Its time to get real: Computers cant spy. They cant violate your privacy, because they dont know that you exist. Computers are the solution to Americans hyperactive privacy paranoia, not its nightmare confirmation. Next Mondays Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the National Security Agencys Al Qaeda phone-tracking program should focus on the promise of computer technology in fighting terrorism, and on overcoming the impediments to using it.
The furor over the National Security Agency program has been inflamed by conflating computer scanning with human spying. Administration opponents and the media have thrown around the phrases domestic surveillance and warrantless eavesdropping to refer to what appears to be computer analysis of vast amounts of communications traffic. In only the most minute fraction of cases has a human mind attended to the resultsat which point, the term eavesdropping may become appropriate. Most of the time, however, the communications data passed through NSAs supercomputers without any further consequences and without any sentient being learning what the data were. Anyone who feels violated by the possibility that his international phone calls or emails joined the flood of zeros and ones that feed the NSAs machines only to be passed by undeciphered, must believe that his wonderful individuality can spark interest even in silicon chips.
But although the NSAs Al Qaeda communications analysis program did not in the vast majority of cases violate privacy, it probably did violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And that fact should serve as a warning that national security law needs reform if we want to deploy one of our greatest defensive assetscomputer technologyagainst Islamic terrorists.
The facts about the NSA tracking program remain unknown: administration accounts and media reports are conflicting and incomplete. Assuming some truth in what has come out to date, it seems that when American soldiers and intelligence agents abroad seize phones and computers from Al Qaeda suspects, NSA computers start tracking communications to and from the phone numbers and email addresses contained in those devices, including communications between Al Qaeda suspects abroad and people here in the U.S.
Some of that mechanized tracking, it appears, simply follows calling or emailing patterns to and from the intercepted numbers and internet addresseslooking solely at phone numbers and email addresses without analyzing content. Other aspects of the program may search for certain key phrases within phone and electronic messages. And perhaps in a small percentage of cases, an NSA agent may monitor the content of highly suspicious communications between Al Qaeda operatives and U.S. residents.
Under the law, all of those methods require a court order if any of the numbers or addresses belong to U.S. citizens or legal residents, even though only a live agent poses any privacy problems. Using a computer to track phone numbers called and email addresses contacted, or to search for key words in conversationsassuming no follow-up action by the governmentis a privacy-protecting measure. A computer is no more sensitive to the meaning of the millions of conversations it may be scanning for Jihadist code words than a calculator that you use to figure out your taxes is privy to your income and debt levels.
But the legal hurdles to such automated-scanning programs become significant if theres any possibility that data on American residents are in play. To track just the phone numbers dialed out of and received by numbers contained in Khalid Sheik Mohammads cell phone, without any interception of content, for example, requires a court order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, if some of those numbers belong to U.S. residents or are found in the U.S. This requirement is particularly perverse, because the Supreme Court has held that there is no Fourth Amendment privacy interest in the numbers you dial from or receive into your phone. Phone companies already possess that information, which they use (among other things) to pitch new calling plans to subscribers. Dialing patterns, therefore, have no claim to constitutionally protected privacy.
The barriers to using our computer capacity grow even more daunting when the government wants to use computers to find Jihadist language in communications. Remember: a computer cannot eavesdrop on a conversation, because it does not know what anyone is saying, and a key-word detection program would exclude from computer analysis all conversations and all parts of conversations that dont use suspicious language. Nevertheless, such an insensate tracking device becomes surveillance for FISA purposes. Thus, in order to put a computer to work sifting through thousands of phone conversations or email messages a day, the NSA must convince the FISA court that there is probable cause to believe that every U.S. resident whose conversations will be dumbly scanned is an agent of a foreign power knowingly and illegally gathering intelligence or planning terrorism. FISAs 72-hour emergency exception rule, which allows the government to begin monitoring a conversation and seek a warrant within 72 hours, is no help. The government will still need to prove that the thousands of electronically scanned and ignored conversations emanate from American agents of foreign governments or terrorist organizations.
Obviously, such a requirement is both unworkable and unnecessary. It is wrong to consider computer analysis a constitutional search of data that havent been selected for further inspection. Only when authorities order a follow-up investigation on selected results should a probable-cause standard come into play.
That FISA employs probable-cause standards at all is a belated encroachment on national defense that contravened centuries of constitutional thinking. The Fourth Amendments probable-cause requirement governs criminal prosecution. It requires public authorities to prove to a judge issuing a search or arrest warrant that there is sufficient reason to believe that the wanted individual has committed a crime or that the criminal evidence sought is likely to be in the alleged location. The purpose of probable-cause rules is to ensure that the governments police powers are correctly targeted and do not unreasonably invade privacy. But federal judges and criminal evidentiary standards should be irrelevant when the government is gathering intelligence to prevent an attack on the country. A federal judge has no expertise in evaluating the need for and significance of foreign intelligence information. And the standard for gathering intelligence on our enemies should be lower than that for bringing the governments penal powers to bear on citizens.
FISAs incongruous probable-cause standards, passed in a fit of civil-libertarian zeal after the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s, however, are likely here to stay. At the very least, we should not make matters worse by equating computer interception of large-scale data with surveillance under FISA. Requiring probable cause for computer analysis of intelligence data would knock out our technological capacity in the war on Islamic terrorists almost as effectively as a Jihadist strike against NSAs computers.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
02/04/2006 00:56 ||
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#1
A pretty good article. Although it doesn't properly bring out that the laws were written in the context of a particular set of technical capabilities. The analogy I'd use is. it's like trying to retain the road rules developed for horse powered vehicles as motor vehicles become the primary vehicular traffic.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/04/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
I wish they'd just blow.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
02/04/2006 0:29 Comments ||
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#2
Virginia's voters did themselves no favors when they elected Kaine as governor. He was a lousy mayor of Richmond and he's off to a fast start at being a lousy governor.
Posted by: mac ||
02/04/2006 2:01 Comments ||
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#3
I'm sorry, but Kaine was so mealy-mouthed, so personally off-putting, that I turned off the set and went to bed. This guy, like Harry Reid, seems the perfect face for the Democratic Party, colorless and depressing.
Posted by: Random Thoughts ||
02/04/2006 4:06 Comments ||
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Public relations between the so-called West and the Islamic Middle East have reached a level of abject absurdity. Hamas, whose charter pledges the very destruction of Israel, comes to power only through American-inspired pressures to hold Western-style free elections on the West Bank. No one expected the elders of a New England township, but they were nevertheless somewhat amused that the result was right out of a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Almost immediately, Hamas's newly elected, self-proclaimed officials issued a series of demands: Israel should change its flag; the Europeans and the Americans must continue to give its terrorists hundreds of millions of dollars in aid; there will be no retraction of its promises to destroy Israel.
Apparently, the West and Israel are not only to give to Hamas some breathing space ("a truce"), but also to subsidize it while it gets its second wind to renew the struggle to annihilate the Jewish state.
All this lunacy is understood only in a larger surreal landscape. Tibet is swallowed by China. Much of Greek Cyprus is gobbled up by Turkish forces. Germany is 10% smaller today than in 1945. Yet only in the Middle East is there even a term "occupied land," one that derived from the military defeat of an aggressive power.
Over a half-million Jews were forcibly cleansed from Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and other Arab cities after the 1967 war; but only on the West Bank are there still refugees who lost their homes. Over a million people were butchered in Rwanda; thousands die each month in Darfur. The world snoozes. Yet less than 60 are killed in a running battle in Jenin, and suddenly the 1.5 million lost in Stalingrad and Leningrad are evoked as the moral objects of comparison, as the globe is lectured about "Jeningrad."
Now the Islamic world is organizing boycotts of Denmark because one of its newspapers chose to run a cartoon supposedly lampooning the prophet Mohammed. We are supposed to forget that it is de rigueur in raucous Scandinavian popular culture to attack Christianity with impunity. Much less are we to remember that Hamas terrorists occupied and desecrated the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in a globally televised charade.
Instead, Danish officials are threatened, boycotts organized, ambassadors recalled and, yes, Bill Clinton steps forward to offer another lip-biting apology while garnering lecture fees in the oil-rich Gulf, in the manner of his mea culpa last year to the Iranian mullacracy. There is now a pattern to Clintonian apologies they almost always occur overseas and on someone else's subsidy.
Ever since that seminal death sentence handed down to Salman Rushdie by the Iranian theocracy, the Western world has incrementally and insidiously accepted these laws of asymmetry. Perhaps due to what might legitimately be called the lunacy principle ("these people are capable of doing anything at anytime"), the Muslim Middle East can insist on one standard of behavior for itself and quite another for others. It asks nothing of its own people and everything of everyone else's, while expecting no serious repercussions in the age of political correctness, in which affluent and leisured Westerners are frantic to avoid any disruption in their rather sheltered lives.
Then there is "President" Ahmadinejad of Iran, who, a mere 60 years after the Holocaust, trumps Mein Kampf by not only promising, like Hitler, to wipe out the Jews, but, unlike the ascendant Fuhrer, going about the business of quite publicly obtaining the means to do it. And the rest of the Islamic world, nursed on the daily "apes and pigs" slurs, can just scarcely conceal its envy that the Persian Shiite outsider will bell the cat before they do.
The architects of September 11, by general consent, hide somewhere on the Pakistani border. A recent American missile strike that killed a few of them was roundly condemned by the Pakistani government. Although a recipient of billions of dollars in American aid and debt relief, and admittedly harboring those responsible for 9/11, it castigates the U.S. for violating borders in pursuit of our deadly enemies who, while on Pakistani soil, boast of planning yet another mass murder of Americans.
Pakistan demands that America will cease such incursions or else. The "else" apparently entails the threat either to give even greater latitude to terrorists, or to allow them to return to Afghanistan to destroy the nascent democracy in Kabul. American diplomats understandably would shudder at the thought of threatening nuclear Pakistan should there be another 9/11, this time organized by the very al Qaedists they now harbor.
The list of hypocrisies could be expanded. The locus classicus, of course, is bin Laden's fanciful fatwas. Oil pumped for $5 a barrel and sold for $70 is called stealing resources. Tens of millions of Muslims emigrating to the United States and Europe, while very few Westerners reside in the Middle East, is deemed "occupying our lands." Israel, the biblical home of the Jews, and subsequently claimed for centuries by Persians, Greeks, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Ottomans, and English is "occupied by crusader infidels" as if the entire world is to accept that world history began only in the seventh century A.D.
The only mystery is not how bizarre the news will be from the Middle East, but why the autocratic Middle Easterners feel so confident that any would pay their lunacy such attention.
The answer? Oil and nukes and sometimes the two in combination. Read the rest of it...
Hamas's victory in the Palestinian elections is the logical outcome of a "peace process" more than a decade long that completely ignored what was happening within Palestinian society.
Rather than seriously link the peace process to the building of a free society among the Palestinians, the democratic world, including Israel, turned a blind eye as Palestinian civil society was hollowed out, its streets taken over by armed thugs and its youth indoctrinated to glorify suicide bombers and despise Israel and America, Jews and Christians.
The international community repeated its shallow formula for peace like a broken record. International legitimacy, Israeli concessions and billions of dollars in aid were used to strengthen Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority - the "moderates" who had ostensibly renounced violence and accepted Israel's existence - and marginalize extremist groups like Hamas.
The Palestinian election result is the fruit of this failed approach to peacemaking, which amounted to nothing more than supporting a corrupt dictatorship. The world believed that seriously pressing Palestinian leaders to enact real reform would only weaken the Palestinian Authority internally and strengthen Hamas. The truth is precisely the opposite. By failing to insist that the Palestinian Authority dedicate itself to improving the lives of Palestinians, the United States, Israel, the EU and other players in the peace process made themselves contemptible in the eyes of Palestinians who saw their lives only getting worse.
When Arafat died, I had hopes that perhaps a new path to peace would be taken. But it was not too be. Abbas was not told unequivocally that without serious reforms, he would receive no support from the free world. On the contrary, he was given a pass when he blatantly refused to confront terror groups.
For its part, Israel's government, encouraged by the effusive praise of the international community, embarked on a foolish policy of one-sided concessions, which, as I feared when I resigned from the government last May, only strengthened the forces of terror within Palestinian society.
To the outside world, the Palestinians have now chosen the party of terror over the party of peace. But in the eyes of most Palestinians, the differences between Hamas and the "moderate" Fatah were not primarily in their views toward Israel. In fact, satellites of Fatah, such as Tanzim and the Al Aksa brigades, were no less responsible for the terrorism against Israel than were Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Indeed, the leading figure on Fatah's list was Marwan Barghouti, a man serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his role in terror attacks.
No, the real difference for the Palestinians was that a Fatah-run Palestinian Authority was rightly seen as a corrupt and feckless organization that had done and would continue to do nothing to improve Palestinian lives, whereas Hamas was untainted by corruption and appreciated for providing real social services.
With the vote being a choice between corrupt terrorists dedicated only to themselves and honest terrorists who are also dedicated to others, is it any surprise that Hamas won by a landslide?
I believe that many Palestinians who voted for Hamas voted to end corruption, to restore law and order and to implement real reform; the slogan that Hamas chose in its election campaign was not "Throw the Jews into the Sea," but rather "Change and Reform." The paradox is that the only party that Palestinians see as credible on this internal reform agenda was a terror organization dedicated to Israel's destruction and which has declared President George W. Bush "the enemy of God" and "the enemy of Islam."
Now that the Palestinian Authority's corrupt dictatorship has collapsed and a terror organization riding a wave of resentment with the status quo is assuming power, the free world has an opportunity to restore moral clarity to the peace process.
The world must base their support for this new regime on two ironclad conditions. First, Hamas must explicitly abandon the goal of destroying Israel and renounce terrorism. Second, it must dedicate itself toward building a free society for the Palestinians.
For 12 years, Israel and the world have imposed the first condition and ignored evidence when it was violated. As for the second condition, not only were democratic reforms seen as irrelevant to peace, supporting a corrupt dictatorship was seen as essential.
If the new Palestinian regime does not abide by these conditions, the free world, including Israel, must actively confront it and withhold legitimacy, money and concessions. But we must also seek ways to support any Palestinian individuals and organizations that do abide by these conditions.
My fear is that the results of the Palestinian elections will discredit the whole concept of democratic reform in the Middle East. But that would be to discredit an idea without it having been tried. For all the talk of the need for Palestinian reform and democracy, the only thing that the world insisted upon was holding elections. Elections do not a make free society. Elections in a "fear society" in which there is no law and order and in which democratic institutions are nonexistent, can bring the worst elements to power.
I hope that the policy of promoting democracy in the Middle East has not been dealt a fatal blow. Like so many tens of millions of Arabs in the region, there are countless Palestinians who want a better future, and we must seek every way to work with them. If we do not, we will end up not only betraying them once again, but also endangering ourselves.
(Natan Sharansky is the co-author of the best-selling book ''The Case For Democracy'' and a candidate for the Likud Party in Israel's forthcoming parliamentary elections.)
#1
Oh, crapola. Everybody who was involved in the peace process tried damn hard to get the Paleos living a good life, to make themselves a place fit to live, and to end the conflict.
It was the Paleo leaders who bent over backwards to keep their own people poor, stupid, and living in squalor and hate; while the leaders stole everything of value.
Now they live in de facto chaos, with the Hamas-led chaos of the Gaza Strip still mis-managed by Hamas, and the Fatah-led chaos of the West Bank still dominated, if not led, by Fatah.
Instead of calling them Hamas and Fatah, they could equally be called the Crips and the Bloods, for all the good they do. AND IT IS NOBODY'S FAULT EXCEPT THE PALEOS THEMSELVES.
#2
The Paleao are not supposed to live and create a state. They are supposed to all die eliminating Israel. And the Arab world would prefer that they just get along with it now and stop farting around with stuff like rights and democracy - it doesn't apply. Would the fodder get moving please.
#3
What the Palestinians need is a good, hard, final military defeat. Something that lets them know they've lost, let's their supporters know they lost, and makes it clear they'll never win.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
02/04/2006 14:17 Comments ||
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Agreed Robert. Unfortunately, that will ultimately require a lot of dead people.
The Paleos are the closest thing to living in anarchy and choas. They have no real government, other institutions, enforcement, even major warlords. They *are* defeat, there is nothing left to defeat.
My suggestion is that the Gaza Strip be completely turned over to the military administration of Egypt, and the West Bank, to Jordan. Both countries under the mandate to disarm and order their Paleos, so that there is finally some there, there.
Other than a few gunslingers on either side, there is nothing to stop the Egyptian and Jordanian armies from fully occupying the Paleo lands--other than the utter horror both Egypt and Jordan would have at getting *more* Paleos.
But until the Paleos are forced to have something, they are nothing more than a solvent dissolving away any efforts to give them something.
#6
'Moose, that's probably the most successful outcome possible and I'd love to think it was possible. Instead, I think the most likely outcome is a forced Paleo evacuation of Gaza and the WB after some other Muzzy country makes a WMD attack on Israel. This won't end happily for the Paleos under almost any circumstances.
Posted by: mac ||
02/04/2006 16:25 Comments ||
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#7
The problem is not Paleos (or French Muslims, or Tai Muslems). The problem is people who believe that they've divine sunction to rob, rape, and murder.
#9
Anonymoose, Egypt and Jordan didn't impose effective control over their portions of the Palestinian Territories before the conquests of 1967. What makes you thing they would do so now? Recall, as soon as Egypt got control of the border crossing from Israel, they opened the gates to weapons passage, relieved that the under-border tunnels from their military cantonments wouldn't need to be used henceforward.
Amir Taheri Until just a week ago estate agents in Tehran were marketing a housing project due to be launched at the end of the year by an Irano-Finnish company. Now, however, agents contacted over the telephone say the project has been indefinitely postponed. The reason? Well, you know where the country is headed, says one Tehran real estate dealer.
Where the country is headed, of course, is toward a possible clash with the United Nations over its alleged plans to build nuclear weapons. The clash could lead to economic and other sanctions or, if the worst comes to worst, military conflict.
The Tehran leadership under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, however, appears confident that it can take on the UN and win.
It has completed emergency plans to face aggression and is busy building a network of logistical support facilities in the western and southern provinces.
Some $3 billion has been added to the regular defense budget in the form of a supplement for emergency exigencies under the direct control of the Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei.
The Supreme Guide has also created a High Council of Military Planning under former Defense Minister Adm. Ali Shamkhani.
A list of high priority sites that might be attacked has been established and their protection against air strikes or ground sabotage operations beefed up.
Import of sensitive goods has been increased to build up stocks to face sanctions.
The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has transferred some $8 billion of its assets from the European Union to Asia to forestall the possibility of its accounts being frozen by the EU.
The international network of radical organizations created and supported by Iran has been put on full alert.
The time when Muslim leaders kowtowed to powerful infidel rulers is over, Ahmadinejad said during a meting with visiting Indonesian Parliament Speaker Agung Laksono in Tehran Tuesday. We will pursue out goals regardless of (any) threats.
Apart from the defensive measures already taken, Tehran has also issued a number of threats, some vague, some not. One vague threat has come from Defense Minister Mostafa Muhammad-Najjar who told a press conference in Tehran last week that Iran would retaliate with double force against the US and its allies in the region, presumably with missiles. Vague threats have also been made about unleashing terrorist groups against the US and its allies in the Middle East and Europe.
Tehran, however, had made two specific threats. One was to persuade the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to cut production so as to raise prices and create economic pressure on potential aggressors. That has not happened. In its ministerial meeting in Vienna last week OPEC decided to maintain the present production levels and work to bring prices down to $28 a barrel (as opposed to the current average of $50). This was a signal that OPEC did not wish to encourage Iran.
The second specific threat made by Tehran was the launching of a new expanded intifada led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad against Israel. But with Hamas now trying to form the Palestinian government it is unlikely that it would wish to become involved in an Iranian strategy. As for Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian group closest to Tehran, it is not strong enough to take both Israel and Hamas, simply to please the Iranians.
The truth is that things are not going as well for the Islamic Republic as President Ahmadinejad claims. Here are some facts that he might want to consider:
Over the past six months an estimated $300 billion, mostly belonging to small or medium investors, has been transferred from Iran to foreign banks, especially in the Gulf states. (The chief justice of the Islamic Republic Mahmoud Shahroudi puts the figure at $700 billion).
Over 10000 Iranian companies have moved their headquarters from Iran to Dubai, Turkey, Cyprus and even Pakistan.
At least 10 oil companies, among them British Petroleum (UK), Baker-Hughes (US), Halliburton(US), and Conoco-Phillips(US) have either withdrawn from Iran or are winding down operations, even in the Qeshm and Kish free zones.
Several major Western companies have also started their withdrawal from Iran. These include Baker-Hughes (US), Siemens(Germany), General Electric (US) and Phillips (Holland).
Some international banks are also winding down their activities in Iran. These include Standard-Charter (UK), ABN-Amro(Holland), Credit Suisse (Switzerland), UBS (Switzerland), and the insurance brokers AON Corps.
The US Treasury Department has revived the long forgotten Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) and is investigating 73 European, American, Canadian and Japanese firms that do business in Iran in violation of its provisions. Many of those firms are likely to withdraw from Iran rather than face being shut out of the US market.
Iran imports nearly 40 percent of the refined petroleum products it needs from other OPEC members, including Iraq and Kuwait. The imports could stop if the United Nations Security Council imposes sanctions on Iran. That would lead to a severe rationing of petrol for private and commercial use at a time that the militarys demand would be on the increase.
The perception in Tehran is that the new administration is deliberately provoking an unnecessary conflict for ideological reasons by restarting a program to process uranium at a plant in Isfahan. Iran does not have any nuclear power station, and thus does not need any enriched uranium for at least another two years.
There could be even more bad news for President Ahmadinejad even if the UN does not impose any sanctions immediately. The economic slowdown provoked by a flight of capital and the postponement of many projects has already destroyed thousands of jobs and job opportunities. It has also undermined the national currency that has lost 17 percent of its value against a basket of hard currencies since September. The Ahmadinejad administration has tried to cope by increased spending, including a depletion of the Reserves Fund set up by the previous government. The result is a new boost to inflationary tendencies that have been the bane of Irans economy since the 1970s. And that would hurt the masses of the poor most, the constituency that helped Ahmadinejad win the presidency.
Somewhere along the road, the very nuclear program over which the crisis is brewing could be in jeopardy. Irans imports of raw uranium, mostly from Gabon and Niger, through France, could be stopped by the UN. Irans own uranium deposits, believed to be among the largest in the world, would not be brought to production level anytime soon without the help of Western companies.
Irans nuclear program could also face difficulties from another direction. Even without specific UN sanctions, the seven-nation group of exporters of nuclear technology and equipment could decide to stop Iran from buying what it needs from them. And that could slow down the Iranian program, whether civilian or military, for years if not decades.
President Ahmadinejads macho talk may well sound good for propaganda purposes. But he sure needs a fallback position that he does not seem to have. The way he is going now may give the last laugh to the persons he defeated in last Junes election.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/04/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
I feel a little more hopeful over this news, pressure on the Iranian terror regime seems to be causing resources to rapidly drain away. A few "accidents" in Iranian petroleum refineries and their electrical power stations would really put the screws to them. However, bringing oil prices down to $28 a barrel is a pipe dream.
#2
However, bringing oil prices down to $28 a barrel is a pipe dream.
Actually, it's not. I predict oil prices below $20/bb in the next 5 years after a huge surge in production from non-conventional sources. The US oilshales alone will supply the entire world with oil for more than a hundred years. And this ignores coal and nuclear energy, which in the big picture are fungible. That is, any increase in one energy source reduces demand for another.
#3
That is why we need an oil import fee to maintain the cost of imported oil at an inflation adjusted $50 per barrel so that these investments will pay off.
#5
US oil shale conversion requires huge amounts of water. The oil shale is in the driest part of the country. Also, oil shale extraction makes a big mess - environmentalists will certainly slow down any massive expansion. Fear of another round of price drops will also slow down massive capital investment (every previous shortage and price escalation has ended with new supplies and a price collapse - but eventually that will not be true, because the Earth is finite.)
Posted by: The Village People ||
02/04/2006 10:17 Comments ||
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Iran: Macho Talk
Some $3 billion has been added to the regular defense budget in the form of a supplement for emergency exigencies exits under the direct control of the Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei.
The Supreme Guide has also created a High Council of Military Planning surrender monkeys under former Defense Minister Adm. Ali Shamkhani.
Import of sensitive goods turban wax has been increased to build up stocks to face sanctions.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Until just a week ago estate agents in Tehran were marketing a housing project due to be launched at the end of the year by an Irano-Finnish company. Now, however, agents contacted over the telephone say the project has been indefinitely postponed. The reason? Well, you know where the country is headed, says one Tehran real estate dealer. 
