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Terrorist Recognition Handbook
Ben Rothke writes "There
are two types of writers about terrorism, experts such as Daniel Pipes and
Steven Emerson who write from a distance and others that write graphic tales
of first-hand from the trenches war stories.
Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for
Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, is unique in
that author Malcolm Nance is a 20-year veteran of the U.S. intelligence
community and writes from a first hand-perspective, but with the organization
and methodology of writers such as Pipes and
Emerson. Those combined traits
make the book extraordinarily valuable and perhaps the definitive text on terrorist recognition."
Read below for the rest of Ben's review
Terrorist Recognition Handbook: A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities, Second Edition
author
Malcolm Nance
pages
480
publisher
CRC
rating
10
reviewer
Ben Rothke
ISBN
978-1420071832
summary
Perhaps the definitive text on terrorist recognition.
You don't need any book to identify terrorists.
This appears to be a rather intelligent look at the issue, but the sad part is I have to wonder how many TSA employees are actually going to read it, especially at airports.
Not when there is a Towelie-ban!
*Ducks, runs for cover and watches his karma go up in smoke!*
This signature is lame.
I always thought that terrorists were anyone designated by the United States State Department, or Department of Fatherland Security as being opposed to US foreign policy.
im sure this will come in handy if any terrorists ever invade my mom's basement.
The only thing that guy's an expert on is hating Arabs and Muslims. He's a radical, bigoted putz. Fuck him.
Posting anonymously to avoid having to deal with all the Slashcons who will pile on to tell me that all the Mooslimes are TEH TERRORIZTS!
If they weigh the same as a duck....
A must-read for anyone concerned about the direction our nation is heading.
Here's an excerpt that's very relevant to the topic in question:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
We should be happy that a high percentage of Americans do not read books. There would be people who read this book, think they are an expert in terrorists and carry out the law in their own hands. People would shoot "suspected terrorists" because they showed characteristics that were defined in this book.
I'm sure if the TSA reads this it will be better for most people in general but it does not solve the core problem of terrorist. You catch or kill one and there is ten more to replace him.
Its like the problem with Vietnam for the US and Afghanistan for the Soviet. Sometimes you cannot win by force. Either it has to come to understand, negotiation, or at least putting them at arms length such as building a massive security wall like Israel.
Having military bases in these people's lands, other throwing legitimate governments for over 50 years, and backing unpopular dictators is what causes them to attack us. Not because we believe in freedom or a different religion. We stop messing with things over there and when we do that the common man who currently supports the terrorists and their Jihad will be more apathetic and the popular support base the terrorists enjoy now will go away.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
But now that Iraq is a terrorist training ground, it sounds like it'd be a good book for the Bush Administration to read. If only this were the kind of Administration that reads.
Catching a terrorist is like catching a hacker.
You never catch the good ones without an insane manhunt. Sometimes not even after that. All you are able to catch are the idiotic average high school level dorks who bloast their achievements in the Interwebz.
Academically correct? Yeah right... I wonder whether there's a single major proven argument in that film.
There are nuts out there that pretend both things to be the same, but Pipes surely isn't among them.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
...is that the TSA is 100% ineffective, because no government, regardless of how brutal they are to suspected terrorists, or how many secret police they employ, or how many phones they tap, can prevent one person from committing a terrorist act.
The only thing the TSA does is reduce the likelihood such an attack will occur on a plane. It's a huge waste of money that's simply a security blanket for the uninformed.
Attempting to judge someone by physical appearance or a quick observation of behavior is completely ineffective.
This book is the biggest load of cruft I've had the displeasure of pursuing in a long, long time.
Nearly a complete, waste of time and money and is more than likely bound to spark more than a few more uber-paranoid people locking themselves up in their trailer with a shotgun pointing out the window.
The only perks about this farce was the netural informational aspects such as how individual terrorists as well as terrorist groups and cells form, operate and work as well as the mind-set, cultural and historical information presented.
As a "guide" it's practically useless, as a source of information about the how and why terrorists operate and think, it IS fairly interesting.
Too bad that information is often available (in bits and pieces) via other sources on the net.
This signature is lame.
Terrorists are labeled by the party in power. Each country has its own 'terrorists'.
Terrorist: An agent of a sub-national group who uses premeditated, politically motivated violence against non-combatant targets
I would add "violence" or "physical harm" to that defition.
I am strongly opposed to many laws and the politics of many countries including the US. I have YET to use violence against any target, including civilians.
In my opinion war should be fought against the military and exclude civilians, if at all possible. I understand collateral damage, but I don't approve of it as just an excuse.
Belonging to my particular faith is seen by treason and/or terrorism by some governments.
This is how to spot a terrorist:
1) Look for clothing masking the face
2) Carries AK-47
3) Burns American flag
Now not every body described like this is a terrorist but be careful and vigilant.
Although 911 had a high death toll, groups like Al Qaeda couldn't possibly hope to match states when it comes to killing civilians. The Indonesian government used widespread terrorism against it's own people and those of East Timor with a death toll of several hundred thousand. Of course, today we are interested in not only the perpetrators of the terror, but those that support them. In the case of Indonesia under Suharto, the supporters were countries like the US and UK who supplied arms knowing full well what they were being used for.
Then of course there is the famous case of US support for terrorism in Nicaragua, for which the country was condemned by the World Court. The death toll was around 50,000. One of the things the US was condemned for in that case was the mining of Nicaraguan harbours, putting civilian shipping in danger. If Al Qaeda did the same thing, it would be immediately recognised as a terrorist act.
The interesting thing is there is no such thing as absolute security. Never has been and never will be. Hitler and Stalin tried it. Got them nowhere. Even now W. and his ppl are pushing the universal ID card for everyone, but will it stop Spies, Illegal aliens, or Terrorists? Nope. Interestingly, nearly all of the terrorists and spies are here legally, and the illegal aliens will buy docs that prove that they belong here (saw a few recently; they appear to be real docs; I am guessing that some federal employees are getting extra money).
Even with that said, it is important that some profiling take place. We have limited resources and must try to make the most of them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This is the same Pipes who advocated oversight of left leaning academics in case they poison their fragile students after 9/11? People to advocate such things are the truest enemies of the state. I saw him speak at my school, and he had to be hustled out of the room by his hosts after failing to respond to valid criticism of his borderline racist/fascist agenda.
I suspect the above poster, and the person he's quoting are not doctors.
Um...I have never claimed to be...and to the best of my knowledge, neither has Cory Doctorow.
Neither am I, for that matter...
So...what was your point, then?
but my wife went through several classes on statistics...
You're kidding, right?
their approach to statistics is not so simple as "accuracy" only. They have several different terms, all more or less seeming similar to the layman. I don't recall the words, but they more or less correlated to concepts such as:
False positive rate.
False negative rate.
Overall rate of accurate test.
Your objection does not invalidate the argument in my OP, it only strengthens it. The other concepts you listed do not mitigate the problem of false positives - on the contrary, they only exacerbate it.
The argument in the OP assumed (for argument's sake) that while the false positive rate was 1%, the false negative rate was 0%. If you want to make the false negative rate a non-zero number, go ahead, but you'll quickly find that it makes the overall results even worse, not better.
Using the correct, field-specific term may eliminate some of your objection.
Actually, the terms are quite correct, and your argument only succeeds in raising additional objections.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I love gaffes! please point out all of them.
in the spirit of the book review...
4000+ dead
over a trillion $ spent,
all u got to say is about gaffes?
It's been some time since I read Pipes and I didn't remember some details, so I must make some corrections to my above post.
Actually, although Pipes recognizes pretty clearly the distinction between, on one side, the moderate religious Muslims, and on the other the radical authoritarian pseudo-religious political nuts we all despise, he doesn't like the term "Islamofascism", as what they pursue isn't a fascist regime proper.
Basically, fascism was/is always nationalistic, and bound to the concept of a totalitarian central government ruling society. What these guys pursue, on the contrary, is a kind of stateless internationalistic decentralized totalitarianism. Thus, not quite the same thing. Both authoritarian, both totalitarian, but in very different ways.
He has some suggestions for naming this thing, basically variations around the word "Islamist", "Militant Islam", "Militant Islamism" etc., but I don't think any of those sound right. "Islamofascism" might not be accurate, but I guess we'll have to stick to it for se simple lack of a better alternative.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I saw Daniel Pipes speak once at my university and he spent a lot of his speech going on and on about how we need to reach out to moderate Muslims, yet when it was opened up for questions after his speech, he was incredibly verbally hostile to every Muslim who asked him a question. I know many of the Muslims who asked him questions and they were largely all very moderate, apolitical and with a very modern interpretation of Islam. At the end he was just downright hostile towards the entire audience, even turning off many of the conservatives in the room.
What Daniel Pipes really is a hack writer and pundit for the establishment. His role is to lay an ideological foundation for US foreign policy that is already being carried out. His father was one of the main hawks against Stalinist Eastern Block style Communism during the 60's. He makes a living creating "boogeyman" stereotypes of the people who resist the imposition of neo-liberal economic policies and foreign meddling.
The fact that he runs a group that systematically harasses left leaning university professors in the United States only adds to the fact that he is a rightwing political opportunist who profits off of demonizing cultures and creating racist stereotypes. His group Campus Watch specializes in taking anonymous unsubstantiated claims of conservative students who are upset over their grade. He's not a legitimate academic and has no place in the culture of discussion that academia should be. If all he did was just advance a position, no matter how much I disagreed with it, that would be fine; but intimidating and harassing one's political opponents is not free speech.
Just so we know who we are labeling with the sterile description of "expert."
-Ted
-=-=- Quantum physics - the dreams stuff are made of.
If you want to spot a terrorist, Look for someone that has a hat like this or this. If he has a shirt like this he's not a terrorist, but if the shirt looks like this he is.
If he's drinking this look out for car bombs!
this guy would have ME calling the Department of Homeland Cowardice in a New York minute! And how about this guy?
Look at da bomb in that terrorist's hand!
this asshat is not a terrorist.
SCARY TERRORIST! ANOTHER SCARY TERRORIST! EVEN SCARIER TERRORIST! And OMFG the scariest one of al!!!!
RUN! RUN! RAISE THE THREAT LEVEL FROM YELLOW TO "SCARED SHITLESS!"
The fact that 40,000 people that die on the American highways every year tells me some of that damned Homeland Security money should go to highway safety improvements. You want to spot a terrorist? Look in a tobacco company boardroom; half a million Americans die every year from cancer.
Terrorism is a tool of the US government to take away Americans' liberties. You, sir, are part of the problem.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
See spotter's post.
See my response to spotter's post.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Counter-terrorism == work to stop terrorist operations
Anti-terrorism == work to kill the terrorists themselves
Perhaps the usage has changed since I went to my CT training courses in the U.S. Army, but I really, REALLY hope that the TSA isn't conducting anti-terrorism operations! "Sorry, you're on the no-fly list, please step into the euthanasia chamber to your right..."
Travel the Galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms...
I would agree with parent. I read his blog now and then a few years back. Overwhelmingly negative stories on muslims mixed with the occasional writing on what he means by "moderate islam". He's also the founder of an organization called Campus Watch that seems more than a little sinister.
He absolutely is a hack, and his primary agenda is disenfranchisement and marginalization of American Muslims. He thinks every mosque in the US is infiltrated with radicals and "Islamists" who want to overthrow our government. Doubtful Pipes has ever set foot in a mosque, though he's been invited.
His idea of a moderate Muslim is someone who calls himself Muslim but doesn't practice Islam, e.g., people like Irshad Manji -- the heroine of the anti-Muslim bigots in our country. (sorry if you like her -- she has nothing to do with mainstream Islam in the US or anywhere else).
Pipes is fine as long as the conversation is one-way with him spewing propaganda and fear-mongering -- challenge anything he says and he resorts to hostility (see other posts in this thread).
The author seems to be implying that you just ought to give up on developing standard testing procedures altogether. That seems like it would be a useful meme for the people who brought you Guantanamo Bay, Inc.
The glaring problem with his logic is that if you repeat the test your accuracy will tend to go up, and if you apply complimentary tests, you get even better accuracy. The original writer assumes that you test, then you execute, then you forget... Well that happens, to be sure, but it's a problem of rigor.
I mentioned Guantanamo Bay because it's a fine example of a willful failure to be rigorous. Shrub, Inc.'s only concern was to generate perceived results and delay further testing as long as possible. To fill up space and create the appearance that (a) there are lots of terrorists and (b) we caught lots of them. And they got a bunch of useful political prisoners - not really imprisoned for their beliefs or affiliations - but as pure fodder for use by the political class.
Had we applied more rigorous testing there never would have been a Guantanamo Bay prison. And if we ever begin to do so, the place will evaporate in a black cloud of oil smoke.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Once you stop calling them "terrorists" and call them what they really are, it usually helps to suggest a more rational and workable approach to dealing with them. Bundling all of the above into a single category of "people who may endanger innocent bystanders" in the hopes that this will make the problem more manageable, will in fact do the opposite.
Depending upon where in the world you are, this person is considered one. And yet the State Department doesn't haul him in...
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
...would be to know how not to be seen!
-- thinkyhead software and media
there already is a well known, very accurate terrorist recognition handbook! look here
short summary: hooknoses
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
You don't know Daniel Pipes.
http://www.mpac.org/article.php?id=72
Um, no, that's something we all knew about before. I've never heard anyone classify homicide bombers as "insane," or unintelligent, or irrational in the classic sense of the word.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Let's see... Covers head, sports facial hair, shuns pork and other critters that the goyim/kaffirun consider tasty, recites prayers, rejects consumerism and sexualization of the culture, criticizes public policy. Sounds like if a subculture does not compromise with the culture and/or public policy (a.k.a assimilate), it is branded as 'extremist' and/or 'terrorist'. In that case, even the Amish would be suspect.
Whatever allows governments to exercise as much authority over as many individuals as possible (read: as it can get away with). The goal is to exercise supreme plenary authority over all individuals everywhere. This is what defines godhood; that is the goal of government.
f000:fff0 jmp absolute ptr [dvarim_6.4]
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
The TSA stands around, making sure the people in line aren't terrorists. Now, I'm no criminal mastermind, but given the security around most US airports, all it does it make the regular citizens feel warm and fuzzy about all the gadgets they have to walk through to get on their plane. A terrorist would make a few friends at the airport, lift a few IDs, and before you know it, he can walk around the tarmac for weeks on end without being bothered, and walk right past a security line with the flash of his counterfeit badge and a smile.
Really effective security would be to bring every last troop home, and place them in every port and border crossing into the US. Even more effective than their inspections would be the fact that they aren't in foreign countries blowing stuff up. It's very difficult to recruit people to kill the infidel when he's across the ocean behind hundreds of thousands of highly trained Marines, minding his own business.
Unfortunately this would require leaders in government (Republicans and Democrats) to do an about-face on how they deal with terrorism, and as anyone knows, getting a politician to admit a mistake is harder than getting one to tell the truth in the first place. But we're the ones to blame - when the greatest threat to our way of life, according to Sean Hannity, is that "we may be driving around in Yugos," you wonder if the society is worth saving in the first place.
No, they usually have Armalites and big fistfulls of US dollars. Thank you, the US Republicans, for continuing to support terrorist attacks on your allies.
He invented and promulgates the cognitive dissonance that is summarised by the phrase: "Islamofascism."
He's a real Israeli, dual-loyalist and "newspeak" maker of the first (lowest) rank. Pipes was teh founder of The Middle East Forum - purportedly a 'think-tank', really a propaganda and media policing agent for radical Israeli military/political objectives.
Who's next on teh
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
War for Israel - not oil.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Has Pipes made mistakes, yup!
Does EVERY analyst makes mistakes, yup!
Is Pipes correct where it matters? YUP!!!
Security is only achieved when you have a multi-faceted, reactive and proactive system designed to detect anomalies and investigate them, EVEN IF THEY DON'T HAPPEN IN AN AIRPORT.
We have hundreds of millions of tons of cargo coming in and out of the country with zero inspection.
We have hundreds of miles of unprotected borders.
Where is our military force, sworn to protect us against all enemies, foreign and domestic? Across the ocean bombing infrastructure that we have to rebuild, because Americans don't want to drive small cars, or practice sane environmental conservation, or god forbid, live in more humble housing structures. We'd rather kill people who have never threatened us to maintain ground control near oil reserves.
Real security for the US would involve compromise, sacrifice, and hard work. That's why it will never happen.
Why the focus on "Islamofascists" (a lazy and Godwinite term if anything). There are hundreds of terrorist organizations all over the world, Maoist, Catholic, Protestant, Anarchists etc. The only reason that I can make out is that the author of this book is pandering to the current US government's scare mongering tactics using the current boogeyman, Muslims (China is fast supplanting us, though). I am a Muslim and here is what I see. The majority of Muslims do not support terrorism (it is actually against the teachings of our Prophet to harm non-combatants, even crop plants and the Quran specifically prohibit carrying destruction of the world). The majority of Muslims wants peace and the freedom to get on with their lives. However, the majority of Muslims are not happy with the way US has meddled in the Middle East, Palestine and Iraq and soon, Iran. Remove this meddling and I am sure the terrorists will lose support and sympathy from Muslims. Iraq was the US own undoing and you will end up like the Mongols, British and Soviets in Afghanistan. Many Muslims believe that the "al-Qaeda" as the James Bond-villain is a myth, cooked up by the people like the author of this book since we never heard of it until the Western media started to hype them up. That is not to say it doesn't exist but we believe the West potrays them that way so that you can have a defined entity to hate. It is hard to get people to enlist when you are fighting an amorphous foe.
"His father was one of the main hawks against Stalinist Eastern Block style Communism during the 60's."
And this was a bad thing because... ?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
...that were not as knowledge as possible and ignored the advice of those that were as knowledge as possible.
Next time, you might want to run your review by someone who is as grammar as possible.
Step1: Use account #1 to post a funny joke to go over heads of dense /. readers /. reader to post correction /. is
Step2: Wait for dense
Step3: Use account #2 to create informative post about how dense the dense
Step4: (Karma) Profit!
"he had to be hustled out of the room by his hosts after failing to respond to valid criticism of his borderline racist/fascist agenda."
He probably had to be "hustled out" because some of the little brownshirts-in-training wouldn't let him speak, which seems to be a favorite tactic of leftist protesters at schools. Why argue when you can simply overwhelm a speaker and his audience with your friends... often physically taking over a speaking hall... and gamble that the university administration will be too cowed to do anything to you about it? It seems to work that way a lot lately. From the sound of it, it seems like your commitment to free speech ends at those that agree with you.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
He came to my university too. The situation there is so opposite of what you describe that I think you're full of crap.
Here's a video clip of the full lecture so you can judge for yourself:
http://www.rit.edu/academicaffairs/etc/gannett/videos/2005-04-14.ram
Are you actually willing to substantiate your claims?
We don't a book to identify terrorists, we just need Clutch:
You can always tell a terrorist
By his cologne and the watch on his wrist
It says, "I'm the kind of man
Who can take off anywhere, take off anywhere."
Clutch - Power Players
Tell me something...it's still "We, the people"... right?
Nope, that doesn't pass the logic smell test either.
/. AC, I know.
If you reduce the list of vulnerable targets, you reduce the probability of being hit ipso facto. For example, terrorist methodology is not equally adaptable to any target whatsoever. A lot of the reason airplanes are hit are because they're high in the sky, which means (1) even a small amount of damage can bring them down, killing everybody, and (2) they're very isolated from effective and timely outside help. The same kind of methodology that will work against an airplane is not going to work against, say, an oil terminal. So if, for example, you were able to completely forestall terrorism against airplanes, it would not all just shift over to oil terminals, because some of the people and methods focussed on airplanes just can't transfer. You might say that terrorist methods are not perfectly fungible.
Part of the problem is that both you and the OP are arguing by the (bogus) methods of extremes: either this extreme (terrorism is 100% preventable) or that extreme (terrorism is 0% preventable) must hold, and so if one extreme doesn't hold, the other must, QED. The problem is you've ignored (deliberately or otherwise) the many middle positions, e.g. terrorism is somewhat preventable and its frequency or severity can be economically reduced by some methods (but not others). Of course, you need a lot more subtle and well-informed POV to argue which methods are economical. A lot to expect from a generic
The book calls itself a "A Practitioner's Manual for Predicting and Identifying Terrorist Activities," and I didn't hold a gun to their head and force them to call it that.
So, it's fair to ask: regardless of how much interesting background it on how terrorist groups function, does the book
1) give specific guidance on predicting and identifying terrorist activities?
2) present any evidence at all that these methods are effective? More effective than graphology, or trial by ordeal, or the use of witch cakes?
It's quite one thing to say that (say) "suicide bombers are rarely insane. They are most often intelligent, rational individuals."
It's quite another to say that if wiretaps on an organization show that it is rife with intelligent, rational individuals, those organization should be targeted as a likely terrorist group.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Call it the "hygiene hypothesis" of political discourse. The original hygiene hypothesis explained the recent rise in auto-immune disorders like Crohn's and lupus, where the immune system attacks own's own body, by theorizing that the much better hygiene of modern living deprived the immune system of more legitimate targets (invading germs and viruses) to attack. Lacking more appropriate targets, it turns on itself. Perhaps, then, the lack of real serious threats to security and liberty makes people turn on minor and even nonexistent threats.
The strenght of political movement is to adapt strategies. If Canada had taken over your democratic institution, and you started a group of resistance and thought about suicide bombing, you would fucking read a book about how does the canadians think terrorist looks like before doing anything.
Will this book help me increase my frag rate in Counter Strike?
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
A bunch of untrained citizens that think they are experts because they read a book.
"look mommie, thats a terrorist according to chapter 3, lets call the police"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ever price a AR15 and AK47? There is a big price differential.
Besides, AK's are simpler to operate/maintain and far more reliable if not taken care of and kept spotless.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I would assume the last should read knowledgeable. Anyhow, you assume that our "leaders" didn't know what they were getting into. I present to you, Dick Cheney. This video of Dick, is him right after the first Iraq war, saying how bad of an idea it is to invade Iraq, citing multiple religious sects and other interesting knowledgeable ideas. here. So in fact, our leaders are very much on top of things, but have alternative agendas to run, either in our interest, or not, but either way they give us lies...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
The turban, the hook nose, the dark complexion, the funny accent.
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
The AK-style action is less accurate but more reliable under abuse and poor maintenance conditions than the Striker-based rifles. It's also much cheaper, usually, to get a Kalishnikov, Dragonov or some knock off than to get a Colt, Bushmaster, or equivalent.
The Hi Point pistol cartridge carbines might make sense as they're meant to take some abuse at a low price point. They're not exactly military-style rifles, though, and are even less accurate than AKs because of the types of rounds they fire. They should be fine in close quarters, though, as offensive or defensive weapons or as target/varmint plinkers.
One of the biggest reasons I think that the AK is so popular with those opposed to the US or US policy, though, is that it symbolizes that opposition. The Soviets, Chinese, Germans, Israelis, and Americans are well known for small arms. The Germans produce very expensive weapons and I think they only sell to allies. The Israelis produce their own weapons for strategic reasons. The US only sells its weapons to nations which it's happy with. The Soviets were (and the Chinese are) able to make a good amount of money selling AKs to whoever can't or won't buy AR-15/M-16 rifles and M4 carbines.
If you're from a nation that is traditionally opposed to the US, as many (not all) terrorists tend to be, then the AK is likely what you've had around to be comfortable with using. It's also a symbol of sorts for the animosity these people have.
I'm by no means an expert, but I feel slightly uneasy when I see this sort of book appear on Amazon. I tend to get the impression that it's quite a valuable resource for the discerning terrorist or terrorist instructor.
After all, having a systematic and handy compendium of how people are going to be looking for you is of great use when you're trying not to be found, right? And when you're trying to write the manual for a terrorist's course, yes?
Why is it really necessary to put this sort of knowledge in the public domain? I mean, does Joe Public really need to know? Will our net security be increased if he does know? Did anybody ever make a trade-off between informing our (admittedly rather uninformed and clumsy) officials by making this knowledge public versus the danger of informing would-be terrorists about how people will be looking for them?
I wonder. Is there anyone knowledgeable able to comment?
Are we that paranoid already? Do we really see a terrorist behind every tree? Don't we have more important things to do with our lives than look for terrorists?
What's so new about terrorists anyway? It's the buzzword of the decade(s to come)! Where were the handbooks, when the IRA was most active? Or the German RAF or the Italian Brigardi Rossi? Nowhere! Terrorists have been around pretty much since the beginnings of society. But nowadays we need handbooks to identify them? Sorry guys but this sounds like a big wank to me.
If you want to see terrorists, look towards your capital city. That's where a lot of them are. They are called politicians! They fan the terrorist paranoia and the fear in the people for their own agenda. Or do you really, really think, that all these anti terror laws and surveillance programs would have stood a snowball's chance in hell, if it wasn't for politicians putting fear in our minds? Would you have accepted laws like that without fear? Have you ever noticed that there's always a new message from Osama, when there's new laws to be pushed through and it is clear that people will resist?
If you think about it, the terrorists have already won. We're scared and we give up our freedom. Yes, our freedom. Or do you call it freedom, if your every move is watched, logged and whatnot? Do you call it freedom, if all the information about your flight, including your dietary needs on the plane and your religion(!), are not only recorded but transmitted to authorities in other countries and stored for decades? Do you call it freedom, if you visit a foreign country and get treated like a criminal?
Sorry guys but we really don't need a handbook to recognise a terrorist. What we need is to bloody wake up, kick our politicians in the arse and give these pricks the finger.
A guy who believes in "Al Qaeda" and calls himself a veteran in US intelligence is a clown...or he is a Minister of Propaganda clerk... Come on...who heard about a group calling himself "Al Qaeda" before 9/11? Where are the hi tech caves? where are the AMDs? You tell me...
Your example is correct, but there is even MORE subtlety involved.
The question here is framed as the test being accurate 99% of the time. In practice, though, you usually examine the test from two different standpoints - the false positive and the false negative.
Going back to the example at hand, you can think of it in the terms of the probability of identifying an innocent person as a terrorist (false positive) and the probability of not identifying a real terrorist (false negative). It is extremely hard to pick a test that can give you a low false positive and a low false negative, whereas it is very easy to maximize one or the other.
For example, if the government wanted to make the statement, "We have a method of identifying 100% of terrorists," that's easy - just assume that everyone is a terrorist. * insert sarcastic political jab here *
On the other hand, you can also easily design a test that will never wrongly accuse an innocent person - just assume nobody is a terrorist. Actually, this last test is very effective. If we use the numbers from the parent, where terrorists are 0.00005 percent of the population, I can trivially construct a test which is 99.99995 percent accurate just by assuming everyone is innocent.
Obviously, both of these tests are useless, but they help illustrate the difficulty here. If you are going to institute any screening method, you are pretty much guaranteed to seriously fuck up, either by wrongfully accusing a great number of people or by missing one or two very dangerous people.
The solution - don't do random screening. Period. You will not catch terrorists and/or you will seriously erode personal freedoms. The terrorism problem is much more difficult (and no, I don't think I have the answers, even though I'm posting to slashdot).
Terrorist = Bogyman be afraid and we will protect you. This is a very very old tactic, thousands of years old.
... eh'.
There are no terrorists. Just people who hate the US and there are a shitload of them.
Have a nice decade
Daniel Pipes founded Campus Watch an organisation dedicated to making sure that Americans only get a rabidly pro-Israel view in a McCarthyesque way, i.e. lists of those who disagree with his own fascist views.
He favours profiling and internment of Muslims in the United States.
The Daniel Pipes entry at sourcewatch is quite a read.
Any model that is built on 10 or 20 positive examples from a population of 6,000,000,000 is going to suffer from overfitting. Not just a little overfitting... I mean it's going to overfit like a mo-fo. There's just no way, and I mean NO way, to create a statistically significant test based on the data we have on who is and who is not an ACTUAL terrorist. Books like this are pure speculation.
Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
...if the Islamofacistfragilisticexpealadocious' (or whatever the PC term is nowadays) have an Arabic-language equivalent of The Anarchist Cookbook.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
What, you mean the terrorists aren't those guys with the goatees and the french accents?
Well sink me!
Ok, but without the book, will you method be as effective as spotting the pedo-smile ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The version of the book I would give out would have a chapter at the end of the book on what the US considers the No1 Terrorist, when they open up the chapter they would find a mirror showing the readers reflection.
My guess that his error was a problem with autocorrect in ms word.
I just tried it and it did change knowledgeable to knowledge two times in the test paragraph I wrote.
as per my previous comment:
Focus on the book!
Focus on the book review!
Forget a silly intro sentence!
The parent post is not flamebait. While it's debatable that Pipes actually has fascist views, there is enough evidence to have the debate. The rest of the post is simply based on well-documented behaviour and statements.
Damn those pesky terrorists
By the look of it this book doesn't really address the fundamental issues underlying terrorism. I realise that this is outside the scope of the book and that it would be controversial, to put it mildly, in the US; but sooner or later we are going to have to tackle the issue of 'why'. We have at least since 9/11 had our heads stuck firmly in the sand, with fantasies about how terrorists are completely different from us, how they are 'evil', 'envious of our freedom' or at least 'insane' - this book goes some way to puncture that myth, at least.
The truth is, we are not going to win any war against terrorism - it's like the 'Gumby Brain Surgery'(ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumbys). We have to understand why something so utterly irrational as terrorism can not only exist, but spread rapidly; really, I would have thought that much was obvious. The good news is that it isn't impossible; as the book suggests, these people are rational, often intelligent, and if they can arrive at the conclusion that they have to go and blow themselves and other people up, then we can follow their logic. I should think that there is a good chance that we will discover one or two points that we can address intelligently, thus breaking the rationale of their reasoning. This is all about popular support - the terrorists have popular support because they can argue strongly for their goals; we can make their arguments weak if we know what we are doing, and once they lose popular support, they will soon cease to be a threat.
The above poster has clearly stated some unpopular truths about Islam.
It is an unfortunate truth that Islam is basicly incompatible with many of the freedoms of the Western world - all the best wishes and desires of the multiculturalists will not change this basic truth.
Daniel Pipes is just stating unpopular truths - do not kill the messenger, challenge the message if you must.
Ed
And by that I mean, these times are not the only ones to have faced the "threat" of "terrorism".
... and I doubt seriously that that book pays any attention to such obviously unimportant matters.
... and ... and ... and now they're Muslims and copyright infringers and Free-and-Open-Source-Software distributors and peer-to-peer networks users and ....
Can we classify the various Haiti independence movements during the 1700s as terrorists? Do we?
Would similar procedures apply to Tsarist Russia? When Tsar Alexander II had been killed in a bomb blast in Nevsky Prospekt on March the third, 1881?
In post-Krakatau-eruption Dutch East Indies? When there where a significant number of disaffected Javanese?
What about the Moro resistance to the US annexation of Mindanao? The Cebuan resistance to the US annexation of Cebu?
In the south of China around the time of the Long March?
During the Mau-Mau in Kenya?
You see, as they say, "One man's terrorist is another man's guerilla/Freedom Fighter/useful idiot/Republican senator/US President" etc, ad nauseam
At various times, apparently terrorists were obviously Jews and homosexuals and Catholics and Protestants and Poles and Marxists and voodun priests and
We have some downright brilliant people in power, and they won't stop until everybody's been fucked up the arse with curare-tipped depleted uranium-covered thermonuclear fenceposts - themselves excluded, naturally.
"I his bow, and spun and wove, likes you." Vere de Vere out of my mould's mouth dragged me of the voluntary apes.
I agree entirely. It's interesting to look at how the British dealt with terrorists in Malaysia when it was a British territory in the 1950s. The three main strands of the, successful, operation were to firstly protect the non terrorist population by moving them to expensively constructed model villages which could be protected effectively. Secondly to pursue any terrorist incursion ruthlessly, killing the terrorists and bringing back their heads to publicly demonstrate the likely fate of terrorists and thirdly of agreeing to Malaysian independance once the terrorist problem was successfully dealt with.
Obviously the exact methods used would be different in Iraq but the principle is the same and most probably where much of the information for the US Counterinsurgency manual was gleaned from. Provide the population with what they need to live nice lives, separate the terrorists and prevent them harming civilians and if there are wider issues to be addressed then address them openly and sensibly. Unfortuantley this costs an awful lot of money and means you must also be really prepared to negotiate.
Actually, although Pipes recognizes pretty clearly the distinction between, on one side, the moderate religious Muslims, and on the other the radical authoritarian pseudo-religious political nuts we all despise...
...you mean Neocons?
Thanks, folks, I'll be here all night.
I am the man with no sig!
..."it is a specialized subject that requires serious study and requires that those in the front line of defense be as knowledge as possible.
In a later chapter, Nance gives the Iraq war as an example of a group of leaders that were not as knowledge as possible and ignored the advice of those that were as knowledge[able] as possible."
In the McCarthy-led Red-hunting frenzy of the 1950's, the State Department purged itself of all people who knew what was going on in southeast Asia. Being knowledgeable, the experts said things like "the Vietnamese have a long unfriendly history with China and won't turn into a puppet state, but most of their citizens are being sorely treated by the current regime, and so Communism is very appealing to them." People that made remarks were seen to have Communist sympathies and driven out of government. A few years later the USA was surprised when the Vietnamese civilians provided assistance to the Viet Cong as they carried out the guerrilla warfare that bogged down the USA in a no-win quagmire. The State Department experts who could have predicted it were all gone.
If you only hear what you want to hear, you're clueless to many truths. Look at the post 9/11 backlash towards those thought that it provided an opportunity for the USA to look at aspects of it's society and foreign policy that stir up hate, and milder forms of disapproval, among other cultures. Those who sought knowledge out of the incident were immediately suspected of being, somehow, part of the enemy efforts.
"Know thyself" often involves looking at the ugly, not just the beautiful. Never underestimate the tendency of both individuals and cultures to come up with some serious bullshit rather than admit that they don't know everything. The meek shall inherit the earth, but the arrogant will make life miserable for them in the meantime.
"If you're not passionate about your operating system, you're married to the wrong one."
I flew from LA to Boston two weeks after 9/11. On my return trip, I noticed that there were many visible soldiers with M16's on patrol throughout Logan and especially at security. By contrast, when I was outbound in LAX security I saw some TSA employee on the other side of the metal detectors READING THE F*CKING NEWSPAPER!!!! WAS THIS A**HOLE LIVING UNDER A ROCK FOR THE LAST TWO WEEKS?!?!
A terroist action is an action in which combatants actively TARGET non-combatants with physical harm (i.e. civilians, not other soldiers), for political purposes.
Please note that this definition of terrorism:
1. Does NOT include the majority of rebels, freedom fighters, or other revolitionaries thar are respected.
2. Does not include wars.
3. DOES include the CIA itself, as they have admitted to targetting noncombatants in the past.
4. Does include most famous terrorist actions, including the crashing into the World Trade Center.
5. Does not include certain famous actions called terroism by the media, such as dingy attack on the USS Cole. (Cripes man, trying to seek a warship should not be called terrorism. It should be called STUPID.)
6. Does leave certain things to argue about, such as the craahing of the plane into the Pentagon. The pentagon is a military target and the civilians on the plane could be called 'ancillary casulaties', as opposed to being the target of the attack.
This definition does not in any way that I can tell have a geopolitical agenda. As it specifically describes certain actions done by the agency that created it as terrorist actions.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
What you are doing is a rather nasty, stupid kind of argument called Guilt by Association. More people hate terroism than hate war (and those that hate terrorism hate it more than they hate war.
Because you dislike ware more, you are trying to convince other people to hate war by RELABELLING it as terrorism.
But words have real meaning, they are not your play thing to twist and lie and change in order to trick fools into thinking like you do.
War may not be the best thing in the world, but it is NOT terrorism. There are RADICAL differences between the two concepts, and those differeces are NOT insignificant. Specifically, the major difference between war and terrorism is that terroirsts actively target non-combatants, while war actively targets combatants. Yeah, you may not think that is a big deal, but to someone that is female, a child, or actively refuses to join the military, it is a VERY big deal.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
But I think that you've just proven my essential point: the american 'hegemony' is founded on some astoundingly well-crafted pervasive propaganda at home, with the theme of being a global benefactor.
Ask around: "why do we perpetually have half a million troops overseas in over 100 countries?" The reasoning of the american public in justifying such a massive permanent deployment in so many bases is very thin, if not jingoistic and naive, or outright frightening to citizens of other countries. Americans just don't believe in the scale of clandestine maneuvering through their history, and they have an essential sense of manifest destiny.
21C hegemony (shorthand for empire) does not resemble victorian Brittania, in the way that late post-industrial capitalism doesn't resemble feudalism.
Damn those pesky terrorists
As I stated in the post the more effective part of the plan is that there aren't bunch of marines killing hundreds of thousands of people in Arab territory. However...
Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, there are about six thousand miles of US border. You could take the roughly quarter million troops worlwide, divide them into three shifts, and have 13 US soldiers every mile, or about 1 every four hundred feet.
We are already paying these people. I'm sure they would be happy to take the same money, and actually defend their country instead of serving the interests of a few deranged politicians.
There is zero successful recruiting within the borders. FBI provocateurs have even failed, because the "terrorists" they pick up are poorly educated people who are angry and delusional, but have no ability or intent to actually commit terrorist acts.
You don't hear about domestic terrorism because there isn't any. The angriest cleric in the world has a hell of a time convincing a person with a job, a safe place to sleep, and the opportunities that every American has to strap a bomb to himself and kill innocent people. Maybe he could convince a sociopath, but these events would certainly be rare if they even occurred at all (and haven't yet.)
Now, take a young Iraqi kid who has lost his entire family to American military "collateral damage," or who's seen his sister raped and murdered because we can't even offer basic security after we destroyed their country, and show him a target that's in his neighborhood. That's an easy sell, and one that works in any cultural situation.
The point is that terrorism, like any other crime, isn't preventable. It's going to happen. You can reduce the likelihood through diplomacy, foreign policy, and security measures. All military action does, especially when there is no clear military objective, is make more people dead, and in my opinion, creates more terrorism than it destroys.
You are right about making people not want to do it, but the problem is violence isn't a part of that solution. Israel has been torturing Palestinians, destroying their homes, and assassinating suspected terrorists since the 60s, and the violence has gotten worse.
70% of Israelis believe that direct talks with Hamas are appropriate to achieve peace. Unfortunately, this does not fit in with the goals of their government, just as US politicians don't pay attention to what their constituents want if it happens to conflict with their own.
Western democracy at it's finest.
He has some suggestions for naming this thing, basically variations around the word "Islamist", "Militant Islam", "Militant Islamism" etc., but I don't think any of those sound right. "Islamofascism" might not be accurate, but I guess we'll have to stick to it for se simple lack of a better alternative.
Well, on one hand, in Europe and in most muslim countries, there's a very clear distinction between "islamist" and "islamic": someone is islamist, if he aims to mix religion to politics; while he is merely islamic (or muslim) if he doesn't strive to impose charia law on society. In muslim countries, the term "islamist" or "islamism" is generally referred to as a problem and islamists are perceived as a danger to society.
On the other hand, in Europe and in muslim countries, the term "islamofascism" is considered a very bad pejorative Bushism intended to cast a bad light and hatred on all muslims (be they islamists -- in which case it is justified, or non-islamists alike, in which case it is deeply offending to them). Perhaps it's different in the US, where people are more used to that term... but should you visit Europe or muslim countries, it may be wise to stick to the technically correct term "islamism" and avoid "islamofascism". "Islamism" is strong enough, and everyone knows whom you'd be referring to.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
just got the book, free overnight shipping, yeah!!
at the very beginning of the book, he give different definitions of terrorism from differnt US and foreign agencies. and he even gives his own unique definition.
i have no idea what your point is.
Answer
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Wow, what a puff job review. It's almost as though someone was trying to push an agenda or something. It is good however that even the rat-bags that cooperatively decided to pull the wool over the American publics eyes with regard to Iraq are now admitting their error in print. And I suppose they don't think they are rat-bags either. Let's just call 'em security industry spooks with a weighty conflict of interest, with their collective hands caught in the cookie jar.