http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/sleeper-cells-smell-test-and-big-num bers
by Ben Frankel On sleeper cells, smell test, and big numbers Published 8 April 2011 Whether or not Gaddafi has the means, or the intention, to launch a terror campaign inside the United States in retaliation for U.S. attacks on his military remains to be seen; another country, however, has not shied away from such actions: Iran; just one example: in the early 1990s, in response to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, Iranian agents blew up the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires; scores were killed and hundreds wounded; there are many other examples for the Iranian penchant for such actions; if the United States attacked Iran's nuclear facilities, then an Iranian terror campaign against targets inside the United States would be one of the ways in which Iran would retaliate for such attacks Here are quick comments on three things that caught our eye this week. 1. Sleeper cells Over the years, Col. Gaddafi has supported a variety of terrorist groups on four continents, and his own intelligence operatives used terror tactics as well, as was the case with the 1988 downing of PanAm 103. With the United States now engaged in a campaign against his regime, many have raised the question of whether or not Gaddafi would retaliate by sending Libyan terrorists here - or, perhaps, activate terrorist sleeper cells. Thus, ABC News reported that, Concern over a possible terrorist attack directed by Gadhafi was raised Friday when White House terrorism advisor John Brennan told reporters the Libyan leader "has the penchant to do things of a very concerning nature." "I think clearly from what we've seen he's got intent, but the second piece is capability," former senior U.S. intelligence official Phil Mudd told ABC News. "He's been out of this business a long time so whether he's retained the capability is an open question. Whether he can resuscitate it, I think, is an even bigger question." The other day, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that the Bureau had begun questioning Libyans living in the United States to "identify Libyan agents operating inside U.S. borders." Mueller also said the move is intended to put the US "on guard" against any potential terror attacks from Libya. "We want to make certain that we are on guard for the possibility of terrorist attacks emanating somewhere out of Libya," said Mueller, appearing before the House Appropriations Committee, "whether it be Gadhafi's forces or, in eastern Libya, the opposition forces who may have amongst them persons who in the past have had associations with terrorist groups." Whether or not Gaddafi has the means, or the intention, to launch a terror campaign inside the United States remains to be seen. Another country, however, has not shied away from such actions: Iran. Just one example: in the early 1990s, in response to Israeli attacks on Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, Iranian agents blew up the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Scores were killed and hundreds wounded. There are many other examples for the Iranian penchant for such actions. Gaddafi may not use terror in retaliation against the United States, but experts say there is little doubt that if the United States attacked Iran's nuclear facilities, then Iranian terror campaign against targets inside the United States would be one of the ways in which Iran would retaliate for such attacks. 2. Failing the smell test, again In 1988, Col. Gaddafi contributed $10 million to a Swiss foundation to create and administer - hang on to your seat - the al-Qaddafi International Prize for Human Rights. The first reaction of most people would be that it is oxymoronic to name a human rights prize after Col. Gaddafi. Looking at the list of the recipients of the prize, however, would show that attaching the name Gaddafi to it is appropriate. Among the recipients we find Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, Louis Farrakhan - and French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy. Now, dozens of human rights and watchdog groups are calling on the UN to expel from its ranks a Swiss official who helped create the al-Qaddafi prize. UN Watch, a United Nations watchdog group, was among forty-five organizations that sent an appeal to UN leaders earlier this week urging them to oust Jean Ziegler, along with a Libyan official, from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Further, they urged the Human Rights Council to apologize to victims of Qaddafi's regime for electing Ziegler in the first place, and the Swiss government to do the same for nominating him. The appeal referred to Ziegler as "a long-time apologist and propagandist for Col. Gaddafi and his regime." Ziegler serves on the UNHRC Advisory Committee. Moral rectitude is not the UN's strong suit. From 1972 to 1981 the organization was led by Kurt Waldheim, an Austrian who, from 1942 to 1945, served with the Wehrmacht in occupied Yugoslavia. The units he was attached to murdered thousands of civilians in reprisals for anti-Nazi attacks by partisans. In his autobiography, published in 1985, he lied about this chapter in his life, claiming that from 1942 to 1945 he was studying law in Vienna. Old habits die hard, though. On 4 July 1976, Israeli special forces staged a daring raid on the airport of Entebbe, Uganda, where Palestinian terrorists and their European supporters - with the help of the Idi Amin government -were holding 248 Israeli and Jewish hostages. The commander of the Israeli forces was Lt. Col. Yonathan Netanyahu, the older brother of the current Israeli prime minister. He was killed, along with the terrorists. The hostages were freed and flown to Israel Waldheim's reaction to the raid? He criticized Israel for violating Uganda's sovereignty. Will the UN expel Ziegler for being Gaddafi right-hand? We doubt it. 3. Big numbers When we launched the Homeland Security NewsWire, we said that for a busy business person or investor, the only thing worse than having too little information was having too much of it. In the Internet age this is a real problem. If you Google, say, "homeland security," you will find thousands of items every day, and no one has the time to read a thousand news stories in order to find out which of them were the ten important ones he or she should have focused on to begin with. We created HSNW for the purpose of selecting those dozen important news stories for our readers. Now, three scientists at UC San Diego (UCSD) proved that our hunch was correct (about the abundance of business information, that is; our readers will decide whether or not we do a good job at HSNW in selecting the important and telling news stories every day). These scientists have estimated - rigorously estimated - the annual amount of business-related information processed by the world's computer servers in terms that Guttenberg and Galileo would have appreciated: the digital equivalent of a 5.6-billion-mile-high stack of books from Earth to Neptune and back to Earth, repeated about twenty times a year. The calculated that the world's roughly twenty-seven million computer servers processed 9.57 zettabytes of information in 2008, according to a paper - Chaitan Baru, Roger Bohn, and James Short, "User Case Study: How Much Information? 'Big Data' Research Findings for Enterprise and Consumer Information" - presented <http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/04-05BusinessInformation.asp> yesterday (7 April) at Storage Networking World <https://www.eiseverywhere.com/ehome/SNWS2011/19967/?&;> 's (SNW's) annual meeting in Santa Clara, California (one zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power, or a million million gigabytes). The study estimated that enterprise server workloads are doubling about every two years, which means that by 2024 the world's enterprise servers will annually process the digital equivalent of a stack of books extending more than 4.37 light-years to Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star system in the Milky Way Galaxy (each book is assumed to be 4.8 centimeters thick and contain 2.5 megabytes of information). At the risk of sounding self-serving, we could say that with that much business information engulfing us, the case for subscribing to the Homeland Security NewsWire is now even more compelling. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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