US Coast Guard stays ashore

When talking about naval capabilities, you usually differ between brown-water and blue-water capabilities. Brown water is a littoral navy, staying close to the coast, such as the Chinese or the Danish, whereas a blue water capable navy can roam the high seas for months, with whatever that takes of logistics, systems and manpower.

But time is running from the brown water navy. As globalisation means that conflicts will probably move away from the vicinity of the nation state and out into the rim of the sphere of influence. Both China and Denmark has taken steps to adjust to this, albeit in very different scales and ways.

The US Coast Guard has traditionally been the US Brown Water Navy, doing inspections and rescue missions close to home. But they have also seen the need of going blue, starting a large revision programme called Deepwater. However, now the money falters, they have outsourced the development to large corporations and things are generally coming to a halt, with battles in congress.

Ethymology of intelligence

William S. Lind muses a bit over the the litteral meaning of the Swedish word for intelligence "underrättelser" - which he translates to "corrections from below".

The translation is very direct - and a bit dubious. But the resulting "Corrections from below" is a nice illustration of what 3rd generation intelligence gathering should embody - not amassing data in piles to get the rationalistic "hard facts", but doing qualitative intelligence, bottom-up.

In Danish, intelligence is called "Efterretning", is related to the Swedish term, but in the same literal translation it means "Corrections after". And in a strange way that might actually reflect strategic intelligence at its most effective: using all that data to understand - after things have happened.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessing to all terrorism in the world, period

It seems that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was quite a boon for the US effort against terrorism when captured, has taken the credit for all major terrorist attacks in a long time.

However, there are several reasons to be a bit critical about that. Of course Al Qaeda was a bit more structured prior to 9/11, but still, the plots that Mohammed claims to be a part of has been carried out by disparate cells, aligned with different groups in the AQ network.

Wired has a very interesting article on the "confession" - providing this interesting parallel:

"Ronald "Wee-Bey" Price -- soldier to Baltimore drug lord Avon Barksdale -- gets nailed for a murder. He knows he's headed to jail for a long, long time. So he confesses to crime after crime after crime, in order to protect the rest of the Barksdale crew from homicide raps.

The police know the confessions are all wrong; Wee-Bey screws up some of the cases' key facts. But there's nothing they can do; they've "solved" a slew of murders, all at once."

Mohammeds confessions are candy in a political sense, but probably empty calories when it comes to intelligence or the juridical side of things.

Humaniora på lyn-slankekur

Med en hurtigtarbejdende prodekan i spidsen, sigter Københavns Universitet på at skære antallet af humanistiske BA uddannelser ned fra 44 til 18 - i et forsøg på at erhvervsrette de humanistiske uddannelser. Den massive ændring skal diskuteres og vedtages på sølle 15 dage.

En sær konsekvens af denne blitz-kur bliver højst sandsynligt at BA i Retorik bliver lagt ind under filosofi. Begrundelsen?

"De overordnede ønsker er at samle småfag i større enheder, at mindske optaget der, hvor der er lav beskæftigelse, samt at bacheloruddannelser skal kunne føre til beskæftigelse." Siger Prodekan for uddannelser Hanne Løngreen.

Retorik skal lægges ind under Filosofi, for at sørge for beskæftigelse? Mon ikke det skulle have været den anden vej rundt, så?

En mere langsigtet konsekvens er at man dermed nedlægger en selvstændig BA, der er enestående i Nordeuropa og efterhånden er begyndt at give masser af dønninger rent forskningsmæssigt når disse bachelorer bliver kandidater og ph.d'er. Øv.

New issue of Intelligence and Counterintelligence

There is a new issue out of International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Traditionally being a bit more light than Journal of Intelligence and National Security this print features some interesting stuff on academical intelligence research, namely William J. Lahneman's article on a Revolution in Intelligence Affairs.

Dagens definition: "Voksenstyring"

Definitioner er en af mine yndlings-kæpheste at ride retorisk skoleridt på. Med Perelmans tanke om "presence" kan man identificere hvordan en taler definerer situationen, hvorpå efterfølgende talere er tvunget til at tage stilling til denne definition, om ikke andet så ved at ignorere den.

På Faderhusets pressemøde i dag kunne man forvente sig netop et indlæg i definitionskampen. Ruth Evensen har en retorisk forpligtigelse til at udlægge verden på en facon der kan forsvare nedrivningen af huset. For mange vil det nemlig understrege det absurde i hele salgs-situationen at huset er rømmet under så store sværdslag, blot for at blive revet ned, så grunden kan bruges som spekulationsobjekt.

Een af Ruth Evensens definitionsstrategier var at umynddiggøre brugerne af Ungdomshuset og forstærke det topos der er blevet etableret: Ungdomshusets brugere er uansvarlige og forkælede - og i mange tilfælde børn med for lang snor.

Et fremragende eksempel er dette:

»Vi har været dem, der kom og tog over. Københavns Kommune turde ikke selv rive huset ned, og så gav de sorteper videre. Der var fyldt med rotter, og gulvet i køkkenafdelingen var fyldt med alt muligt snask. Det bærer præg af, at der ikke har været nogen voksenstyring«

Sideløbende med dette etablerer Ruth Evensen sig som den "voksne" - både i forhold til Københavns Kommunes uansvarlige og skræmte politikere og de unge "brugere". Ikke direkte, men mellem linjerne.

Anniversary: Colin Powell in the UN

Today it is precisely four years since Colin Powell held his speech at the UN Security Council meeting, erecting a seminal milestone on the discoursive way to the Iraq War.

Read the speech here.

The sorry state of crisis reporting

The riots in Copenhagen last night (just around the corner) were an incident that the media had waited anxiously for, for a long time. And when the teargas finally flew they had their field day, with TV and newspapers and internet media brimming with graphic details.

But with all this excitement, the journalists quickly became a part of the episode themselves. Reporters - and seemingly only the eager gung-ho new hires, swarmed the streets and talked every little bonfire into an inferno, every scratch into a gashing headwound and teargas into a smothering blanket.

However, as these things don't happen too often, I didn't get the impression of any real experience showing. The most seasoned veteran reporters could talk about the riots they had attended in december 2006 and this gave them carte blanche to speculate wildly about motives and strategies of the unruly mob and the police forces.

A few examples:

* Tabloid Ekstrabladet: During the Police's raid on Ungdomshuset a German male was "heavily wounded", hospitalised - but discharged later in the day. Heavily wounded?

* Politiken: "Stone throwers sprung a police trap". A group of people in a demonstration were boxed in by the police. In the television pictures there were seemingly ordinary people being caught up in the arrest, later to be released. But they must have been stone throwers, right?