water." Congress wants to tax what you do in the privacy of your bathroom.
Graphic source: The Long War Journal.
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