Welcome! Our goal at Winds of Change.NET is to give you one power-packed briefing of insights, news and trends from the global War on Terror that leaves you stimulated, informed, and occasionally amused every Monday & Thursday.

Today's Winds of War briefing is brought to you by evariste of Discarded Lies.

Top Topics

• The Department of Energy is going to release a whoooole lot of energy, blowing up truck bombs in the desert to figure out whether nuclear site security barriers are vulnerable to them.

• Dress-up time for Putin! Is it a pilot...a seaman...it's a tin-pot autocrat playing games with another tin-pot autocracy! The unprecedented 8-day-long joint military exercise, Peace Mission 2005, involving 10,000 Russian and Chinese troops, started on the 18th. The exercises are meant to send the US a message and sell more weapons. Meanwhile, Russia's defense budget will increase by 22% in FY 2006. Russia and China also want the US to quit its bases in their backyard to free them to pursue influence, resources and regional hegemony. The US is watching. According to the Russians, the scenario for the war games is ostensibly Russia and China are "assisting" a third country that has a terrorist insurgency. I'm sure they'll be very helpful.

• The Taliban are reopening the Afghan front with new tactics, flush with cash and weapons. They're taking a few pages out of the Iraq playbook. The CIS's anti-terror chiefs are concerned. The amnesty for Taliban fighters/government jobs program doesn't appear to be too effective either.

• The Pentagon's latest (and third, so far) 25-year roadmap for the development of unmanned aerial systems (née UAVs). If you're looking for pictures, vital stats and future plans for every unmanned craft in the US arsenal, this is the PDF for you. There are currently well over 1000 unmanned aerial systems in Iraq and Afghanistan. More at DefenseTech, too...

• In the wake of the New Folsom prison terror cell's unraveling plot, questions are being asked more urgently about Islamist recruitment in prison. Over 200 agents are involved in the investigation into the homegrown terrorist cell, a manifestation of Saudi Arabia's insidious war on the United States. According to geostrategy-direct (no link, sorry), the Saudi military is sending 100 officers a month to fight in Iraq. The cell itself may be homegrown, but at least one of the terrorists is not-he's a Pakistani national. Oh, Pakistan.

• JK: Meanwhile, here's some good news from Afghnistan. No, not Chrenkoff - but worthy. Just one of the good folks we're working with to keep these briefings going after Arthur Chrenkoff retires.

Other Topics Today Include:
Turkey holding Zarqawi confederate?; AQ chief in Saudi killed (yes, again); Putin flirts with Jordan; US permanent troop presence in Iraq details; US teams up with 4 countries against MS-13; NYPD & its Middle Eastern employees; ACLU whining; Arab Bank fined; two states of emergency along the border with Mexico; US shopping mall security learns from the Israelis; US mediates release of hundreds of POWs in Morocco; Mugabe tottering; how Binnie got da Bomb; 27 terrorist training camps in Pak sez India; JI US embassy truck-bomb plot thwarted; UK wrings hands as terrorists broadcast demoralizing messages inciting the death of its soldiers in Iraq-from their UK facilities!; IRA doings; UK appoints fox to guard hens; secret spilled; Bakri and Little Bakri still in the news and mucho mucho more...

Read the Rest....