Indeed, if you start looking at the whole situation, you’re left with nothing but unanswered - and possibly unanswerable - questions - questions the media, and officials, seem reluctant to pursue. If nothing else, it highlights just how little public information there really is about the whole subject. As an example, here are more than two-dozen questions that spring to mind:

For convenience, more than anything else, I’ve tried to divide these up into four fairly traditional groups: Who, what, where, why, and how. (”When” was omitted, in part to keep this from being even more painfully long.)

Who: Who are the pirates? They operate out of, and around, Somalia, but are they actually Somalis, or are they just taking advantage of the lawless, failed state as a convenient base of operations? Are they one big group, or several smaller ones? If they’re one big group, who is or are the leader or leaders? If they’re several smaller groups, are they operating independently, or is there someone calling all the shots? (There don’t seem to be any reports of infighting between “rival” pirate groups, at least that I can find, but that doesn’t really mean anything.) How skilled are the pirates; what’s their background? Also, assuming that the stories about pirate “mother ships” are true - and keep in mind, international anti-piracy operations have, as far as I’m aware, only inferred their existence, yet never identified one or its crew, let alone captured one - who operates those ships? Experienced “leaders”? Or “noob” greenhorns?

What: What’s the point of the piracy? Traditionally, piracy happened for two basic reasons: greed (private enterprise) or politics (state-endorsed “privateers”). It’s generally difficult to imagine the pirates working as privateers - but what if the capture of the M/V Faina, laden with weapons headed to Sudan, wasn’t a fluke? Could that be the real raison d’etre of the group(s) - to be “contract pirates” as and when requested? Could everything else just be “cover”? Unlikely, I know, but… If the “mothership” stories are true, what do their crews do, exactly? What do they contribute, in lieu of the actual boarding-and-seizing bits? Do the pirate fleets engage in other money-making ventures? If so, what? Smuggling? Something more sinister?

Where: Where does the money go? Sure, some of it doubtless goes to daily operating expenses - food, fuel, maintenance, bribes - and a sizable chunk probably goes to the pirates themselves. Some small amount goes to the local warring factions… but where’s the rest of it go? Are the ransoms paid for ships, crews, and cargo being “diverted” to other enterprises elsewhere? (If so, what is it? Of late, the pirates seem quite willing to negotiate regarding the amount of ransoms paid, suggesting - if the funds are destined to a third party - that the eventual recipient(s) of the cash aren’t in particularly desperate need of it.)

Why: Why resort to piracy? Presumably they’re in it to get “easy money”, but the tactics involved don’t make much sense. (Traditionally, pirates seized ships for one of four reasons: to acquire weapons, for their own use or resale; to acquire liquid wealth - currency or easily-negotiable valuables like bullion; to acquire cargo - liquor, cigarettes, et cetera - easily sold on the black market; or to acquire the ship itself. While the pirates off Somalia have reportedly kept some vessels for their own use, I’ve found little evidence that they’re in any meaningful way exploiting - or trying to exploit - the cargo of seized ships. Yes, it’s hard to “liquidate” several thousand tons of metal ore, industrial chemicals, fertilizer, and whatever else the seized freighters and bulk carriers are carrying, but it doesn’t appear that the pirates are even trying.) So, if they’re not doing it purely to get-rich-quick, why do it in the first place?

How: How are targets chosen? Geography seems to play a part, but is there more to it than that? Violence is reportedly threatened, but seems rarely to be employed. How willing are the pirates to actually work for their money? (Actual shooting incidents seem to have grown very rare in the past few years, even as the number of pirates, and piracy incidents, have skyrocketed. Does this represent a change in tactics on the pirates’ part?) How is it that, while the rough location of the “motherships” has been inferred, the ships have yet to be actually identified?

My point, really, is this: Piracy off the coast of Somalia has been a problem for over a decade, and it’s gotten significantly worse in the last few years. It’s becoming increasingly visible, and increasingly a matter of international attention. Yet, unbelievably, the actual public knowledge about the situation, its participants, and their actions is virtually non-existent. While it’s nice and comforting to think that the intelligence community is “on top of things”, there’s almost no evidence whatsoever that this is true. International military anti-piracy efforts in the region have had pretty literally no lasting positive effect. It could be attributable to politics; but what if it isn’t?

To put things in perspective, considerably more is known about the “freedom fighters” in Chechnya and Dagestan than the pirates off Somalia; more is known about the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Why? Because those groups threaten the stability and sovereignty of political states? Because they’re branded (by some) as “terrorists”? Or does it have less to do with those groups, than the pirates? It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the international community - and the public - has an enormous intelligence gap where the Somali pirates are concerned. (The alternatives all read like really bad conspiracy theories.)

This should be very, very worrying, to the professionally paranoid types whose jobs, frankly, are to worry about this sort of thing. And, let’s face it, it’s not as if this is a new development, either: knowledge of and about the pirates seems to have remained fairly minimal since day one. It seems unlikely that the pirates are a “front” for al Qaeda, or Hezbollah, or any other recognized “terrorist” group. Not impossible, but really unlikely. That doesn’t mean they’re not of concern; both terrorist groups - and many others - are well-funded, and while the pirates so far seem to be staying out of politics, if they’re purely profit-driven, it’s hard to say what they might acquiesce to for a large enough amount of money. I mean - and this is purely hypothetical - the international community wouldn’t hesitate for a second to scream the dangers if al Qaeda had a stolen superfreighter or two at their disposal, right? Why, the terror possibilities are endless: floating WMD factory, or chem/bio dispersal vector; floating suicide-boat (”the USS Cole, only a thousand times more so!”), or simply a way to screw up the world’s economy by blocking a navigable port or waterway. (Sink a fully-laden bulk-ore carrier in the Suez Canal, anyone?) So, hyperbole and anti-Islamic obsessions aside, why isn’t the international community nearly as worried about a bunch of, let’s face it, pirates, who have the same basic capabilities and appear, as far as anyone can tell, to be motivated purely by greed? If the pirates asked for $5 million ransom for a petro-tanker, and al Qaeda offered them, say, $25 million… what would happen? I don’t know. Neither do you. And, quite frankly, I’m a little bit worried that nobody else does, either, because - ineffective naval patrols aside - nobody really seems to care enough about the growing piracy problem off Somalia to learn about it, let alone do something about it.

That’s a problem I hope we don’t all live to regret.

Tor is another matter entirely. The developer of the Portable Tor Bundle doesn’t see the point in connecting to a remote server running Tor via SSH, and running it that way. While I admit I like the plug-and-play, no-cost approach that project takes, I’m unconvinced it doesn’t leave the potential for unwanted information disclosures, however inadvertent. The advantage of Tor-over-SSH is that all the traffic identifiable as Tor (like directory requests) come from the remote machine; all your local ISP, network administrator, or government snoops see is an encrypted SSH session between two machines. Further, even though they’re run as “portable apps” from (say) a flash drive (encrypted or not, doesn’t really matter), with the portable “bundle”, you’re still running Tor, Privoxy, et cetera on your machine. Are traces of this left behind on the computer? Potentially. (It’s not that I don’t trust the developer of the Portable Tor suite; rather, it’s that I don’t particularly trust Windows - in this case, the memory management.)

It’s all down to that infamous rallying cry of the deviant, criminal, and paranoid: “plausible deniability”. I’d rather have Tor, Privoxy, et cetera running on a server in another country, than on my personal desktop or laptop computers, or even a flash drive, however well encrypted. Others, of course, feel differently, and perhaps with good reason; I’m not saying this is the “best” way to do things, let alone a “good” way to do so, only that it’s the way I do it, and that it can be done this way. What you choose to do with that information - if anything - is up to you…

I know it’s a necessary evil we all have to live with, but I can’t help but feel that many of the skills being taught have more value for playing politics than they do for actual analysis.

You can teach old dogs new tricks, and you can teach analysts how to do their jobs better, there’s no doubt about it. (I firmly believe that one should never stop learning.) But it seems to me that, especially at the “less traditional” ends of the intelligence spectrum - business intelligence, and the now-flourishing field of law-enforcement intelligence - insufficient emphasis is being placed on the not-strictly-analytic skills an analyst should ideally possess. The real problem, though, is that too many of these skills aren’t ones you can, as an adult, pick up in a fortnight’s classes, or from watching a YouTube video over lunch. Too many of them, I think, aren’t “skills” at all - they’re traits that people either have or don’t have by the time they hit college, and which no amount of classes, workshops, or training will endow to those missing them.

Mental acuity is one; it has nothing to do with IQ, or other objective measures of (human) intelligence, but all the “thinking about thinking” in the world isn’t going to change the fundamental nature of people who are slow, methodical, and resistant to change. These aren’t bad traits, but so very much in the intelligence analysis field is dependent on intuition (or what today’s overly self-analytic boffins call “emotional intelligence”) that its absence seems a painful handicap.

Literacy, I reckon, is probably the most fundamentally important trait of intelligence analysts, and one that no amount of teaching, as an adult, is going to improve. By the time you graduate from high school, I really don’t think there’s anything that can be done to endow, say, reading comprehension skills on one lacking them. I firmly believe that the more you read (for work and for pleasure), and the more you process - and retain - from what you’ve read, the better you’ll be as an analyst. The more new ideas you’re exposed to - nevermind the source - the more you have to apply to your analytic work. (I once produced a series of reports based on an idea I’d gotten from a mystery novel, and I know someone that prepared an intelligence estimate predicated on a “Bloom County” comic strip.) Much more than that, though, is the fact that most intelligence products today are derivative - and their sources are almost all in written form. Even in those smoking hells where PowerPoint presentations are the norm, the most important points are still written out, on the somewhat scientific assumption that people retain more of what they see than what they hear.

The third and final trait which I think is of fundamental importance to intelligence analysts is a bit different from the other two. With mental acuity and literacy, more is better. That’s not the case, though, with ego (or pride, if you prefer). In the intelligence community, it’s a fine line between too little - you don’t take yourself importantly, and nobody else will, either - and too much, where your ego just gets in the way. In part, it’s politics at work: you need to have enough of a spine to be able to defend your work, yet be able to admit to errors and “show weakness” when appropriate. “I’m right, because I say so” doesn’t win many arguments, and wins fewer friends, and while sycophants (”you’re right, because you say so”) will always find their followers, they’re ultimately destructive to the both the work environment and its products.

More importantly, though, is that pride in the fruits of one’s labors is a dangerous thing. The intelligence community doesn’t play by normal rules. You may spend a month producing the most complete and comprehensive analysis of a subject ever made; it may be a thing of art and beauty; however, it will probably be read by less than six people, at least half of which will only read the executive summary, and nobody will ever see or think about it after two weeks have passed. Once you’ve handed it in, nobody cares how great it was, or that you produced it: there’s another one due on Friday, which new developments in the area look set to make obsolete by next Monday, so get cracking. You have to take pride in your work - nobody wants a sloppy job thrown together at the last minute - but you also have to accept the ephemeral, and thankless, nature of what you do.

You can teach people how, and why, to think, and to think better. But I really don’t think you can teach people, after a certain point, how to think quickly, or intuitively, or flexibly. Nor can you teach people to enjoy reading, or significantly improve the retention and comprehension of those who don’t. You can teach people stick up for themselves, or stop being so full of themselves, but it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth. There’s no doubt the IC is right to place an emphasis on the continued education of analysts, but better-identifying “desirable” new hires might do more, in the long run, for the quality of the community and its end products. I know it’s terribly unfashionable to think about things more than a few years down the road, or to suggest that maximizing the potential of today’s human capital isn’t the be-all and end-all of human-resource strategy, but “boldness” is one of the fundamental traits of the intelligence process, after all. At least, that’s what I keep hearing in all these courses and presentations…

I don’t want to sound too cynical, but I think Israel’s enhanced protection is just, frankly, a lucky side benefit of the system’s real purpose, and is being “spun” to make the installation more palatable to the Israeli public. Why? Well, it all has to do with the radar system itself…

That system is the Raytheon X-band system officially known as the AN/TPY-2 in U.S. service. It’s the key component of the American Forward-Based Radar (PDF!) global missile-defense system. It’s the very same radar system we wanted to install in the Czech Republic earlier this year, and somewhere in the southern Caucasus region - like in Azerbaijan - last year. It’s unclear whether we were ever able to install such a system in the Caucasus, but the fact that we’re putting such a long-range system - under American control, no less in Israel, seems to suggest pretty strongly that it’s a part of the missile-defense shield we’re so emphatic about. Here’s a look at the approximate range (here we’re using 2000 KM; range estimates vary) of the Negev radar system, once it becomes operational:

That’s a lot of real-estate covered - including most of Iran, and the area of Baku, Azerbaijan, which some boffins reckon is going to be under the flight path of an Iranian ICBM launched at the U.S. To be fair, a single radar can’t see in a full circle - only a 120-degree arc. However, we’ll come back to that in a moment.

You can’t help but wonder why the system wasn’t installed in Iraq, or better yet Afghanistan, as doing so would ensure full coverage of Iran - and, in the case of Afghanistan, provide coverage of Pakistan as well. My suspicion is because we (the U.S.) are concentrating too much on Iran, rather than their neighbors in the region, and too fixated on, rather than “global” coverage, comprehensive “theatre” coverage of our allies in eastern Europe and the Pacific region. I think part of it also has to do with the radar system’s capabilities, which decrease with range - we want the radars, essentially, in the hypothetical missiles’ paths, rather than having an over-the-horizon look at them speeding away.

There’s another fun footnote to this story: the AN/TPY-2 system requires a crew of between 30 and 40 people to operate. According to all the news reports, the U.S. has sent 120 people to man the system - enough people for three complete radar systems. Since a single radar has a 120-degree field of coverage, three systems would give, if I’m doing my math right, full 360-degree coverage. Coincidence? Maybe. We’ll probably never know. More likely would be just two systems - one system pointed northwest, covering southeastern Europe (the area the notional Czech radar system would cover, if it happens), and one pointed east, towards Iran; the few dozen extra personnel could be explained away in a number of plausible fashions.

Will Israel benefit from the radar system(s)? Almost certainly. But it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that Israel’s interests aren’t the only ones - aren’t even the primary ones - being served by this deployment.

An English-language television interview with one of the captured crewmembers can be seen below; the footage of pirates appears to be from encounters earlier this year. Of particular interest to me is the pirate seen wielding a samurai sword:

As a blogger myself, you might think this would upset me. You’d be very wrong.

The Coast Guard says:

“Whether alternative media (i.e. bloggers) are eligible for categorization as “representative of the news media” is an evolving legal issue based on the extent to which the alternative media has infused its content with sufficient journalistic rigor and whether it is organized and operated to publish or broadcast news to the public. Simply put, not all online content constitutes journalism…”

To be perfectly honest, I’m glad that someone has finally come to their senses. There’s a difference between “media” and “journalism”, and far too few people seem to recognize this fact. Not surprisingly, this is often the case with those who aren’t actually journalists, but who want the “special protections” of the “free press” under the First Amendment. In this case, it’s people wanting fee waivers for the FOIA (never mind that, in my opinion, the bloggers involved should be entitled to the same, at least in this specific instance); earlier this month, it was “independent journalists” at the RNC protests wanting immunity from arrest.

Writing, blogging, producing “media” of whatever form doesn’t automatically make one a “journalist”; Bob Woodward is a journalist; Tom Clancy is not. Noah and company at Danger Room are journalists; I am not. People who blog about their homework, boyfriends, the concerts they go to, and all the other kinds of personal crap aren’t journalists, either. Anonymous people who may or may not have actually contributed something to Indymedia aren’t journalists, either - however much they might want you to believe otherwise. (There aren’t many well-defined standards for what constitutes journalism, but objectivity - and - responsibility - are two recognized standards, both of which are impossible to assess or ensure where anonymous authors are concerned. Sadly, some of the most vocal proponents of this argument fail to distinguish between anonymity and pseudonymity, which annoys me greatly, for what should be obvious reasons. My personal feeling is that two fundamental touchstones for journalism should be accountability and “public interest”, but that’s just me - and I know from personal experience that the government’s idea of “public interest” is often at odds, strangely enough, with that of the, um, public.)

On one hand, I’m sure some would-be, or wanna-be, internet journalists are upset that someone isn’t automatically ceding them the exalted rights and privileges of “traditional media”, and it’s easy to see how they come to the knee-jerk reaction that this is a bad thing. What the Coast Guard are really saying, though, is that they’ll examine the status of “journalists” on a case-by-case basis, which is as it, quite frankly, should be. The real issue to watch is whether government agencies start deciding that bloggers who don’t qualify as journalists for fee purposes are “commercial” requesters under the FOIA, rather than “all other” private individuals. I don’t make a profit from this site, and I certainly am not re-selling material requested under the FOIA, the way some folks do; I believe this to be true of most bloggers and other web-content (”new media”) authors who make use of the FOIA. If the government wants to say we’re not journalists, that’s fine with me - but if they start claiming everyone with a website - or even everyone with a website that runs ads - is a “business”, then we should all panic…

In that scenario, a couple of military journalists aren’t the only problem; the 379th AEW are themselves incredibly negligent. You see, their website contains at least ten references to “Qatar”, including two fairly damning references that pretty much give the game away. One is the official biography of the squadron’s Command Chief Master Sergeant:

The other is the squadron’s new arrival handbook (PDF!), which almost never mentions the name of the country - though it mentions at least four other things which are definite OPSEC no-nos - until you get to the very last page:

“Undisclosed location”? Not so much so, no…

It seems like an obvious solution, on the surface, so you have to wonder why it hasn’t been tried before. My educated guess is that there are rather a number of problems with this plan that haven’t been fully examined: tensile strength of the new lids, for one; is the plastic as strong as cast iron? If it’s overweighted, how does it fail: flexing and cracking, or completely shattering? Does the plastic degrade with exposure to sunlight? Exhaust fumes? Hydrogen sulfide? How abrasion resistant is it, compared to iron?

Equally important is the weight of the plastic covers. The weight of steel lids helps keep them from being “sucked off” by passing cars and trucks, and helps keep them from “blowing off” (this, obviously, is a [freaking awesome] worst-case example, but this is much more typical) during a storm. How are plastic lids and grates going to fare during events like these? (I think the phrase you’re looking for is “low earth orbit”.)

I mean, it’s a drastic measure to combat metal theft, yes. I don’t think it’s going to stop the theft, or even slow it down, just force the thieves to move on to other targets; I also question whether the rush to combat metal thieves means the whole plastic manhole cover idea hasn’t been thought through as well as it should have.

Ah, well; we’ll find out sooner or later, it appears. In the meantime, let’s not even go into how great a boon this is for urban explorers: why yes, local government, I would like manhole covers that weigh eighty percent less, thank you very much…

But first, let me explain why I’m posting this. The location of the photos was presumably obscured intentionally, probably in the interests of Operational Security, or OPSEC. Theoretically, I guess, this is so that adversaries won’t find out that the “distinguished visitors lounge” is the building with the logo-decorated barriers in front of it. Personally, I think that’s kind of stupid, myself. If you consider that information “sensitive” - which I don’t - the OPSEC leak here is the unit name and logo, from which the air base can be identified fairly easily. Arguably, the fact that the sign is in front of the lounge is also an OPSEC leak, itself - and really, unnecessary for the photo caption.

But, here’s the thing: even without this knowledge, someone with decent computer skills can prove the photo was taken at al Udied - all using government websites! Here’s how:

The hunky artist in the photos referenced above is Luis Loza Gutierrez. A quick Google search turns up this page. From there, you can see not only that Staff Sgt. Darnell Cannady is the photographer, but that you can search the website for his photos only. Doing so will net - among other things - this image and this image, both taken a few weeks ago. Uncle Sam thoughtfully lets you view full-size, high-resolution copies of these photos; this is of course nice of them, but - IF you’re for some strange reason trying to hide the fact that these folks are at al Udied, Qatar, not such a good thing. You see, Staff Sergeant Pilgrim isn’t quite as good at covering up “sensitive” paperwork as he perhaps should be.

What’s that under your arm, Sergeant? What’s that say? 379 ECO-something, Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar? Whoops. And, hey, what’s that green sheet of paper all about?

Oh, it’s from the Qatar Trading and Transport Company? Why, how interesting.

Sorry, USAF. You really either need to drop the charade that the 379th AEW and associated units are at an “undisclosed location”, or improve your OPSEC rather considerably. Given that everyone already knows where the 379th are, may I suggest that you stop trying to protect a relatively useless data point, and maybe, I dunno, find something important to protect? Like, say… Engineering drawings for a fairly obvious “undisclosed air base”?

Click on any of the images below to see them full-sized.

The first page I’ll be showing you is mostly redacted, but includes some biographical information not (yet, hint, hint) on his Wikipedia page:

“D.J. Brennan, Jr” was a “top Hoover aide” of some sort, according to Time Magazine.

These memos are all from 1965, but, as we’ll see in a moment, the FBI were aware of Moore at least as early as 1963:

The Junta Revolucionaria Cubana, or JURE, were, according to various sources, a CIA-backed, anti-Castro organization. Most of the substantiative references seem to be in Spanish, but if you’re interested in them, Google is your friend.

Note that - in my mind, at least - there’s some potential confusion over which Robert Moore is being described in this and the next page; the 1965 memo, above, described the “Green Berets” Robin Moore as merely doing advertising work for Sheraton, while the 1963 investigation referenced here seems to describe him as a “director” of the company - a term I can’t help but think was more accurate of the father, Robert Moore, Sr.

Quite aside from his involvement with anti-Castro revolutionaries, it seems that Moore came to the authorities for an entirely different reason: apparently, the rumors about “The Green Berets” are true: it does disclose “classified information”. At least, according to the FBI, presumably at the insistence of the DIA:

The last reference to Moore in the files released by the Bureau concern a 1974 novel co-written by Moore called “The Family Man”, which was of interest to the Bureau more because of it’s co-authors, and its depiction of the Bureau, than because of Robin Moore. Still, at the end of the several-page review of the book, the FBI thoughtfully provided a brief biography of Moore, which hints at an even deeper anti-Castro involvement:

The Fair Play for Cuba Committee had quite an interesting history; apparently membership included Norman Mailer, Alan Ginsberg… and Lee Harvey Oswald.

So, there you go. Assuming the internet - and this website - are still around in five or six years, and that the Defense Intelligence Agency actually releases any of the information referred to them by the Bureau, I’ll post whatever new details come to light. For the time being, well, enjoy what’s been released so far…

Care for more about National Security Special Events, or NSSEs, and the military support to the same? Look no further than this powerpoint presentation (7.14MB), which should answer most of the questions you didn’t know you had…

Last but not least, some amusing quotes from a 1950 letter, found in the “National Archives” material posted by governmentattic.org recently. They come from someone in the Political Affairs (POLAFF) section of the Office of the High Commissioner for Germany (HICOG), and were sent to an acquaintance of his at the State Department in August 1950.

The more things change, the more they stay the same…

The incident, it appears, didn’t come to the attention of the government until 1987, and then only as part of the ongoing search for POWs from the Viet Nam war. What kind of follow-up, if any, ever happened is unclear; the report - from the FBI’s Los Angeles field office - was forwarded to the Defense Intelligence Agency in May 1987. Googling the few details in the report, I can’t immediately find any reference to the incident online, but it’s clear that a little bit of research and analysis should be able to ferret out at least a few of the details that are still classified. The island, for instance, is probably part of the Spratly Islands, perhaps Southwest Cay.

If you’d like to take a crack at solving this 28-year-old mystery, you can download the PDF file right here (474KB). Be sure to post any interesting discoveries as comments, below.

The first (1.7MB PDF!) is a 3 March 1950 report from the U.S. State Department’s Office of Intelligence Research on the Moral Re-Armament group, a strange and fairly long-lived religious cult.

The second (652KB PDF!) is a series of FBI records from March and July, 1953, concerning the “circumstantial” claims - with “a distinct possibility that the story is true”, according to one FBI official - that Georgi Malenkov, then head of the Soviet Union, was actually Jewish, and had a brother living in the United States. If confirmed, the plan was apparently to use the brother to appeal to Malenkov’s ethnicity to end the increasingly worrisome anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union following the Doctor’s Plot of 1952. What ever came of the plan, I don’t know - Malenkov’s stint as head of the USSR was short-lived, and it’s possible the story, if it wasn’t disproven outright, was never confirmed before he’d left office. It’s also possible that, since the widespread pogrom everyone at the time feared the Doctor’s Plot was the opening act to never materialized, the whole issue was rendered immaterial… either way, it’s an interesting anecdote from history that doesn’t seem to be otherwise remembered today…

One of those potentially dangerous analytic tools is “inference”: deducing what isn’t seen, or known, from what is. It is, essentially, the codification of “common sense”, kept in check by tests for “plausibility” and “reasonability”.

During the cold war, in particular, inference was an important and often-used analytic tool, not because it is really a good method of analysis, but because it, by definition, is used in situations where there is insufficient information to educe facts. Everybody involved knew this, of course, and both sides, over the years, spent a lot of time and effort trying to mislead the other by baiting them into making (incorrect) inferences.

The Soviets did this by creatively numbering their most important military units: one of the most common forms of inference is assuming that because there is something numbered x - say, a bomber squadron - there are also examples of that same thing numbered 1 through (x-1), as well. (An example of this, in popular culture, can be seen in internet debates about the Half Life game universe: Half-Life 2 takes place in “City Seventeen”, and so far, no other cities have been mentioned in the games. People infer that there are also Cities One through Sixteen, because that’s logical, but they don’t actually know so.)

Sometimes, inference is right: in the absence of counterintelligence deception ploys, or incorrect, unchallenged assumptions, it’s a surprisingly good analytic tool. And, most of the time - particularly outside the military environment - when it’s wrong, it’s only slightly wrong (if a company is producing a McGuffin 3, you might infer that they had, in the past, produced a McGuffin 1 and 2, as well. If that’s not the case, they probably designed two previous doohickeys, even if they never made it into production). Sometimes, though, inference is not only wrong, but completely and inexplicably wrong.

Consider: there are seven “cardinal” sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. We describe envy as green - people are “green with envy” (though I usually only see people green with motion-sickness… but I digress) - and occasionally either lust or wrath are characterized as red. One could, from this, infer that the other sins also have colors associated with them, but this does not, strictly speaking, appear to be true. Oh, if you hunt through metaphysical books and websites long enough, you’ll eventually find colors for all these vices, but they’re never primary colors, and the sources rarely agree with one another. There are seven primary colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet) and seven cardinal sins, so you’d think it’d be a no-brainer, at least at first. But then, if you’re like me, you’ll sit motionless for a few moments, trying to figure out which sin is “indigo”, and give the whole thing up as a bad idea. Thus, inference, at least on this occasion, is completely and utterly wrong. And, not only is it wrong, it’s wrong in a completely irrational way that cannot, is not, explained by logic or reason…

(Bonus material, for those college students in need of a subject for a research paper: Until the last twenty or so years, when environmentalism became fashionable, “green” was almost invariably used in a negative connotation: untrained and inexperienced employees were “green”, people were “green with envy”, or “green around the gills” if unwell. The usual explanation for green as a pejorative is from the lumber industry, where freshly-cut lumber - which is sometimes literally green - is basically useless until dried. Could it be, though, that using “green” in a negative connotation was a symptom of the institutionalized anti-Irish bigotry that prevailed in much of the western world until somewhat recently? Discuss amongst yourselves…)

The May 3rd summary is here; the August 16th is here; and the August 30th is here.

As an added bonus, courtesy of Wikileaks, check out this FBI report on snipers, which also contains some interesting references to government documents not (yet!) available to the public…

Second, on a kind of related note, I’m a little surprised at the apparent lack of tactical air assets in use during the convention. Even at night, when I’d be getting off work, all I’d ever see in the sky - other than television helicopters - was the State Patrol’s Bell JetRanger, hovering a couple hundred feet above whatever disturbance was going on at the time. I know it has FLIR, and a powerful searchlight, and I know the helicopters operate out of Holman Field, right in downtown Saint Paul, but if they really were the only helicopter the government had to call on, that seems like one heck of a grueling operational tempo for the State Patrol flyboys. There were sightings the weekend before the convention of several USCG helicopters, probably HH-65s, so it’s not as if nobody else brought rotary-wing assets to the party. Strange…

Also strange, nobody seems to have reported seeing any of the really high-tech less-lethal gizmos the government has in its arsenal: The LRAD accoustic doohickey, or the microwave pain-ray deal, for instance. At least one LRAD was in New York in 2004, though most people agree it was never used. I mean, yeah, some of the tinfoil-hat brigade reported seeing “cellphone jammers”, but I’m pretty sure they were talking about the bomb squad disposal trailer (which was also reported to be a cauldron of “boiling oil”, after all).

Did anyone else expect to see something from the military at the convention that wasn’t there? Or get surprised by the appearance of something they weren’t expecting to see?

Sometimes, especially for work, I have to modify - usually resize - already-existing PDF documents whose source files aren’t available. This shouldn’t be a big deal: usually it’s making documents fit nicely onto letter-sized paper. (A4, not a real problem. Legal-sized, rather more of a problem.) To do this, I open the PDF file in Adobe Reader, then “print” to a file using the PDF995 printer driver; by setting the “paper source” and other options, I can get everything resized really easily onto the preferred-size paper. There’s just one problem, though:

Most of the time, I’m resizing images - maps, charts, blueprints, photos, or whatever, and for this the PDF995 driver works beautifully. However, when resizing text documents, things go horribly, horribly wrong: the PDF995 driver apparently enforces a strict separation between lines of type, meaning that, in a lot of typefaces, ascenders and descenders get cropped, badly. (This means the “tail” of lowercase y, g, and q letters disappear - making them appear to be v or o - and lowercase j in some typefaces becomes an i.) This is, as you can imagine, incredibly annoying.

Does anyone know another, free, way of resizing PDF file page sizes, which doesn’t screw up typefaces (or, at least, as badly)?

Incidentally, something to make you ponder: anarchists are stereotypically privileged white kids who rebel against the perceived injustices of the system; a big part of that rebellion is not just a disdain for money, but open, almost ostentatious disregard for it. The Welcoming Committee was no different; with the exception of one or two members - who didn’t get arrested, oddly enough - most seemed to be living - or squatting - in fairly squalid communal housing. I’d guess none of those arrested paid more than $350 a month in rent; what they did to earn money, I have no idea. (Trust funds?) Over the last year, the Welcoming Committee begged and begged for money, going so far as to head on a cross-country fundraising trip. A big chunk of that money probably went towards renting the disused theatre here in Saint Paul they used as a “convergence space” during the convention. Yet all of the eight members arrested were able - within a couple of days - to get out of jail on $75,000 bail. Assuming - as seems reasonable - that they got “scheduled” bond, that means each one of them was able to come up with $7,500 on fairly short notice. That’s more than I, or most of the people I know, have in savings. Even if you’re really cynical, and suggest that the one member’s rich dad ponied up all the money, that’s still $60,000! Anarchists always complain about how the money spent on this or that unpopular government program (like the war in Iraq) could be put to better use; I can’t help but think that most anarchists would agree there are better ways to spend $60,000 than getting eight kids accused of some pretty damnable criminal acts out of jail.

One interesting footnote to the whole RNC Welcoming Committee saga: it appears they were infiltrated by a government informant who also just so happens to be a fairly prominent member of the region’s urban exploration community. You kind of have to wonder: did the government recruit an urban explorer to be an anarchist, or did they recruit an anarchist to be an urban explorer? Mysteries, mysteries. (You could try heading over to Andy/Panda’s website and asking him yourself, but the odds of your getting an honest answer are even worse than the odds of getting any answer at all, I’d say.)

I wasn’t on the streets much; I had to work during most of the RNC-related fun. Still, I managed to keep abreast of things with Twitter when I could. To be honest, it didn’t provide a real good glimpse of what was going on, but it did provide for a lot of laughs. Most memorable: reports of a chant of “you’re sexy, you’re cute, take off that riot suit” directed at police by protesters, reports mis-identifying the bomb squad’s disposal trailer as either a “cauldron of boiling oil” (WTF?) or a cellphone jammer, and a now-infamous message from someone caught up in the last riot of the week, as things came to a head: “cops, swat, horses, bikes, hundreds here, we’re fucked”.

I don’t really have any interesting stories or anecdotes from the whole thing, sad to say, but I’ll leave you with a link to an incredibly awesome photograph taken by someone else, and which is now my computer desktop. As the local Indymedia kids say, “even in the New World Order, we can has cheezeburger!”…

For something to keep you occupied, however, here are YouTube links to my “RNC Playlist”. Ten for the activists:

Rubber Bullets, 10 CC;

Dirty White Boy, Foreigner;

Kids in America, Kim Wilde;

Authority Song, John (Cougar) Mellencamp;

Freaks Come Out at Night, Whodini;

Fortunate Son (awesome nuclear footage edition) | Fortunate Son (non-nuclear edition), Creedence Clearwater Revival;

Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Tears for Fears;

That Smell, Lynyrd Skynyrd;

Revolution, The Beatles;

In the Year 2525, Zager and Evans;

And in case you don’t like subtle mockery of self-described anarchists, here’s three for the politicians:

Eve of Destruction, Barry McGuire;

Gimme Some Truth, John Lennon;

And last but not least:

Requiem for the Masses, The Association.

Enjoy…

(You can click on the picture for a larger view.) For those of you not familiar with “the industrial section of Saint Paul”, the tall building at the very, very far right of the picture is the SPPD building; the horrible tan thing next to it is part of the county government center; it has a lot of VHF and UHF antennas on the roof (obscured here by the billboard), and might house the spiffy new communications and dispatch center. The even uglier two-story building at the left side of the photo belongs to some commercial cleaning outfit, or something like that. What’s that in their parking lot? Why, it’s Sheriff Bob’s Strategic Jersey Barrier Stockpile ™, or SBSJBS (pronounced “sibs-jibs”, if you’re wondering):

Thank goodness that’s right next to the police station, because I’m pretty sure you could climb that pile pretty easily…

Now, what does Sheriff Bob need all those Jersey Barriers for, anyway? Well, apparently the Sheriff wants to keep people well away from the jail - several of the sidewalks in the area are blocked off - and, one presumes, the nicely fenced-in parking lot that, I assume, is the top-secret temporary detention facility. Hopefully the Sheriff plans to shackle arrestees to the barriers, because I’m not convinced the fence is going to be too useful:

Um, Sheriff Bob? Shouldn’t the two sides of the fence meet at the corner?

I’d like to point out here - this being as good as any a place to do so - that Entropic Memes will probably be on hiatus from roughly 27 August to 8 September, thanks to the above-mentioned NSSE. I’ll try to post pictures or anything else interesting during that time, but no guarantees. Not that folks who read this site are given to worry, or anything - but if I’m quiet for a few days during a local period of violence and instability, well… it’s at least a little bit by design.

Onward…

There is - or used to be - an interesting powerpoint presentation here (Powerpoint file, duh) on NSSEs - with a great amount of detail about the planning for next week’s Democratic National Convention, though I seem unable to download it. A Google cache of the document is right here, at least for the moment…

I recently acquired a USMC textbook on “Military Operations in Urban Terrain”, which you can download right here (3.85MB PDF). It’s a surprisingly exhaustive look at modern combat operations… even ones in the sewers(!):

You know, once the U.S. invades a country that has sewers, we urban explorers are going to be in high demand as SMEs…

There’s an interesting presentation here (Powerpoint!) on the shortcomings of wargames as training tools for “modern warfare”. It has a couple interesting points to make - besides the interesting comparison of the Qu’ran with Wikipedia, at right, there’s a spiffy list of things wargame designers “probably left out”. Among others: prisoners of war, detainees, hostages, collateral damage, media in the battlespace, and the presence of refugees. Come to think of it, I just finished the new Medal of Honor game, and there weren’t any war correspondents in it, were there?

Of interest to some, I suppose, a training presentation for police “grenadiers” in Denver has been “leaked” on the web; you can download a copy of the PDF file here. It’s not the most user-friendly document, but there’s some interesting stuff in there.

Now, for a special Ask-The-Readers moment: This presentation (Powerpoint) on OPSEC mentions VOSIP - that is, Voice Over Secure Internet Protocol - as an alternative to the STU-III for sensitive communication. The presentation is only a month or two old, but the only information I can dig up about VOSIP relates to a brief DOD pilot program that ended years ago. This exercise report (PDF!) from last year mentions Skype, but surely the military has something a little more proprietary… right? Anyone got any hot, juicy details about the current implementation of VOSIP?

American pilot - who happens to be a convert to Islam - sues government for placing him on a watch list; government responds that “religious and political affiliation does not impact” ones’ inclusion on such a list. Don’t you feel better now?

Somali pirates seize the fourth commercial vessel in as many months. Apparently, not only are the ships and crews held for ransom, but the negotiations take forever. Glad to see those counter-piracy patrols are working…

Even the Canadians have secret search warrants that allow them to secretly seize property and “forfeit it to the government”. Yay for another great American export, eh?

Microsoft clues in to Internet Explorer security issues - too little, far, far too late.

Get ‘em while you can - Chicago 2016 Olympic t-shirts are already available.

An Australian company has issued a recall for loaves of its garlic bread, which inexplicably turn blue when heated. Their best guess, apparently, is that there’s something wrong with the garlic. I mean, it’s that or the bread, I guess…

Somewhat old news, but still hilarious: Tough-talking maverick John McCain takes shots at - wait for it - Dungeons & Dragons players. Well, with snap pop-culture references like that, maybe Gimpy McGuffin really is hip and with it, yo.

Sorry, Andy; you was used.

If you go and read the article in full, you’ll see that local, pseudonymous activists, apparently representing the RNC ‘Welcoming’ Committee, say they’re being misrepresented and lied about. That may well be true - but if you do a little bit of digging, you sure wouldn’t know it from the claims they make. Here, I’ll take the group’s biggest claims and complaints in the order they appear in the linked article. Some of the more general, nonspecific whining has been omitted, since it’s impossible to rebut meaningfully:

1. Anarchists’ plans “do not include violence”. This isn’t true - unless you are yourself an anarchist, and choose to believe that property damage is not violence. Browse the various anarchist websites and you’ll find that many consider property damage a form of “justice”. We’re not talking spray-painting slogans here, either - we’re talking breaking windows, smashing ATMs, and setting fire to things. I don’t care what they try to tell you - if it walks like violence, and quacks like violence, and looks like violence… it’s violence. Next “lie”:

2. Anarchists set up a “red sector” to clash with police. This is also true - just see this paper (Adobe PDF!) from late last year:

To be fair, it’s unclear at the moment if anything ever came of this plan, but they were definitely planning on designating “red zones”, at one time. (It looks like arbitrary limitations on confrontation are now being left to the organizers of specific actions or “sectors”, rather than being coordinated through the “Welcoming Committee”.) Let’s move on:

3. Anarchists have been compared to terrorist attacks, chemical weapons, et cetera. This makes no sense to me, and I’m unable to find any mention of such a comparison in any of the local news articles about the convention. Unless someone can provide a link or citation, I’m going to guess that by “compared with”, the anarchists really mean “viewed as a potential risk in addition to”, which doesn’t sound nearly as fun, does it? (”People out and about this weekend should be prepared for light rain, high winds, and occasional damaging hail” isn’t really “comparing” damaging hail with light rain, any more than saying that police are making plans for anarchists, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters is “comparing” anarchists to terrorists - or disasters.) Next…

4. Anarchists’ tactics are not terroristic. Once again, it depends on your definition of “terroristic”. Remember, anarchists will tell you that throwing objects is a “defensive” act - i.e. one designed to make police afraid to come near them. So, technically, it’s not true - and if you consider bomb-making environmental activists “anarchists”, it’s not even literally true, either.

5. Nonviolence. Yeah? Too bad nobody told anyone about that, eh? (Does “Give the spineless corporate whores hell” sound nonviolent to you?) I don’t know who the anarchists think they’re fooling - other than gullible and sympathetic citizen-journalists, anyway. News flash, guys: refusal to condemn violence is pretty much an endorsement thereof, okay?

6. Anarchism isn’t really about anarchy. Do you know why everyone refers to self-described anarchists as “self-described anarchists”? It’s simple - because people like the “RNC Welcoming Committee”, and the other groups who will be on the streets during the RNC, aren’t truly anarchists. There are actual topple-the-government anarchists out there - but most of them seem pretty disillusioned with the activist movements that use that name. If the “anarchists” are pissy about being described as, ah, “self-described anarchists”, maybe they’d prefer a quite literally more accurate label - socialists.

I mean, hello!, there’s a reason these groups use the seemingly redundant term “anarchists and anti-authoritarians”, and it ain’t just because it’s alliterative. No, it’s because - just like “violence” - when anarchists use the word “anarchist”, they don’t mean what Merriam-Webster does.

So, what have we learned here? Self-described anarchists lie. When they’re not lying, they’re being weasels, and twisting words around to fit their agenda. Some self-described anarchists, it appears, are almost ashamed of what they and their comrades say, believe, and do, and will stoop to considerable depths to try and distance themselves from those same “neighbors” their “community” is supposedly there to support… the freaking hypocrites. And, quite honestly, if self-described anarchists are being represented a certain way in the “corporate” media, it’s not just for good reason - it’s their own damned fault.

Dave Titus is the president of the Saint Paul Police Federation, which - presumably - means he was elected to that position by a majority of his peers. Assuming that’s true - and that there are no Chicago-style politics at play - Titus’ endless parade of cynical comments criticizing and second-guessing his department’s leadership could hint at morale problems in the department. If you search on the web, or in newspaper archives, you have to hunt very, very hard to find anything nice that Titus has said about his department, ever. Since the RNC announced Saint Paul as the site of the 2008 convention, he’s had little but scorn and contempt for his department’s preparations.

“The ball was dropped”, he says this week, of the SPPD’s planning, and “a recipe for disaster” is how he describes the city’s chosen route for the September 1st anti-war march. Not one to mince words much, “a complete joke” was his description of the City’s plans to enlist other public-safety bodies, such as firefighters, for security efforts at the convention. Last year, he accused the City of wanting to “try to portray that the city is safer than it actually is”, and that’s barely scratching the surface of his endlessly negative attitudes about pretty much everything the City, and the Department, does.

So, like, what gives? Is Dave Titus just a perpetually negative curmudgeon? He’s stated time and again that he would like to see not 3500 officers, but 6000, on the streets for the RNC. Nevermind that he’s offered, as far as I can tell, no ideas at all as to where those additional 2,500 folks are supposed to come from - is his criticism of every action taken by the City of Saint Paul, the SPPD, and Chief Harrington just sour grapes? Yes, he probably sees it as an officer-safety issue, and rightly so - but is his constant pissing and moaning helping anything, or just souring attitudes and damaging morale? How do others in the department feel about Titus’ endless litany of complaints? It seems like, over the last year, every single official statement by the department - usually through spokesperson Paul Welsh - has been immediately rebutted or dismissed by Dave Titus. I mean, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear Titus was the Ramsey County Sheriff union spokesperson, not the SPPD’s!

Look, Dave, I don’t want to suggest that the Chief should keep a tighter leash on you, but Jesus Christ, man, don’t you think it might be more helpful, more productive, to try and support the department, to try and project a unified front, than to be constantly criticizing the department or second-guessing the Chief and undermining his authority? I know you’ve got the best interests of the union at heart, but would it really hurt to just bite your freaking tongue until the convention is over, take one for the team, and try and make the department and the City look good during their fifteen minutes in the national spotlight? Is that really asking too much? Obviously, when things go to hell in a handbasket, you can’t be expected to keep your trap shut and refrain from saying “I told you so” to every reporter who has you on speed-dial - but until then, could you please curb your destructively asinine impulses? Thanks…