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World News & Strategic Reports©



The Periodic Reports and Reflections for Strategic Thinkers Herein Solely Represent the Open Source Research, Findings and Opinions of Our Independent News Staff and Not the Opinion of any Government.

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July 10, 2016







July 6, 2016 | The Association of Military Surgeons of the United States reported that U.S. military bases are "trapping, freezing, and testing mosquitoes" for the presence of the Zika Virus and Army troops receive screening for Zika upon return from areas where the Zika virus is spreading.


July 6, 2016 | United States Amends Afghanistan Troop Level Plans

President Barack Obama said the U.S. will keep 8,400 troops in Afghanistan to assure a lasting political settlement and will continue to support the ongoing Afghan reconciliation process.


July 16, 2016 | The United States has imposed sanctions against ten high-ranking North Korean officials and against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for abuses of human rights. This is the first time Kim Jong Un has been personally sanctioned by the U.S.

July 6, 2016 | Secretary of State John Kerry and Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili of Georgia signed a
memorandum of understanding for more U.S. military aid to Georgia.

July 6, 2016 | The French Government Plans to Enhance Paris as a Significant Financial Center post-Brexit and may amend tax laws.

July 6, 2016 | Germany Plans to Balance Budget Over Next Four Years

The German Cabinet will hold talks for a balanced budget over the next four years an action which eases economic concern over European stability post-Brexit. Economic growth for Germany's economy in 2016 is predicted at the same 1.7 percent as 2015.


July 6, 2016 | Theresa May wins First Ballot for British Conservative Party Leader

Theresa May, British Home Secretary, wins the first ballot with the second ballot scheduled for July 7 to choose the next Conservative Party leader.


July 6, 2016 | The U.K. Iraq Inquiry / Chilcot Report Details Lessons Learned in Iraq Report

The United Kingdom on July 6, released a massive lessons learned report of the U.K. involvement in the Iraq War citing the U.K. entered the war only after exhausting all peaceful options.


July 6, 2016 | China Launches its Most Powerful Space Rocket

On June 27, China launched the Long March 7 new generation space rocket system which currently is its most powerful rocket and part of the Long March 5 and March 6 family capable of commercial and military applications. [Source: CNC News]


July 6, 2016 | U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon will visit China for a five-day meeting.

July 6, 2016

Attacks by ISIS this past week in Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Indonesia (ISIS proponents in Indonesia) may represent a metastasizing and a next-phase strategy of terror groups as eradication of main terror forces occurs in Iraq and Syria.



July 5, 2016

Opinion

An Epidemiological Approach to Naming and Analyzing Terror Agents, Hosts, Environments, and Eradication Strategies and Methods

As the main ISIS body is destroyed in Iraq and Syria, regressions to earlier terror structures and methods are tragically and regrettably expected in which terror groups fragment from recent quasi-military force strategies to canalized strategies combined with regressions (ontogenic) to earlier terror structures including cells, loosely coupled affiliations between historically competitive terror groups, mutations, and the increased use of the Internet and social media as a weapons platform or deadly disease matrix for direct report recruiting and lone wolf incitements.

One of our analytical methods is a pandemic "disease" and "epidemiological" model to analyze terrorism in the 21st century and the use of virulent disease eradication analogues to identify accelerated solution paths to terror group destruction . While analysis is not solution, robust and diverse analytical methods are essential to the generation of enhanced insights and solution paths. A pandemic disease model of terrorism with focus on rapid control, elimination, eradication, and extinction may be a useful adjunct framework for strategic and tactical analysis of terror groups or networks. A pandemic disease based nomenclature and model of global terrorism both eliminates the controversial use of ill-advised faith group references to identify terror groups and also deprives terror groups of a key strategy — terror group name branding, for to deprive an entity of its denotative and connotative name is power and symbolic control over degenerate terror entities. As corporations know, as political candidates know, and as believers of major world faiths know — the naming of things or people is power. In the beginning for many faiths, whatever Adam or the angels named a thing or living creature — that is its true name.

Civilized nations of the world, news media, and governments struggle with naming the agents of terror and terror groups. Guidelines for the use of the word terror at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) read: "The word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier rather than an aid to understanding. We should try to avoid the term, without attribution. We should let other people characterise while we report the facts as we know them." Former President George W. Bush understood not only the dangers but also the wrong-mindedness of using ineffective and ill-advised terror nomenclature: "Americans understand we fight not a religion ... Ours is a campaign against evil." President Obama has said of ISIS and other terror groups: "They are thugs and killers, part of a cult of death." Declassified documents show the wisdom of depriving terror groups of their attempts to brand as a religion. In a number of declassified documents Al-Qaeda's leaders recognized that it lost recruits and terror brand name recognition when the U.S. refused to associate Al-Qaeda with a faith.

It is difficult, however, to precisely research and wage a war against evil — one of the many reasons that we have found an epidemiological or pandemic disease based approach a precise, focused, and robust approach for all branches of terror research, analysis, and response from theory to detection to response and eventual eradication. Of course, the disease based model which is both descriptive and prescriptive must be synthesized with knowledge systems across all relevant domains.

In sum, our approach to a comprehensive model with response scenarios to terror involves a precise, bias free, scientific nomenclature and research framework for multiple domain knowledge fusion, epidemiological research, control, elimination, eradication, and extinction of terror including its agents, hosts, and real as well as virtual environmental vectors.

- Anthony Giannini



July 2, 2016

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 1986, Holocaust survivor, human rights advocate, author of "Night" has died at the age of 87 on July 2, 2016.





July 2, 2016


U.S. State Department Expresses a Desire to Reopen at an Appropriate Time the U.S. Embassy, Libya

Jonathan Winter, Special U.S. envoy to Libya advised Congress on June 15 that the European countries are contemplating a return to Libya and the State Department wants to eventually reopen the U.S. embassy. It is a given that adequate active and rapid response protection would need to be a core part of any State Department. Those in diplomatic service know the national importance and risks of being in places such as Libya but with recent awareness of grave risks, the State Department is unlikely to advance reopening the U.S. Embassy, Libya, without near absolute failsafe security.


July 2, 2016


The Bangladesh army reports that twenty hostages including Bangladeshis, Italians, Japanese, one Indian, and South Koreans were killed by attackers in the July 1, 2016 terror attack on a cafe in the capital city of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Thirteen hostages were rescued.


July 1, 2016

Part I

The recent crash and death involving a TESLA driverless car operating under "regular traffic conditions" on autopilot at the time of its crash may affect public perceptions of autonomous vehicles. Regarding the crash and fatality, Tesla issued a statement: "What we know is that the vehicle was on a divided highway with Autopilot engage when a tractor trailer drove across the highway perpendicular to the Model S. Neither Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the tractor trailer against a brightly lit sky with its positioning across the road and the extremely rate circumstances of the impact caused the Model S to pass under the trailer, with the bottom of the trailer impacting the windshield of the Model S. Had the Model S impacted the front or rear of the trailer, even at high speed, its advanced crash safety system would likely have prevented serious injury as it has in numerous other similar incidents."

Brief Insights:

* Research and development of driverless, autonomous, or self-driving vehicles will continue to accelerate with the driverless vehicle market estimated at $42 billion or more by 2025. If the U.S. automotive industry does not aggressively compete in this vital new market — someone else will — a powerful incentive to assure the future of the U.S. automotive industry.

* The solution paths to the Tesla crash incident will emerge when actual conditions and causes are fully known and correlated — solutions will be found given the importance of autonomous vehicles to the American automotive industry and America's economy, writ large.

* Technology: The Tesla autopilot system employs a synergy of technologies to autopilot a Tesla vehicle: radar, cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and programs to analyze complex traffic and ambient data. The Google driver-less car uses a different cluster of strategies and technologies for its autonomous vehicle which makes it likely that transportation systems scientists will compare the Tesla and Google vision and piloting platforms.


* Brief History of Vision Systems: The actual cause of the accident is uncertain at this time and it is analytically useful to time machine back to gloss the development of computer based vision systems.

Simple machine based vision systems, of course, emerged as a significant research field in the 1950s with early development of two-dimensional image processing systems. In the 1960s, the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT offered its first Machine Vision course focused on real-world applications with relatively low-level vision or image processing tasks such as edge-detection, segmentation, and computer based scene comprehension using a 2-D schema to derive 3-D image results. In the 1980's and 1990's theoretical and computer technologies advances led to increasingly sophisticated machine based vision systems.

- Tony Giannini

[Will be Continued on July 5]


July 1, 2016

Up to 100,000 demonstrators are at the Hong Kong annual march according to its organizers. The event marks Hong Kong's independence from British control in 1997.




June 30, 2016

Reports from the The Washington Post suggest that the administration of President Obama appears to have negotiated an agreement with Russia for closer cooperation in Syria as well as facilitated recent advancements in lowering tensions between Russia and Turkey with the goal of normalizing relationship representing a significant improvement during a year of tensions and instability.



June 30, 2016 /
14:16 GMT

The suicide bombers who attacked Istanbul's Ataturk Airport (June 28) came from former Soviet Union states of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the North Caucasus region. The Turkish government has detained thirteen additional suspects. The attack on June 28 wounded 230 people and killed 43.

June 30, 2016 / 14:49 GMT

The U.N. Permanent Council will issue its verdict on June 12 in a disputed waters case brought to the U.N. by the Philippines over Chinese activities in disputed waters. The Philippine government indicates it will respect any U.N. decision and the Chinese government indicates it would not accept any U.N. ruling stating that the U.N court has no maritime jurisdiction in this case.

June 30, 2016 / ALERT HAS BEEN LIFTED with no incident. 10:05 AM Reporting of Active Shooter at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland with base on lockdown [source is official Twitter account at Andrews]. Alert is SHELTER IN PLACE. Note: An active shooter "exercise" was scheduled for this morning. It is uncertain certain if the alert is related to the exercise at this time.

June 30, 2016 / 8:02 EDT

- ISIS convoy is destroyed while fleeing Fallujah:

Iraqi Army commander Lt. General Hamid al-Maliki reports "More than 20 helicopters took part in the mission and were able to destroy more than 138 vehicles."

Importantly for President Obama's success strategy of destroying ISIS without massive U.S. military interjections which arguably could have worsened the conflict in South Asia and the Middle East as well as have drawn the U.S. into yet another prolonged war with predictable exacerbations of ethnic conflicts — Al-Maliki emphasized a key U.S. goal that — "No other force took part in the operation."

- South Korean Military is on high alert consequent of possible military provocations by North Korea. Pyongyang is increasing the number of weapons and troops in North Korea's western islands.

- Iraq will receive a $2.7 billion loan from the U.S. for the fight against ISIS. $200 million will help Kurdish peshmerga forces with most of the loan allocated for ammunition, equipment maintenance including tanks, jets, and equipment used to fight ISIS,


June 29, 2016 / 15:33 GMT

Coalition-backed Syrian fighters supported by coalition airstrikes are presently engaged with ISIS near the Syrian town of Boukamal an important supply route for ISIS between Iraq and Syria. Denial of this ISIS portal will further degrade ISIS cross-border supply movements. The New Syrian Army is now fighting with the Free Syrian Army and launched an offensive against ISIS on June 28 comprising the first large action although risky because of its scope but if successful could severely degrade ISIS.


June 29, 2016

Major news sources (ABC, CBS, NBC, API, CNN, FOX, BBC, and White House Briefings) suggest that the ISIS is behind the June 28 attack of Ataturk Airport, Istanbul. Governor Vasip Sahin cited the involvement of at least three suicide bombers.

Our Review:

While temporal congruence of events is not necessarily relationship or causality, on 29 June 2014, ISIS declared its intent to form its own vision of a caliphate. On 26 June 2016, Iraqi forces with American military strategic guidance and tactical aerial support took control of Fallujah with the result that ISIS is steps away from its destruction as a massed force in Iraq. The June 28 attack on the airport in Istanbul, possibly a coincidence, nonetheless, is packaged between these two key events of significance to ISIS with the result that ISIS is scrambling for cover. It's remaining strategy is to incite indirect lone wolf terrorism via Internet messaging and recruiting its own direct report terrorists as it seeks to regroup in places such as Libya.

In a recent CNN interview with David Petraeus, he stated, "I've said from the very beginning even in the darkest days" that "ISIS would be defeated in Iraq."

With the attack on the Istanbul Airport, ISIS continues to show its demonic face and the focus within civilized nations is to see ISIS die completely, die forever, and die soon.


President Obama's insights that ISIS is significantly diminished is evinced by substantial ISIS losses of strategic goals, operational ground, material, personnel, command and control, and its apparent inability to survive as a quasi-military force as the main body of ISIS nears force level annihilation within a best guess — 24 months. President Obama's policy of not dignifying the thugs of ISIS with any other name than terrorists is also effective cultural, military, and psychological strategy because ISIS is neither a nation nor a religion. Moreover, the President's approach is a sophisticated, responsible, reasoned, and a highly effective strategy that has resulted in maintaining old friendships and making new friendships that would not occur under xenophobic national models — a strategy and policy that to the minds of reasoned and seasoned Intelligence professionals are self-evident truths relative to terrorist groups of the ISIS strain. To distinguish ISIS with the name of a nation or a religion would be to empower ISIS in ways that are not merely unwise but also grossly ill-informed and likely to incite those on the edge of radical ideology to support ISIS as well as alienate for absolutely no rational strategic or tactical reasons millions of current and future friends of America. While those on television and frankly in political roles who want to label ISIS as something it is not, for it is not a nation, it is not a state, it is not a religion recognized by any sentient nation or person — in analysis, we certainly understand the anger reaction to label this enemy, but the enemy in the case of ISIS is a group of barbarians and to name them otherwise would be dangerous, reckless, and would place American military, American citizens, and citizens of other countries at risk of exponential acceleration of the ISIS recruit base.

However, to fully eradicate requires all nations to fully understand the Folie en Masse that is ISIS. It is vital for nations to comprehend the core processes and forces of the de-potentiation that is on-going of archetypes of civilization. Global archetypal de-potentiation analysis is a powerful tool for nations to use as a new long-term threat assessment resource. It is vital to understand, as well, the neural life cycle of Folie en Masse events — and as the main force of ISIS dies — canalization forces at work within the minds of terrorists present a critical challenge to finally end the debauchery of ISIS and ISIS-like ideology. An increasingly degraded ISIS will attempt to revivify itself with accelerated electronic neural warfare — a phrase I coined in a futures thinking session some years ago to a team of genetic research scientists in Washington and Idaho. ISIS will ramp its use of social media and the Internet as its central strategic, tactical, and electronic weapons platform to agitate lone wolf attacks and refresh its battlefield personnel losses with redeployment to places such as Libya. The social media facet confluent with global Internet access for ISIS is akin to a neurological nuclear weapon fully configured with the functionality to trigger, manipulate, embed, bullwhip, activate, and perseverate terrorist ideology at the neurological level, itself, for even moderately at risk individuals may succumb to internalization of radical terrorism delivered across national boundaries, across cultures, and across belief systems — crafted psychological binds and messages to terrorize. It is important to know that there is no terrorist idea or ideology without an underlying neuropsychological analogue that is often triggered, catalyzed, or exponentiated by an external message event. ISIS not through any great wisdom or great insight but through hit-and-miss experiences has learned a few basic techniques to manipulate and motivate to action the minds of at risk lone wolf actors. We will explore the psychosocial nature of lone wolf actors and terror indoctrination and recruiting processes used by ISIS and other terror groups in future reports as seen through multiple scientific and historical lenses confluent with Intelligence sciences as the overall knowledge consolidation framework.

Summary: Our best prediction is that ISIS as a force will die within 24 months. ISIS and other terror groups will seek to accelerate the use of social media and the Internet — and a multinational strategy to deny ISIS of electronic and other terror messaging platforms is essential. Terror groups, not only ISIS, seek to recruit at risk lone wolves through a variety of means including Internet manipulation or direct social contact. To bring an end to lone wolf attacks it is vital not only to identify and legally negate lone wolf actors but also to fully understand that terrorism is an ideology that once adopted operates at a deep psychosocial neural level and that confluence of remote electronic psychological manipulation of at risk lone wolf actors creates a terrorist messaging weapons platform that we have long called a neural bomb.


Material herein is solely the the opinion of its author and not of any government. All content is protected by copyright and U.S. Trademark registrations. Copy and use in whole or part is only with express written permission of the authors and is in part extracted from a forthcoming book entitled "Neural Warfare". All Rights Reserved 2016®

- Tony Giannini