Debunked NYPD Radicalization Report Just Won’t Die
By Mike German | ACLU | February 11, 2013
Like a villain in a horror movie, the widely debunked concept of terrorist “radicalization” is once again raised from the grave by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in its 2013 report, “American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat.” CRS is an influential legislative branch agency charged with providing objective policy analysis for members of Congress, which makes its continued reliance on the “radicalization” model promoted in a now-discredited 2007 New York Police Department report, “Radicalization in the West,” particularly troublesome.
The NYPD report purported to describe the process that drives previously “unremarkable” people to become terrorists. According to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s preface, the document was intended to “to assist policymakers and law enforcement officials, both in Washington and throughout the country by providing a thorough understanding of the kind of threat we face domestically.” It theorized a simple four-step process starting with the adoption of a particular set of beliefs to becoming a terrorist, though it strangely conceded that not all terrorists need to go through all, or any of these steps, and that people who did go through the steps would not necessarily become terrorists – though that didn’t mean they weren’t dangerous. Confused? It gets worse.
The report only examined terrorist acts committed by Muslims, and essentially suggested that all Muslims were potential terrorists that needed to be watched, stating that “[e]nclaves of ethnic populations that are largely Muslim often serve as ‘ideological sanctuaries’ for the seeds of radical thought.” It posited a profile of potential terrorist “candidates” so broad that it’s no profile at all: within these “Muslim enclaves,” potential terrorists could range from members of middle class families to “successful college students, the unemployed, the second and third generation, new immigrants, petty criminals, and prison parolees.” In other words: anyone and everyone. It identified “radicalization incubators,” including mosques, as well as “cafes, cab driver hangouts, flophouses, prisons, student associations, nongovernmental organizations, hookah (water pipe) bars, butcher shops and book stores.” In other words: any place and every place. Commonplace activities for Muslim-Americans, like wearing Islamic clothing, growing a beard, abstaining from alcohol and joining advocacy organizations or community groups were all listed as potential indicators of radicalization. In other words: any kind of behavior and all kinds of behavior.
If it sounds like the report’s description of potential terrorists is so overbroad it could include entire Muslim-American communities, this does not appear to be accidental. Indeed, the report provided the ideological foundation for the NYPD Intelligence Division’s program of mass surveillance of Muslim communities throughout the Northeast. Not surprisingly, this poorly focused program “never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation,” according to the Associated Press, which received a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the NYPD’s program.
The NYPD radicalization report was quickly denounced by advocacy and academic organizations for its overstated and flawed facts and serious methodological errors. The NYPD responded by inserting a “Statement of Clarification” in 2009 that made this remarkable claim:
“…this report was not intended to be policy prescriptive for law enforcement. In all of its dealings with Federal, State and Local authorities, the NYPD continues to underscore this important point.”
What? In addition to completely contradicting its own preface, the disclaimer refutes the entire purpose of the report. If a police terrorist study isn’t intended to impact police counterterrorism policy, what is it for? Is it just a thought experiment?
Yet, despite all we know of the admitted shortcomings of the NYPD report, the CRS continues to cling to its model of radicalization, suggesting that individuals can become terrorists “by radicalizing and then adopting violence as a tactic.” This concept, that the adoption of a particular belief set is a precursor to violent action is refuted in empirical studies of actual terrorists, like one from RAND, which concludes that an individual’s decision to engage in terrorist violence is a complex one involving a matrix of different environmental and individual factors, no one element of which is necessary nor sufficient in every case (see its “Factor Tree for Root Causes of Terrorism” above, which looks a whole lot more complex than the NYPD’s four-step process).
In addition to being factually wrong, this radicalization concept is also dangerous, because, as the CRS report points out, adopting beliefs and associating with like-minded people is First Amendment-protected activity. But if counterterrorism officials believe that adopting radical beliefs are a necessary first stage to terrorism, they will obviously target belief communities and activists with their enforcement measures, as they often do. The CRS report highlights the NYPD radicalization theory, and while it acknowledges the criticism of the NYPD report it continues to hew closely to the model of radicalization it promotes. This is particularly true in its discussion of the appropriate law enforcement response to radicalization, in which it describes the “major challenge” as determining “how quickly and at what point individuals move from radicalized beliefs to violence.” The faulty assumption that radical thoughts lead to violence drives many of the inappropriate law enforcement actions against Muslim-American communities and political activists that, like the NYPD surveillance program, violate civil rights but don’t actually improve security.
It is long past time to euthanize this erroneous and dangerous theory, as many terrorism researches are already suggesting. Moreover, a more recent study from the Triangle Center of North Carolina suggests that recent data reflects a small and declining threat from Muslim-American terrorists, not the “uptick” that CRS reports. And West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center issued a revealing study indicating that far-right extremists have engaged in more comparatively violent activity over the last twenty years, which the FBI and policy makers have failed to recognize. Effective counterterrorism policies can’t be made from flawed theories and analysis. It is time that CRS heeds the NYPD’s recommendation that its radicalization report not be used to drive policy.
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THE BIN LADEN DELUSION CONTINUES…
By Damian Lataan | February 12, 2013
The Osama bin Laden propaganda saga has been added to recently with the release of a film (as I said there would be), Zero Dark Thirty, and then, even more recently, by the man who, according to Esquire’s latest long-winded article, is said to have actually ‘killed’ bin Laden, an anonymous SEAL operative who says he fired the fatal shots that supposedly put an end to the life of the West’s best known nemesis. (The UK Daily Telegraph runs a précis of the story here.) Readers, however, are likely to find any one of Ian Fleming’s James Bond stories far more believable than anything the SEAL operative has to say.
The story is simply just another embellishment of the myth that bin Laden, who was accused of planning and carrying out the events of 9/11, finally got his comeuppance at the hands of America’s finest in Abbottabad on 2 May 2011.
The one problem with the entire Osama bin Laden death story and the whole industry that seems to have mushroomed around it is that there is not a single shred of evidence whatsoever to support any of the claims made about his death. All we have is the word of a government and a compliant media and entertainment industry that the world knows is given to deliberately lying and fantasizing.
The reality is far more prosaic; bin Laden has been dead for years and probably died simply of ill-health in 2001.
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FBI ‘Stops’ Yet Another Of Its Own Terrorist Threats
TechDirt | February 8, 2013
Well, there they go again. We’ve talked a bunch about how the FBI has gotten really good at stopping its own terrorist plots and they’ve gone and done it again. Right here in the San Francisco Bay Area, the FBI has gleefully announced how they’ve stopped an attempt to bomb a Bank of America building in Oakland. The details are familiar: random guy with no actual connection to terrorists, and no actual way to build a connection with terrorists, is taken in by an FBI undercover agent who works with him to build a “bomb” that was never a bomb. In other words, there was no plot. There was no bomb. There was just a bunch of undercover agents playing dressup, and one Joe Schmo who thought it was all real. Maybe next time, the FBI can turn it into a reality TV show on Spike. Ralph Garmin as… a fake terrorist. I’d watch it.
This all comes just a week after On the Media profiled a new book called Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War On Terrorism. That book appears to collect a bunch of these stories, talking about how this is a major effort in the FBI these days: making up fake terrorist plots in order to stop people they themselves convinced to take part in the “plots” and then generate big headlines around them:
The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terror shows how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the bureau can then claim victory in the war on terror.
Think of just how many resources are wasted in entrapping random people, rather than stopping real crime. I don’t see how this makes us any safer at all. Frankly, it makes me a lot more terrified.
Abe Lincoln, Racist Fascist?
By MICHAEL DICKINSON | CounterPunch | February 9, 2013
I’m going to the cinema tonight in Istanbul to see Steven Spielberg’s biopic, ‘Lincoln’. The other choices of films in English this week are ‘Django Unchained’ and ‘Zero Dark Thirty’. I’ll catch them later. I’m not expecting much from ‘Lincoln’ apart from some excellent performances and great camera-work. From what I’ve heard, we’re presented with the standard loveable father figure that Americans are indoctrinated from childhood to believe in – the sanctified image of the simple country lawyer from Illinois who heroically defended his country and freed the slaves – not the unscrupulous fascist that he really was.
The fact of the matter is that ‘Massa Lincoln’ was a die-hard racist. When he said “all men are created equal” he meant all WHITE men.
This quotation from a speech he made in Charleston in 1858 shows how he really felt:
“I am not now, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of the white and black races. I am not now nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor of intermarriages with white people. There is a physical difference between the white and the black races which will forever forbid the two races living together on social or political equality. There must be a position of superior and inferior, and I am in favor of assigning the superior position to the white man.”
Over and over again he stated that he was opposed to equality of the races. He was not an abolitionist, he denigrated and distanced himself from them. In 1862 in a letter to the New York Tribune Editor he wrote:
“If I could save the union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race I do because I believe it helps to save the union.”
And in the same year, addressing a meeting of freed black leaders at the White House, Lincoln said:
“But for your race among us there could not be a war, although many men on either side do not care for you one way or another. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. It is better for us both to be separated.”
Not only was Lincoln a racist who supported the noxious pre-Civil War “Black Laws,” which stripped African-Americans of their basic rights in his native Illinois, as well as the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled the return to their masters of those who had escaped to free soil in the North, he was a white-supremacist whose projected plan for dealing with racial problems was ‘colonization’ – the deportation of all American blacks to Africa, Haiti, or Central America – anywhere but the United States, which would be for whites only. If Lincoln had had his way there would be no black people in America today.
The idea of deporting the blacks from the country was that of his fellow-fascist friend Henry Clay, upon whose plan, ‘The American System’, or ‘Everyone for Himself at the Expense of his Neighbour!, the Lincoln regime had been built – consolidating massive power in the hands of a small cabal of manufacturers, bankers, and politicians at the expense of the rest of society, and which called for a regimen of high tariffs, federal support for “internal improvements” such as road building and railroads, corporate welfare, and a national banking system based on fiat money. ‘Honest Abe’ eulogized Clay as “the beau ideal of a statesman,” noting that: “During my whole political life, I loved and revered [Clay] as a teacher and leader.”
In fact, despite President Obama’s reverence for Lincoln as the ‘Great Emancipator’, it doesn’t take much research to uncover him as he really was – a political opportunist, a corrupt corporate insider and a lifelong mercantilist.
Lincoln ruled over an oppressive police state under which a military draft was implemented; income tax was introduced for the first time to help finance a Civil War that killed 620,000 young men; dissenters were imprisoned without trial; ‘habeus corpus’ was suspended in some regions; and legal documents were authored which paved the way for corporations to becoming recognized as the equivalents of “legal persons.”
Before his career as a politician Abraham Lincoln had served as a corporate attorney for some of the biggest interests in Illinois, including “Big Rail”- the prevailing corporate interests of his day, a governmental pie of railroad subsidies in which all the big Republican Party Cats had their fingers. As president he championed protectionism and corporate welfare schemes where the force of law was used to benefit a select group of politicians and their cronies, signing legislation that virtually gave away miles of public land to the railroads for free. His son, Robert Todd Lincoln, went on to a successful career as the president of the Pullman Car Company.
It’s no secret that President Obama is a big fan of ‘Honest Abe’. He made the announcement that he was running for president in Springfield, Illinois, on the steps of the Old Capitol, where Lincoln was a legislator; he traveled to Washington by retracing the final stages of the train trip Lincoln made to assume his presidency; the Bible last used for Lincoln’s oath of office was used for his swearing-in; the theme of his inauguration was taken from a line in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “A New Birth of Freedom”.
Lerone Bennett Jr, executive editor of popular black-oriented Ebony magazine describes the whitewashing of Abraham Lincoln as “one of the most extraordinary efforts I know to hide a whole man and a whole history, particularly when that man is one of the most celebrated men in American history.”
How can Obama support such a charlatan racist as his role model? Is it because he exists in a political environment largely inherited from the Lincoln era where enriching oneself and one’s friends while hiding behind a smokescreen of “humanitarian” propaganda is the norm – a government of the poor by the rich and for the rich?
Although he has never been really poor in his own life himself, in his autobiography an admiring Obama wrote: “In Lincoln’s rise from poverty, his ultimate mastery of language and law, his capacity to overcome personal loss and remain determined in the face of repeated defeat – in all this, he reminds me of my own struggles. I find him a very wise man. There is a wisdom there and a humility about his approach to government, even before he was president, that I just find very helpful.”
But what would Lincoln have thought about the idea of a black man as the president of the United States of America? Most likely he would have been astounded – and appalled.
Michael Dickinson can be contacted at his website – http://yabanji.tripod.com/
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Pentagon study questions efficiency of US missile system in Europe
Press TV – February 9, 2013
Secret Pentagon studies have cast serious doubt on the effectiveness of the US-planned multi-billion-dollar missile system in Europe, congressional investigators say.
The classified studies by the Missile Defense Agency were summarized in a briefing for lawmakers by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional nonpartisan investigative body.
The GAO investigators said the briefing cast serious doubt on whether the system is capable of protecting Europe and US interests against potential missile attacks.
So far, the US has signed agreements for launching the missile system in Poland, Romania and Turkey.
The GAO briefing concluded that Romania was a poor location for an interceptor to protect the US interests.
The studies also expressed other concerns about the missile system, including production glitches, cost overruns as well as problems with radars and sensors that cannot distinguish between warheads and other objects.
Although military officials say the problems of the system can be overcome with difficulty, the governmental and scientific reports have expressed doubt on whether the system would ever work as planned.
While the Pentagon has embarked on giant budget cuts, the study is expected to prompt the Congress to reconsider the continuation of the multi-billion-dollar plan.
Republican lawmaker Michael Turner, who requested the GAO study, said the missile system might be useless, adding, “This report really confirms what I have said all along: that this was a hurried proposal by the president.”
The US plan for a missile system in Europe has been a bone of contention since former President George W. Bush’s tenure.
One the one hand, American critics said the plan was rushed and based on unproven technology. Russia, on the other hand, expressed concern that the plan sought to counter Russian missiles and undermine its nuclear deterrent power.
In his latest article on non-proliferation, the Executive Director of the US Arms Control Association Daryl Kimball urged the White House to delay plans for developing its missile interceptors in Europe as they merely prompt Russia to resist further cuts in its nuclear stockpile.
Corruption Charges Shake the Venezuelan Opposition
By Chris Carlson | Venezuelanalysis | February 7th, 2013
Punto Fijo – In a heated debate before the National Assembly on Tuesday, several politicians from opposition political party Primero Justicia were accused of corruption, and one opposition legislator broke ranks with the opposition coalition.
President of the National Assembly Diosdado Cabello had warned earlier in the week that he would be presenting evidence of corruption on the part of the right-wing party Primero Justicia (Justice First) before the Assembly.
On Tuesday, he offered various pieces of evidence that showed that Primero Justicia had received more than BsF. 491 million (US$ 114 million) in undeclared funding from private sources between 2009 and 2011.
The evidence consisted of checks from various private Venezuelan firms made out to Richard Mardo, opposition legislator and candidate for governor of Aragua in last December’s state elections, as well as a recorded telephone call of Miranda Governor Henrique Caprlies’s father discussing campaign financing.
Evidence was also given against opposition legislator Gustavo Marcano for presumably transferring funds to members of Primero Justicia during his term as mayor of the eastern city of Lecheria.
All of the accusations were against members of Primero Justicia, the party of opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
The party has a history of corruption allegations, famously accused of receiving funds from Venezuela’s oil company before Chavez took power, and recently being accused of illegal campaign financing during last year’s presidential campaign when hidden cameras caught a meeting between a party official and a private businessman.
“This party is a mafia organization that uses politics as a way of doing business. This is what they really are, but they want to present another image to the public,” said Cabello.
Pro-Chavez legislators said they would be presenting formal charges against both Richard Mardo and Gustavo Marcano of Primero Justicia, and requested that they be placed under house arrest until the investigations are carried out. Officials later added Henrique Capriles, Julio Borges and Carlos Ocariz to the list of those to be investigated.
The accusations created an uproar on the floor of the assembly, with both opposition and pro-government legislators shouting insults and accusations, and leading one legislator to break away from the opposition and join the pro-Chavez coalition.
Opposition legislator Hernán Núñez criticized the opposition Democratic Unity (MUD) coalition of parties and called for the corruption charges to be investigated.
“I’m breaking ties with a coalition that isn’t united or democratic. It’s a coalition of four parties that get together and rob the hope of the Venezuelan people,” said Núñez amidst the cheers of the pro-Chavez legislators.
Opposition leaders assured that the accusations were simply a “show” put on by the government to try to weaken the opposition, and that the politicians who have recently broken ranks with the opposition were “bought off” by the government.
At a press conference on Wednesday morning, Mardo used newspaper clippings to show the various activities to which the funds had gone, claiming they were used for charitable activities like food purchases for poor families, and the repairing of a sports facility.
However, pro-Chavez commentators pointed out that newspaper clippings were not sufficient proof for how the funds were spent, nor could they justify the fact that the funds were not declared for tax or campaign purposes.
But opposition leaders and analysts insist that the government accusations against Primero Justicia are part of a larger plan to demoralize and weaken the opposition before an imminent election later this year if Hugo Chavez is unable to return to the presidency.
Henrique Capriles, who would most likely be the opposition candidate in any presidential election, insisted the charges were actually aimed at him.
“Don’t anyone be mistaken…Here what they want is to come after me, and to demoralize you all. But we won’t kneel before anyone!” said Capriles.
Opposition analyst Luis Vicente León argued that the accusations are a way for the government to make up for a growing “power vacuum”.
“The government is trying to terrorize its adversaries in order to minimize them and send a strong message that there is no power vacuum, and that they can be even stronger and harder than before,” said León.
However, pro-Chavez analysts claim the events have more to do with ruptures within the opposition coalition as the opposition parties attempt to remain united behind Henrique Capriles.
“The events in the National Assembly show that there exists a conflictive situation inside the opposition,” said pro-Chavez analyst Farith Faija, claiming that some parties in the coalition were critical of Capriles’ “abandonment of the state governor candidates in December, the raw corruption in the core of the opposition coalition, and the fact that it isn’t unified or democratic.”
Hernán Núñez gave similar reasons for his rupture with the opposition coalition, accusing Capriles of abandoning the rest of the opposition’s state governor candidates, and not being “sincere” with the Venezuelan people.
Authorities said a legislative committee will investigate the corruption charges and present a report in less than a month. No announcement was made on whether the legislators would be placed under house arrest during this time.
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Iran’s “rejection of talks” with the US
Iran Affairs | February 08, 2013
The media are full of reports about how Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatullah Khamenei has ‘rejected talks’ with the US, trying to portray Iran as the unreasonably intransigent party in this standoff. But if you check the events just prior to this bit of news, you get a better sense of what actually happened:
JAN 31st 2013: Iran informs IAEA of plans to add 3,000 faster centrifuges to its main uranium enrichment facility
Feb 2: VP Joe Biden: “We have made it clear at the outset that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally with the Iranian leadership”
Feb 3: Iranian FM Salehi: “No red lines for talks”, “But we have to make sure … that the other side comes with authentic intentions with a fair and real intention to resolve the issue.”
Feb 6: Treasury Under Secretary David Cohen announces new sanctions on Iran to take effect.
Feb 7th: Iranian Supreme Leader: “You (US) should know that pressure and negotiations are not compatible and our nation will not be intimidated by these actions”
(Chronology by BibiJon)
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Left-leaning despisers of 9/11 Truth movement: Do you really believe in miracles?
David Ray Griffin | Global Research | 06 Jul 2010
An Open Letter to Terry Allen, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, David Corn, Chris Hayes, George Monbiot, Matthew Rothschild, and Matt Taibbi.
[1]According to several left-leaning critics of the 9/11 Truth Movement, some of its central claims, especially about the destruction of the World Trade Center, show its members to be scientifically challenged. In the opinion of some of these critics, moreover, claims made by members of this movement are sometimes unscientific in the strongest possible sense, implying an acceptance of magic and miracles. … Full article
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