Securing the City - Upcoming Events

Atlanta - Monday, February 9, 7:00 PM: Talk and signing
Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, 441 Freedom Parkway

Chicago - Wednesday, February 11, 11:30 AM: Luncheon address and signing
The Union League Club, 65 West Jackson Blvd.

Costa Mesa, CA - Thursday, February 12, 6:00 PM: Drinks, dinner, talk and signing
World Affairs Council of Orange County, The Center Club, 650 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa, 92626

Los Angeles - Friday, February 13, 7:00 PM: Talk and signing
Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., W. Hollywood, CA 90069

San Francisco - Tuesday, February 17, 7:00 PM: Talk and signing
Books Inc., 601 Van Ness, 94102

Briarcliff Manor, NY - Wednesday, February 18: Talk and signing
St. Theresa, 1394 Pleasantville Rd.

New York City, Thursday, February 19 - Private event

Houston, TX - Monday, February 23, 6:00 PM - Talk and signing
Houston Forum, Omni Houston Hotel, 4 Riverway

Dallas, TX - Tuesday, February 24, 6:00 PM - Talk and signing
World Affairs Council, Rosewood Crescent, 400 Crescent Court 75219

Plano, TX - Wednesday, February 25, 7:30 PM - Talk and signing
Legacy Books, 7300 Dallas Parkway, Plano TX

NYT Daily Review: How to Beat Terrrorists

Books of The Times

How to Beat Terrorists: Use Big Stick and Brains

By Dwight Garner

...

In his revealing and nerve-rattling new book, “Securing the City,” a look inside the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism division, Christopher Dickey recounts the details of dozens of terrorist plots against New York City and elsewhere. Some were planned by smart and determined people, others by misfits and crazies and DVD addicts who couldn’t pull off the heist of two AAA batteries at a Radio Shack. The problem, Mr. Dickey writes, is that, given luck and the right assistance, “even the dumb ones could be dangerous as hell.”

“Securing the City” recounts the story of how, within a few years after Sept. 11, the Police Department transformed itself from a large but not untypical urban police force into one that possessed one of the world’s elite intelligence-gathering operations. The department had no choice. Terrorists are obsessed with New York City, focusing on it, Mr. Dickey writes, “like a compass needle quivering toward magnetic north.”....

The Washington Post: Langley on the Hudson

An excellent review in The Washington Post:

New York City's Police Department is among the largest and most recognizable police forces on earth. Thanks to the global reach of syndicated television programs, audiences in cities as diverse as Paris, Tel Aviv, Amman, Abu Dhabi, Singapore and Santo Domingo share a cursory familiarity with the comings and goings at One Police Plaza in Manhattan. But what viewers in those exotic locales don't realize is that the NYPD has now come to them for real, posting officers in potential hot spots around the world.

The role of these agents, part of an elite and controversial counter-intelligence unit within the NYPD, is the subject of Christopher Dickey's illuminating Securing the City. Dickey is an old hand on the terrorist beat, having spent decades covering the Middle East and Europe for Newsweek and The Washington Post, and he's eminently well positioned to examine New York City's effort to start its own mini CIA....(more)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/29/AR2009012903568.html

NYT Book Review: Cops and Bombers

A mixed review, but with a solid conclusion:

“Securing the City” remains an undeniably timely book. In the coming weeks, the new administration will begin the daunting task of setting a fresh course for the war on terror. As it does, it would do well to spend at least a little time examining the success of the New York City Police Department.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/books/review/Mahler-t.html?_r=1&ref=books

From Rocky Mountain News: Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force: the NYPD

Christopher Dickey sent you this:

Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force: the NYPD

http://rockymountainnews.com/news/2009/jan/29/securing-the-city-inside-americas-best-force-the/

--------
Christopher Dickey attached this additional message:

A good, utilitarian review with a very good "final word":

"Readers will be scared by the near misses and anxious about the future, but can't help but also be inspired by this well-researched story of just why and how plot after plot against the city has been foiled."
--------

Rocky Mountain News

Peace Talks: The Importance of Apologies

There's an important op-ed that appeared in the NYT over the weekend, coauthored by Scott Atran. It's a well-reasoned and well-researched call to Western leaders to go beyond the utilitarian approach to peace negotiations.

To some extent they buried the lede: interviews with Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy chief of Hamas, and Bibi Netanyahu, who may well make a comeback as Israel's prime minister. Both responded positively to talk of apologies and what could be interpreted as moral concessions from the other side. But the key to the story is in these paragraphs:

"There is a moral logic to seemingly intractable religious and cultural disputes. These conflicts cannot be reduced to secular calculations of interest but must be dealt with on their own terms, a logic very different from the marketplace or realpolitik.

"Across the world, people believe that devotion to sacred or core values that incorporate moral beliefs — like the welfare of family and country, or commitment to religion and honor — are, or ought to be, absolute and inviolable. ... People will reject material compensation for dropping their commitment to sacred values and will defend those values regardless of the costs."

"Waltz With Bashir," Golden Globe Winner, Oscar Nominee?

This Israeli animated film about the 1982 Lebanon war and the Sabra and Shatila massacre looks fascinating. It won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film and is shortlisted for an Oscar nomination. But I have not seen it yet. I'd be interested from hearing from people who have.

Unbuggable Skype?

James Bamford's recent book, "The Shadow Factory" (which I've reviewed for this Sunday's NYT) makes a convincing, if often disjointed case that just about everything we say or do online is monitored by the government. As an expatriate who communicates with a lot of characters who are not popular with their own government, or ours, I take it for granted that any or all of my conversations, whether spoken or written, are liable to be tapped. So I was interested to read in Bamford's book (pp 255-56) that Skype calls are "virtually unbuggable" because the security "is achieved by end-to-end encryption for all calls to other members. Such technology makes it possible to fight back against the proliferating eavesdropping factories."
Whew. Let's hope.

NYT Book Review: Dickey on the NSA and Mumbai

BOOK REVIEW

'The Shadow Factory' How eavesdropping became big business

By Christopher Dickey

Published: January 9, 2009

The Shadow Factory The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America By James Bamford 395 pages. Doubleday. $27.95.

'Probably the best place within the entire region to install a listening post is the Indian city of Mumbai," James Bamford writes in "The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America," his latest book about the all-seeing, all-hearing National Security Agency. Without question, he says, Mumbai "represents the kind of location where the N.S.A. would seek to establish a secret presence." And such a place, he notes elsewhere in his book, "presents an extremely tempting target for terrorists."

As it happened, I read those lines at precisely the same time that Mumbai became the scene of a bloody three-day siege that killed more than 170 people and wounded many hundreds. Telecoms were not attacked, and whether there was some symbolic connection between the NSA's ambitions and the terrorists' targeting is not a question that can be answered definitively here and now or, perhaps, ever. But it's a fair bet that Bamford will find a way to work the bloodbath at the Taj Mahal hotel into the long NSA narrative that he began with "The Puzzle Palace" in 1982, followed up with "Body of Secrets" in 2001, and may well continue after the present book. These are the kinds of details, or coincidences, that Bamford loves. .... (more)

Hollywood Torture Hype

NYPD New Year's Eve 2007

Blair on Gaza: Looking Old, Looking Useless

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Rami Khouri: Why Hamas and Hezbollah Will Be Hard to Defeat

BEIRUT -- Many analogies are being made between the ongoing Israeli attack against Hamas in Gaza and the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Here are the most important ones, in my view.

The first is about provenance: Hamas and Hezbollah did not exist before around 1982. Their birth and strength must be understood largely as a response to Israel's occupation and colonization policies in Palestine and Lebanon, alongside other secondary reasons.... (more)

Haaretz: The Big Picture

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1052336.html

Useful background on strategy.

NY Daily News: Mayor Bloomberg whisked into bomb shelter in Israel as rocket fire errupts during solidarity trip

News | 01/04/2009 Mayor Bloomberg whisked into bomb shelter in Israel as rocket fire errupts during solidarity trip By KATHLEEN LUCADAMO Mayor Bloomberg braved embattled Israeli neighborhoods today during a solidarity visit -- and found himself hustled into a bomb shelter as rockets landed less than a mile from where he was standing....

Iran's security chief meets Hamas, Jihad leaders in Damascus over Gaza

DAMASCUS, Jan. 3 (Xinhua) -- Saeed Jalily, Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, met here Saturday with exiled Hamas Politburo chief Khaled Meshaal and Secretary General of the Islamic Jihad Ramadan Abdullah Shallah over the situation in the Gaza Strip.

They discussed "the serious situations in Gaza Strip due to the continuing Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people, and the Arab and Islamic movements needed to stop this aggression and liftthe siege," said Syria's official SANA news agency.

According to SANA, Jalily told reporters after the meeting that his visit to Syria is for discussing the serious situations in Gaza and ways to reach an effective Arab and Islamic stance to support the Palestinian people.... (more)

US blocks UN Security Council action on Gaza

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=xgsFgJm2

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Securing The City - Talks and Signings (Update)

New York City

Feb. 2, 2009 -- 6:00 pm -- The Overseas Press Club

Feb. 3 -- 6:00 pm -- NYU Center on Law & Security


Washington, D.C.

Feb. 4 -- 6:45 -- Smithsonian Institute


Atlanta

Feb. 9 -- 7:00 pm -- Jimmy Carter Library


Chicago

Feb. 11 -- 11:30 am -- Union League Club luncheon


Los Angeles Area

Feb. 12 -- 6 pm -- Orange County World Affairs Council, Costa Mesa

Feb. 13 -- 7 pm -- Book Soup, Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles


San Francisco

Feb. 17 -- 7 pm -- Books, Inc.


New York City

Feb. 18 - St. Theresa Lecture, Briarcliff Manor


New York City

Feb. 19 -- 6:15 pm -- private function


Houston

Feb. 23 -- 6 pm -- Houston Forum


Dallas

Feb. 24 -- 6 pm -- World Affairs Council

Reuters.com - Muslim family booted off U.S. airline gets apology

Muslim family booted off U.S. airline gets apology Fri Jan 02 21:55:08 UTC 2009 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Muslim family that was ordered off an AirTran Airways flight on New Year's Day received an apology and refund on Friday from the airline, which said its decision to bar the passengers was necessary. Atif Irfan said in an interview with CNN that federal authorities removed him, seven family members and a friend from the flight after passengers overheard members of the group talking about the safest place to sit on the plane. He said they were being careful to avoid any "buzzwords" like "bomb" that would trigger a security alert. The group was flying out of Reagan Washington National Airport and was headed for a religious retreat in Florida when other passengers apparently overheard the conversation and reported it to authorities. AirTran, a subsidiary of AirTran Holdings Inc., issued a statement apologizing to the nine and the other passengers who were inconvenienced by the incident. It said the airfare of the nine was refunded and other passengers would be reimbursed for expenses incurred by taking other flights. "We apologize to all of the passengers -- to the nine who had to undergo extensive interviews from the authorities, and to the 95 who ultimately made the flight," the discount airline said in a statement. "While ultimately this issue proved to be a misunderstanding, the steps taken were necessary," it said. An earlier AirTran statement said the airline complied with all Transportation Security Administration and Homeland Security directives and had no discretion in the case. All 104 passengers aboard the flight were taken off and rescreened and their baggage was checked again, AirTran said. Of the nine passengers in the group, six asked to be rebooked to Florida, AirTran said. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said it filed a complaint on Friday with the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Islamic civil rights group said in a statement it was working with the Muslim passengers and the airline to address the civil liberties issues related to the incident. "We believe this disturbing incident would never have occurred had the Muslim passengers removed from the plane not been perceived by other travelers and airline personnel as members of the Islamic faith," the group said in its complaint. Kashif Irfan, Atif's brother, told The Washington Post he thought the group, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens, were profiled because of their appearance. He said five of the six adults in the group are of South Asian descent, and all six are traditionally Muslim in appearance, with the men wearing beards and the women in headscarves. Kashif Irfan, 34, is an anesthesiologist, and his brother Atif, 29, is a lawyer, the Post reported. Both live in Alexandria, Virginia. Atif Irfan told CNN U.S. law enforcement officials treated the group with kindness but the family is upset that the airline did not allow the group to reboard the plane or rebook a flight after they had been cleared of any wrongdoing. The Post reported the group booked a flight on US Airways after the incident. (Reporting by Donna Smith; Editing by Eric Beech) This service is not intended to encourage spam. The details provided by your colleague have been used for the sole purpose of facilitating this email communication and have not been retained by Thomson Reuters. Your personal details have not been added to any database or mailing list. If you would like to receive news articles delivered to your email address, please subscribe at www.reuters.com/newsmails © Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world. Quotes and other data are provided for your personal information only, and are not intended for trading purposes. Thomson Reuters and its data providers shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the quotes or other data, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Gaza: Brian Lehrer interviews Chris Dickey

Gaza: A Return to Deterrence?

Newsweek

A Return to Deterrence

Hollywood and the Feds

In case you missed it earlier in the month, this appeared in The New York Post:

STAR'S G-MAN BEAU BUSTED
FBI AGENT SPIED AS 'FAVOR' FOR FIORENTINO

Naturally, they met at Elaine's, a venue almost as important to a certain class of New York law enforcement officer as One Police Plaza or the FBI field office. Rossini -- handsome, polished and very well connected -- was probably the biggest counterterror celebrity in the Bureau.

Gaza Gets Worse

Israeli troops mobilize as Gaza assault widens

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=NG3R0KdK

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Fewer Cops Killed

Police officer deaths drop in 2008

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=k1qBvNpL

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NYTimes.com: Unspooked

MAGAZINE | December 28, 2008 Philip Agee | b. 1935: Unspooked By RICK PERLSTEIN The spy who turned his back on the C.I.A. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

Gaza Bombing: Watching for Regional Escalaton

The scale of these Israeli strikes has to be viewed as more than
retaliation. It is in effect a test, seeing who will react, and how
dramatically. The pro forma Arab condemnations, Abu Mazen's feeble
call for restraint, and protests by "dozens" of Palestinians in Syrian
and Lebanese camps signify little. The question mark is Hezbollah and,
in the background, Iran. Will they respond as they did in the summer
of 2006, when Gaza was under siege in the south and they opened up on
Israel's northern front? Is Israel ready to respond if they do? And is
Lebanon ready for that response? All delicate and dangerous
calculations. After Hezbollah's leading terrorist, Imad Mugniyeh, was
blown up in Damascus last spring, Nasrallah vowed to take revenge
outside the normal theaters of confrontation. That could mean
anywhere, literally, as with the example of the Argentine attacks in
the 1990s. Has Hezbollah held back waiting for the right political
moment? This could be it.

And we can also expect Al Qaeda to try to get in on the action, most
likely with another video from Ayman Zawahiri.

Israel strikes demolish Hamas compounds, kill 192

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=fjQcsns0

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Somalia: Pirates and Rising Powers

China targets pirates in groundbreaking mission

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=CUevTxZX

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Can Homemade GMO WMDs Be Far Behind?

Hobbyists are trying genetic engineering at home

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=HFDPmrpk

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Terror: The Shape of Things to Come?

Homeland Security forecasts 5-year terror threats

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=9ZGVNOgD

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BBC News - Bombs Found In Bangladesh

Of possible interest if JMB has active support networks in the UK
other EU states or USA.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/i/bbc_news/top_stories/779/77999/story7799910.shtml?

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NYTimes.com: Young Muslims Build a Subculture on an Underground Book

US | December 23, 2008 Young Muslims Build a Subculture on an Underground Book By CHRISTOPHER MAAG A five-year-old novel about punk rock Muslims in Buffalo has inspired many who reconcile religious observance with being an "angry American youth."

Fort Dix Verdix

5 convicted of plotting to kill Fort Dix soldiers

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=Yaz75Km6

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My office e-mail remains: chris.dickey@newsweek.com

BBC News: Cheney's Endless War

http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/i/bbc_news/top_stories/778/77890/story7789005.shtml?

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My office e-mail remains: chris.dickey@newsweek.com

NYTimes.com: Tumult in Iraqi Parliament Over Shoe Hurling

This page was sent to you by:  csdickey@yahoo.com Message from sender: The shoe saga continues... INTERNATIONAL / MIDDLE EAST   | December 18, 2008 Tumult in Iraqi Parliament Over Shoe Hurling By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and ATHEER KAKAN A session of the Iraqi Parliament erupted in an uproar on Wednesday as the continuing detention of an Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush was hotly debated. 1. Butter Holds the Secret to Cookies That Sing 2. Op-Ed Columnist: The Great Unraveling 3. In Successful Paris Restaurant, Jewish Roots 4. Obama Pledge Stirs Hope in Early Education 5. Colonoscopies Miss Many Cancers, Study Finds »  Go to Complete List Advertisement Slumdog Millionaire From visionary Director Danny Boyle, nominated for 4 Golden Globe Awards, including Best Picture-Drama. Now Playing in select theatres. Click here to view trailer Copyright 2008  The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy

Ga. judge jails Muslim woman over head scarf

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=jNvPGA9G

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My office e-mail remains: chris.dickey@newsweek.com

Homegrown Terrorism: Dumb and Dumber

CAMDEN, New Jersey (Reuters) - Five Muslim men accused of planning an attack on a U.S. army base had no intention of following through even though they shared Muslim anger toward America after September 11, defense attorneys said on Tuesday.

The men, all born outside the United States, plotted but did not execute an attack on Fort Dix in New Jersey and discussed attacks on other installations including Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and the U.S. Coast Guard in Philadelphia, prosecutors say.

They were arrested in May 2007 and face life in prison if convicted....

This group is typical of the "homegrown terrorist" threat which I examine at length in Securing the City. One of the great common traits among such plotters is their stunning stupidity, which is then exploited by undercover officers or confidential informants who may act as facilitators, organizers, even "spiritual sanctioners," in the jargon of the NYPD's extensive report on "Radicalization in the West." (pdf)

When the members of such cells come to trial, they typically claim not only that they were entrapped but, inevitably and not without cause, they plead ignorance. Unfortunately, stupid people kill people, too. Several of the World Trade Center bombers in 1993 were pretty dim bulbs, and one, Mohammed Salameh who tried to get back the deposit on the rental truck he blew up, was moronic. But six people died, many more might have been killed, and the event set off a chain of events and created a web of connections that culminated in the disastrous second attack of 9/11.

In fact, the greatest danger is that a "homegrown" collection of homicidal dimwits will be missed by the cops, or not taken seriously, then hook up with someone much brighter who knows how to organize them and exploit them. In the 1993 plot, that role was played for a while by an FBI informant, but when the feds got bored with his stories and dropped him from the payroll, the cell managed to reach out to ... Ramzi Yousef, a true terrorist mastermind, and the nephew of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the brains behind 9/11.

The Fort Dix case, fortunately, was broken by a clerk at Circuit City. This is from the original complaint, the full text of which can be found as a pdf at www.usdoj.gov/usao/nj/press/files/pdffiles/DukaDritanComplaint.pdf :

1. On or about January 31, 2006, a representative of a retail store informed officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) that an individual had brought a video to their store to be duplicated into a digital video disk (“DVD”). That DVD depicted conduct – recorded as having occurred on January 3, 2006 – that the store representative described as disturbing. FBI agents reviewed the DVD in question. The DVD depicted 10 young men who appeared to be in their early twenties
shooting assault weapons at a firing range in a militia-like
style while calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic “Allah Akbar” (“God is Great”). The FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force (“JTTF”) immediately commenced an investigation into the activities of the men depicted in the DVD.
2. The FBI identified the 10 men depicted in the DVD, six of whom are: MOHAMAD SHNEWER, DRITAN DUKA, a/k/a “Distan Duka,” a/k/a “Anthony Duka,” a/k/a “Tony Duka,” ELJVIR DUKA, a/k/a “Elvis Duka,” a/k/a “Sulayman,” SHAIN DUKA, SERDAR TATAR, and AGRON ABDULLAHU. Immigration and Customs Enforcement checks show that DRITAN DUKA, ELJVIR DUKA, and SHAIN DUKA are illegally residing in the United States.
3. In or about March 2006, a cooperating witness (“CW-1") successfully
infiltrated this group ...

Sock and Awe

Is it time to start feeling sorry for President Bush? Probably not as sorry as we should feel for the Iraqis or, for that matter, the environment, the economy, the state of the nation and the world. But, still... For the surprisingly spry Bush to face the slings and arrows, or at least the shoes, of an outraged Iraqi while on his farewell, things-are-finally-getting-better visit to Baghdad is a bit much. As an American, I don't want to see my president treated this way, even this president.

For a British Web developer to cobble together, in a matter of hours, a video game called "Sock and Awe" that allows you to hurl a virtual Topsider at Bush's face with the click of a mouse, well, that is adding silly insult to non-injury. (Maybe a Dana Perino pop-up for extra points will be added to version 2.0.)

And then there is the matter of the "Intelligence Squared U.S." debate on NPR, which asked if Bush is the worst president of the last 50 years. The proposition was so shockingly disrespectful that I thought, truly, the pack-hunting press had begun to go too far. But then I looked at the defense of Bush put up by William Kristol and Carl Rove, and, you know, it's hard to contemplate the continued, unreprentant sophistry without wanting to throw a shoe or two yourself.

December Dynamite; Bomb Threats in Paris

Police find dynamite at Paris department store

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=7Jm8hGNI

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Mafias: A Sicilian comeback?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/i/bbc_news/top_stories/778/77851/story7785133.shtml?

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Oregon bank bombing suspect charged with murder

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=TKYUjnP8

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FRANCE

President On the Precipice

Sarkozy is a loose cannon with no real opposition. So far, he's fared well. But that could change.

Olivier Laban-Mattei / AFP-Getty Images

An Obama-inspired poster of President Sarkozy inside a Paris subway station

By Christopher Dickey and Tracy McNicoll | NEWSWEEK

Published Dec 13, 2008

Mumbai gunman's confession sheds light on massacre

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=d5OWkflS

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Not all terrorism is Islamic.

Bomb explodes at Oregon bank; at least 1 injured

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_8537/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=uqyTFiqS

In fact most incidents in the United States are related to the far
right or to radical animal rights groups. And explosives are becoming a relatively common method to settle personal scores. So this kind of incident bears
watching, even though it is likely to fade from the headlines very
quickly.

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The usual suspects, or something more?

6 alleged Islamic extremists charged in Belgium

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=NCsqfpv4

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Torture: If this is true, what consequences?

Panel blames White House, not soldiers, for abuse

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=GTGdb8Hq

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Save the Dates to Secure Your City

The current dates for the Securing the City tour include:


New York City

Feb. 2, 2009 -- 6:00 pm -- The Overseas Press Club

Feb. 3 -- 6:00 pm -- NYU Center on Law & Security


Washington, D.C.

Feb. 4 -- 6:45 -- Smithsonian Institute


Atlanta

Feb. 9 -- 7:00 pm -- Jimmy Carter Library


Chicago

Feb. 11 -- 11:30 am -- Union League Club luncheon


Los Angeles Area

Feb. 12 -- 6 pm -- Orange County World Affairs Council, Costa Mesa

Feb. 13 -- 7 pm -- Book Soup, Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles


San Francisco

Feb. 17 -- 7 pm -- Books, Inc.


New York City

Feb. 19 -- 6:15 pm -- Colony Club dinner


Houston

Feb. 23 -- 6 pm -- Houston Forum


Dallas

Feb. 24 -- 6 pm -- World Affairs Council

Bravo, Obama.

Rumsfeld nemesis Shinseki to be named VA secretary

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_7731/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=eTC4qylf

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Revolution 2.0: The Videos

In the Shadowland column this week, "Revolution 2.0," I refer to several videos, and used others as background material. Here are some of them:

Ayman Zawahiri's Nov. 19 production on As-Sahab, including extended clips of Malcolm X speaking, can be viewed below. I found it on a site called "Internet Archive" at this address -- http://www.archive.org/details/Zawahiri-Obama -- and a transcript is posted there as well. The video ss presented here for study, and neither I nor any organization with which I am affiliated condone it in any way.:



This is the MyBo tutorial on YouTube, which gives a clear picture of the tools used for community organizing and fund raising:



Bibi Netanyahu's Web site is http://www.netanyahu.org/

The English-language videos on it are not nearly so polished as Obama's, but worth watching nonetheless as an insight into Netanyahu and his politics:





And finally there is this, to me, fascinating three-part interview with Blue State Digital co-founder Jascha Franklin-Hodge from OreillyMedia:

The Madness In Mumbai, A Prelude to War?

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The latest from the Press Trust of India:

Thu, Nov 27 12:09 PM

New Delhi, Nov 27 (PTI) The government today equated the Mumbai terror attacks to a "war" thrust upon the nation and vowed to give a "befitting" reply to the perpetrators. "We are considering the terrorists attack in Mumbai as a war and dealing the situation like war-time emergency," Union Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal told reporters here. ... (more)

From 2003: The Stranger in the Waste Land

The article below, which originally appeared on the Web in July 2003, apparently is no longer live. But the broader debate it addresses certainly is:



This text is a draft I excavated from my hard drive:

What the Thunder Said:
Art and Culture after Shock and Awe

By Christopher Dickey

Above the bar a mass of Ruffino Chianti bottles were hung so closely together that the bases made a single pattern of wicker rings. The paintings on the walls were, in some cases, actually painted on the walls. Others were drawn on paper with the dregs of Turkish coffee and lipstick, and all had a drunken, kind of desperate energy to them. “Al-Ghareeb,” the bistro was called, which means “The Stranger,” and a decade ago just being there, on a side street in Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad, could give you a rush of pure existential excitement.

This was not the Iraq that any of us on the outside had heard about. This was not the Iraq where most Iraqis lived. It was a place were intellectuals and painters, architects, writers, and sculptors made themselves a little space to think and relax. Other dictatorships have had such bohemian retreats, like Naguib Mahfouz’s houseboat adrift on the Nile in Nasser’s time. (“Because we are afraid of the police and the army and the English and the Americans, and the visible and the invisible, we have reached the point where we’re not afraid of anything!”) But the total evil that was Saddam made this little candlelit corner of Baghdad all the more special.

At Al-Ghareeb the unafraid artists talked for hours. They listened to piano players who were great, good, and godawful. They got falling-down drunk. They paired off and had affairs. They forgot, more or less, where they were, until one or another of them would leave for exile, or be picked up for questioning by the secret police. Sometimes government officials stopped by, hoping, themselves, to escape the ethos they served. And in the old days there was that voluptuous painter of dark visions, Layla al-Attar, whom Saddam was rumored to love. (He would take for himself anything valued by others, and anyone.) She was killed in her house in 1993 by an American Cruise missile, which may have been meant for him.

Last month, almost as soon as I got to Baghdad, I went back to Al-Ghareeb. As I feared, it was closed. When Saddam banned spirits in Iraq in the mid-1990s, in a bloody fit of hypocritical Muslim piety, a lot of the spirit had left the bar. But there was a pile of rubble out front, as if it were being remodeled. The next morning I went back again and found the lanky gray-haired owner, architect Faisal Jaburi, sitting at the counter amid the construction dust, reading some of Baghdad’s many new newspapers.

What were his plans now that he was liberated?

“I cannot talk to you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because of what has happened.” He gestured around him, not at the inside of the restaurant but at Baghdad, at Iraq, at a calamity too enormous for his voice. We sat more or less in silence. “If you want to talk to artists there is a gallery,” he said at last. “A cafeteria. Everybody is there during the day.”

The drive across the city is long and hot at high noon. Traffic jams appear suddenly and senselessly, and the missing cops, the powerless stoplights, are only partly to blame. Some Iraqis have an instinct for gridlock, taking perverse pleasure in blocking intersections. And if an American patrol comes on the scene, trying to drive through in Humvees with heavy machine-guns and a platoon of infantry standing in the back of a truck, there’s a sudden wild sense of danger. The soldiers draw their pistols and train them on every car around. Wherever the troops appear, they know they’re targets, so everyone around them is targeted.

We were half lucky. We got to the Hewar Gallery behind the old Academy of Fine Arts the day a show opened. But there was no electricity to light the exhibits. In the shadows the owner, a painter named Qasim Alsabti with a mane of graying hair and a poliomyelitic limp, said many of the best works were ones that had been looted from the Saddam Center, which had served as Baghdad’s museum of modern art. Unlike the international furor that surrounded the looting of Sumerian and Babylonian antiquities from the Iraqi National Museum, the devastation of Iraq’s contemporary culture went unnoticed by the rest of the world.

“I heard from many friends that I could find these works in Al-Midan” – the looters’ market in the middle of town—“a place full of drunks, full of thieves,” said Alsabti. “I went to the area, this dirty area, looking for the works, and I paid the thieves, but of course not the real price.” He smiled, proud of what he’d salvaged. “Sometimes they show me things I know were from the Saddam Center, but …” He shook his head. “I buy only the good stuff. This museum, sometimes they bought rubbish from the Ba’ath Party people. I don’t pay for that.”

The lights came back on briefly. The fans worked briefly. Alsabti walked me through the show quickly.

“I decided to exhibit the stolen works with new works by the same artists to give the message to the Americans, the message that we are alive,” said Alsabti. “And we are not thieves like on TV. We are people of art and culture.” But no, he said, nobody from the Coalition Provisional Authority had been to visit. They had not seen the dark abstractions with only the faintest flash of color; the Giacommetti-like bronzes; the brooding, distorted figures by Iraq’s modern masters, Ali Talib and Ismail Fatah.

We finished the tour and continued our conversation over Pepsis in the gallery garden, where we were surrounded by artists and writers who chain-smoked and joked and argued and fluttered folded newspapers to fan up faint breezes.

Alsabti was polite and hospitable, but he had to work at it with this stranger from the United States, a country he blamed for almost everything. “I have seen the American smile,” he said. “The foolish American smile that I see always on the faces of American soldiers inviting the thieves to enter our places of culture.”

I said I didn’t believe for a minute that Americans approved the looting of the Iraqi National Museum or the Saddam Center. Maybe the soldiers were just trying to be friendly, I said, or were simply bewildered.

Alsabti shrugged. “They invade all the details of life,” he said. “They try to change the soul, the minds, the brain. But there is a long distance between Iraqi civilization – I mean the meaning of this civilization that goes back to Ur, to Sumer, to Babylon, 5,000 years – and 200 years of American life. That is not civilization. That is not even history. I know who my grandfathers were for 1,000 years, and what they did. An American doesn’t know who his father is.”

Alsabti could no more contain this anger than he could stop the sweat coming out of his pores. “They are interested in the meaning of money, we are interested in the meaning of our soul. They are not interested in art and culture, they are interested in petrol and the economy. When an American baby is born and is at his mother’s breast, she doesn’t sing to him, she talks about money.”

The looting and thievery, they were all part of the same picture in Alsabti’s dark eyes. His English failed him as he got more emotional. “It is part of a plan to steal our soul to… to …” Alsabti turned to some bystanders for translation. “To cut off our dicks,” said one. “To castrate us,” said another.

There it was, the emotion that reigns not only in the world of Iraqi artists, but in the mean streets where American soldiers are shot almost every day. No matter how Iraqis felt about Saddam, they have not felt the invasion, the defeat, and the occupation as a liberation, but as an emasculation. The sense of catastrophe is all around them, I realized, and also inside them.

I wished that I could talk to Jabra Ibrahim Jabra about all this. An elegant, Anglophile Palestinian author who translated Shakespeare into Arabic, he lived in Baghdad from 1948 until his death in 1994 at the age of 75, and I used to go see him whenever I visited. His take on Arab art and politics was ironic, passionate, often funny, and sometimes wonderfully surprising.

It was Jabra, for instance, who explained how important T.S. Eliot and “The Wasteland” had been to Arab writers. For Eliot, the poem’s sense of cosmic catastrophe grew out of the wholesale slaughter of World War I, while drawing on ancient Middle Eastern myths about the restoration of fertility to the dead land through the blood of the god. When Eliot’s poetry was at last discovered by the Arabs, a generation after it was written, they had suffered not only the World Wars but “the Palestinian debacle and its aftermath,” as Jabra put it. Through Eliot they rediscovered in a new light their own 5,000-year-old legends. “A whole order of things had crumbled, and the theme of the sterile ‘cracked earth’ thirsty for rain seemed most insistent of all,” said Jabra. There was even, in Arab eyes, a coda for salvation in the description of “what the thunder said” that Eliot drew from the Upanishads: Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata –Give, Sympathize, Control. “Love and sacrifice shall bring fertility to the land,” said Jabra, “though they may both come in lightning and thunder.”

In Iraq today, after the awesome shock of invasion and occupation, “give, sympathize, control” is certainly a better formula for peace and justice than the speeches we hear from the Coalition Provisional Authority about democracy and free markets. But, then, those speeches are for a self-satisfied audience in the United States, not an emasculated one in Iraq. And as you drive through the 120-degree streets, bracing against sandstorms, and watching American soldiers train their guns on the cars and crowd around them, it’s another famous line from “The Wasteland” that comes to mind: “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

Al Jazeera English Panel: America's War on Terror

Talking with Marwan Bishara and his guests in all four segments about the law enforcement paradigm, occupation, torture, Abu Ghraib, and where all this has left us in the fight against terrorism:

Newsweek-YouTube: Merchandising Racism

Some of the ten video journal segments that accompanied the Newsweek cover story on "The End of the South" that ran earlier this month.

Spartanburg Herald: Reporting on the Reporting

Spartanburg voices in magazine piece

Newsweek: Article focuses on race and politics in the South

By Rachel E. Leonard
rachel.leonard@shj.com

Published: Saturday, August 9, 2008 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, August 9, 2008 at 7:20 a.m.

Newsweek reporter Chris Dickey didn't set off to visit Spartanburg as he embarked on a four-state journey to examine Southerners' feelings and opinions about race and the upcoming presidential election.

He ended up here anyway, by chance and through contact with friend John Lane, a Wofford College professor. Now two of his experiences here - an interview with a waitress in Spartanburg and a visit to a Hispanic family in Una - are featured in this week's cover story, "The End of the South."

In the article and in an online video clip, Gerhard's Cafe waitress Shana Sprouse explains she's voting for Barack Obama, among other reasons, because she's impressed with his health care plan. Sprouse says her 26-year-old boyfriend has been diagnosed with cancer and the couple has spent two years trying to find ways to pay for his treatment. ... (more)

External Links:

• Watch Newsweek's video shot at Gerhard's in Spartanburg

More Appearances Talking About the South

C-Span, Washington Journal:
http://www.c-span.org/video_rss.aspx?MediaID=37580

Christopher Dickey, Paris Bureau Chief at Newsweek discusses the impending nomination of Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and its potential political and social effect on the old Confederate South. Washington, DC : 32 min.



NPR's On Point News Roundtable:
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/08/week-in-the-news-2/?autostart=true

Friday, August 8, 2008 at 10:00 AM EDT

Week in the News

President Bush criticized China's human rights record during a speech in Bangkok, Thailand on August 7, 2008. (Photo: Chris Greenber)

Post your comments below

A week of big starts — and finishes. It’s 8–8–08, and in Beijing, at 8:08 p.m. local time, the Olympic opening ceremonies got underway. President Bush is there, his words on human rights still hanging in the air.

Back home, the trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver ends with a split verdict and light sentence. The FBI says the anthrax case is solved. On the campaign trail, McCain and Obama get feisty on energy, and the Veepstakes go into overdrive. Iraq’s elections are in doubt. Musharaff faces impeachment.

This hour, On Point: our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. What’s moving your world this week? China and the Olympics? Obama and McCain? The anthrax case? Tell us what you think.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

* * *

Guests:

Shai Oster, Beijing correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He joins us from the site of the 2008 Olympic Games.

Christopher Dickey, Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor for Newsweek. His cover story in this week’s issue is “The End of the South: How Obama vs. McCain is Unsettling the Old Confederacy.”

Bill McKenzie, editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News.

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

NPR: Here and Now - On the South

Christopher Dickey and the American South
Newsweek's Christopher Dickey returns to his roots in the American South to gauge the mood ahead of the presidential election. Dickey says emotions are raw in the region because the candidacy of Barack Obama has stirred up the ghosts of the racial strife that has marked the South for decades.

	Listen
	Read the story and view photos and video

NBC Nightly News: Rediscovering the South

NBC Nightly News did a segment tied to my Newsweek cover story about the South using footage shot by Lee Wang for the accompanying video blogs.

And this is the link to a 30-minute interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93305841

Securing the City - Due out February 2009

After a year and a half of work, I am pleased to report that I have finished the manuscript for "Securing the City," due to be published by Simon & Schuster in February.

The Great (Hoffman-Sageman) Debate

The Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism

Why Osama bin Laden Still Matters

Bruce Hoffman

From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008

Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-first Century. Marc Sageman. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, 208 pp. $24.95.

Summary: Marc Sageman claims that al Qaeda's leadership is finished and today's terrorist threat comes primarily from below. But the terrorist elites are alive and well, and ignoring the threat they pose will have disastrous consequences.

... (full text)

Iraq: The Endless Occupation

An important article by Patrick Cockburn in the Independent:

Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors

By Patrick Cockburn
Thursday, 5 June 2008

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.

America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.

The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.

The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: "This is just a tactical subterfuge." Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its "war on terror" in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.

Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called "strategic alliance" without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create "a permanent occupation". He added: "The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans."

Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.

The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.... (more)

Some background from Shadowland two years ago:

The Rule of Order 17

An American agreement puts a motley array of foreigners above the law in Iraq. It’s time to take away their license to kill—and to stop treating Maliki’s new government as a servant.

Christopher Dickey

Newsweek Web Exclusive

29 June 2006

It’s just two years ago this week—two very long years—that President George W. Bush’s handpicked proconsul cut and ran out of Iraq. Instead of a grand ceremony handing over something called “sovereignty” to the U.S.-appointed government of Ayad Allawi, there was a low-key, almost secretive handshake and a very quick set of brief remarks before Paul Bremer jumped on a plane and got the hell out. He didn’t want to attract too much attention, or mortar shells from the growing insurgency.

It was an extraordinary moment, fraught with the arrogant hyperbole and arrant hypocrisy that has characterized this adventure all along. According to Bremer, the idea for the stealth ceremony before the announced date came from President George W. Bush, via Condoleezza Rice, who was then his national-security adviser. She’s quoted in Bremer’s book, “My Year in Iraq,” saying, “The president is trying to ‘wrong foot’ the opposition by doing the transfer of sovereignty a couple of days early.” Bremer agreed to this bright idea but worried that it would “look as if we are scuttling out of here, Condi.” There would have to be “several days of relative calm” beforehand. In the event, he settled for several hours. When Bremer landed in Jordan, he called his wife. “I’m safe and free,” he told her. Which was more than he could say for Iraq.

What Bremer did not mention in his book is a document—Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 17—that he signed on June 27, 2004, just one day before he scuttled out of there, that continues to set the ground rules for the American occupation of Iraq. It is not a “Status of Forces Agreement” (SOFA) like the ones we have with our NATO allies or Japan or other countries where U.S. forces might be based. Those have to be negotiated, and the talks are tough, because truly sovereign countries think sovereignty truly is important. They never like the idea that American soldiers who commit crimes on their territory are not subject to their laws.

But Order 17 was not negotiated with the Iraqis, it was promulgated by the Americans, and it’s purely of the people, by the people and for the people that the United States brought into Iraq. Under its provisions, they are exempt from Iraqi laws, cannot be arrested, prosecuted, tried or taxed. Nor do they have to pay rent for the buildings and land they turn into bases. Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who served in Baghdad immediately after the invasion and subsequently negotiated military agreements with other countries before leaving the State Department in 2004, describes what Bremer pulled off as “a SOFA on steroids.” It’s all about what the Americans get to do, and what the Iraqis get to do for them...(more)

Talking Terror

The Brian Lehrer Show with the NYPD's Richard Falkenrath last year. Useful background on the report "Radicalization in the West" and the question of "homegrown terror."

Don't Give Me That Ol' Time Religion

The New Face of Islam
A critique of radicalism is building within the heart of the Muslim world.

And there is so much more to say. Please do comment and suggest other links. Here are a few that may be of interest:

Using Comics to Turn Off Terror

Muslims Turning a Page on Rage?

The Unraveling

The Rebellion Within

Al Qaeda is losing the war of minds

Moderating Immoderation at the WEF in Sharm

Recent Work

Shadowland: Bush’s 10 Commandments 20 May 2008
The U.S. president's latest pronouncements on Iran and the Arab world generated doom and gloom on his Mideast tour.

Shadowland: Slaughterhouse Beirut 13 May 2008
Lebanon's chances for meaningful reconstruction are diminishing by the day. And despite Bush's bravado, it's going to be the same in Iraq.

Newsweek Online: Bombs in the Basement 7 May 2008
Remembering a Civil War relic hunter who survived.

Shadowland: Terrorist Triage 6 May 2008
Why are the presidential candidates—and so many counterterrorism experts—afraid to say that the Al Qaeda threat is overrated?

Shadowland: Bluff and Bloodshed 1 May 2008
The Persian Gulf is more dangerous than ever. Will the U.S. and Iran go to war at sea?

Newsweek: The French Revolution 5 May 2008
Sarkozy attempts to transform the West's military alliances.

Newsweek: Snapshots of Horror 28 April 2008
The curiously human side of the inhumanity that was Abu Ghraib.

Newsweek: Welcome to Paradise 21 April 2008
Oil revenue has made the desert—and plenty of other places—bloom with unexpected treasures for the tourist. Enter if you dare.

Shadowland: 'Jihadi Cool' 15 April 2008
Comic book action heroes may be better weapons against terror than bullets or bombs. (For more graphics and trailers, visit www.the99.org)

Web Exclusive: Italian Politics as Unusual 15 April 2008
Berlusconi wins by a landslide. Why Italy may never be quite the same again. (Written with Jacopo Barigazzi)