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Zepplin vs the Pterodactyls

“But sophomoric pranks and cyberattacks were only the first shots of a much wider online war in which Russian bloggers willingly enlisted as the Kremlin’s grass-roots army. For Russian netizens, ‘unconventional’ cyberwarfare—winning the hearts and minds of the West—became more important than crashing another server in Tbilisi. Managing information seemed all the more urgent as there were virtually no images from the first and the most controversial element in the whole war—the Georgian invasion of Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia—and the destruction that, were one to believe the Kremlin’s account, followed shortly thereafter.”

In January of this year the old Belmont Club, hosted on Blogspot, carried a long post called the “Ghost in the Machine” focusing on cyberwarfare. It contained a description of China’s system, the so-called Three Headed Monster.

the “Three Headed Monster”: the “NET Force” corresponding to a general staff; the “Red Hackers Union” (RHU). These are several hundred thousand patriotic Chinese programmers and Internet engineers who wished to assist the motherland — all behind the Golden Shield Project (also known as The Great Firewall of China) manned by 30,000 Ministry of Public Security employees to keep the targets from repaying Beijing in kind.

One of the reasons that Russia and China spend so much effort on cyberwarfare is that Western information institutions — universities, the press and even the Internet — are so vulnerable to disinformation. The MSM in particular is structurally incapable of classifying and analyzing new information at a near real-time rate. It can be cyberherded easily. And because it is institutionally perpetually amateur, it often can’t even tell when it is being had. Plus many of its major connected nodes are probably compromised and the small world property means that these compromised nodes will spread the poison.  Thursday, August 14, 2008

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez

By Ed Morrissey

Knowing no one got seriously hurt makes watching this video clip somewhat easier. Apparently, Russian soldiers don’t particularly like international journalists watching them around the Georgian city of Gori, and one in particular made that spectacularly clear. When firing his pistol in the air didn’t chase Israeli reporters from Ynet out of the area, he aimed a little lower:

“We arrived on the outskirts of Gori on Thursday, during the afternoon. There were a lot of Russian troops and television crews. We arrived about two hours after an altercation almost broke out between Russian troops and Georgians. The Georgians were there to welcome their army, and the Russian troops brushed them off.

“As I was taking pictures around Gori, a Russian soldier approached me and started shooting his weapon in the air,” added Sheizaf. “People were running scared and our driver had disappeared. Suddenly a soldier appeared, I didn’t know if he was an Osstetian or a Chechen. He pointed his weapon at me and screamed, ‘Where are the car keys?’

“I approached the driver’s side of the car and saw that the keys were in the ignition. I tried to get into the car and run, but the soldier pushed me and then he fired a round which nearly hit my foot, it actually hit the tip of my sandal.["]

The YouTube description says the soldier was drunk, a detail that doesn’t make it into the Ynet report, but may account for why the journalist survived his encounter. Russian soldiers stole the car and sped off, taking with them the reporters’ passports — which could have complicated their exit from Georgia, especially with the diplomatic turmoil in the nation at the moment.

Surprisingly, Russian officers drove the car back to the journalists within 20 minutes. They got better treatment than the Georgians, who still cannot come back into their own city, which the Russians have blockaded.

Update: This wasn’t an isolated incident, apparently. A Georgian reporter got hit by a sniper on live television, but kept her composure (via Power Line):

Maybe Russia has declared open season on reporters? And why would a sniper aim for an unarmed woman in the middle of the street in broad daylight, who’s doing nothing but reporting for a television station? Mighty brave fellows, those Russian soldiers.

By Ed Morrissey

Pervez Musharraf has worked out a deal with the new civilian government of Yousef Gilani to retire to his Islamabad farm, rather than put Pakistan through an almost certain impeachment. His resignation would be accepted with a promise to end any efforts to prosecute him for crimes while in office, a perhaps less-than-satisfactory outcome for Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf deposed in 1999 and who wanted the former dictator prosecuted. In the end, the army insisted on Musharraf’s terms:

Pakistan’s beleaguered president Pervez Musharraf is to step down after nine years in office, government officials and a member of his circle have told the Financial Times.

A senior officer in Mr Musharraf’s camp on Thursday conceded that he had decided to step down to avoid a parliamentary impeachment that was likely to begin on Monday.

A senior Pakistani government official said that a deal had been brokered between president Musharraf and members of the newly elected coalition government, with the army playing a key role in the agreement.

“The president will neither be impeached nor prosecuted on any charges. He will try and stay in Pakistan,” said the official.

The army actually facilitated a deal by withdrawing its support of Musharraf in the last few days.  According to FT, the army had threatened to intervene if the civilian government pursued either impeachment or prosecution — not surprisingly, since the leadership had been all Musharraf’s men.  In an unusual development, though, the army finally blinked, backing away from Musharraf and leaving him vulnerable to his political opponents.  Immunity was the price the Gilani government had to pay to avoid yet another military coup.

According to the report, Musharraf will resign by Monday.  He will immediately decamp for his farm, leaving the Pakistani government in the hands of the coalition headed by Gilani.  Whether that means an immediate revote for the presidency remains to be seen.  If this all takes place as reported, it means the real transfer of power to civilian control in a decade — and it could also mean a new period of even greater instability.  Musharraf provided a focus for Pakistani discontent, and with him out of the picture, the Gilani government will have to start delivering better days, and soon.  Thursday, August 14, 2008

http://hotair.com

Those who favor outsourcing our energy production generally argue that there is no point in opening up domestic drilling, since it would take many years before oil actually begins to flow. In some cases, it will indeed take a considerable time, although this problem is mostly self-inflicted: the delay will result more from regulatory hurdles and litigation than from the time it takes to build platforms, pipelines, and so on.

But there are areas where, if Congress acts to remove existing bans on drilling, oil could be flowing in a matter of months, not years. Foremost on this list is oil off the coast of California. We asked Dan Kish, Senior Vice President, Policy, at the Institute for Energy Research to comment. This is what he told us:

For oil, California is the quickest relief. Existing platforms there would allow access to some of the leases companies paid $1.1 billion for in 1981, but have been precluded from developing for 26 years. California is the nation's largest consumer of gasoline, so it could go directly to their extensive refinery network, also. The estimates are that 10 billion barrels exist off the coast of California, and tankers full of imported oil and Alaska North Slope oil go through those protected waters every day.

Santa Barbara is also home to one of the largest oil seep trends ever observed, and in one small area 100 bbls per day seep to the surface, except around an existing producing platform that releases the pressure causing the seeps. 100% of the oil on the beaches in Santa Barbara county, and 50% of the oil on the beaches of LA County are caused by Santa Barbara's seeps. The local group Stop Oil Seeps advocates drilling there to improve the environment.

Off California, oil could be flowing in less than a year. For us to send hundreds of billions of dollars overseas, so that Venezuelans, Nigerians, Russians, Saudis, Canadians and Mexicans can do the high-paying jobs that hundreds of thousands of Americans would be delighted to do, is insane.  Thursday, August 14, 2008

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Karl Rove argues that the presidential election probably will come down to four key states: Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, and Virginia. Rove provides valuable insight into the political dynamics of each state.

President Bush carried three of these four states in 2004 (all but Michigan). However, his margin in Ohio was small, and the Democrats have surged in Colorado and Virginia since 2004.

To win Michigan, McCain will have to run substantially better than Bush did in 2004; to win Ohio he will have to run about as well. On the surface, both scenarios seem a little bit unlikely, since 2008 should be a better year for Democrats than 2004, especially in states like Michigan and Ohio whose economies have been hard hit. In Michigan, though, the Detroit's Democratic mayor is fighting felony charges and the Democratic governor is widely blamed for much of the state's economic woes. On the other hand, McCain ran poorly in the state's primary, experiencing a rare defeat at the hands of Mitt Romney. McCain's strong free trade, free market stance is not well calculated to win over voters in either Michigan or Ohio. But Obama fared poorly against Hillary Clinton in Ohio, and Rove shows that the state's demographics don't favor Obama.

Virginia and Colorado are similar in that, as noted above, the Democrats have surged in both since 2004. But they diverge in that Obama seems like a good fit in Colorado, whereas he's substantially to the left of the Democrats who have prevailed in Virginia recently. Perhaps putting Tim Kaine, one of those Dems, on the ticket would partially compensate for this disadvantage.

The state polls, such as they are, also point slightly in Obama's favor. He's a few points ahead in Michigan and Colorado, and even in Virginia. For some reason, there are no current polls in Ohio, but Obama led by two percentage points in the most recent one.

In sum, the picture in Rove's four battleground states looks basically the same as the picture nationally -- Obama has a small edge. This makes sense; in a tight national race one would expect the swing states to be tight. A surge by either candidate nationally would almost certainly bring along enough of Rove's four states (probably all four) to ensure victory for the beneficiary. But if the race remains tight nationally, these are probably the states we'll be biting our nails over in late October and early November.  Thursday, August 14, 2008

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Diyala Governor Ra’ad Rashid al Tamini. Photo by Bill Murray.

BAQUBAH, IRAQ: Governor Ra’ad Rashid al Tamini didn’t seem in an overly jovial mood on Wednesday, even if his aides all agreed on his high spirits. An outsider may say his face displayed more relief than joy, which is no surprise: firing your militant police chief, then surviving an assassination attempt and a coup d’état in a two-day period can wind even the most talented of political athletes.

Observers hope events this week in Diyala may portend for larger gains for civil society in Iraq, where demonstrations of civilian authority over security and military affairs can be rare. Indeed, implementing civil authority in Iraq has been the crux of the political adventure here since 2003, which is the reason successful military actions by Iraq’s central government against Shia militants in Basra and Sadr City in April and May were interpreted as political watersheds for the country’s leadership.

In Diyala, north of Baghdad, months of a “cold war” between al Tamini and the provincial police chief, Ghanem al Qurayshi, came to an end Aug. 10. Diyala’s provincial council voted 36-0 to oust the police chief, after numerous run-ins with councilors and the governor over the extent of his police authority. Even after the vote, the central government in Baghdad could have countermanded the decision, given al Qurayshi’s close ties to powerbrokers within the Shia-based political parties.

“We have enforced the laws,” said al Tamini in an interview. “Our society will improve so much if we can educate people about how the law strengthens the country. It was the first time the provincial council applauded for me. The decision came from their hearts.”

It was a series of missteps by the police chief that lead to his permanent dismissal. The council acted only after al Qurayshi bungled an order from the central government creating a civilian security detail for provincial officials and judges.

Instead of adapting the poorly written rule to local circumstances, like other provincial police chiefs, al Qurayshi stuck to the letter of the law, leaving public officials throughout the province woefully under protected at a time when Diyala qualifies as the most dangerous province in Iraq.

The day after his dismissal, several hundred of his supporters within the Iraqi Police staged a demonstration in front of the Diyala government complex. The protesters began chanting slogans, including a Saddam-era “with my blood, with my life, we support you” chant that curdles the blood of any Iraqi who felt the boot of the Hussein regime on their neck. It was this chant that steeled elements within Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s government past the point of no return.

Inside the governor’s office, al Tamini sat with General Ali Ghaidan, head of Iraqi Army ground forces in the region, listening to the chant on a cell phone. Upon hearing the protesters, General Ghaidan put the gears in motion in Baghdad to guarantee al Qurayshi’s permanent dismissal, but with an Iraqi twist. Al Qurayshi was given a promotion and moved to a deputy position in Baghdad with little direct influence, although it’s not sure whether he will accept the posting.

Finally, a male suicide bomber dressed as a female blew himself up as al Tamini and Ghaidan left the government complex to consult with the provincial council, killing two people and narrowly missing the governor’s vehicle.

The vote “was a unifying event for the council, giving them the first real taste of democracy – the kind that we take for granted every day,” said US Major Timothy Hunt, the main US military advisor to al Tamini.

Police Chief Had Support

There were numerous accusations of corruption against al Qurayshi, but very few stuck, and ultimately poor communication with elected leaders and a lack of appreciation for civilian authority, i.e. not following orders, which led to his downfall, rather than his ties to militants, Iraqis said.

While it’s doubtful al Qurayshi himself organized the protest, he walked outside and was viewed as supporting the chants, soaking up the personal adulation instead of ordering his subordinates to shut the protest down.

The chief still has support among other leaders in the provincial police, who view him as a strong military leader who brought police authority back from the brink in 2006 when the province was dominated by al Qaeda in Iraq and Mahdi Army extremists. Baqubah that year was declared the capital of the Islamic State of Iraq by an al Qaeda front organization, while Abu Musab al Zarqawi, al Qaeda in Iraq’s founder, was killed in Diyala by a US airstrike in June 2006.

Iraqi Police Colonel Ragheb Radhy Abbas. Photo by Bill Murray.

“At the end of 2006, beginning of 2007, the security situation was very bad. When they asked for someone to become the IP [Iraqi Police] Chief, a lot of generals refused,” said Iraqi Police Colonel Ragheb Radhy Abbas. “He accepted and started work. He was a great man, but the way he operated politically was not the best. He operated in a military fashion, more than as a policeman. He could not balance between his job and politics.”

Al Qurayshi was in charge during the period joint Coalition-Iraqi offensives that took back control over Baqubah and Diyala from insurgents. About 10,000 U.S. troops and an unknown number of Iraqi troops took part in the Arrowhead Ripper in March 2007. The Iraqi Police rolls in Diyala grew from 8,000 police at the end of 2006 to 18,000 in August 2008.

“What the IP did yesterday was because they were intimidated by him,” al Tamini said. “It shows and explains that he did it to himself. Most people are concerned with peace.”

Al Tamimi ordered an indefinite curfew in Baqouba after the suicide attack occurred. Major General Abdul Kareem Khaleef has become acting Diyala police chief.

Earlier this week, the Maliki government announced a weeklong suspension of military operations in the province to allow militants a chance to surrender. Iraqi forces have detained 663 wanted terrorists since the operation began on July 29, said Major General Mohammed al Askari, the spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, in a press conference in Baghdad on August 13.  Thursday, August 14, 2008

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