community weblog - [ Terrorism Public ]

At first blush, LTTE’s Prabhakaran appeared to have been executed, not KIA

Many readers know that I follow the Tamil Tigers (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)) both for their perfection of suicide terrorism and their remarkable ingenious homemade (still photos, video) weapons and asymmetrical applications, notably their modest air force, the Air Tigers, which I have compared to the earlier Biafra Babies of the Biafran secession. See Asymmetrical air force symmetries: Biafra Babies and Air Tigers, part II, 3/6/2009.

The Sri Lankan Army completed its military campaign Monday, 18 May, against the LTTE. (After years of battering by the smaller LTTE forces, Colombo dispensed with years of large unit tactics and adopted the same long range, small unit interdiction strategy used by the LTTE).

The key high value target for the government was the LTTE commander, Velupillai Prabhakaran. (Also here). Originally said to have been caught up in a firefight while escaping with other cadres in an ambulance (itself a Geneva violation), the government revised its commentary to say that Prabhakaran died along with other cadres in a sharp firefight.

Possibly. This government article confirming Prabhakaran’s death has images which show an entry wound above and between the eyes. (See images here and here, and this video.) There are no other obvious wounds to the body, and a kerchief oddly covers the back of Prabhakaran’s head, which I assume is to shade exit path damage, which is usually extensive) Forensics, if they are permitted by the government, could indicate proximity by presence or absence of powder residues on the face.

Asymmetrical air force symmetries: Biafra Babies and Air Tigers, part II

Part I: Asymmetrical air force opportunities in interstate and intrastate conflict

Thirty-nine years apart, the two great asymmetrical air forces, the Biafra Babies and LTTE Air Tigers, had remarkably similar aircraft performance criteria:

• Single engine monoplane
• Basic "two-place" or two-passenger trainer aircraft (stable responsive platform, easy to fly/control, at best forgiving)
• Four-seat (2+2) monoplanes in trainer class offer increased ordnance carrying capacity
• Modifiable to light-strike attack role
• Forward and downward cockpit visibility (high wing or cockpit forward of low wing) for ground attack role
• Short field, unimproved field take-off and landing
• Low maintenance ("field maintainable") and broad parts availability, low operating costs
• External hard points (presence of, or ability to retrofit, hard point releases to either fuselage and/or wings w/o compromise to aircraft cg or weight limits)
• Mixed ordnance delivery (bombs, rockets, gun)
• Weapons/ordnance carrying capacity
• Operational range (with ordnance)
• Survivability (combination of surprise, time over target, maneuverability, speed, enemy capabilities)
• Transportable to operational area (ferry distance with additional fuel tanking or disassembly for covert delivery)
• IFR capacity for night or low visibility conditions (surplus military aircraft already possess capability)
• Modest acrobatic capacity (often possessed by surplus military aircraft, increasingly common to sport aircraft)

Ground attack aircraft questions

Aircraft of World War II - Warbird Forums

August 2007

Sri Lanka bombs Tigers, wants tattered truce reviewed
By Simon Gardner
Reuters
(Updates with government, Norway comment)
07 May 2007 14:36:03 GMT

Missile design sources for the aspiring asymmetric, amateur or hostile state scientist

Having built rockets in earlier decades as part of an investigation of kinetics, warhead design, fuzing and explosives, I wondered where would the aspiring asymmetric attacker or amateur scientist go now to build rockets capable of offensive capacity? In those years DuPont's Blasters' Handbook and many military field manuals on fuzes and explosives were readily available.

Spotting a short piece on engineering sources for missile design in Arms Control Wonk in which contributors commented on titles of seminal, still applicable - though often out of print - sources for missile design, I decided to chase them down in order to see what was available to an asymmetrical missile builder.

Many of the initial links had inaccurate titles and/or lacked full provenance or sources. All are properly sourced below. Having been a builder, I’ve added items from the amateur side which can have asymmetrical applicability.

The best were indeed a short list, with many key works rising in the 1960s. Here they are, divided into three sections: 

• For launcher design
• For engine design
• From applied theory to beginning practice

Hillbilly Sudetenland

"Hillbilly Sudetenland" is the term I've coined in reference to the scimitar stretching from Oklahoma to West Virginia the comprises the 'more-red' (properly termed "Became more Republican") ranking in comparison to 2004. This modern Sudetenland is less global, more conservative, more reactionary, and more insular; it responds to social and religious conservatives. Yes I remember that Fulbright (also here) came from Arkansas but this arc is a new 'dagger pointed at the heart of' the republic.

Of the Election Results and President Map, the now familiar red-blue divide shows in the "expected to win easily", "expected to win narrowly", and "battleground states" of Election Results as well as the state winners, county bubbles and county leaders of the President Map.

The frame in the President Map that is arresting is the "voting shifts" that compares 2008 country results to 2004, 2000, 1996 and 1992. The Hillbilly Sudetenland is intensely visible in 2008-2004 comparison, made more remarkable for its "10%" or "15%" "Became more Republican" rankings. A similar intensity was present in the 2008-2000 figures but its size was larger, less distilled, in comparison to the current election cycle:

[The] South is no longer a solid voting bloc. [The] "suburban South," notably Virginia and North Carolina, [have] experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee.

 

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter... Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

Oklahoma is archetypical; McCain won all Oklahoma counties with 65.6% of the vote, the highest state percentage for McCain, despite higher overall Democratic voter registration: 

Although McCain was considered more moderate than the conservative Bush, he did better than the president did in 2004 in rural areas of Oklahoma, where social conservatism is dominant. His best performance was in the "Little Dixie" region of southeastern Oklahoma... McCain pulled in 70 percent of the vote to Obama's 30 percent in five Little Dixie counties... Bush got 56 percent in those counties in 2004.

 

That region is where Sen. James M. Inhofe (R), who easily won reelection this year, said his "guns, God and gays" strategy was born, in 1994 at a cafe in Hugo. That strategy emphasizes protecting Second Amendment rights to own guns, stressing his Christianity and opposing expansion of rights for gay people. [Race] was "probably a factor" in some rural areas after folks became frightened by false information that Obama "was a Muslim who would take away their guns."

 

"People really believed that. It reminded me of when I was a youngster. I was brought up in the Baptist Church, and I was taught that if John Kennedy was elected president, the pope would be running the government." Exit polls found that more than half of Oklahoma voters identified themselves as white, evangelical or born-again Christians. Of those, a heavy majority went for McCain.

It is telling that Oklahoma continues to reelect one of the more odd and internationally tone deaf senators in Congress, James Inhofe, who is remembered for claiming climate change is a hoax (2003 and 2005 floor speeches) and for dismissing the abuse at Abu Ghraib, in his words being "outraged" at the national and international outrage over the excesses at Abu Ghraib. (Videos here and here.) Compare Senator Leahy's comments to those of Inhofe.

Adjoining Oklahoma, Arkansas went for McCain with 58.8% of the vote. Opposition to Obama was so great that conservatives were able to pass a measure blocking the adoption of children by unmarried couples, despite opposition by notables such as Bill Clinton and Beebe, the Democratic governor. Strong opposition to the candidacy of Barack Obama in Arkansas may have helped conservatives pass a measure blocking the adoption of children by unmarried couples: 

Conservatives mounted a grass-roots campaign, mainly through church groups, that framed the state's case-by-case approach to adoption requests as an affront to traditional family values... The ban affects all unmarried couples but was written with the intent of preventing gay couples from raising children in Arkansas... Exit polls found that the ban was primarily supported by conservatives, supporters of Mr. Bush and evangelicals.

De facto one-party government

Democrats may have reestablished a one-party system in American politics for the foreseeable future. Some assumptions that a colleague and I have been discussing:

Two term presidency for Obama

Given the organizational and managerial the Obama campaign has demonstrated to date, there is no obvious reason to suspect that he will not win a second term. A two-term Obama allows the opportunity to develop substantial successors for 2016.

Democratic greed and cupidity does not (soon) reemerge

While I believe that an Obama executive branch can hold to its mission, a Democratic congress could again become slothful and greedy. My point is that I believe there is a very different risk calculus between the ability of the executive and the legislative branches to retain their focus and unity, as opposed to simply lumping all together as 'Democrats'.

While it took Democrats some forty years to become a takeover target for Republicans, it does not have to take that long the next time. As previously noted, I wager that Emanuel's appointment as chief of staff was more to keep Obama's own troops in line as opposed to assaulting the Republicans. I infer that Obama is already working to shape and prioritize a longer term agenda than the pork barrel folk have interest. Herding cats will become a useful metaphor.

Successful management of the new minority

Hispanics are displacing African-Americans as the primary minority. If Democrats can manage Hispanics as they have African-Americans, they stand to double their ethnic support base. The reverse to this is what a colleague calls large "promissory notes" to the new Hispanic community and the existing African-American community.

Demographics remain firm short of catastrophe

The white vote is voting increasingly liberal on the low age range, i.e., Democrats may not have to capture all the Hispanic/African-American vote in the medium term. In the longer term, white vote is diluted by demographic changes. While minorities are "predicted to represent 39 percent of the total population by the year 2020", the pendulum shifts in 2050:

The nation will be more racially and ethnically diverse, as well as much older, by midcentury, according to projections released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Minorities, now roughly one-third of the U.S. population, are expected to become the majority in 2042, with the nation projected to be 54 percent minority in 2050. By 2023, minorities will comprise more than half of all children...

 

By 2050, the minority population - everyone except for non-Hispanic, single-race whites - is projected to be 235.7 million out of a total U.S. population of 439 million. The nation is projected to reach the 400 million population milestone in 2039.

 

The non-Hispanic, single-race white population is projected to be only slightly larger in 2050 (203.3 million) than in 2008 (199.8 million). In fact, this group is projected to lose population in the 2030s and 2040s and comprise 46 percent of the total population in 2050, down from 66 percent in 2008.

Conservative (Traditionalist) Republican party worldview hardens

If Brooks is correct in his assessment of the post-election struggle of Traditionalists versus Reformers in the Republican Party, Traditionalists will hold sway in the near-term as they control: 

• Congressional Republicans [now that] Republicans from the coasts and the upper Midwest are largely gone.
• Republican institutions [comprising] a movement of activist groups, donor networks, think tanks and publicity arms. The reformists [have] no institutions.
• Donors... Reformist Republican donors don't seem to exist.
• Conservative mythology [of] a small, heroic movement marching bravely from the Heartland into belly of the liberal elite. [Anyone] who deviates toward the center, who departs from established doctrine, is a coward, and a sellout.

Brooks also feels that Republicans will become "an ever more rigid" movement. While Appalachia and parts of the Deep South may no longer be able to dictate Democratic ideology, they should provide a fertile ground for Traditionalists:

Less than a third of Southern whites voted for [Obama], compared with 43 percent of whites nationally. By leaving the mainstream so decisively, the Deep South and Appalachia will no longer be able to dictate that winning Democrats have Southern accents or adhere to conservative policies on issues like welfare and tax policy...

Forecasting future Republican national candidates, Brooks believes that all - just as with McCain - will have to "immediately tack right to be acceptable to the power base."

The race genie is managed without explosion

The "poisonous controversy" ignited when Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to dinner in the White House in 1901 is alive and as explosive today as it was then. The good news to a majority of voters is that a color line has been crossed in the White House; that same news is a stain to be eradicated and rolled back to a violent minority.

One only has to review the tracking of extremist groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. (See The Intelligence Project and its Intelligence Report (current issue and archives link) and the Active U.S. Hate Groups map.) We periodically have to look at Neo-Nazi, Patriot Right, and other paramilitary groups and I can assure you that it is not pretty. See:

• Deposing the 'servant government': listening to the cant of the Patriot right, 6/18/2004
• The rise of authoritarian social conservatives: coming to terms with a temple to incuriosity and anti-intellectualism, 10/26/2008

How the US as a nation and individual interest groups manage or ignite race as a political issue will say much about the future of the US in the 21st century.

The next Smedley Butler is another Smedley Butler

Next: If the next Smedley Butler is Erik Prince

Darkness at Dusk

By David Brooks

New York Times

November 11, 2008

As Much of Nation Went Blue, Okla. Applied Extra Coat of Red

By Ron Jenkins

Associated Press

November 9, 2008; A18

Antipathy Toward Obama Seen as Helping Arkansas Limit Adoption

By ROBBIE BROWN

New York Times

November 9, 2008

The Underside of the Welcome Mat

By GARDINER HARRIS

New York Times

November 8, 2008

Hackers and Spending Sprees

Highlights from NEWSWEEK's special election project.

Newsweek

Nov 5, 2008, Updated: 5:01  a.m. ET Nov 5, 2008

Barack Obama, Forever Sizing Up

By JODI KANTOR

New York Times

October 26, 2008

'Ready for War'

Thousands Join Militant Black Supremacists

Intelligence Report

Southern Poverty Law Center

Fall 2008

The Intelligence Project

Tracking the Threat of Hate

Southern Poverty Law Center

Active U.S. Hate Groups

Southern Poverty Law Center

An Older and More Diverse Nation by Midcentury

U.S. Census Bureau

US Department of Commerce

AUG. 14, 2008

Complete List of Population Profiles

U.S. Census Bureau

The Population Profile of the United States: Dynamic Version (Internet Release)

[Latest Data]

U.S. Census Bureau

James Inhofe Republican Jr Senator (OK) (2008 race)

OnTheIssues

2008

Members of Congress / James Inhofe

U.S. Congress Votes Database

Indicator 1: Population and Geographic Distributions

Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Minorities

US Department of Education

2007

Senator Inhofe on Climate Change

by Michael Mann, Stefan Rahmstorf, Gavin Schmidt, Eric Steig, and William Connolley

Real Climate

10 January 2005

Special Edition: Coverage of Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Scandal

CNN RUSH TRANSCRIPT

Aired May 16, 2004 - 11:00   ET

Waiting for 'Torture Fatigue'

By Bill Berkowitz

AlterNet

May 12, 2004

The Deranged Mind of James Inhofe

Maybe the Dumbest US Senator of the All

By Bruce Jackson

CounterPunch

May 11, 2004

In His Own Words: Jim Inhofe & Torture

YouTube video capture

Guantanamo Inhofe CNN

YouTube video capture

Statement Of Senator Patrick Leahy On The Abuse Of Prisoners In U.S. Military Custody

U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY

Office of Senator Leahy, 202-224-4242

May 5, 2004

Climate Change Update

Senate Floor Statement by U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe(R-Okla)

January 4, 2005

The Deranged Mind of James Inhofe

Maybe the Dumbest US Senator of the All

By BRUCE JACKSON

CounterPunch

May 11, 2004

The Science of Climate Change

Senate Floor Statement by U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe(R-Okla)

Chairman, Committee on Environment and Public Works

July 28, 2003

Serving Christ in the Senate

Today's Pentecostal Evangel

June 30, 2002

Crackpot Theology Makes Bad Foreign Policy

by Doug Bandow

Cato Institute.

June 4, 2002

Gordon Housworth

"We are all American" - again, and if not squandered, for some time to come

"We Are All American", Le Monde editorial by Jean-Marie Colombani, Sept. 12, 2001

With the close of the 2008 US presidential elections, "We're all Americans" - again, and if not squandered, for some time to come. In private email in May 2008, I echoed earlier conversations with conservative colleagues:

When people ask me about Obama, I say that the thing that most stands out in my mind is his ability to rally people to commit and to sacrifice; if anyone could get a draft through short of war, it is him. Short of a military draft, he could easily build a form of civilian draft. Our infrastructure and population surely needs it.

 

Why does this interest me? All studies of effective organizational change show that it was preceded by a cultural change that would implement without cynicism or self-interest. Absent the culture change, lip service is paid, another level of cynicism is laid down, and the pioneers soon get arrows in their front and their back. The US desperately needs a sum-sum recommitment. [private email]

In late October on the eve of the election I noted:

The US hold of hyperpower was brief and it is now going to need assistance from so many corners of the world, not just to obtain its foreign policy guidelines but to keep from slipping further. Only Obama has instilled that sense of hope. Wielded wisely, he can get sacrifice and commitment [globally] that another candidate could not." [private email]

While the US was absorbed in its presidential election, little notice was paid to rapt international attention:

It is 2 p.m. in Beirut. On Al-Jazeera TV, a correspondent is talking live from Arizona on how Republicans are preparing for the voting to start. A few minutes later, at the studio of the Qatar-based Arab satellite news channel, an American analyst is commenting on the results of the newest polls. For Arab media, the U.S. presidential election is far from being simply another item of foreign news. At least today, the election is being covered with almost the same intensity as on any U.S. news channel.

 

Starting this morning, the big satellite channels throughout the Middle East started extensive coverage of the election with commentators from around the world discussing the effect of the vote on the Middle East, charts and maps explaining where each of the two candidates are favored and several correspondents describing live the atmosphere of the voting day from various U.S. locales such as Virginia and  Florida.

 

The satellite channel Al Arabiya carried a report from Chicago's South Side showing images of the church where Obama attended services and the building where he worked as a community organizer. On Al-Jazeera, a talk show addressed the future of Iraq after the election and whether the Democratic Party candidate Barack Obama was prepared to end the war there. The channel interviewed Iraqis on the street on whether security in their country would be improved under a new American president.

 

Many Arab newspapers clearly expressed their hope for Obama to win in their opinion and editorial articles and headlines published this morning...

From the Netherlands:

Such comments mirrored the global reaction to an Obama presidency (see other bibliographic citations below). The thoughts that follow reflect the concepts that shape my worldview. From Islamic territory from North Africa to South Asia: No solutions, only adjustments: 

• Lord Palmerston - "We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are perpetual and eternal and those interests it is our duty to follow."
• Sir Harold Nicholson - Describing diplomacy as "the understanding that for intractable problems there are only adjustments and not solutions."
• Realpolitik - Politics based on strictly practical, even modest, goals rather than overzealous, idealistic goals.
• Gregory III - "What fairness suggests, What the law allows, What will work."

I believe that Obama will exhibit a "ruthless pragmatism" that will discomfit many of those on the democratic left, will surprise and please many of the moderate and centrist democrats, independents and republicans, and will elate most of our international community. By July 2007, Obama was asking Brzezinski questions such as "What can a new president accomplish in foreign policy in his first 12 months in office that he can't achieve later?... How should a new president reorganize his national security team so that the structure fits the problems of the 21st century?" Ignatius echoes Brzezinski in stating that "change and caution" are "the two channel markers for Obama foreign policy."

After decades of anti-intellectualism (beyond the studied educational condescension of Bush43, Clinton too often played to his bubba side), it will be interesting to watch this administration unfold:

"What is beginning to take shape is a group of people that are unified in their purpose but diversified in their perspectives and views... All of them are rooted in pragmatism and reality in the context of accomplishing demonstratable results. [Obama's] going to have a group of people that from Day One all know what they're doing, are deeply committed to Senator Obama's philosophy, but isn't a 'yes' group, not at all."

It will be more interesting if Brzezinski's view plays out:

[This] election means first of all that a very negative chapter in American foreign policy and American domestic affairs has come to an end. I particularly mind the various unfortunate moves that characterized the past eight years of the Bush administration. But secondly, I think it means something much more positive. Namely that America is now defining itself increasingly as a 21st century universal society, in which membership in that society is based not on ethnicity or on race, but increasingly on shared values, fundamentally universal values, democratic values...

Speaking of al Qaida early on, I noted that the strategic options were "cure, kill or contain" and that "Two don't work; the third is merely exceptionally difficult." If a US administration can hold Brzezinski's image, if not its substance, abroad after the debacle of Abu Ghraib (also here), it will materially lighten both our military and diplomatic burden. Shachtman confirmed as much in this impromptu interview:

The sovereign individual as target; the sovereign superindividual as Temporary Autonomous Zone

History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. [Voltaire]

A colleague, Michael Sheren, was recently profiled in A Growing Trend of Leaving America:

Talk to some of the successful American relocators around the world and the broad generalizations about them tend to hold up - though not so much as to overwhelm the huge variety of experience and achievement that distinguishes their lives. Michael Sheren, 45, who worked for Chemical Bank in New York in his early career, came to England in 1997 primarily to apply his background in leveraged buy-outs to the European market. Now working in the London office of Calyon Crédit Agricole, a French bank, he credits his American training and drive for giving him a leg up in his work. America's image abroad has suffered during the Bush years, he acknowledges, but he finds that Europeans still value the can-do spirit of Americans. "People equate America with success, even now," he says.

While business is what initially drew him to England, Sheren is now deeply attached to the British way of life. That includes everything from a generous government-backed system of social supports for all citizens to a mentality that is more comfortable with leisure. "I consider the quality of life here significantly better than what I would have over there," he says.

Sheren acquired British citizenship and has at times been tempted to abandon his American one, but he attaches relatively little importance to nationality. His closest friends are an international lot, and he greatly values the freedom of movement that comes with a European passport. "I feel more like a sovereign individual," he says, using the label coined by authors James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg in their book, The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age.

I replied with a mixture of humor and concern that goes beyond the economic aspect of the "sovereign individual":

When the US Air Force loadmaster at the airstrip or the US Navy chief petty officer on the evacuation quay asks your citizenship, the statement "US" and the passport will get you on and away to safety, all under US military force projection. I ask that you consider carefully their response when you announce "sovereign individual" and produce an EU passport... You won't get the courtesy of "Wait for the French," fairing no better than the poor benighted souls carrying UN refugee passports - which in my experience is a label that says, "Please exploit me after I step to the back of the line." In what may pass as a future Dunkirk, you are not going to get on the plane or on the boat. In such cases, sovereign individual and dead body may be indistinguishable.

 

I know the risks of bandying US credentials in certain places. By all means, use the EU document for genteel commerce, but keep the US document handy when the balloon goes up. [email]

Whenever I see an interest voiced in aspiring to be a sovereign individual while still acting under the protective umbrella of a sovereign state, even a declining one, I want to say, "Get a copy of Roberts' STAYING ALIVE: Safety and security guidelines for humanitarian volunteers in conflict areas. Read it cover to cover. You might just get through."

It is the mindset shift that I have in mind as much as the direct guidance. Roberts is a Sandhurst trained British Army parachutist that saw action in various conflict zones, then the operational security adviser for the International Red Cross and later its unit for promoting humanitarian law among various armed forces. "Staying Alive" is elegant, short, and should be read by anyone stepping off the beaten path. In conditions where nation states decline, the beaten path shrinks dramatically.

The economic sovereign individual as target, hostage and kidnap victim

I think it fair to say that in their third book, The Sovereign Individual, Davidson and Rees-Mogg did a reasonable job of drawing economic implications of the application of the microprocessor and internet revolution, what many now sum as the shift from an industrial to an information society. In what the authors call a "fourth stage of human society" that frees individuals while weakening governments (by reducing their ability to tax), they offer financial strategies for newly enabled sovereign individuals to move and protect their wealth.

Unfortunately the authors did a poor job in defining the military or defense strategies needed to keep the sovereigns from being robbed, kidnapped or killed. This despite the fact that Davidson and Rees-Mogg introduced the concept of megapolitics - loosely described as the fundamental forces affecting the way man and society work, that are the hidden drivers to current and future events - in their first book, Blood in the Streets, carrying it into their second, The Great Reckoning.

Megapolitics states that it is possible to determine a society's structure based upon its cost of violence; their term is the "logic of violence." When WMD are expensive and rare, empires form and enforce a semblance of peace. (Pax Romana, Pax España, Pax Britannica and Pax Americana) But when WMD are relatively inexpensive and increasingly common, states decline and the level of violence rises dramatically.

Every technology has its "glide slope to the desktop" (where the angle of descent indicates the decreasing cost threshold of acquisition over time) such that the technology's capacity will ultimately get to anyone's desktop, anywhere and for any purpose. John Robb was describing "open source" warfare whose development was paralleling open source software as early as 2004. (See also here and here as well as Charette.)

There is ample evidence of the proximity of the superempowered individual - and if there is one there will be many:

[A superempowered actor] must be able to initiate a destructive event, fundamentally with their own resources, that cascades systemically on a national, regional or global scale. They must be able to credibly, "declare war on the world".

• Manufacturing efficiency gives rise to a new arms race: convergence of legitimate pharma-chemical, illicit drug, and CW/BW agent, 10/19/2004
• Designer bioagents: Why a potential Iranian, or existing Pakistani or DPRK, nuclear weapon does not overly excite me, 10/4/2006

Examples to date indicate that systemic violence is easy to organize, especially in mildly disturbed societies. Consider the sovereign individual class of Mexico who are now at risk of cyclic kidnapping that has reached epidemic proportions to the point that mere professionals and the modestly employed are at risk. Mexico has set up an anti-kidnap squad in the wake of the kidnapping-murder of a minor after ransom payments in the millions of dollars. Public anger is so great that the anti-death penalty state had heard calls for its reinstatement and has barely noticed the recent execution of a Mexican national in Texas. Economic prowess in Mexico and many other states are no longer enough to shield this class from predation. I am surprised that Davidson and Rees-Mogg could have missed the application of lowered cost of violence against their chosen class.

The sovereign superindividual as Temporary Autonomous Zone

Writing under the pseudonym, Hakim Bey, Peter Lamborn Wilson created the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) based on research of what he called Pirate Utopias beyond the reach of established states. At least read the 'Pirate Utopias' section and scroll down to 'The Net and the Web'.

If economic sovereign individuals have a future, this analyst feels that most of them will join in temporary autonomous zones that may have characteristics of statelettes, more commonly called micropowers, and Hawala informal funds transfer (IFT) systems said to be "less expensive, swifter, more reliable, more convenient, and less bureaucratic than the formal financial sector."

Certain sovereign individuals such as George Soros will be wealthy enough to create their own TAZ, a superindividual, and may well attract lesser sovereigns to join. The key is enough power to stave off predation, i.e., either the sovereign is a superindividual, joins a superindividual or bands together with like sovereigns to form a defensive entity against likely aggressors. Zones formed by sovereigns may exhibit characteristics such as:

• Areas beyond global nation state control:
• Failed/collapsed states.
• Chaotic areas.
• Virtual sanctuaries (Internet Relay Chat (IRC), secure Web, secure Satellite transmission).
• Staging grounds for operations against "controlled" areas.
• Sanctuaries created as needed in areas without global/state order:
• Fluid, rapidly shifting locations.
• Locations resistant to interdiction.
• Politically diverse, fuzzy tools needed to eliminate.
• Military operations can inadvertently create a TAZ where none existed.
• Long-term issue for nation states, aggravated by cooperative criminal, corrupt actors.

A TAZ may inhabit a micropower but will have to careful that its micropower does not overplay its hand as Georgia has now done.

Not all Zones are created equal

Just as with the original Medieval and Renaissance principalities, the new duchies that Davidson and Rees-Mogg predict to reemerge will not be created equal. They will both trade and war with one another. This analyst regards the longevity of a TAZ similar to that of an arms merchant: be as useful to many without being especially annoying to influential patrons or competitors (that can terminate life, steal treasure, or both). A TAZ will have to have to be adaptive and possess excellent means of surveillance and early warning of aggressors.

From Trends point towards Mexico's destabilization, 9/25/2007:

[Mexico bears the brunt of the] pan-national destabilization of the interlocked narcotics corridor stretching from Brazil to Columbia, the Isthmus and Mexico, the rise of Mexican cartels at the expense of the Columbians. The cartels have militarized and expanded to the point that they have formed Temporary Autonomous Zones outside control of the Mexican state; those autonomous zones effectively control significant stretches of the US-Mexican border. The cartels have both grown strong even as they have lost command & control over critical assassination and enforcement assets. Either singularly or in concert, the cartels and their enforcers have broached plans to assassinate US journalists on US soil that have reported critically on cartel activities. (Deaths among Mexican journalists already put Mexico among the big three (Iraq, Mexico and Columbia).)... Calderón has undertaken not just a war against the cartels but a war on a failing Mexican social infrastructure all the way down to the national sport of tax evasion.

The Mexican drug cartels form especially potent Temporary Autonomous Zones capable of attacking other TAZ assets as well as the Mexican state:

• Hyperviolence at the low end.
• Bribery and threats at the high end.
• Expand control of local state police assets.
• Cow and co-opt up the judicial chain.
• Attack the military intelligence community.
• Attack incorruptible senior judiciary.
• Co-opt fractious political opponents.
• Selective state disruption, damaging businesses.
• Isolate, emasculate Calderón.
• Failing that, assassinate him.

Tunable Just-in-time Disruption

Sovereign TAZs will have to insure systemic resilience against physical and internet attack. The Mexican cartels have now demonstrated what I call Tunable Just-in-time Disruption against state and corporate assets. Attacks have been made against Pemex (in which corporate interruptions are collateral damage) and municipal power grids. The cartels' technical capability for broad industrial sabotage at any level is clear.

Sovereigns will have to install their own systemic resilience against a broad spectrum of predators:

• Building systemic resilience must become a priority.
• Virtually all commercial systems (any type, any scale) are designed for commercial efficiency, not security.
• Resilience to systemic attacks requires redundancies or "circuit breakers" that increase adaptive capacity and automate reactivation.
• Critical infrastructure industries are increasingly private-sector institutions. (Who will pay, and how, especially when these industrial assets are under stress?)
• Resilience will be expensive and disruptive, so states will not do it until it is too late. Sovereigns may have other ideas.

If the state is a descendent institution as Davidson and Rees-Mogg believe it to be - and certainly there are indicators (and here) that point to its possibility - sovereigns will have to transition a disrupted state environment in which states will find it increasingly difficult to:

• Reestablish order and functionality.
• Maintain financial viability.
• Deliver critical services to their citizens.
• Control their borders and economy.
• Maintain a monopoly on violence.

Roberts' STAYING ALIVE sounds more useful by the moment.

Mexico launches anti-kidnap squad

BBC News

Page last updated at 09:35 GMT, 12 August 2008 10:35 UK

Georgia reports new air attacks near capital

By MISHA DZHINDZHIKHASHVILI

AP

Aug 8, 2008

Mexico president wants tougher punishments for kidnappers

Felipe Calderon urges Congress to act on his proposal after a 14-year-old abductee was found dead.

By Ken Ellingwood, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

August 8, 2008

Medellin execution draws little public protest in Mexico

La Plaza

Aug 7, 2008 9:20:44 AM

Crime-weary Mexico barely focuses on US execution

By MARK STEVENSON

Associated Press

Aug. 6, 2008, 12:27PM

A Growing Trend of Leaving America

By some estimates 3 million citizens become expatriates a year, but most not for political reasons

By Jay Tolson

US News and World Report

Posted July 28, 2008

Not shocked but stressed

David Steven

Global Dashboard

March 15, 2008

The resilience agenda

David Steven

Global Dashboard

February 10, 2008

Open-Source Warfare

How do you defend a country against small stateless bands of terrorists?

Jim Henley

Reason Online

February 2008 Print Edition

A mild rebuttal to John Robb's open source warfare

Professors Sam and Sydney Liles

Selil Blog

November 24, 2007 (posted by: sam)

THE US EMBRACES OPEN SOURCE WARFARE?

John Robb

Global Guerrillas

19 November 2007

Open-Source Warfare

By Robert N. Charette

Spectrum

First Published November 2007

Active and passive telemetry attacks against medical implantable devices

Attacking medical implantable devices, cardiac or otherwise, is long overdue for examination as this device class contains:

If the device can be interrogated, adjusted or reprogrammed - as most can be, it can be actively attacked. If you are limited to passive scanning in which the device offers a serial number or patient information, you can know where its wearer is and possibly gain some insight to the stress and physical condition of the wearer; Is the target running, for example?

While the University of Washington computer researchers have not laid out a stepwise attack profile per se, they defined passive and active attacks recognizable to any signals intelligence (SIGINT) practitioner. Furthermore, the countermeasures they put forward are susceptible to spoofing techniques and  counter-countermeasures:

Since health care is a very sensitive and personal subject for many people, we explicitly choose to deviate from standard practice in the academic security research community and do not describe specific scenarios in which an attacker might compromise the privacy or health of a victim. We also do not discuss the potential impact on patients if an adversary were to carry out an attack in vivo. Rather, when discussing attacks we focus solely on the technical properties of those attacks. In addition, in each case where we identify a vulnerability, we propose a solution or technical direction to mitigate it...

The researchers achieved these results against Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators (ICDs) with only three classes of adversaries:

An adversary with a commercial ICD programmer, i.e., an external device commercially produced and marketed for use with ICDs. At least for the programmers with which we have experimented, there are no technological mechanisms in place to ensure that programmers can be operated only by authorized personnel.

Effective attack range is an issue for the moment, but the same attack profiles used to capture RFID data in passports and credit/ID cards (waiting by the door or portal, walking through a crowd, etc.) are more immediately applicable. (Also here)

Attacking implant devices has the potential of a useful denial weapon to frighten away those who have such devices implanted. (One already sees signs that warn patients that potentially damaging RF signals are likely to be broadcast.) Without warning, it makes an interesting area attack weapon, especially in the vicinity of a hospital.

If an implant wearer is taken prisoner whereby your captors are close at hand with any technology they wish, he or she falls prey to an exquisite torture instrument that leaves no external physical effects.

Misleading, even dangerous press comments

It was startling to read a New York Times reporter out of his depth with this erroneous comment:

I read the report and it says no such thing. To a reader with a military signals intelligence (SIGINT) background, the effort to determine phase modulation (differential binary phase shift keying (DBPSK)) and symbol rate (pulse repitition frequency (PRF)) was trivial. An "eavesdropper" (passive intercept unit) was built using the "Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) in concert with the open source GNU Radio libraries." As the authors note, "Even without knowledge of the semantics of the packet format, these data are easily extractable":

The IEEE paper is quite accessible despite its technical content. Reading through the neutral technical verbiage, I got the reverse impression from that carried in the Times. I felt that the researchers were surprised at the ease of their chosen attack vectors. Furthermore:

• Equipment can be stolen (the researchers provide a shopping list to any researcher that tinkers with hardware).
• The effort to analyze has been achieved with the report; others have only to cobble together a crude attack platform.
• A high value target such as VPOTUS Cheney would be worth the effort.
• Anti-terrorist efforts would tend to be looking for explosives instead of the tools for an RF attack.

The takeaway should be that this is a long overdue exploit vector which should be considered more seriously.

A Heart Device Is Found Vulnerable to Hacker Attacks
By BARNABY J. FEDER
New York Times
March 12, 2008

Researchers find implantable cardiac defibrillators may expose patients to security and privacy risks; potential solutions suggested
University of Washington press release
March 11, 2008

Gordon Housworth

Asymmetrical air force opportunities in interstate and intrastate conflict

The work of Thomas Szayna, Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Michael Ross were central to my understanding of the drivers shaping "intrastate communitarian strife" (or "ethnic strife") and civil wars. Their hands are at work is this note and I remain indebted to works such as (and more in the bibliography below):

The post-colonial nation-state

The very nature of state sovereignty in Africa and other post-colonial regions is increasingly at odds with the nation-state of North America and Europe. There is speculation that we are witnessing the end of the state project launched in Berlin with the Congress of 1884-1885, a system that owed its origin to disputes rising over the Congo River basin. It is as if Africa is returning to the 1880s, and the age of the chartered companies, marking out their enclaves in an otherwise disorderly environment.

It is a mistake to apply Western assumptions about the nature of state security in areas such as Africa because the concerns for state survival are subordinated to the personal security and well being of the incumbent leadership. Rulers create a "shadow state," a parallel political authority, where personal ties and controls replace failing institutions. Furthermore, the court system and legal apparatus are appropriated to serve these requirements. The state ceases to be the provider of physical or social security.

These shadow power networks, underpinned by political and economic privilege, are potent enough to frustrate interventions by the international financial and donor community designed to undermine this informal sector and strengthen the structures of the nation-state. This is the environment in which military activities and interventions of state, regional and private security forces must be considered.

Current diplomatic and security arrangements are state-centered and predicated upon states being the primary actors in international affairs. This is just not so in Africa, where regional alliances are formed between private actors or leaders who expropriate the framework of the state to their own ends and in their own private interest. In such environments, the United Nations (UN) and Western states find themselves on soft ground, having to deal with individuals both as the source of power and wealth, and as the origin of ambiguous signals in a rapidly changing environment.

Criminalization of the state by the ruling elite affects both the productive sectors of the economy and the sovereign functions of the state, e.g., maintenance of customs barriers, concession of territories or harbor enclaves to foreign entrepreneurs, internal security and national defense, and peacekeeping. "Informal and illicit trade, financial fraud, systematic evasion of rules and international agreements" become the norm by which many Africans states cope. The conflict zones of Africa are stages where rivals seek to control scarce resources and the manipulation of business links, licit and illicit, to the benefit of entrepreneurs. On the back of these resource wars, vast profits are made in the transportation of items from guns to food.

While the lapse of bipolar confrontation was thought to improve the chances of post-colonial states by reducing the political and military incentives for outside powers to intervene on the continent, the opposite is the case. These states can no longer rely on outside assistance to end local wars that are no threat to vital foreign interests. Outside powers have less influence on the conduct, termination and outcome of these local conflicts. Driven by their remoteness and insignificance from world centers, Africa's local rivalries and antagonisms are given freer rein.

Neither precolonial states nor colonial administrations felt the need to justify their existence in terms of meeting the needs of security and welfare of individuals or to have some concern for individual liberty. This heritage of inattention to the security and welfare of its citizenry has been passed on to almost all post-colonial states.

Characteristics of these states need to be understood as different and needing risk management, rather than being bad and requiring flight:

• Economic sovereignty diluted by transnational economic and financial actors able to shift operations almost at will, answerable to no one nation's political masters.
• Kinship and allegiance remaining rooted in the local communities without a parallel at the national level.
• Challenge to the state by regional groupings, often seeking to evade or ignore the state's claims to authority.
• Growing intrastate conflicts of seeming racial, religious or ethnic origin.
• Ethnic and racial cleansing combined with religious extremism, intolerance or pure criminality.
• Increasing numbers of civilians becoming involved in violence for no obvious political reason.
• External non-state actors have stepped into the void left by the international community, either as proxies or independent agents, able by virtue of their wealth and expertise to influence events to their local and often short-term advantage. International firms operating in marginal areas are increasingly providing enough of the apparatus usually supplied by the state in order to carry out their businesses in relative safety. (Shell Oil in the Nigerian Delta is an example.) Concerns focus more on competition among their rivals and co-opting whatever parts of the state's political apparatus remain viable.

Changing security environment in postcolonial and developing world

Security and security management can no longer be seen only in military terms. Various other threats such as crime, poverty, resource scarcity and disease must also be included as virtually any socio-economic ill may spill over into conflict, especially in areas like Africa where social and democratic development have been stunted. This has significantly impacted the kinds of threat environments that face potential adversaries.

Using Africa as a model for underdeveloped regions, some key characteristics of the emerging threat environment are:

1. Conflicts are increasingly intrastate in nature, i.e., one internal faction against another -- although potential for spillover remains high.
2. Conflicts are becoming increasingly unconventional in nature, as they are fought more often in developing countries with limited conventional forces.
3. Rules of engagement are increasingly vague and diffused, often being tailor-made to suit specific operational requirements.
4. Warfighting patterns are becoming nonlinear as parties advantage themselves with the greater availability of sophisticated weaponry on the world's arms market irrespective of the opponent's capabilities.
5. Early warning is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, especially among less technologically developed opponents (due to the unconventional nature of doctrines involved in combat, and the non-traditional triggers which often initiate conflict).
6. Increasing pressure is being exerted on developed countries to become more aggressively involved in peace support operations.

Intrastate wars are increasingly assuming gray area characteristics, finding their origins in areas such as conflicts over scarce resources, ethnic and religious conflict, transnational crime (with links to terrorism and insurgency), migration and illegal immigration, border disputes, famine and state collapse. The instability and fluidity of the situation makes for a very hostile environment. Such conflicts manifest themselves primarily under the banner of low intensity conflict (LIC).

"Intrastate communitarian strife" - or "ethnic strife"

This risk analysis has drawn extensively on the implications of "ethnic strife," more properly called intrastate communitarian strife, on African states. Intrastate conflict has been by far the dominant form of strife in the world in the 1990s. Only seven of the 108 world's armed conflicts in the 1989 -- 1998 period were interstate wars. Most of the remaining intrastate conflicts had a communitarian aspect. Szayna noted that there "will be more Somalias, Rwandas, Haitis and Burundis in the future."

While most interstate wars end in a negotiated settlement, the majority of intrastate conflicts end with the extermination, expulsion, or complete surrender of one side. Civil wars with a communitarian or ethnic dimension are especially difficult to negotiate and the most likely to result in protracted strife, and closely mapping to the African experience, often go on for years and sometimes decades. Szayna and Tellis note that the reason is straightforward:

"To end intrastate strife the warring sides must lay down arms and respect an agreement usually in the absence of a legitimate government and under conditions in which the agreement is generally unenforceable. In conditions of communitarian strife, where issues of identity are intertwined in the conflict (since ethnic bonds are psychologically similar to kinship bonds and involve perceptions of identity), it is especially difficult for the two sides to go on coexisting in the same state. Put differently, there are only two main pathways for the regulation of ethnic conflict:

1. Eliminating the differences (genocide, forced transfer of population, partition/secession, and integration/assimilation);
2. Managing the differences (hegemonic control, arbitration by third party, federalization, and power-sharing)."

Because the trust that would allow for management of differences is absent once conflict starts, it is understandable that elimination of the differences becomes the preferred choice and that many ethnic and communitarian conflicts end up in prolonged and bloody strife, sometimes mixed in with attempts at genocide and complete elimination of the other side:

"Because of the unenforcibility of an internal agreement to end intrastate conflict, third-party intervention is usually required to guarantee the agreement and, even then, the intervening forces easily may become caught up in the continuing struggle between the belligerents. But without an intervention, the simmering intrastate strife may well spawn an international crisis, either in the form of a humanitarian disaster or because a neighboring state becomes drawn into the internal strife and, as a result, creates a regional conflict and the potential for an interstate war."

Communal differences by themselves do not provoke conflict. The most widely discussed explanations of ethnic conflict are incomplete and, at worst, simply wrong. Ethnic conflict in not "primitive, atavistic, and irrational." It is not directly caused by inter-group differences, "ancient hatreds" and centuries-old feuds, the stress of modern life, or ethnic passions "uncorked by the end of the Cold War."

Individuals are goal-oriented and adaptive, and will attempt to reach their goals by what they see as the easiest and least costly or most efficient means. (Rationality does not have to be a universally agreed-upon mindset.) Ethnic action requires mobilization and direction. The popular image of a disadvantaged group rebelling spontaneously against state tyranny is a "romantic image not borne out in reality." There are many examples of severe group deprivation and repression that do not lead to rebellion, because the group is not mobilized for political action. Without mobilization, ethnically centered perceptions of injustice may exist but do not have larger political significance.

"Ethnic strife" has three stages:

• First, a pattern of exclusion or dominance in the three areas of political, social and economic control. If one group dominates any or all of the three areas and other ethnic groups are systematically excluded, then the possibility exists of their resorting to violence to gain access, even though conflict is not yet imminent.
• Second, group mobilization, where mobilization is for the purpose of capturing power and not necessarily for redressing past injustices. Leaders become "identity entrepreneurs" that exploit the ethnic card to gain access to the specific arena from which they are excluded, and are as essential as the resources at the disposal of the group and their capacity for organization.
• Third, the addition of the element of strategic bargaining in which each side uses the tools available to it to bargain for the political space. The state has the weapons of finance, accommodation, and the ability and willingness to use force. The mobilizing group has the weapons of leadership strength, popular support, and available resources.

While prevention is the preferred course of action so that long-term strife does not escalate to major regional problems, it is often not initiated in time even though the costs of dealing with an ongoing conflict and its reconstruction are uniformly far greater than the small costs in prevention. Even when the drift towards intrastate strife is clear, it may not be possible to assemble the resources required to head off the conflict. In the absence of a direct threat, it is difficult for international or multinational organizations to expend substantial resources to deflect what might be a "phantom threat." Responses are therefore too often reactive and late.

Conflict diamonds - or "blood diamonds," market forces and civil war

Collier and Hoeffler found that conflicts occur when rebels respond rationally to market opportunities, much as entrepreneurs and investors do. Civil wars that are so often blamed on chaotic, irrational ethnic, religious and communal feuds now have a unifying thread:

"Rebels need to meet a payroll without actually producing anything, so they need to prey on an economic activity that won't collapse under the weight of the predation... Natural resources is a good one. The same characteristics that make a commodity readily taxable -- that it's rooted to a spot, it can't move -- makes it readily lootable, too."

Three economic factors were found to shape civil wars:

• Countries dependent on the export of primary, or unprocessed, commodities such as minerals or coffee are more prone to civil wars. A country where such exports account for 28 percent of GDP has four times the risk of civil war as a country with no such exports.
• Countries that are divided between just a few ethnic groups are much more likely to have civil wars than ethically diverse countries because the economic costs of pushing a highly diverse nation into conflict are so much greater.
• Once a civil war has ended the chance that war will resume "goes up by a factor of six if there is a large and relatively wealthy population of natives living outside the country." This Diaspora has the money to fund rebel actions, World Bank says, "so the rebels sustain themselves by selling vengeance to diasporas during the 'lean' years of peace," when looting of resources isn't possible.

The new economics of civil wars starts with the premise that conflicts within countries begin if the incentive for a rebellion outweighs the costs of mounting one, i.e., that the "opportunity cost" outweighs other more familiar factors such as the intensity of ethnic differences or support for differing political ideologies. The World Bank authors say that it is "greed and not grievance that lies at the root of many violent conflicts within nations."

"Blood diamonds" becomes a special case of this resource-based means of civil war. To the degree that any primary extraction process can be sequestered by a powerful minority, the opportunity for conflict, extortion, and interruption rises. Coupling this concept with the fact that most wars today occur within nations rather than between them, the risk analysis of investing firms should be reevaluated.

Endnote: Readers now have an underpinning of conditions that lead to sustained asymmetrical responses. These same conditions permit the gathering, smuggling and hiding of operational assets, and the subsequent deployment of those assets against the established power. The characteristics that led two of those engagements taking to the air will be examined. As the cost of aerial responses plummet, more asymmetrical players will deploy air forces in various forms.

Part II: Asymmetrical air force symmetries: Biafra Babies and Air Tigers, part II

Global Pattern Formation and Ethnic/Cultural Violence
May Lim, Richard Metzler, Yaneer Bar-Yam
Science
Vol 317, no. 5844, pp. 1540-1544
14 September, 2007

Supporting Online Material for: Global Pattern Formation and Ethnic/Cultural Violence
May Lim, Richard Metzler, Yaneer Bar-Yam
Supplement contains:

• Methods
• Reports of Ethnic Violence in the Former Yugoslavia and India
• References
• Bibliography on Ethnic and Cultural Conflict

Neo-Classical Counterinsurgency?
Frank G. Hoffman
Parameters
Summer 2007, pp. 71-87

Sri Lanka: Rebels with an air force
Commentary by Animesh Roul
ISN Security Watch
02/05/07

Air Tigers' Maiden Attack
Motives and Implications
N Manoharan
Senior Fellow, IPCS
Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies
IPCS ISSUE BRIEF
NO 45
APRIL 2007

Ethnic polarization and the duration of civil wars
Jose G. Montalvo, Marta Reynal-Querol
Policy, Research working paper WPS 4192
Post-Conflict Transitions working paper No. 6
World Bank Development Research Group
April 1, 2007

Subversion and Insurgency
William Rosenau
RAND COUNTERINSURGENCY STUDY, PAPER 2
ISBN 978-0-8330-4123-4
Prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense
2007

EVOLUTION OF INDIA'S COUNTER-TERRORISM CAPABILITIES
by B.Raman
IntelliBriefs
( PRESENTATION MADE BY THE WRITER AT A CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL HOMELAND SECURITY ORGANISED BY THE ROYAL UNITED SERVICES INSTITUTE (RUSI) FOR DEFENCE AND SECURITY STUDIES, LONDON, ON MAY 10,2006)
May 11, 2006

On ''Other War''
Lessons from Five Decades of RAND Counterinsurgency Research
By: Austin Long
RAND Counterinsurgency
ISBN 978-0-8330-3926-2
2006

Terrorism and Civil Aviation Security: Problems and Trends
Jangir Arasly
THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL
Spring 2005

Primary Commodities Exports and Civil War
James D. Fearon
Department of Political Science, Stanford University
Forthcoming in Journal of Conflict Resolution
October 25, 2004

Primary Commodity Exports and Civil War
James D. Fearon
Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 49, No. 4, 483-507 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0022002705277544

Evidence and Analysis: The Role of Natural Resources in Fuelling and Funding Conflict in Africa
Hester Le Roux
COMMISSION FOR AFRICA
London, September 2004

Measuring the Economic Costs of Internal Armed Conflict - A Review of Empirical Estimates
Göran Lindgren
Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, Sweden
Paper for the conference Making Peace Work in Helsinki 4-5 June arranged by The United Nations University - World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER)
June 2004

Greed and grievance in civil war
Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler
Oxford Economic Papers Advance Access originally published online on August 20, 2004
Oxford Economic Papers 2004 56(4):563-595; doi:10.1093/oep/gpf064
Oxford University Press
2004
HTML

Breaking the conflict trap: civil war and development policy, Volume 1
Collier, Paul; Elliott, V. L.; Hegre, Havard; Hoeffler, Anke; Reynal-Querol, Marta; Sambanis, Nicholas
World Bank policy research report 26121
ISBN0-8213-5481-7
June 31, 2003
SINGLE FILE PDF (large)
GO HERE for individual segments

Natural Resources and Civil War: An Overview with Some Policy Options
Prof. Michael Ross
UCLA Department of Political Science
December 13, 2002
Draft report prepared for conference on "The Governance of Natural Resources Revenues," sponsored by the World Bank and the Agence Francaise de Developpement, Paris, December 9-10, 2002.

On the Incidence of Civil War in Africa
Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler
Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 13-28
DOI: 10.1177/0022002702046001002
2002
MIRROR

The New Partnership for Africa's Development: last chance for Africa?
Richard Cornwell
African Security Analysis Programme
Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria
AFRICANUS
Journal of Development Studies
Vol 32 No 1 ISSN 0304-615X
2002

Implications of ethnic diversity
Paul Collier
The World Bank
Working Paper 28127
December 17, 2001
Originally (?): Economic Policy, Vol 16, Issue 32, April, 2001, pp: 127-166

On the Duration of Civil War
Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler and Mans Soderbom
POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER WPS 2681
World Bank Development Research Group
September 30, 2001

The GIobal Reach of Tamil Militancy: Sri Lanka's Security Predicament
P. K. Rao
Strategic Affairs
No. 0025/ Issue: August 1, 2001

Conflict Diamonds
Louis Goreux
Consultant, Africa Region, The World Bank
Africa Region Working Paper Series No. 13
World Bank
March 2001

Identifying Potential Ethnic Conflict: Application of a Process Model
By: Thomas S. Szayna
RAND
ISBN/EAN: 0-8330-2842-1
2000

World Bank Blames Diamonds and Drugs for Many Wars
By JOSEPH KAHN
New York Times
Published: June 16, 2000

ECONOMIC CAUSES OF CIVIL CONFLICT AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY
Paul Collier, Director, Development Research Group
World Bank
June 15, 2000

On the Economic Consequences of Civil War
Paul Collier
Oxford Economic Papers Vol 51, No 1, pp. 168-183
DOI:10.1093/oep/51.1.168
Oxford Universty Press
January 1999
SUBSCRIPTION
FREE MIRROR

The Changing Nature of Warfare: Implications for Africa
Ian van Vuuren
Deputy Director, Strategic Management Systems
Defence Secretariat, South Africa
Published in African Security Review Vol 7, No. 1, 1998

Anticipating Ethnic Conflict
By: Ashley J. Tellis, Thomas S. Szayna, James A. Winnefeld
RAND MR-853-A
ISBN/EAN: 0-8330-2495-7
1997

Gordon Housworth

Semi-autonomous "killer robots" are already within reach of asymmetrical attackers

As part of my work revolves about inverting toys, technical gadgets, and industrial "found objects" into asymmetrical weapons, I was attracted to Noel Sharkey's presentation at RUSI's The Ethics of Autonomous Military Systems as well as his earlier efforts in venues such as Robot Wars and Techno Games. I have come to see Sharkey inhabiting the intersection of engineering, the application of engineering and ethics of application:

Writing to Sharkey:

I cited a trio of short weblog items I wrote in April 2004 in pursuit of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) fleet of attack and surveillance UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles):

Price, performance and accessibility have only accelerated since. Subsequent to my articles, the Israeli IDF was astonished when Hezbollah launched a reconnaissance UAV over Israeli territory, recovering it without incident. Despite Israeli drone and UAV flights over Lebanon, Israel had not been paying attention to asymmetrical UAV development - publicly stated in many cases to rise from commercial radio-controlled (R/C) model aircraft versions. They should not have been surprised; Hezbollah is a resourceful adversary.

I found that as early as 2004, "it is feasible for a diligent and reasonably agile individual or small group to create a COTS hunter-killer and surveillance R/C model fleet, a poor man's Predator":

An article is forthcoming on criteria for an asymmetrical air force that would be within the means of a number of entities, criminal and terrorist.

Killer robots pose latest militant threat-expert
Reuters
Tue Feb 26, 2008 7:00pm EST

Gordon Housworth

Mexican drug cartels make the leap from guns to IEDs: Expect risks in Mexico to rise

Among the drumbeat of Mexican "narco-terrorism" killings, here the torture, mutilation, murder and public dumping of six informants, the names of which are supposedly kept secret, and the transient, sensational headlines of threats of Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah against Israel for the assumed killing of Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, the threat by al Qaida in Iraq (AQI) to commence attacks elsewhere in the Middle East, the continuing ethnic strife in Kenya, Chinese efforts to damp down espionage charges and refute Beijing's facilitation of Sudanese attacks in Darfur, and the run-up to elections in Pakistan, there appeared a brief AFP piece on Friday, Feb 15, 6:15 PM ET:

Reuters added more detail a few hours later as the BBC carried the link to police headquarters, the intended means of triggering, and pointed directly at the cartels:

By Saturday, Reuters was flagging the Sinaloa Cartel:

By Thursday, Meza's nickname, El Pipén, and his "links to drug dealers in a high-crime neighborhood called Tepito" were known as was his intent to place the IED into a police commander's car in a nearby parking lot.

The cartels now refine certain cocaine products in Mexico as well as produce superior grades of methamphetamine. They can certainly perfect the production of TATP. Expect to see a family of IEDs employing homemade, commercial and military explosives emerge in Mexico.

Deadly Bomb in Mexico Was Meant for the Police
By ANTONIO BETANCOURT and JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
New York Times
February 21, 2008

Bomb was assassination plot, Mexico City authorities say
The blast last week is believed to have been a failed attempt to kill a top police official. Drug traffickers are suspected.
By Héctor Tobar
Los Angeles Times
February 20, 2008

Dead suspect named in botched Mexico City bombing
By Mica Rosenberg and Luis Rojas
Reuters
19 Feb 2008 05:39:28 GMT
(Recasts with suspect, target identified, adds details)

Mexico City tightens security after fatal blast
By Mica Rosenberg
Reuters
18 Feb 2008 23:45:44 GMT

Mexico City Bomber's Motive Unclear, Police Say
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
New York Times
February 17, 2008

Mexico drug gangs suspected of fatal blast
By Alistair Bell
Reuters
16 Feb 2008 19:45:31 GMT

Mexico City blast may have ties to organized crime
AP
February 16, 2008 -- Updated 1459 GMT (2259 HKT)

Bomb Kills Man on Street in Mexico
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
New York Times
February 16, 2008

Bomb kills one, wounds two in Mexico City
By Armando Tovar and Cyntia Barrera Diaz
Reuters
16 Feb 2008 03:18:21 GMT
(Updates with officials' comments, details about the bomb)

MOD-DATE: 02/16/08 00:08:25
WORLD05-FEB15 -MEXICO -BOMB BLAST
WORLD05: STORY 561
BOMB BLAST MEXICO CITY, MEXICO FEBRUARY 15, 2008 NATURAL WITH SPANISH SPEECH DURATION:01:36
SOURCE:REUTERS FEED HISTORY:
INTRO: Bomb kills one, wounds two in Mexico City.
TV AND WEB RESTRICTIONS~**NONE**~

Homemade bomb explodes in Mexico City, killing man
Two others hurt by blast in capital near U.S. Embassy
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS and MARION LLOYD
Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau
Feb. 15, 2008, 11:59PM

Bomb explodes in Mexico City killing at least one
AFP
Fri Feb 15, 6:15 PM ET

Grim warnings left on six bodies found in Tijuana
Placards advise against informing on drug traffickers
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Houston Chronicle Mexico City Bureau
Feb. 14, 2008, 11:06PM

Acetone Peroxide (For A Bomb - Triacetone Triperoxide) And The Terrorist Plot To Bow Up British Planes
Posted by Richard at August 10, 2006 7:27 PM
Hyscience

Gordon Housworth

Submarine fiber optic cable breaks: a study in hysteria and ignorance against analysis

Undersea cable networks are an underappreciated but essential part of modern life. They now carry well over 95% of the world's international telecommunications traffic. As trade rises as a share of global GDP - it's now over 30% - reliable connectivity becomes a key ingredient to growth. Some drivers of economic growth - outsourcing, offshoring - would be nearly impossible without it. As such, the undersea cable networks that support this connectivity are clearly vital to global commerce...

The global submarine fiber optic network almost perfectly mimics the global electricity grid in its inability to mount any reasonable defense against attack. (I say 'almost' as the fiber optic industry is far less aware of its being a target than is the electricity grid.)

Here is Richard Clarke in 2000 speaking of cyberwar as "a threat that US government cannot defend solely by federal means":

Compare that to Clarke's recent 2008 reply on the vulnerability of fiber optic networks to physical attack:

No one has the responsibility to insure there are redundant lines. Each company makes a decision based on market forces as to whether to invest in building new capacity. Nobody pays the private firms that own the fiber to build excess capacity. In some places it exists, but there are many point-to-point connections that have single points of failure and insufficient work-arounds available. There ought to be a public-private partnership, an international one, that insures there is adequate capacity to handle large scale outages caused by malevolent actors. That means back up dark fiber, rapid repair and replacement capability, and research to increase the bandwidth for laser uplink/downlink satellite comms.