US bankrolls 'shadow Internet for dissidents' abroad

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US government is financing the development of "shadow" Internet systems to enable dissidents abroad to get around government censors, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
The newspaper said the covert effort also includes attempts to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries.
The operation involves a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype "Internet in a suitcase," the report said.
Financed with a $2.0 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communications over a wide area with a link to the global Internet, the paper noted.
Some projects involve technology being developed in the United States while others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers from the so-called liberation technology movement, The Times said.

The State Department is financing the creation of stealth wireless networks that would enable activists to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria and Libya, the paper said.
The US government has also spent at least $50 million to create an independent cellphone network in Afghanistan using towers on protected military bases inside the country, The Times said.
It is intended to offset the Taliban's ability to shut down the official Afghan services, the report noted.

Some Libyan rebel photos

Some Libyan rebel photos:

Among other heroic photos we can find and something like this:

And, of course, they aren't smoking tobacco...

Sources:
http://www.businessinsider.com/libya-rebellion-pictures-2011-3#libyan-rebels-ride-into-battle-at-brega-1
http://publicintelligence.info/libyan-rebel-photos/
http://fishki.net/comment.php?id=86675

Modern "Toyota War"

“Cheap and fast” are two main criteria of modern war in Africa. And Toyota became one of the symbols of such wars. We could see them during the Chadian–Libyan conflict

 

The Chadian–Libyan conflict was a state of sporadic warfare events in Chad between 1978 and 1987 between Libyan and Chadian forces. Libya had been involved in Chad's internal affairs prior to 1978 and before Muammar al-Gaddafi's rise to power in Libya in 1969, beginning with the extension of the Chadian Civil War to northern Chad in 1968. The conflict was marked by a series of four separate Libyan interventions in Chad, taking place in 1978, 1979, 1980–1981 and 1983–1987. In all of these occasions Gaddafi had the support of a number of factions participating in the civil war, while Libya's opponents found the support of the French government, which intervened militarily to save the Chadian government in 1978, 1983 and 1986[1].

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chadian%E2%80%93Libyan_conflict

The 1987 war resulted in a heavy defeat for Libya, which, according to American sources, lost one tenth of its army, with 7,500 troops killed and 1.5 billion dollars worth of military equipment destroyed or captured. Chadian losses were 1,000 troops killed.

Of course, only because of Chadian geographical features (lay of the land) the Desert Rats[1] method was successful.

Here are pictures from today’s Libyan conflict:

Nothing has changed…

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_7th_Armoured_Division