Insurgent Consciousness: From the infamous to the obscure

Big news in terrorism today. There is so much to write about I cannot limit myself to just one subject. Here are a few recent events and discoveries:

Mumbai Attacks: If you read Insurgent Consciousness, you already know about these horrifying attacks that have killed over a hundred and wounded over 250. In typical I-Con fashion, I would like to highlight a few lessons and take-away points that the media has missed.

Terrorism is easy. Nothing here was complicated- guys with guns and grenades in hot-spots- yet this is being called India's 9/11. This attack can be replicated, possibly on a smaller scale though not necessarily, in dozens of places.
Building off of the first point, these attacks provide a textbook example of small group and individual super-empowerment. Here we have a previously unknown group bringing one of the world's largest nations to its knees and panicking the rest of the world who's executives and diplomats may have been in the area. The nature of modern communications and globalization meant that Mumbai may as well have been in any one of our backyards, with tourists, officials, and business travelers from just about everywhere staying there and the entire world watching events unfold via CNN.
The analysis around this event illustrates how we as a society have not yet adapted to super-empowerment. Everyone suspects al Qaeda to be involved, simply because of the scale and coordination of the attacks. Why? Does al Qaeda have a monopoly on AK-47s and cell phones?

Nigeria: No one outside of the oil industry seems to care much about events unfolding in Nigeria, which is a shame because it offers an example of one of the most successful current terrorist campaigns. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, a sophisticated and highly capable insurgent network, has been hitting oil and gas pipelines, refineries, and wells so hard that Nigeria's normally very significant oil exports have fallen by over a quarter and domestic power has fallen by two thirds. There has been a ceasefire in the past month, but recently MEND threatened to resume and escalate attacks if provoked. The government's answer was to create a joint military and police taskforce and give it the absurdly short time frame of 3 months to restore order in the Niger Delta. There is a backup plan, with MEND rebels being sent to anger management classes, but I am not buying it. Expect some serious bloodletting in the next few months.

Facebook: On the home front, I-Con's concerns about facebook prove to be further justified. Turns out that Hezbollah, besides using facebook to rally supporters, has been assigning operatives to friend members of the Israeli army in order to extract information and plan kidnappings. Talk about information access superiority . We're using Facebook to post drunk Halloween pics and awkwardly poke each other; Hezbollah's incorporated it into their intelligence strategy.