Fuel prices goin up?

Somali pirates seize supertanker

Somali pirates have captured a tanker carrying oil to the US, officials say.

The Greek-owned Maran Centaurus was about 1,300km (800 miles) off Somalia when it was hijacked on Sunday, said the EU Naval task force (Navfor).

The ship was full of oil and is believed to be one of the largest yet seized by Somali pirates. There are 28 crew members on board.

Pirate attacks have been common off the Somali coast and international navies have been deployed to counter them.

A spokesman for the Greek coastguard told Reuters news agency that about nine armed pirates attacked the ship close to the Seychelles.

“ This incident clearly shows the pirates are becoming more bolder ”
Rashid Abdi Somalia analyst

As it was fully laden, it was moving quite slowly - between 11 and 15 knots (20-27km/h) - when attacked, a Navfor spokesman told the BBC.

Reuters reports the Greek defence ministry as saying that a Greek navy frigate which had been involved with the Navfor operation was now shadowing the vessel.

Navfor said the ship, which has a dead weight of some 300,000 tonnes, had been sailing to New Orleans in the US from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia but was now heading towards Somalia.

Its crew is made up of 16 Filipinos, nine Greeks, two Ukrainians and one Romanian.

Maran Tankers Management, which operates the vessel, told Reuters the crew were "well".

Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group think-tank Rashid Abdi says the fact that pirates are now operating so far out to sea shows that the intervention of the world's navies has made little difference to the problem of piracy.

"This incident clearly shows the pirates are becoming more bolder," he says.

"So I don't think the solution is in building the naval deployment there, or increasing the naval deployment. The problem is actually in dealing with the governance crisis which feeds the problem of piracy."

'Mother ships'

War-torn Somalia has had no functioning government since 1991, allowing pirates to operate along the lawless coast almost with impunity.

In recent months, the pirates have started operating further from the Somali coast.

They are believed to use "mother-ships" to reach the high seas, before using small skiffs to carry out their attacks.

Pirates are currently holding 11 vessels and 264 crew members in Somalia, the Navfor spokesman said.

In November 2008, the Sirius Star, carrying two million barrels of oil - a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily output - became the largest ship ever seized by pirates. It has a deadweight of 318,000 tonnes.

The vessel was released in January after a ransom of $3m (then £1.95m) was paid.

Navfor is one of several international naval forces patrolling the oceans off the country to try to prevent the captures of ships using the vital sea routes. Nato and the US also lead task forces.

Earlier this month, the US began using unmanned drones to scour the Indian Ocean for suspect vessels.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/8385845.stm

Published: 2009/11/30 16:34:41 GMT

Podcast Educational Series

Terrorism: Understanding the Threat
BasicsProject.org produces a free weekly podcast series designed to define the basics elements of the radical Islamist history, mindset, activities and the threat radical Islam poses to the United States and Western Civilization...

from sourcesandmethods.blogspot.com

Past, Present and Future of OSINT Arthur S Hulnick on open source intelligences role in the intelligence field http://bit.ly/1lsdtj

As a country are we helping or fighting the taliban?

You tube and other us based hosting services continue to help the taliban and aq populate their message abroad. Is this something we sould address if so how?

“The Taliban have really been latecomers to the world of online video, and their initial forays haven’t been terribly successful,” Kohlman tells Danger Room. While the group has used YouTube in an official capacity before, placing video of captured America soldier on the site, Kohlman says that the use of embedded YouTube video on their site is a first. In other words, the Taliban is actually more dinosaurish about social media than the Pentagon. Way to be Web 2.0, Mullah Omar!
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/taliban-steps-boldy-in-2007-invades-youtube/

Ending uGov a Step Back for U.S. Intel Community

Ending uGov a Step Back for U.S. Intel Community
Chris Bronk | 15 Oct 2009

snip
The exact reasons for the decision are still unclear, but it seems that they primarily involve concerns over network security: Something might leak out or be compromised by hackers. The problem with this logic is that, for better or worse, when computer security barriers go up, users typically react by going around them. When that happens, of course, information security goes almost completely out the window. Given the choice between the two, the need to share almost always trumps security, especially when the job simply has to get done.
endsnip

in full here
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=4448

comments
uGov is a great service, loosing it and failing to replace it with a tool set of equal or greater value is a stab in the back of the ic.

Navajo Nation mourns passing of Code Talker

(AP) – 13 hours ago

PRESCOTT, Ariz. — Willard Varnell Oliver, a member of the Navajo Code Talkers who confounded the Japanese during World War II by transmitting messages in their native language, died Wednesday. He was 88.

Lawrence Oliver said his father died at the Northern Arizona Veterans Administration Health Care System Hospital in Prescott, Ariz. He had been declining health for the past two years.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. ordered flags on the Navajo Nation to be flown at half-staff from Oct. 15-19 in honor of Oliver, who is at least the fifth Code Talker to die since May.

Oliver was part of an elite group of Navajo Marines who confused the Japanese during World War II by transmitting messages in Navajo.

The Code Talkers took part in every assault the Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. Their work was declassified in 1968.

Oliver, who grew up between Shiprock and Farmington, N.M., served in the South Pacific with the 2nd Marine Division from 1943 to 1945. He was wounded during the battle of Saipan of 1944.

Oliver's brother, Lloyd Oliver, was also a member of the elite group.

His funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday in his hometown of Lukachukai.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The return of El Nino

Expected El Niño impacts during August-October 2009 include enhanced precipitation over the central and west-central Pacific Ocean and the continuation of drier than average conditions over Indonesia. Temperature and precipitation impacts over the United States are typically weak during the Northern Hemisphere Summer and early Fall, and generally strengthen during the late Fall and Winter. El Niño can help to suppress Atlantic hurricane activity by increasing the vertical wind shear over the Caribbean Sea and tropical Atlantic Ocean (see the Aug. 6th update of the NOAA Atlantic Seasonal Hurricane Outlook).
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html