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4 weeks ago
A Tale of Two Cities
2 May 2012
This month, the City of Chicago will host the NATO Summit, when Western leaders will decide which Middle Eastern satrapy is next to be bombed into democracy and liberty. This summer, the City of London will host the Olympics, when the world will see how far the former Eastern Bloc nations have fallen since they quit breeding humans like Kentucky show horses.
Both cities are implementing extraordinary security measures in order to thwart any possible attack by Islamofascists, anarchists, or students upset with the price of college tuition. In London, the multifaceted protection programme has been given the rather elegant appellation, “The Ring of Steel.” In Chicago, borrowing from the lexicon of Mayor Richard Daley the First, the security arrangements have been characterized as “Shoot-to-kill” enforcement. Perhaps this will be supplemented with that other Richard I protective provision, a “Shoot-to-maim” order.
Of course, London is the city where Shakespeare debuted his plays, while Chicago is the famed Hog Butcher for the World. The stylistic differences could not be more stark. Here are a few more:
Mayor
London: Boris Johnson is an avid bicycler, despite comically falling off on occasion.
Chicago: Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish in a box as a warning to an opponent.
Judges
London: Are addressed as “My Lord.”
Chicago: 17 were convicted of corruption in “Operation Greylord.”
Law Enforcement
London: “The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon … the way we police in Britain is through consent of communities.” Home Secretary Teresa May
Chicago: “The police are not here to create disorder, they’re here to preserve disorder.” Mayor Richard J. Daley
Waterways
London: The Thames River is the station for HMS Ocean, an amphibious assault ship.
Chicago: The Chicago River flows backwards because otherwise it pollutes the drinking water.
Flag
London: A red cross to represent St. George and a red sword to represent St. Paul.
Chicago: Red stars representing the devastating fire of 1871 and the Haymarket Massacre of 1886.
In the Face of Attack…
London: “We shall fight for Queen and Country!”
Chicago: “We got da Bulls, da Bears, and da Bombs – youz don’t F*** wit us.”
— Grey Eminence
comments: hamam@titleten.com
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1 month ago
Unwanted Houseguest
27 April 2012
“As far as I know, he is in the U.S. Embassy, the safest place in China. I’m not sure if he’s going to ask for political asylum or not. I don’t know if he still wants to stay in China.”
— Hu Jia, Chinese activist, speaking about his missing friend and fellow activist Chen Guangcheng
Chen has been alternately imprisoned and placed under house-arrest since 2005, when he spoke to Time magazine about government-enforced abortions. Sunday night, after months of lulling his guards into complacency, he scaled a wall outside his Shandong home under cover of darkness, and rendezvoused with a fellow activist and blogger who clandestinely drove him eight hours into Beijing…and most probably to the American embassy.
Mr. Chen, this is not the Cold War, you are not living in the Soviet Union, you are not Andrei Sakharov – and the United States is in no position to be sheltering you at the risk of seriously souring relations with the Chinese government. You are a righteous luxury America cannot afford right now. So please betake yourself to the Swiss embassy – we are dusting off the Manuel Noriega memorial Guns N’ Roses CD in the meantime.
“Their actions are so cruel it has greatly harmed the image of the Communist Party.”
— Chen Guangcheng, in a video message to Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, released after his escape from house-arrest
Mr. Chen, if you are worried about the image of the Communist Party, or if you thing Wen is worried about the image of the Communist Party, you’ve really missed the point – and you’re certainly in the wrong embassy.
— Grey Eminence
comments: hamam@titleten.com
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1 month ago
Unreal
26 April 2012
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the North Korean military literally rolled out the largest missile launcher it has ever shown publically. Unfortunately for the reputation of the Korean People’s Army, international engineers and analysts have pointed out that the missiles on the launch platform were either fake or very poorly designed. This would partly account for the comically failed rocket test of 13 April. One expert has called the phony missile parade a “dog and pony show.” Considering the Communist regime’s chronic inability to feed its population, a dog and pony show is usually a culinary affair.
The official designation for the North Korea’s imitation-missile is KN-08. The following are some more apt names:
BS-12
Silo-Clogger
Kim Jong Ill
V-2 (no, those actually worked – even if it was 1940s technology)
InterContinental Bowel Movement
Typo-Dong 3
Minutegirl
PAD (Personally Assured Destruction)
Tri-and-Fail-Dent
Bottlerocket
Pisskeeper
Saber-Rattler (since a saber is about the only weapon North Korea can get to work)
— Grey Eminence
comments: hamam@titleten.com
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1 month ago
Uncle Sam Had a Farm - EIEIO
25 April 2012
ODNI - Office of the Director of National Intelligence: Established to placate the 9/11 Commission and designed to pretend that one man actually knows what 16 other agencies do – agencies charged with keeping secrets and creating deceptions.
CIA - Central Intelligence Agency: Established because Harry Truman was deathly afraid of all the spies and covert operatives left without meaningful work after the end of the Second World War, its remit was to use any means necessary to gather foreign intelligence…which is why it has spent over six decades getting caught skulking around the 50 states.
FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation: Established because local Keystone Cops were either too incompetent or too corrupt to combat bank robbers and organized crime, its proto-director kept extensive and compromising files on thousands of prominent Americans, its associate director exposed classified information and fabricated evidence against the President of the United States (before going to jail for ordering covert burglaries of Americans’ homes), and it missed every sign that foreign agents were preparing within the United States to conduct the September 11 attacks.
DIA - Defense Intelligence Agency: Established by Secretary of Defense Bob McNamara, author of the successful American policies in Vietnam from 1961 to 1968, it was the product of two major study group committees operating over three years, and was designed to take over responsibility for all Department of Defense intelligence operations…which is why there is still an Office of Naval Intelligence, a Military Intelligence Corps, and an Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency.
NSA - National Security Agency: Established under the Secretary of Defense at the behest of the Director of Central Intelligence, it was created to collect and coordinate all cytological intelligence; it was kept so secret that the first reference to it only appeared in official government documents five years after its creation – three years before the first of a long line of its employees either sold secrets or defected to the Soviet Union.
AFISRA - Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency: “The agency’s mission is to deliver decisive advantage by providing and operating integrated, cross-domain ISR capabilities in concert with service, joint, national and international partners.” It may have been established in 2007, or it may be the successor to a number of agencies stretching back to 1948; either way, it does not seem to employ either grammarians or proofreaders.
INSCOM - Army Intelligence and Security Command: Established in 1977 to (once again) streamline intelligence operations and bring several different agencies under one coordinated command structure, this is the group that worked on parapsychology projects such as “remote viewing.”
MCIA - Marine Corps Intelligence Activity: Established to provide intelligence based on missions in littoral areas – yes, this is an agency concerned exclusively with beaches.
NGA - National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency: Established, oddly enough, in 1939 as the Engineer Reproduction Plant, it was reorganized into the Army Map Service in 1942, redesignated as the U.S. Army Topographical Command in 1968, merged into the Defense Mapping Agency in 1972, along with the U.S. Air Force Aeronautical Chart and Information Center, which had previously been known as the Aeronautical Chart Plant when it was established in 1943 by the Army Air Corps, before the latter was separated from the Army and became the independent Air Force. The Defense Mapping Agency was merged into the National Imagery and Mapping Agency in 1996, along with the Central Imagery Office, the Defense Dissemination Program Office, and (against its will) the National Photographic Interpretation Center which had been established in 1961 as part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology. In 2003 the National Imagery and Mapping Agency was quietly renamed the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency without any further reorganizations or mergers.
NRO - National Reconnaissance Office: Established in 1960 to coordinate the satellite intelligence gathering operations of, first, the Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency, and eventually, the Navy and the National Security Agency, this agency was not officially acknowledged until a Senate report accidentally named it in writing in 1973; the National Reconnaissance Office is part of the Department of Defense and, as such, the director is appointed by the Secretary of Defense with the consent of the Director of National Intelligence, and reports to both, as well as serving as the Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force for Intelligence and Space Technology.
ONI - Office of Naval Intelligence: Established in 1882 as the Office of Intelligence under the Bureau of Navigation within the Department of the Navy, it was immediately merged with the Department Library…the more things change, the more they stay the same.
OICI - Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence: Established by the Department of Energy to provide intelligence on foreign nuclear weapons programs, nuclear proliferation, nuclear energy, and radioactive materials, contrary to its name the agency performs no counterintelligence functions; those responsibilities fall to the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive.
DEA/ONSI - Office of National Security Intelligence, Drug Enforcement Administration: The Drug Enforcement Administration is part of the Department of Justice, as is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which itself is an intelligence agency; and that is precisely why the Drug Enforcement Administration needs its own intelligence agency…right?
And now introducing
DCS - Defense Clandestine Service: Established on 23 April 2012 to collect all the intelligence the other agencies are lacking.
— Grey Eminence
comments: hamam@titleten.com
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1 month ago
Trashing Secrets or Secret Trash
24 April 2012
What is a secret and what is not a secret? What makes something secret? What constitutes a national security secret? Is something secret by nature, or only because an authority declares it secret, or only because its disclosure would be damaging? WikiLeaks hero Bradley Manning is in the preliminary stages of a military trial for disclosing secrets – information that the State Department and Department of Defense declared to be secret. But his defense team has raised an important question: was any harm done by making that information public? In essence, should the information Manning bandied about actually have been secret in the first place?
The vast majority of the secret Manning communiqués that WikiLeaks has disclosed have been certainly embarrassing, but none has really risen to the level of “dangerous if publicly known.” And that is precisely what the Manning defense is raising – the age-old adage of “No Harm, No Foul.”
In court, the validity of the argument will depend on the wording of the statute under which Manning is being prosecuted, and case law. As any prostitute knows, it is possible to break a law without any actual harm being done. Thus it is possible that Manning is being prosecuted not because he has done material harm to American security, but so that a clear message will be sent to any and all disgruntled individuals with access to secret information, thereby preventing the disclosure of truly damaging information. Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen disclosed information that led to the deaths of American agents and gravely compromised American national security. Bradley Manning disclosed information that the late Muammar Gaddafi liked to use busty blondes for bodyguards. Those are not even comparable situations, but the action of violation is the same.
At the same time James Murdoch of News Corporation is being publically excoriated for having (knowingly or unknowingly) presided over a flock of reporters with the ethics of trash pickers and dumpster divers. However, in theory, that is all Murdoch’s various “journalists” and other employees have done. They sorted through the unsecured voicemails of non-consenting individuals who were ignorant of the activity. It has been called a hacking scandal, but in fact, no actual hacking was done. Voicemails were listened to and recorded because basic security provisions like numerical access codes were not activated. It would be similar to placing sensitive personal documents in the trash and then placing the trash on the curb. In that instance, one’s love letters and financial statements are fair game for unscrupulous garbage connoisseurs. Yet, picking through someone’s trash is not a crime, because if that someone had wanted to make sure his secrets were safe, he would have mutilated, burned, or in some way substantially destroyed the documents.
In an odd twist of vocabulary, Manning collected government secrets on a junk drive. Evidently, said government was treating its own secrets like said homeowner who threw crumpled diary pages in a black plastic bag and left them on the parkway. One wonders whether said government has bothered to set up voicemail security codes.
Murdoch and his minions did something tawdry, but was it criminal to take advantage of another’s rank carelessness? Manning did something irresponsible, but was it criminal to walk off a military base with a memory stick full of State Department tattle? These philosophical questions are left to several different courts to decide. And even if the proceedings are kept secret, everyone knows the information will get out eventually.
— Grey Eminence
comments: hamam@titleten.com
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1 month ago
Light My Fire
2 April 2012
The Federation Tower in Moscow will be Europe’s tallest building at 1,150 feet and 93 floors when completed. Unfortunately, it caught fire and was significantly damaged yesterday. The question is, whom will Vladimir Putin blame for the fire?
10. Shoddy Communist-Era building and fire codes that only Vladimir the Wise can rewrite properly
9. Internal enemies of progress and change who do not want to see Russia “Rise Above the Rest” (slogan written by Vladimir)
8. The Christians
7. The ghost of Boris Yeltsin (Dig him up, cut off his head, and drive a wooden stake through his heart – What? Well then do it again!)
6. Medvedev – if he crosses me.
5. The oligarchs whose power over the good people of Russia can be curbed only by Vladimir the Terrible
4. The Mafia whose power over the good people of Russia can be curbed only by Vladimir the Just
3.
China– (no wait, we like them lately) – Hillary Clinton2. Greek restaurateurs
1. The Germans – it’s always their fault
— Grey Eminence
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2 months ago
Rating Survival
22 March 2012
For all the advanced weaponry the armed forces of the United States have brought to bear in Afghanistan and Iraq, the deadliest countermeasure the enemy has devised has been little more than a ball of plastic explosive wrapped in rusty nails and triggered by a disposable cell phone. These pieces of nastiness have maimed thousands of American troops. It seems that more men are coming back from these Asian forays crippled than ever returned home in pieces during other wars. But that is not the result of cunning on the part of enemies; rather it is the result of skill on the part of combat medics and surgeons. Injuries that would have been deadly 15 years ago are now merely life and limb altering. Of course, losing two legs and an arm is not a “mere” event – it is the intersection of crude, homemade weapons and highly-advanced medical care.
But the underlying problem remains the improvised and insufficiently destructive nature of terrorists’ weapons. The German panzer of 1942 has been replaced by the insidious Afghan exploding tinker-toy of 2012. And this devolution in weaponry poses an even more calamitous threat when the bomb in the backpack is nuclear. Now the Soviet ICBM which was guaranteed to wipe out an entire city in the blink of an eye is replaced with the terrorist’s small-scale nuclear device. The trouble is the satellites cannot see these coming.
FEMA has produced a report with the ominous title, “National Capital Region: Key Response Planning Factors for the Aftermath of Nuclear Terrorism.” It is basically a study of what would happen if a nuclear bomb were exploded a few blocks from the White House. This fear is nothing new. There has been a somewhat nuclear-proof shelter under the Executive Mansion since Harry Truman ordered one built. Washington has always been target #1 in a nuclear exchange, with the outdoor eatery in the middle of the Pentagon called the “Ground Zero Café.” At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Jack Kennedy had to decide whether to permit a staged evacuation of national leaders to the various hardened bunkers in Maryland and West Virginia. In the event, he decided against such moves, because of the risk that they would be perceived as a prelude to an American strike.
But the days of a good, old-fashioned 20 megaton explosion 300 feet over the National Mall are well and truly gone. And when the nuclear suitcase explodes on K Street Northwest, it will do massive damage, but not nearly lethal enough. FEMA’s report lists which federal buildings will be destroyed in which order – which is totally irrelevant. The larger issue is which fire stations and which hospitals will be leveled, because there are going to be a lot more survivors – maimed, crippled, and poisoned – than if the deathblow had come from a Typhoon-class submarine.
It seems morbid to wish for a quick death in a blinding flash. But that is infinitely better than waiting for the toxic cloud to spread into a relatively unaffected neighborhood – or waiting for the Baltimore Fire Department paramedics to arrive. At the height of the Cold War, the strategy had always been to anticipate the Soviet first strike and to move important people out of Washington in time. But when the nuclear device slips over the border from Mexico on a student visa, there will be no time to decamp to the Greenbrier.
And there will be no doctors and nurses left – or, at least, not enough. FEMA’s study meticulously charted which floor of a high-rise is the worst to be on when a nuclear bomb explodes, but did little to plan for how to care for all the survivors. Like the soldiers coming back from the Middle East with significantly fewer limbs than they were born with, the survivors of a crude, homemade nuclear explosion will need significantly more continuing care than a corpse.
So it is useful that FEMA is planning for the umpteenth time what will happen if Washington gets nuked. But the critical difference in this day and age is that too many people will live through it.
— Grey Eminence
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2 months ago
Looks Like We Got Us A Convoy
13 March 2012
Baciamano is the kissing of the hand of a superior as a show of homage. It is an ancient sign of respect and submission. And it is what Nursultan Nazarbayev is demanding of Prime Minister David Cameron in order for the latter to secure an evacuation route through Kazakhstan. The baciamano is a rather primitive gesture; but that is fitting, since Nazarbayev is a rather primitive leader – more of a tribal chieftan than a president. But since Nazarbayev has the upper hand, Cameron will have to kiss it and like it.
This has all come about because the road through Pakistan is closed; and since Britain and America really need to get out of Afghanistan (now more than ever), they will have to leave by the back door. For American and British men and materiel that means a tortuous caravan route through Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, and also Kazakhstan. It is rather amazing that this thousand-mile detour through terrain that can only be described as rugged is ultimately safer than decamping through our erstwhile ally Pakistan. What is even more surprising is that British forces are also looking for a way home that does not lead through Pakistan, since it has not been British robots dealing death to Pakistani civilians from the sky.
Thus, much sooner rather than the scheduled later, the world will be witness to the ludicrous sight of the American and British military fleeing Afghanistan with heads held high and flags flying, all the way across half of Asia and all of Europe, on some quasi-medieval trade or pilgrimage route. How this image will be reconciled with boastful assertions of victory beggars the imagination. Will the disingenuous spokesmen try to convince the press that things went so well in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the forces are just taking the long, leisurely way home as a reward?
In Britain, the massive 3,500 mile convoy operation is being called the “New Dunkirk.” That is an insult to the brave soldiers, sailors, and civilians in their “little ships” who effected one of the most heroic and noblest evacuations in the history of warfare. A more apt comparison could be drawn with Alexander’s ignominious retreat from India through the desolate Gedrosian desert. In that instance, the general was punishing his men for their disloyalty; in this instance, the generals are punishing their men for nothing that the troops have done, but because the generals have grossly mismanaged nearly every aspect of the Central Asian war, up to and beyond the ending. Alexander lost thousands of soldiers and most of his equipment train in Gedrosia, which was the great commander’s greatest miscalculation and mistake.
But that is the British plan. The American plan is just slightly more sensible and just slightly less embarrassing. It requires reversing the Northern Distribution Network which begins at Baltic and Black Sea ports and then takes the short way across the middle of Asia. In that this involves ports, is quicker, and the British are not interested in it, it is also undoubtedly considerably more expensive than Britain’s 21st Century Silk Road.
The most apt term for America’s back door exit from backward Afghanistan is “Bugging Out.” The visuals of this sudden evacuation are fondly remembered from the long-running TV series M*A*S*H. Indeed the term “Bug Out,” as applied to a hasty retreat, originated in the very conflict M*A*S*H commemorated – the eerily similar and tragically costly stalemate known as the Korean War.
— Grey Eminence
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2 months ago
OMG NATO
12 March 2012
State-sponsored individuals in China (also known as spies) recently managed to set up a fake Facebook account in the name of the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, Admiral James Stavridis. From this account, they then sent friend requests to high-ranking military officers and officials from various Western governments. Once these requests were accepted, access was then gained to all the personal information contained in the various accounts.
This poses some troubling questions. First, why would the Supreme Commander of NATO have a Facebook page and be making friend requests in the first place? Can one imagine General Dwight Eisenhower unfriending Charles de Gaulle? Would General Alexander Haig have liked “being in control here?” How or why would anyone in the upper echelons of the European military establishment, even in an excess of credulity, become childishly excited by a friend request from Admiral Stavridis, rather than deeply suspicious?
Second, why are high-level defense officials using Facebook? Are they chronically lonely or terminally stupid? At what point does a man who has a security clearance decide that the pictures from his birthday party are just too cool not to share? Are they also Tweeting things like, “During briefing Cameron says Nazarbayev with first part sounding like Nazi #epicdictatorfail.” In the Second World War the byword was “Loose Lips.” Does NATO’s leadership need to see posters about “Friendly Fingers?”
Third, how did the security arm of NATO not perceive this basic threat, pioneered years ago by ex-girlfriends and cyber-stalkers? Alternatively, how did the security analysts forget to warn their superiors about posting personal or sensitive information online? A couple Post-it notes some carefully-chosen computer monitors would do the trick.
Considering the ineptitude of the cyber-security division of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, it should come as no surprise that the two-pronged response to this Facebook charade has been to create Facebook pages for all the SHAPE leaders. That’ll show those pesky Chinese! They can’t make any more FAKE Facebook pages because we’ve made REAL ones! The second prong of this defense strategy is even more uninspired and obtuse: Denial. “This type of compromising attempts are called ‘Social Engineering’ and has nothing to do with ‘hacking’ or ‘espionage,’” said one particularly unintelligent SHAPE spokesman, who had obviously spent six to seven minutes researching his response on Wikipedia. One would like to ask him when, in history, has deceiving others into divulging information they would not normally provide constituted anything less than a form of espionage (which is a big word for spying). One suspects that 20 minutes before he made this statement, the same SHAPE spokesman though ‘hacking’ was what the cat did when it had a hairball.
Perhaps trying to blunt the imbecility of SHAPE’s statement, the other acronym involved, NATO, put forward an official tasked with the assignment of applying a thick coating of irony. “Social media played a crucial role in the Libya campaign last year. It reflected the groundswell of public opposition, but also we received a huge amount of information from social media in terms of locating Libyan regime forces. It was a real eye-opener. That is why it is important the public has trust in our social media.” Really? NATO used social media to gather information on hostile regime forces, but its officials are still cavalierly using said social media? Do they not think that any powers out there might consider NATO to be a hostile regime, and therefore attempt to use NATO’s own sloppy social media usage against it?
It is not terribly important that the public has trust in NATO’s social media, when there is no reason to trust the ever so cyber-gullible officials running the organization (and friending, and liking, and Tweeting…)
— Grey Eminence
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2 months ago
Un-Welcome
11 March 2012
“Afghans have never been comfortable with foreigners and there comes a point — no matter how benign the intentions, and how much you explain that this is not an occupying force, that we are here under a UN mandate agreed with the Afghans — when you just outstay your welcome.”
Sir William Charters Patey, the British Ambassador to Afghanistan, made this statement on March 5. It would seem that American forces have just reached that point when they have outstayed their welcome. Quite definitively.
— Grey Eminence
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