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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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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
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
...would be to know how not to be seen!
-- thinkyhead software and media
You don't know Daniel Pipes.
http://www.mpac.org/article.php?id=72
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..."
"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
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?
That the treatment at Abu Graib was newsworthy shows that you're babbling nonsense. If the US military was at all like al Qaeda or like Saddam Hussein, then it would have been expected.
All of you other countries lost the right to have the US stay out of world affairs. The US tried to avoid both world wars, and was brought in by plots of other nations. Now, the US is going to have its hands in whatever it can reach. We get attacked when we leave the rest of you alone, and we get attacked when we don't. We might as well sway some things in our favor, then.
Before you start mouthing off about human rights abuses and "terrorist acts" by the US, you should look up some other countries. I suggest you start with China, Myanmar, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Mexico , Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.
Wasn't the point of calling french fries "freedom fries" to keep Joe Sixpack from empathizing and humanizing the French when they decided to not back the invasion?
Suicide describes what type of bomber. Bomber means someone who kills with explosives. I don't really see how changing suicide to homicide makes it any "worse".
Anyways, any media that would call them "homicide bombers" aren't the ones that will be followed by the group that produces the suicide bombers.
It's just emotional gut-thinking that just makes you feel better.
What term do you use to describe the kamikaze of WW2? Divine Wind is a pretty romantic term, especially when you consider the first Kamikaze and what it meant for Japan. Are they homikaze? Last-ditch-act-of-desperation-due-to-lack-of-resources-including-veteran-pilots-kaze?
I can look at the term "suicide bomber" and not think: oh, the poor lad went so emo, the only way for him to describe his anguish to another was with the destructive blast and shrapnel of an explosives vest, I really should feel sorry for him and subscribe to his newsletter. All this bellyfeel claptrap will be the end of western civilization, not some schmuck wearing a few pounds of C-4.
Fighting against uniformed forces using asymmetrical tactics because you're a smaller force facing a larger force is one thing. Attacking civilians with no warning to get on CNN and have your demands heard is another. There is a proper use for the term "terrorist", but it's being used more broadly than it should be.
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.
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.
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.
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
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