Month: January 2011

by Zoe Pollock Scott Horton interviewed father and son Charles and Gregory Fried about their book, Because It Is Wrong—Torture, Privacy and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror. Horton asked why they paired torture with privacy and surveillance: [After 9/11] the general public, and even the informed public, reacted as if both transgressions were equally serious and equally deserving of condemnation. Indeed, there may have been a markedly greater tolerance of torture than of surveillance—maybe because few of us expect to undergo torture, but all feel our phones or Internet may be tapped into. This gets things exactly wrong.…

New Terrorism Adviser Takes A ‘Broad Tent’ Approach : NPR. “A number of years ago, before he went into government, he did some of the most path-breaking work not only on who was susceptible to being radicalized, but most importantly, who was the most resistant to being radicalized,” says Christine Fair, an expert on terrorism and radicalization at Georgetown University. “And the findings that he came up with based upon his work really shattered some of the stereotypes we have about Muslims and radicalization.”  As part of his research, Wiktorowicz interviewed hundreds of Islamists in the United Kingdom. After compiling…

Where Were the Tunisian Islamists? – NYTimes.com. The Tunisian revolt helps clarify a reality about Arab life: The terrorism we’ve seen over the past few years, with its utopian millennialism, doesn’t stem from the real societies of the Middle East. More Islamic radicals are to be found in the West than at home.

Administration Prepares to Lift Ban on New Guantánamo Cases – NYTimes.com. The Obama administration is preparing to increase the use of military commissions to prosecute Guantánamo detainees, an acknowledgment that the prison in Cuba remains open for business after Congress imposed steep new impediments to closing the facility.