Guardian article on a report by Major Flynn [and others] which basically says intelligence is missing the wood for the trees. Trying to spot insurgent cells rather than identify local powerbrokers. report published by Centre for a New american Security http://www.cnas.org/ the full report is downloadable from here: Fixing Intel: a Blueprint for Making Intelligence … US INTELLIGENCE CHIEF CRITICISES SPY FAILINGS IN AFGHANISTAN

Story from Spain. Someone’s going to be in a lot of trouble!

The brothers ran the Sinaloa cartel. One, Mario, is still free. Alfredo is in jail, Arturo is now dead and Carlos is the one who has just been arrested. I just hope they have a plan to deal with the inevitable turf war that will follow the dismantling of the cartel.

Thoughtful piece from el Pais on Al Qaeda in North Africa. In Spanish, of course.

Curious article which gives lots of names but then gets contradictory. It starts with 200 Al Q members, but later, 2,000 Yemenis who have returned from fighting in iraq turn up and in the next paragraph 200,000 Somali refugees. The leadership is staffed by escapees from a high security priso, but then it turns out … YEMEN’S CHAOS AIDS THE EVOLUTION OF AN AL QAEDA CELL

Hmmm…I don’t think Plod will go with this one, but I am concerned that I, as an academic, can’t read this stuff to inform my own lectures.

New York Times piece on charismatic imams on the internet. Do they radicalise young Muslims? Marc Sageman puts an opposite view to the camp that believes they do.

Guardian claims that Peter Moore was installing IT equipment in Ministry of Finance that would have discovered Revolutionary Guards siphoning off money for militias allied to it.

This is very depressing news. 3 dissident Republican groups targeting PSNI officers and being joined by disillusioned ex-Provos. Gives a timeline of incidents during 2009.

Unusual piece of good news from Liverpool. Man heads the Criminal information Bureau, providing mentors and support for criminals when they come out of jail.