Pages tagged terrorism:

Arundhati Roy: Mumbai was not India's 9/11 | World news | guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/12/mumbai-arundhati-roy

A sensible commentary on the state of India.
The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender. We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why they hate us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.
There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself. Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.
Why hasn't America been attacked since 9/11? - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine
http://www.slate.com/id/2208971/
An interactive inquiry about why America hasn't been attacked again. By Timothy NoahUpdated Friday, Feb. 27, 2009, at 8:59 AM ET
This is the first in a series of eight essays exploring why the United States suffered no follow-up terror attacks after 9/11.
The Sunday Leader Online
http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20090111/editorial-.htm
Leader Online
Striking editorial by murdered Sri Lankan journalist published posthumously.
An editorial by Lasantha Wickrematunge that was published after his assassination in which he spoke of...
No other profession calls on its practitioners to lay down their lives for their art save the armed forces and, in Sri Lanka, journalism. In the course of the past few years, the independent media have increasingly come under attack. Electronic and print-media institutions have been burnt, bombed, sealed and coerced. Countless journalists have been harassed, threatened and killed. It has been my honour to belong to all those categories and now especially the last.
US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites - The New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22530
An article by Mark Danner from The New York Review of Books, April 9, 2009
We think time and elections will cleanse our fallen world but they will not.
Mark Danner obtains Red Cross report on CIA Black Sites - US behavior toward detainees = "torture"
Mark Danner obtains confidential ICRC report on CIA torture.
the toread tag is becoming more aspirational all the time
10 years later, the real story behind Columbine - USATODAY.com
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-04-13-columbine-myths_N.htm
This is a unique story about Columbine that was basically the start of a new era and gave kids idea about killing that the shouldnt have
The real story?
John Goekler: The Most Dangerous Person in the World?
http://www.counterpunch.org/goekler03242009.html
I'm not sure if the argument is right; many people die from heart disease, but I don't think we can say that better diet and exercise would have prevented 100% of these deaths.
Bruce Perens - A Cyber-Attack on an American City
http://perens.com/works/articles/MorganHill/
good content - horrible design makes me not want to read it
by Bruce Perens
The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means - The New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22614
Manliness, heroes, & national character - a harrowing account of our own failures: http://tr.im/jII7 (Read 2 the end!) (via @jayrosen_nyu) [from http://twitter.com/CircleReader/statuses/1617944525]
New York Review of Books
2 of 2 essays by Mark Danner
NY Review of Books review referring to Feb 2007 Red Cross study on torture, referred to by Rahm Emanuel
Mark Danner NY Review of Books April 3009
Survey: Support for terror suspect torture differs among the faithful - CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/30/religion.torture/
More evidence that right-winger Christians are jerks and full of fear. If you're so faithful, how come you're scared?
The more Americans go to church, the more likely it is they support torturing suspected terrorists. http://bit.ly/YHDkV [from http://twitter.com/NickCobb/statuses/1685517486]
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
Enough said...
How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade - WSJ.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125200842406984303.html
Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks. The software's main advance is a user-friendly search tool that can scan multiple data sources at once, something previous search tools couldn't do.
Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks.
9/11 Pager data
http://911.wikileaks.org/
From 3AM on Wednesday November 25, 2009, until 3AM the following day (US east coast time), WikiLeaks is releasing over half a million US national text pager intercepts. The intercepts cover a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
"WikiLeaks is releasing over half a million US national text pager intercepts. The intercepts cover a 24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington. [...] Text pagers are usualy carried by persons operating in an official capacity. Messages in the archive range from Pentagon, FBI, FEMA and New York Police Department exchanges, to computers reporting faults at investment banks inside the World Trade Center"
Tweeting the terror: How social media reacted to Mumbai - CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/mumbai.twitter/
Article on 926 tweeting from CNN.
Interesting! how social media sites can be helpful (as well as harmful?) during a crisis...
Article suggests 6M Twitter users ...
Is aviation security mostly for show? - CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/2009/OPINION/12/29/schneier.air.travel.security.theater/index.html
Dear US government and TSA. This is reality, not TV. Please act accordingly not stupidly.
A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we're doing the terrorists' job for them.
“By not overreacting, by not responding to movie-plot threats, and by not becoming defensive, we demonstrate the resilience of our society, in our laws, our culture, our freedoms. There is a difference between indomitability and arrogant "bring 'em on" rhetoric. There's a difference between accepting the inherent risk that comes with a free and open society, and hyping the threats.”
Professor Schneier does it again. He puts into words what I've been thinking, much better than I could have done so.
Last week's attempted terror attack on an airplane heading from Amsterdam to Detroit has given rise to a bunch of familiar questions. How did the explosives get past security screening? What steps could be taken to avert similar attacks? Why wasn't there an air marshal on the flight? And, predictably, government officials have rushed to institute new safety measures to close holes in the system exposed by the incident. Reviewing what happened is important, but a lot of the discussion is off-base, a reflection of the fundamentally wrong conception most people have of terrorism and how to combat it.
Why No More 9/11s? (consolidated version for printout) - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine
http://slate.com/id/2213025
Amid the many uncertainties loosed by the al-Qaida attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, one forecast seemed beyond doubt: Islamist terrorists would strike the United States again—and soon.
Clear overview of the prevailing theories about why no major attacks have occurred since 9/11/01.
Schneier on Security: The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Terrorists
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/10/the_seven_habit.html
Most counterterrorism policies fail, not because of tactical problems, but because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates terrorists in the first place. If we're ever going to defeat terrorism, we need to understand what drives people to become terrorists in the first place.
"Conventional wisdom holds that terrorism is inherently political, and that people become terrorists for political reasons...Max Abrahms, a predoctoral fellow at Stanford, argues that this model is wrong, and discusses seven habits observed in terrorist groups that contradict the theory that terrorists are political maximizers...Abrahms has an alternative model to explain all this: People turn to terrorism for social solidarity."
Abrahms has an alternative model to explain all this: People turn to terrorism for social solidarity. He theorizes that people join terrorist organizations worldwide in order to be part of a community, much like the reason inner-city youths join gangs in the United States. The evidence supports this. [[Some of the comments are very intriguing as well. —Ed.]]
Most counterterrorism policies fail, not because of tactical problems, but because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates terrorists in the first place—by Bruce Schneier
Police delete London tourists' photos 'to prevent terrorism' | UK news | guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/16/police-delete-tourist-photos
Klaus Matzka and his teenage son Loris took several photographs of some of the city's sights, including the famous red double-decker buses… But the tourists have said they had to return home to Vienna without their holiday pictures after two policemen forced them to delete the photographs from their cameras in the name of preventing terrorism.
Austrian tourist who photographed bus and Tube stations says 'nasty incident' has put him off returning to London. By Matthew Weaver and Vikram Dodd, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 April 2009 12.53 BST
Austrian tourist who photographed bus and Tube stations says 'nasty incident' has put him off returning to London
Jenny Jones, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and a Green party member of the London assembly, said she would raise the incident with the Met chief, Sir Paul Stephenson, as part of discussions on the policing of the G20 protests. "This is another example of the police completely overreaching the anti-terrorism powers," she said. "They are using it in a totally inappropriate way. "I will be raising it with the commissioner. I have already written to him about the police taking away cameras and stopping people taking photographs and made the point that if it was not for people taking photos, we would not know about the death of Ian Tomlinson or the woman who was hit by a police officer." More out of control policing.
"Austrian tourist who photographed bus and Tube stations says 'nasty incident' has put him off returning to London." Sigh.
To prevent tourism?
A hidden world, growing beyond control | washingtonpost.com
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/
Questi sono alcuni dei risultati di un'inchiesta portata avanti per due anni dal Washington Post. Dice @riotta su twitter che non ci sono scoop, però.
Great piece of journalism from Washington Post: Top Secret America, A hidden world, growing beyond control. http://is.gd/dyx7L #Terrorism
Interesting.
The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.
A hidden world, growing beyond control | washingtonpost.com
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/
tl;dr Government is too big.
To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post. What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest -- and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities.
To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.
RT @redlog: RT @ananny Phenomenally good reporting from the Washington Post: "Top Secret America", http://bit.ly/9Ja5Fi
A hidden world, growing beyond control | washingtonpost.com
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/
invetigaciones especiales acerca del gob de EUA
tl;dr Government is too big.
To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post. What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest -- and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities.
To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.
RT @redlog: RT @ananny Phenomenally good reporting from the Washington Post: "Top Secret America", http://bit.ly/9Ja5Fi
A hidden world, growing beyond control | washingtonpost.com
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/
invetigaciones especiales acerca del gob de EUA
tl;dr Government is too big.
To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post. What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest -- and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities.
To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called "inherently government functions." But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.
RT @redlog: RT @ananny Phenomenally good reporting from the Washington Post: "Top Secret America", http://bit.ly/9Ja5Fi