by David Steven | Feb 21, 2008 | Conflict and security, Influence and networks
If you’ve never been cornered by a 911 truther then you should definitely read Paul Constant’s excellent profile of the movement for the Utne Reader. Key quote:
The very fact that they’ve branded themselves the “Truth” movement shows a canny grasp of public relations on a level with the Bush administration’s lusty embrace of the word freedom. Who could possibly be against truth? Truth is part of the credo of superheroes, along with justice and the American way. It’s the same kind of organic organizational genius that people who are against abortion drew on when they came up with prolife.
Adopting a powerful, emblematic word like truth or life or freedom gives you an important edge at the start of an argument. It’s more than a statement of purpose; it’s brilliant marketing, and it reveals an organization wise enough to use the same tools as the institutions they’ve sworn to fight.
Truthers get dismissed as idiots on liberal and conservative message boards around the country, but it’s hard to think of another movement that has covered as much ground as quickly, and has defined itself as well, as 9/11 Truth has.
by Alex Evans | Feb 21, 2008 | Conflict and security, UK
FCO has been briefing journalists in the last few minutes: here’s the Times –
David Miliband is expected to apologise to the Commons today as he discloses that two American “extraordinary rendition” flights did, after all, land on British soil.
The Government has always insisted that there was no evidence that such flights had occurred, but ministers have recently received information from Washington that two flights – one en route to Guantanamo Bay and one to Morocco – stopped over at Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean.
The Foreign Secretary is expected to say that the Government did not know of the flights at the time it assured MPs that none had taken place and that efforts are under way that it never happens again.
Miliband is making a statement to the House now – watch it live here. More to follow.
Update: the BBC says both flights landed in 2002. And The Times has now added this:
Campaigners pointed out that when any such flight had landed on British soil it came under British jurisdiction. In late November Jack Straw, the then Foreign Secretary, wrote to the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to ask for clarification on the purpose of some 80 flights that were known to have passed through the UK.
Downing Street denied that UK airports had been used for rendition flights “so far as we are aware”. Questioned by the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs on December 13, Mr Straw denied that any CIA flights carrying prisoners abroad had passed through British airfields.
He dismissed suggestions that a judicial investigation should be launched into reports that over 400 CIA flights have flown in and out of Britain since September 2001, saying the world should accept the “serious assurance” of the United States that it was not transferring prisoners abroad to be tortured.
To which the obvious rejoinder – assuming that the British government really did know nothing about UK airports being used for rendition flights – is: with allies like these…
The Guardian has just added that “Miliband said he had expressed his “deep disappointment” to the US government that the nature of the flights had not been revealed earlier”. Too bloody right.
by Alex Evans | Feb 21, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system
Yeah, yeah, it touched the $100 mark on January 2, but that was just a trader paying over the odds and making a loss in the process so that he had “the right to tell his grandchildren he was the one who did it”. Yesterday, though, the West Texas Intermediate price hit $101.32 – having been as low as $86.24 just a couple of weeks ago.
This is interesting, as a lot of hedge fund folk were betting heavily that with the US moving into downturn land, the oil price would ease too. The International Energy Agency had also cut its demand forecast for the year. So what’s the deal? Chris Flood in the FT cites four factors:
– First, demand in emerging economies is proving to be the real engine here: as Paul Horsnell of Barclays Capital puts it, “Shorting oil on account of a negative view on the US economy is always very dangerous and likely to backfire, because global oil demand growth is centered on emerging markets”.
– Second, there are ongoing supply disruptions in places like Nigeria and the North Sea; the supply outlook remains very tight.
– Third, a lot of investor inflows are arriving in the oil sector, seeking fairer climes than are currently available in credit and equity markets.
– And finally, there’s the OPEC factor. At its January meeting, it left production levels unchanged, ignoring calls to increase supplies, including from President Bush himself. Now, there’s speculation that OPEC supply might even be cut.
Various commentaries are wondering whether OPEC’s now actively planning to keep the price above $80. I’m wondering whether OPEC simply doesn’t have any more production capacity to give…
by Alex Evans | Feb 20, 2008 | Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks
And so to Network Weaving, a blog by and for people who use network mapping tools. Network mapping folk like nothing better than to, y’know, network, and so it was clearly with a swing in his step that blogger Valdis Krebs went off to the 28th annual conference of the International Network for Social Network Analysis. [Not Institute; Network. Obviously. Duh.]
But all was not well. If there’s one thing that social network analysts need in order to stay happy, then of course it’s adequate wireless network access. But at the conference hotel, Valdis found, the wi-fi was definitely substandard. Now as Valdis explains,
Hotels are used to dealing with disconnected customers — hotel guests who do not know each other. They can tell these guests anything. Since most guests do not talk to each other, nothing is verified, no action is coordinated. In terms of social network analysis: the hotel staff spans structural holes between the guests — occupying the power position in the network.
But the hotel had reckoned without the networking capacity of INSNA members. “When INSNA arrived”, Valdis continues with evident satisfaction, “the hotel guests were no longer disconnected — many people in INSNA know each other and after initial greetings started to talk.” What do you suppose they talked about? Ah, yes:
The conversation soon went to the lack of connectivity in the hotel — no one could get a connection out of the hotel to the internet. Not only did everyone discover they were having the same bad experience, but they discovered they were receiving the same lie from the hotel staff — “everything is fine, no one else is complaining”. Being lied to made “being disconnected” all the more infuriating.
But the hotel clearly had no idea of who it was dealing with.
Soon “emergent clusters” of INSNA members went to the front desk as small groups and started demanding better service — after all we were being charged for WiFi.
The emergence was clearly too great for the hotel manager, who “became overwhelmed by the coordinated action and soon went into hiding and refused to talk about the topic”. Now, I know what you’re wondering. How had the network topology changed? Well, Valdis explains, what was actually happening here, was that “power dissipates when people in a hub-and-spoke network [a.k.a. hierarchy] start to talk to each other”, and “learning begins”. And he’s helpfully provided a White Paper explaining how it all works.
Oh, you think this stuff is nerdy? Then you haven’t been paying attention to Colombia…
by Charlie Edwards | Feb 20, 2008 | Influence and networks, UK
Two days, two very similar broadsheet leaders. Yesterday The Times called for a national security strategy that narrowly defined ‘security’ (read defence), today the FT calls for strategic thinking on national security (read defence). Without some background knowledge both these pieces seem sensible enough but you wouldn’t expect us at Global Dashboard to give you the news without some insightful analysis…
To understand why these two pieces are so important one must turn our attention away from Pennington Street and Southwark Bridge and instead look to Whitehall and 10 Downing St, for it is here that the battle over the national security strategy is taking place.
The development of a UK NSS has been a very bruising affair with ownership of the document passed between senior mandarins on a regular basis. The first draft, I am told, was too focused on defence and traditional threats to the UK, while later drafts added new challenges and risks. Still no one could agree – let alone the Prime Minister who sat on the document and continues to do so.
So some bright spark thought of the idea of writing a second, alternative national security strategy. And so that is what has been done. So Cabinet Ministers now have not one, but two national security strategies on their desks. One (let’s call it NSS Alpha) is a traditional, 1990s security/defence focused strategy (big concerns: terrorism, proliferation, and rogue states) the alternative (NSS Bravo) also includes those threats but plkaces them in context with other global risks, the threat from organised crime, cyber warfare, migration, climate change and also focuses on ‘human security’ and the individual citizen (because as Kissinger, I mean Alex, has pointed out before the nation state is on the wane).
It can’t be easy for Cabinet Ministers to decide which National Security Strategy to go for (especially if they are focused on an area like Transport) so my guess is senior officials and/or No.10 advisers have begun to brief the papers on their preferred option (watch out for the Guardian and Sun soon).
