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The Long War Journal
May 5, 2012 By Thomas Joscelyn A new report by the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at West Point, which has been widely cited, concludes that relations between Iran and al Qaeda are "antagonistic." Documents showing collusion between the two were not released by the CTC, however. And the CTC ignored much other evidence that got in the way of its conclusion.
Thank you for your faithful readership through the past five years. Over its short run, the Counterterrorism Blog served an important role both as a leading terrorism news and information aggregator and as a site where noted practitioner-experts presented commentary and analysis. This combined to make the site a regular “one-stop” bookmark for the interested public, media and policy community at a crucial time. CTB has had a remarkable run, and a tremendous impact – in addition to being visited over 8.2 million times, the CTB spurred news stories, held Congressional briefings, embedded reporters in war zones, and informed the policy debate – even earning a negative review from Al Qaeda!
Counterterrorism Blog
Global Guerrillas
From the videos, drones look harmless. They aren't. The primary use of drones today is to find, identify, and kill targets.
“Australia is about to enter a boom that should last decades…The Australian dollar is unlikely to go back to where it was, and manufacturing will shrink in importance to the economy, perhaps even faster than it has been.” This, according to Martin Parkinson, Treasury Minister of Australia . While 30 years from now, Mr. Parkinson’s prognosis might probe to be accurate, I’m not so sure it applies to the period 3 months from now.
Forex Blog: Currency Trading News & Analysis
Jetlag has me up and at the keyboard at 5.54am here in London, 43 minutes before sunrise, which today is at 6.37am. Only it’s not “sunrise”, is it? As we all know, it’s really “Earth Axial Rotate” at the point in its 24 hour axial rotation when the Sun—around which the Earth rotates once each year—becomes visible from London.
Steve Keen's Debtwatch
Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed
pkedrosky Conclusive proof that bits roll downhill: Outbound b/w from Mammoth (el. 8000 ft) is 6x inbound. And both suck. twitpic.com/971b5s 11 hours ago · reply · retweet · favorite
makezine.com: MAKE: technology on your time
Exploring Natural Materials It's Natural Materials month here on Makezine. So far, we've looked at bone, rope, gemstone, flint napping, cuttlefish casting, and more. You can check out all of these themed posts on the Natural Materials archive page . I'm excited to see that Greg Borenstein has launched Makematics, a blog that covers his own exploration of advanced math topics that are found in new creative applications by and for makers.
A Texas-based Linux admin was charged with hacking into the websites of at least 4 police groups after FBI agents engaged him in an online manhunt that mined photo metadata, Facebook profiles, and other digital evidence. He says he's surrendered all accounts in his control, but his status as a cooperating witness is anything but clear.
Ars Technica
Lifehacker is making some changes to its comment system that will require you to log in with a Facebook, Google, or Twitter account. You must convert your account to one of these services in order to continue using your account. Converting your account on Lifehacker will do so on all Gawker Media Sites.
Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done
FuturePundit
Increased Death Risk From Red Meat While quite a few studies have found an increased risk of assorted diseases and death from eating red meat some of those studies lumped together unprocessed and processed meat. So I've long wondered whether the signal against unprocessed meat is strong. This study finds the risk exists even for non-processed red meat.Gadling | travel blog | news, stories, deals, and tips.
Sally Shalam, a regular contributor at the Guardian , is an experienced travel writer with a strong focus on tourism in the United Kingdom . Her archive at the Guardian is full of wonderfully detailed reviews of accommodations across the UK. Many of these reviews are republished on Shalam's website, Sally Shalam's Britain , which organizes her reviews into helpful categories – my personal favorites: Pubs with Rooms and Urban Bed & Breakfast . A: I have been a journalist all my working life, but it was at the Daily Telegraph that the travel editor spotted me coming to work with a rucksack. I was backpacking a lot at that time. I'd work for several weeks and save up then take a month or so out to travel, often leaving for the airport straight from a shift at the paper.Calafia Beach Pundit
As a follow-up to this morning's post, here are some charts that survey the state of liquidity in the U.S. economy. It's unambiguously the case that the public is still desperate for the safety of cash and cash equivalents, and risk-aversion (e.g., a preference for bonds over stocks) is still very high. Liquidity is in abundant supply; the Fed has supplied trillions of cash to a dollar-cash-hungry market; bank loans are expanding; consumer credit is expanding; savings deposits in U.S. banks are still increasing at double-digit rates. Taxable bond funds continue to receive $5-6 billion in net inflows every week, while equity funds are still experiencing net outflows. Banks are definitely lending again. In fact, lending has been increasing since October 2010.Sony has announced the NEX_FS700 pro-grade 4k-capable E-mount camcorder. The camera will initially offer 1080p video, switchable between 50Hz and 60Hz frame rates (including 60p, 50p, 60i and 24p). A later upgrade will enable 4k capture and Raw output from its built-in 3G-SDI connector. The camera is also able to capture slow-motion footage, shooting at up to 960 fps at reduced resolution (240fps in Full HD).
Digital Cameras: Digital Photography Review, News, Reviews, Forums, FAQ
Photography community, including forums, reviews, and galleries from Photo.net
by Bob Atkins , April 2012 The Sigma APO 120-300mm F2.8 EX DG OS HSM has a new optical design using 23 elements in 18 groups, whereas the previous version used 18 elements in 16 groups. It's also slightly longer and slightly...BostonSportsHub provides a breakdown of how the NCAA bracket has performed by seed going back to 1997: The first step in filling out your bracket is to understand the importance of seeding. Unless you are a complete novice to the religion that is March Madness, you know that in general the better the seed, the better the team. There are of course exceptions to this rule. At times the committee loses its mind, but in gener al the seeding is a fairly accurate representation of the quality of the teams.
EconomPic
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