In the run-up to the 9/11 anniversary, I reached out to experts who identified the ways terrorism evolves, fades, or dies—and under what conditions it succeeds.
The current spasm of international terrorism, an age-old tactic of warfare, is often traced to a bomb mailed from New York by the anti-Castro group El Poder Cubano, or Cuban Power, that exploded in a Havana post office, on January 9, 1968. Five people were seriously injured. Since then, almost four hundred thousand people have died in terrorist attacks worldwide, on airplanes and trains, in shopping malls, schools, embassies, cinemas, apartment blocks, government offices, and businesses, according to the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. The deadliest remains the 9/11 attack, sixteen years ago this week, which killed almost three thousand people—and in turn triggered a war that has become America’s longest.
I’ve covered dozens of these terrorist attacks on four continents over that half century. After the Barcelona attack and the U.S. decision to send more troops to fight the Taliban, I began to wonder how terrorism ends—or how militant groups evolve. In her landmark study of more than four hundred and fifty terrorist groups, Audrey Kurth Cronin found that the average life span of an extremist movement is about eight years. Cuban Power carried out several other bombings, but, in the end, it didn’t last a whole year.
I’ve also witnessed some transitions that I never thought would happen. I interviewed Yasir Arafat several times when the United States considered him a notorious terrorist. He was a paunchy man of diminutive height, a bit over five feet, with a vain streak. He always wore plain fatigues, crisply pressed, and a checkered kaffiyeh headdress to conceal his bald pate. He was linked, directly or indirectly, with airplane hijackings, bombings, hostage-takings, and more. Israel thought that Arafat was defeated after its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. I watched from the Beirut port as the chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization and his fighters sailed off to new headquarters in Tunisia, a continent twenty-five hundred miles, by land, from the frontlines. …
The Autocratic Element
Can America recover from the Trump administration?
Like many people, I’ve lately been preoccupied by the mayhem-makers of the radical right, and by those in power who abet their work. But even as Nazis were invading Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, I found myself worrying about a more subtle, but still substantially pernicious, manifestation of democratic decay. This is the apparently deathless attempt by certain rightist Republicans to bring Hillary Clinton to “justice,” a cause rationalized this way by one such Republican, a freshman congressman from Florida named Matt Gaetz: “Just because Hillary Clinton lost the election doesn’t mean we should forget or forgive conduct that is likely criminal.”
Let us lay aside the question of whether the charges of criminality leveled against Clinton are specious (they certainly seem to be) and focus instead on the novelty of Gaetz’s mission. The idea he is endorsing—if not on behalf of Donald Trump, then in the spirit of Donald Trump—is that the political party that wins power is duty-bound to hound to the point of actual prosecution the losing party.
This is un-American, and I mean that in a very specific way. I’ve spent much of my reporting career covering countries that are not ruled by law, and that do not venerate the democratic norms of restraint, moderation, forgiveness, and compromise. It is common for autocratic rulers, even those who took office through ostensibly democratic elections, to persecute the individuals and parties that they have vanquished, for reasons ranging from paranoia to simple vindictiveness. America, though, has been different. It is not uncommon in the U.S. for the losers to challenge the victories of the winners, and this is as it should be. But it is a dangerous innovation to use the instruments of state power to harass powerless, defeated political foes. The fractures that this sort of behavior causes are not easily healed. …
Why Robert Mueller May Have to Give Donald Trump Immunity
If the president fights a subpoena, the special prosecutor can make him a deal: Testify and it won’t be used against you (sort of).
The Trump-Russia Investigation has accelerated. Armed with more evidence, and assisted by many of the most talented prosecutors and investigators in the country, special counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., to investigate whether President Trump and his associates colluded with Russian operatives to win the White House.
The fact that a federal grand jury has been impaneled is a significant development by itself; prosecutors don’t ordinarily convene grand juries unless there is a compelling reason to do so. The grand jury probe has expanded to include whether Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey. And it is also reasonable to believe that Mueller’s team is presenting evidence to the grand jury relating to financial connections between Trump, the Trump Organization, and Trump’s business associates with Russia and Russian interests.
We have a fairly good picture of where the grand jury investigation will go. Although it is not known who all has been subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury, many of them have already made statements, and we can reasonably assume that many of them already have been interrogated by federal investigators. We do not know whether any of these individuals has sought immunity from prosecution, been granted immunity, and has given testimony. Also, the fact that investigators obtained a search warrant to search Paul Manafort’s home in July is quite significant. Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager and had the most far-reaching financial ties with the Ukraine and Russia. Prosecutors in order to obtain a warrant must demonstrate probable cause to believe that Manafort committed federal crimes.
But clearly the most critical witness of all, and a likely target of the investigation, is Trump himself. …
Why Every Terrible Person Thinks They’re A Hero
I want this phrase added to the American flag:
Put it in place of some of the stars or something. It’s important. It’s one of those things everyone knows, right up until it’s convenient to not know it. Hell, hating bad people doesn’t even necessarily get you closer to being a better person. The Klan hates ISIS, but we don’t count that as a point in their favor. Yet I’m pretty sure that most of what we consider being good in this culture is just having disdain for the right things.
What does this have to do with police shootings, Nazis, immigration, and most of the headlines you’ll see this year? And how does it tie into the best Keanu Reeves action franchise? Well, it comes down to how …
#6. We Hate Giving People Second Chances
This subject will be about five outrages old by the time this article goes up, but as I type this, the Trump administration just ended a government program for children whose parents entered America illegally. “DACA” basically allowed these young people to get jobs, pay taxes, go to school, and get driver licenses despite not being citizens. Ending the program means destroying the lives of about 800,000 people for a crime their parents committed. As one Republican congressman put it, “justice” means these people deserve to “live in the shadows.” After all, he said, they entered the country illegally. Not even years of productive, law-abiding living absolves them of that original sin.
Experts call it “John Wick morality” (or at least they should), named after the film series in which Keanu Reeves’ dog is killed by Russian mobsters, and in response he shoots 738 of them in the head. You wouldn’t think any real person considers that a reasonable moral code to live their life by, until you look at the comments under any article about a police shooting and see …
… or see entire comment sections full of people rooting for a guy who shot a car thief to death. The logic almost makes sense if you squint — if the victim hadn’t resisted (or suddenly moved their hands, or smoked weed, or failed to signal, or illegally crossed the border), they’d still be alive, therefore they have no one to blame but themselves.
That “no one to blame” phrasing is key. It implies that once someone breaks a rule, you can do whatever you want to them and you cannot be blamed. Listen for it, and you’ll hear somebody using this reasoning once a day, even if it’s just over stupid shit. Do you have some poor bastard in your social circle who’s gotten stuck with a demeaning nickname based on something they did when they were 13? If you want a famous example, try to find a single discussion about Richard Gere, anywhere, that doesn’t bring up the urban legend about him shoving a gerbil up his ass (a rumor that got started during the freaking Reagan administration).
Which means people had to devote actual conversation time
to the possible contents of this man’s asshole, rather than
mere tweets.
We need that one mortal sin which will let us revoke a person’s status as a human worthy of dignity, respect, empathy or anything else. It’s the proverbial John Wick’s Dog, the moral trump card. We cannot be accused of prejudice or pettiness as long as we’ve got a bloody JWD carcass to jiggle in response to critics.
How does this apply to you, a good person fighting the good fight? I’m getting to that. …
Company Town: ‘quiet tragedy’ of an Arkansas community vs the Kochs
A new film tells the story of Crossett, Arkansas – a small town dominated by a Koch brothers-owned paper mill, blamed for dumping cancer-causing chemicals.
Local pastor David Bouie in Company Town. Bouie is a key presence in the film.
The documentary Company Town opened in New York City on Friday night, for a short run at Cinema Village on East 12th Street. Introducing a sold-out screening, New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman said co-directors Natalie Kottke-Masocco and Erica Sardarian had captured one of the “quiet tragedies that are taking place all across America all the time”.
The film tells the story of Crossett, Arkansas, a small town dominated by a huge Georgia-Pacific paper mill owned by the Koch brothers, Charles and David, hugely influential Republican donors with a deeply contentious – activists would say appalling – record on the environment. People who live in Crossett blame the mill for the heedless dumping of cancer-causing chemicals they say pollutes drinking water and shortens already straitened lives.
“This is a story that never gets told,” Schneiderman said, “and it takes tremendous commitment to get to the quiet tragedies that are taking place all across America all the time.
“The environmental movement really has not done as good a job perhaps as we should have done carrying the essential message that people who are poor and without power are always on the front lines of pollution and environmental justice.”
Kottke-Masocco, who describes herself as “a documentary film-maker and an activist”, went to Crossett in 2011 to work on a section of Koch Brothers Exposed, a film by Robert Greenwald. Learning of attempts by local pastor David Bouie to hold the Kochs and Georgia-Pacific to account, she stayed on the story. With Cheryl Slavant, a local environmental activist and “riverkeeper”, Bouie is a key presence in the resulting movie. …
Major news networks are failing to explain that Hurricane Harvey was fueled by climate change
Media Miss
Scientists know what caused this, so why isn’t it being reported?
Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 storm that has laid waste to Barbuda and inundated Puerto Rico, is headed for Florida. The most powerful storm ever to descend on the Atlantic, Irma has produced winds so fierce some scientists have suggested it deserves a new classification — Category 6.
Will the major broadcast networks report on the role of climate change in shaping this storm? If Hurricane Harvey is any indication, the answer is ‘probably not.’ But by ignoring climate science, they are missing an opportunity to tell a great story.
Last week, Harvey tore through Texas, killing dozens of people and displacing more than a million. The National Weather Service described the storm as “beyond anything experienced.” The agency had to add new colors to its maps to portray the unprecedented volume of rainfall. Brock Long, the head of FEMA, said, “You could not dream this forecast up.”
Climate change is taking us to uncharted territory, fueling storms that were previously unimaginable. Warm water, humid air and rising seas conspired to make Harvey an uncommonly destructive storm. Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said that climate change “worsened the impact of Hurricane Harvey.” Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research told The Atlantic, “The human contribution can be up to 30% or so of the total rainfall coming out of the storm.” …
We’re all Equif*cked
Every company is a tech company, and that’s a big problem. Or rather, either every company is a tech company but most suck at it, or most aren’t tech companies but should be. Either way, we’re gonna have a bad time. Stock photo companies oughta be making more images of hackers because that cat burglar / hoodie dude behind a computer isn’t going to cut it when sh*t hits the fan on a weekly basis.
Somehow, no one seemed to realize that connecting the Internet to everything was a terrible idea despite also being a great idea. We built information super-highways…yay, great…but most businesses forgot the guardrails.
The Equifax disaster is just warning shot compared to what’s to come.
It used to be that getting hacked or breached meant you had to change all your passwords. Attackers hit tech-first companies that at least had a basic understanding of security, and a limited amount of your immutable personal information. The Yahoo breaches from 2014 and 2015 that impacted over 1 billion users were huge, but not nearly as harmful as what happens now.
Today, the hacks and breaches are hitting banking and credit companies, government databases, voting machines, and public utility infrastructure. That stolen data can’t always be changed, like your date of birth. Unless the government decides to reissue everyone a new social security number, once it’s stolen, it’s permanently vulnerable to exploitation. …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
Donald Trump issued his first presidential pardon to the last person who should get one. John Oliver discusses the troubling record of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.
THANKS to HBO and Last Week Tonight for making this program available on YouTube.
“My position is not anti-technology, it’s pro-conversation,” asserts Sherry Turkle the director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self in a short interview at the 2017 Aspen Ideas Festival. Turkle believes that technology is an important part of modern life, but also that people need time away from their phones to cultivate the best relationships with other people. She argues that there should be spaces in everyone’s home and life where there are no phones at all.
Max watching me and the birds. Than he enjoys some grapes.
Ed.More tomorrow? Probably. Possibly. Maybe. Not?