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From the Los Angeles Times

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Yemeni forces hunt for Al Qaeda bomb maker

Officials say Ibrahim Asiri is a lethal militant strategist who has been behind a number of attempted bombings. Meanwhile, Yemen files charges against U.S.-born radical cleric Anwar Awlaki.

by Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times

November 2, 2010

Reporting from Sana, Yemen

Yemeni special forces launched an offensive Tuesday in rugged terrain, searching for an Al Qaeda bomb maker believed to have designed explosives concealed in printer cartridges that were intercepted in two U.S.-bound packages last week.

The hunt for Ibrahim Asiri, a Saudi-born munitions expert, intensified in militant strongholds in Shabwa and Marib provinces. It is the third major operation against Al Qaeda in recent months but one that has taken on new urgency since a plot to blow up aircraft over the U.S. was uncovered Friday.

Investigators describe Asiri as one of Al Qaeda's most lethal strategists. He is alleged to have rigged the explosives in a 2009 suicide bombing carried out by his brother in the failed assassination attempt against Saudi Arabia's intelligence director. He also is suspected of building the bomb that was hidden in the underwear of the Nigerian student who has been charged in the bungled attempt to bring down a U.S. airliner in December.

The military incursion to find Asiri and other fighters in the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula began the same day Yemen for the first time filed charges against American-born radical cleric Anwar Awlaki. Prosecutors accused him of "plotting to kill foreigners" in the Oct. 6 slaying of a French manager at an oil compound in Sana.

Awlaki, a charismatic speaker who has emerged as an Al Qaeda leader, will be tried in absentia with his cousin, Osman Awlaki. The charges were read during a hearing for Hisham Assem, the security guard accused of shooting the Frenchman.

Prosecutor Ali Saneaa said Assem was inspired to kill foreigners after listening to audiotapes and sermons sent to him by Awlaki. The narrative is similar to accusations by U.S. officials that Awlaki's teachings prompted a killing spree last year at Ft. Hood, Texas, allegedly carried out by an Army psychiatrist and that they were the catalyst for the Nigerian's alleged attempt to bring down the Detroit-bound plane.

"It was natural for the Yemen government to accuse Awlaki," said Saeed Ali O. Jemhi, an expert on Al Qaeda. "They had been hunting him without charges. Now they have legal justification, and it will allow the Yemen and U.S. governments to better cooperate on his capture."

The two governments, however, ultimately may be in dispute over the cleric's fate. Yemeni officials have said that Awlaki is a citizen of Yemen and will not be handed over to the U.S. The Obama administration wants to try Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, but it also reportedly has placed him on a CIA list for assassination or capture.

Tuesday's developments indicate growing U.S. demands on the government of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to defeat the estimated 300 to 500 Al Qaeda fighters hiding in Yemen's tribal lands, mountains and deserts. Washington has so far provided funding, equipment and training to Yemeni special forces, but the extremists have continued to strike domestically and internationally.

Hours after attacking militant redoubts, Yemeni officials blamed Al Qaeda for blowing up a section of oil pipeline operated by a South Korean firm in Shabwa province.

"The military campaign against Al Qaeda is just more propaganda," Jemhi said. "The previous campaigns achieved nothing except a few arrests. It is the result of U.S. pressure following the discovery of the package bombs."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-yemen-offensive-20101103,0,3333269,print.story

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At least 113 killed in series of Baghdad attacks

At least 17 coordinated explosions are set off in Shiite neighborhoods. Al Qaeda in Iraq is believed to be behind the violence, which appears aimed at igniting a new sectarian war.

By Ned Parker and Jaber Zeki, Los Angeles Times

November 3, 2010

Reporting from Baghdad

Militants unleashed a wave of deadly attacks in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 113 people in Shiite neighborhoods in an apparent bid to provoke a new sectarian war in the country.

Seventeen car bombs and other blasts shook the city at sunset in one of the bloodiest days this year. The coordinated attacks, which bore the earmark of the Sunni Arab militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq, came just 48 hours after 58 people were killed after armed men seized a Baghdad church.

"The new Qaeda has started its work again in Iraq," a senior Iraqi security commander warned, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The situation is very bad."

The mayhem underscored the extent to which violence continues to define Iraq, even as American troops depart and memories of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion retreat from American consciousness. Each deadly incident, whether a fatal shooting or a major explosion, fuels foreboding that Iraq could once more fall apart as the nation seeks to function without a new government eight months after national elections. The senior commander cautioned that Iraq's political deadlock was tempting disaster.

"It's getting worse," he said of the violence. "Maybe it will be worse than 2005 if the government doesn't form."

In the period since the March 7 elections, hopes that the vote would promote stability have dissipated amid a rancorous competition to head the next government. The race between Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, a Shiite Islamist, and former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite supported by Iraq's Sunnis, has fractured the political arena along sectarian and ethnic lines.

Although Allawi's bloc won two more parliamentary seats than Maliki's, the prime minister has outmaneuvered Allawi by rallying most other Shiite religious factions to his side. Yet Maliki has been unable to close the deal and a political vacuum has emerged, along with bilious sentiment among the feuding camps.

It is this friction that the attackers are apparently seeking to exploit. These two bloody days could bring foes together to forge a united front, or they could serve as another tool for leaders to bludgeon one another for political advantage.

"Today was a well-planned, organized, calculated attack on Shiite neighborhoods to ignite sectarian violence again to push us back to 2006. This needs a great deal of leadership, self-restraint and focus not to fall into the trap of the terrorists. This is the key issue," said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. "The one value added from this horrible massacre of people will be to pressure the politicians and the leaders that the time is now. You must form the government as soon as possible."

A senior U.S. military officer cautioned that both the Iraqi government and the remaining American forces in the country lacked the ability to gauge what the tipping point might be for a renewal of sectarian war. He described the Americans as stuck in the dark now that their ranks are drastically reduced and restricted to an advisory role; in turn, he described Iraqi political and security figures as blinded by their own internal power struggles.

"Nobody knows where that red line is. No one is really gauging how close anyone is to crossing that line," said the officer, who was not authorized to talk to reporters. "Everything is really vulnerable right now."

Zebari also faulted the Iraqi forces for failing to share their intelligence, work together or anticipate threats. "It is a security failure," he said.

One of the worst attacks Tuesday took place in east Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, the bedrock of support for populist Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. A car bomb exploded near a street market, killing 15 people and wounding 23, police said.

Car bombs and small explosives also ripped through districts near the densely packed Sadr City, according to police and hospital officials. In west Baghdad, attacks including seven car bombs killed 54 people in Shiite neighborhoods. The bloodshed triggered memories of the warfare in the capital between Shiite and Sunni armed groups that ended a little more than two years ago.

In the dark days of 2006, Sunni extremists associated with the group Al Qaeda in Iraq regularly bombed Shiite sections of Baghdad. Sadr's Mahdi Army militia often struck back with raids in Sunni areas. The violence began to cool in late 2007 after Sunni insurgents turned against Al Qaeda in Iraq, Sadr froze his militia's activities, and the U.S. military sent additional troops to Baghdad.

One lawmaker and Sadr supporter faulted the political blocs for Tuesday's carnage. Political leaders "are occupied with who gets what position and are busy with quarrels amongst each other. It feels so irresponsible," said Hakim Zamili, a parliament member beloved in Sadr City for fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq and reviled by Sunnis as a symbol of the Mahdi Army. "I don't think people will resort to revenge. They just want peace and quiet and to live an honest life."

Zebari, a Kurd, and Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's Kurdistan region, have been pushing for a government that includes both Maliki and Allawi. The Kurds have been hesitant to back Maliki, whom other parties have accused of authoritarian tendencies, without bringing Allawi and the Sunnis on board too.

Hospitalized victims spoke with resignation. Ali Yassin, with shrapnel wounds to his arms, legs and head, had been watching the sunset in Sadr City when he was suddenly knocked down by flames.

"I am sorry the situation has gotten so bad," he said. "This emergency room is packed, dirty and chaotic. The doctors are doing everything they can, but what can anyone do?"

Hassan Naima, who operates a food cart in the eastern neighborhood of Shaab, was preparing sandwiches for customers when he heard four loud blasts. Cars raced away with wounded people, and smoke filled the air.

"Where are the people who are bragging about the security?" Naima asked. "Where is the government? They left us to face the unknown. Yesterday it was the church, and now so many explosions in one day. All the government knows is how to set up roadblocks to clog the street and make traffic jams."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iraq-bombings-20101103,0,5501782,print.story

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EGYPT: Authorities on high alert to protect churches after Al Qaeda threat

Egyptian authorities are stepping up efforts to protect the country's Christian churches following a series of threats by Al Qaeda. 

Newspapers reported Tuesday that the Ministry of Interior had tightened its security presence and police patrols around all churches in Cairo and other provinces across the country. Worshipers will also be thoroughly searched before entering any church.

An eyewitness in the Qena, where six Copts and a Muslim were killed in a drive-by shooting outside a church on Jan. 7, said that no fewer than six security vehicles were positioned outside his neighborhood church. He added that no cars were allowed to park within about 300 yards of the area.

The red alert comes after Al Qaeda-affiliated militants in Iraq  attacked  the Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad during a Sunday Mass attended by 120 worshipers. At least 58 were killed and 75 were wounded during the raid.

After taking full responsibility for the assault, Al Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq offshoot issued a statement giving Egyptian Coptic leaders a 48-hour deadline to release two females who are allegedly being locked up in Christian monasteries in Egypt after they converted to Islam.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the threat. Experts played down Al Qaeda's threat, but warned of its consequences, which can lead to escalating tension between Copts and Muslims in the most populous Arab country.

"Al Qaeda's threat is just bogus," analyst Amar Ali Hassan said. "Nonetheless, this was expected in light of repeated failures by the Egyptian government to resolve the sectarian problem." 

Al Qaeda's move might give ideas to other would-be militants, "unknown to security forces and to individuals who are upset with the way the matter has been dealt with by the government and who may carry out individual attacks against the church," he added.

Sporadic conflicts between Egypt's majority of Muslims and Copts, who makeu up an estimated 10% of the country's population, have been on the rise.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/11/egypt-churches-on-high-alert-following-al-qaeda-threat.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BabylonBeyond+%28Babylon+%26+Beyond+Blog%29

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The bodies of two leaders of a student gang lie uncovered before the Santo Domingo church in Oaxaca, Mexico, Oct. 29, 2010

Gang killings in Oaxaca force response from governor by Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City Los Angeles Times November 2, 2010 Two leaders of a university student gang were gunned down last week in front of a popular tourist attraction in Oaxaca, Mexico. The shootings are not believed to be drug-related but rather tied to the complex world of provincial politics in Oaxaca, where deals, scores, and broken alliances are often settled through violence. Campus-based student gangs, known as porros , are among those accused of carrying out fatal attacks against the teacher-led movement that sought to oust Gov. Ulises Ruiz in 2006. The victims in the Friday shooting, Ruben Maldonado Marmolejo and Jose Maria Gonzalez Porras , were approached by gunmen outside the Santo Domingo church, a tourism landmark in the historic center of Oaxaca, also capital of Oaxaca state, at about 1:30 p.m. Ruiz was at an official event only a few blocks away, one report said.

The gunmen fired and fled on motorcycles, while the dead men's bodies were left uncovered for an unusually long time as police investigated, reports said. This allowed the scene to be widely photographed, as seen in the above news agency image.

Maldonado and Gonzalez were identified as leaders of a porro gang at a Oaxacan university that routinely clashes with police and opposition activists (link in Spanish). Ruiz, pressed by local reporters including Mexico's official state news agency Notimex (link in Spanish), dismissed immediate whispers in Oaxaca that the porro killings at the Santo Domingo church were somehow tied to the upcoming end of his six-year term as governor.

"We are not immune to this type of violence," Ruiz said, adding that violence in Oaxaca is not as acute as in other states.

On Dec. 1, Ruiz hands over the governorship to Gabino Cue, ending 80 years of uninterrupted rule in the state for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Cue won as a coalition candidate for non-PRI parties. The PRI's control over Oaxaca is longer than the party's uninterrupted control over the Mexican presidency, which lasted 71 years. The transition is expected to be delicate.

Porros are often hired as unofficial muscle for politicians and political parties in various regions of Mexico. Operating as contracted thugs, the secretive groups are thought to openly attack or seek to sabotage opposition demonstrations, such as those that gripped Oaxaca during the conflict over Ruiz's rule in 2006. The Oaxaca teachers' group known as the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca, or APPO, accused the Ruiz administration of hiring porro groups to attack its blockades in the city at the time. The gangs were known as "caravans of death" (link in Spanish).

In statements during the 2006 confrontations, APPO said at least 17 people died in attacks, but subsequent reports place that figure higher. Among the dead over the seven-month period of upheaval was the American journalist Brad Will , a case that Will's survivors say has never been fully solved.

In recent weeks, two social activists have been killed in different towns in Oaxaca, part of a steady stream of politically motivated attacks that crisscross the state and confound even locals over their motive or meaning. In mid-October, an American real estate developer was found dead near the town of San Bartolo Coyotepec. Lane Gilbert , 46, was a native of Northern California who lived in Oaxaca for 18 years. He had been missing since August.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2010/10/oaxaca-student-gang-leader-killed.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LaPlaza+%28La+Plaza%29

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Youth vote falters; Prop. 19 falls short

California would have become the first state to allow marijuana to be sold for recreational use. Moderate voters opposed it.

John Hoeffel, Reporting from Los Angeles

November 3, 2010

After taking a serious look at legalizing marijuana, Californians voted Tuesday to reject Proposition 19, which would have made the state the first to allow the drug to be sold for recreational use.

The measure drew strong support from voters younger than 25, as the campaign had hoped, but those voters did not turn out in unusually high numbers, according to a state exit poll. The initiative also failed to win over the moderate voters who make up the state's decisive swing vote.

The San Francisco Bay Area was the only region to tilt toward the measure, but it did so just slightly. In Los Angeles County, where a quarter of the state's voters live, the initiative lost.

Despite a potential double-digit loss, marijuana-legalization advocates said the proposition had transformed talk about legal pot from a late-night punch line into a serious policy matter.

"This has been a watershed moment," said Stephen Gutwillig, the California director for the Drug Policy Alliance, which waged an extensive ad campaign for the measure. "Even in defeat, Proposition 19 has moved marijuana legalization into the mainstream of American politics."

Tuesday's vote was just the first round, say legalization advocates, who are aiming measures at the 2012 ballot in Washington, Oregon, Colorado and very likely California. But it's also the second time in two years that California voters have rejected an initiative to soften penalties for drug crimes.

"The cover of the book looked nice, but it didn't read very well," said Roger Salazar, the spokesman for the opposition campaign. "This specific initiative was massively flawed."

Richard Lee, the medical marijuana entrepreneur who spearheaded the initiative and spent $1.5million on the historic campaign, pledged to work with the initiative's critics to draft a new one.

"We won tonight. We won for the last six months, the last year, all the years we've been fighting. We're going to keep fighting," Lee told supporters who gathered inside and outside Oaksterdam University, the Oakland medical marijuana trade school he founded.

California's 1996 medical marijuana initiative, the first in the nation, has led to more liberal attitudes toward pot nationwide as similar programs spread to 13 other states and the nation's capital. On Tuesday, voters in Arizona and South Dakota were deciding whether to approve programs; voters in Oregon were weighing whether to allow storefront dispensaries.

Proposition 19's backers had hoped voters worried about the economy would embrace the measure as a way to raise new taxes. In 10 cities, including San Jose, Sacramento and Long Beach, voters appeared to be overwhelmingly approving taxes on medical and recreational marijuana.

Passage of Proposition 19 would have vaulted the state into unmapped territory, invigorated the movement to legalize marijuana and set up a dramatic confrontation with the federal government.

The initiative would have eliminated all criminal penalties for adults 21 and older who planted marijuana in a plot of up to 25 square feet or possessed up to an ounce for personal use. It also would have allowed city councils and county supervisors to authorize commercial cultivation and retail sales.

But the opposition was broad, according to the poll conducted by Edison Research for the National Voter Pool, a consortium of the major television news networks and the Associated Press. Men and women opposed it. Voters of every race opposed it. The campaign had hoped black and Latino voters would see the measure as a way to end disproportionate arrests of minorities caught with marijuana.

The measure drew intense interest. Foreign leaders weighed in. All the top statewide candidates opposed it. The federal drug czar denounced it. And the U.S. attorney general pledged to "vigorously enforce" federal narcotics laws whatever California did.

Americans tuned in to the Proposition 19 debate. More than four decades after the war on drugs was declared, the country is almost evenly divided on whether to legalize marijuana.

In California, half of the voters consistently tell pollsters they favor legal marijuana and a tenth are unsure. In September, support for the initiative crept above the halfway mark, triggering euphoria among advocates. But voters became skeptical about the details.

Opponents exploited their doubts by mocking it in radio ads and suggesting that it would create an epidemic of dope-addled teenagers, motorists and nurses. Proponents said it would control marijuana as alcohol is controlled, allow police to focus on serious crimes, curtail the black market and raise billions in taxes, but they opened themselves to criticism by overstating those claims.

Lee once hoped to raise $20 million for the campaign, but big-money donors stayed out until the end. Proponents raised about $4.2 million, almost a third in the last two weeks.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pot-20101103-1,0,5990135,print.story

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Patient aggression intensifies at Napa State Hospital

Attacks on staffers and patients have increased sharply. State officials pledge to improve security after the killing of a staffer there.

By Lee Romney, Los Angeles Times

November 3, 2010

Reporting from San Francisco

When Napa State Hospital psychiatric technician Donna Gross was strangled last month on the hospital grounds, state officials lamented her death as a tragic and rare event, the first killing of a staffer in two decades.

They pledged to improve security by offering staff members shuttle rides to the parking lot, and they temporarily barred patients from going outside unaccompanied.

But a Times review suggests safety problems at the facility are neither rare nor so readily fixed.

Attacks on staff in the second quarter of 2010, the latest for which information was available, more than quadrupled to about 200 since early 2009 and patient assaults against one another have soared sevenfold to 692, data from the state Department of Mental Health show. Patients also have harmed themselves and threatened suicide at steeply rising rates since January of last year.

Even so, federal officials have declared the state hospital to be in "substantial compliance" with court-mandated changes to improve conditions and protect the civil rights of the hospital's 1,100 patients.

The reforms are the result of a 2006 lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice targeting Napa and three other state mental hospitals. They have cost California taxpayers tens of millions of dollars for, among other things, consultants, a federal court monitor, more staff and a computer system to better track treatment.

The efforts also have led to a reduction in close supervision, restraint and medication of potentially dangerous patients, most of whom have been committed because of crimes related to their mental illnesses, according to state data and interviews with staffers.

"Overall, it does more harm than good," Dr. David Brody, a former Napa State Hospital psychiatrist, said of the federal oversight. He said he left this fall because of ethical and safety concerns.

Although Napa's data on patient aggression in many ways reveals the most startling deterioration systemwide, the others under federal watch — Atascadero State Hospital on the Central Coast, Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk and Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino — have also experienced increased assaults on patients and staffers.

Stephen Mayberg, director of the state Department of Mental Health, said Monday that rising aggression rates are caused in part by the relatively recent practice of including such behavior as verbal assaults and throwing things, which often precede physical attacks. Napa is also getting more violent and unmedicated patients than it once did, he added.

He called Gross' death a "terrible, terrible situation" and said reducing violence "has to be one of the major markers for us as to whether or not what we're doing in our system works."

A U.S. Department of Justice spokeswoman said Tuesday that although it mostly abided by federal requirements, the Napa facility fell short in some areas. A monitor's report from a July visit, which she provided, suggested that the hospital was not adequately tracking aggression trends over time.

Central to the federal reforms was a requirement that patients attend 20 hours a week of groups — such as anger management and substance abuse recovery — conducted in a campus-style "treatment mall." One consequence was that patients had more freedom to wander among units and around the grounds, resulting in more assaults and exchanges of contraband, according to internal memos and reports to hospital and state administrators.

Jess Willard Massey, 37, the patient charged with murdering Gross, had a "grounds card" that permitted him to wander outdoors. He had been admitted to the hospital in 1997 after being declared not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity in connection with a brutal stabbing, according to media reports.

Gross' body was found on the grounds on the evening of Oct. 23 after she failed to return from a meal break.

Staff members said that it was bound to happen and that administrators had been on notice.

In June 2009, the hospital's social workers sent a report to their superiors, including Mayberg, that patients had been wandering unsupervised in hallways and stairwells; that patients who were supposed to be separated from one another had been assigned to groups on the same unit; and that those confined to locked units had been mingled with those from unlocked units.

The changes created "a chaotic and unsafe environment that has been incredibly stressful for staff but even more so" for patients, said the report, obtained by The Times. Staff members said they received no response.

The number of assaults grew. Patients are now locked out of their bedrooms during treatment hours in an attempt to compel them to go to groups, which many avoid. Memos indicate that staff members have continued to alert hospital administrators over the last year to security problems.

One memo sent this fall noted that at one complex, the atmosphere had deteriorated so much that patients were fighting, loitering and "passing small objects to each other." In that area last December, a patient with a grounds pass, 47-year-old Michael Allen Cobb, hanged himself from an air conditioning unit, according to an autopsy report.

A day before Gross was killed, the hospital's acting executive director, Dolly Matteucci, announced in an internal e-mail that the hospital has "maintained our performance level, and in many areas continued to improve."

Two hundred friends, family members and co-workers attended Gross' memorial service Friday. The 54-year-old Concord woman was remembered for her "infectious energy" and compassion. She was helping to raise her granddaughter and had long taken needy neighborhood children into her home.

"Donna will be my angel, our angel," fellow psychiatric technician Ceclia Jasch told mourners. "I think she's been a sacrifice so that we can be enlightened that we need to focus on safety issues in that place. Please don't let this fade away. Donna, your death is not in vain."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-hospital-violence-20101103,0,6315782,print.story

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Three San Diego residents charged with aiding Somali terror group

Three San Diego residents have been indicted on charges of conspiring to provide money to a terrorist group in Somalia that uses murder, beheadings and bombings, the U.S. attorney's office announced Tuesday.

The three are charged with aiding Al Shabab, listed by the State Department as a group pledged to use terror and intimidation to undermine Somalia's weak transitional government.  All three are in custody.

Charged are Basaaly Saeed Moalin, 33; Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud, 38; and Issa Doreh, 54.

Al Shabab has claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed 76 people in Uganda who were watching a telecast of a World Cup soccer match. Included in the dead was an American aid worker.

Although it has ties to Al Qaeda, the group is not believed to have launched any attacks on U.S. soil, officials said.

The indictment charges that Moalin was in telephone contact in 2007 and 2008 with a leader of the terror group, Aden Hashi Ayrow, who asked him to send money to the group. Money from San Diego was sent to Somalia on several occasions, the indictment alleges.

Also, Moalin provided a safe house for terrorists to use in Somalia, the indictment says.

Moalin was arrested Sunday as he attempted to board a flight from San Diego's Lindbergh Field. Doreh and Mohamud were arrested Monday.

In August, 14 people, most of them U.S. citizens of Somali descent, were indicted in three states on charges of helping the same group. Included in that group was a former San Diego resident, Serwan Mostafa, 28, a U.S. citizen. He remained at large.

At the time, U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder said the group was attempting to put together a "deadly pipeline" of funds and fighters to help its goal of toppling the Somali government and installing an Islamic regime akin to that of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Holder said that an increasing number of U.S. residents "have become captivated by extremist ideology." An estimated 20 young men left Minnesota from 2007 to 2009 to join Al Shabab, Holder said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/11/three-residents-of-san-diego-charged-with-aiding-somali-terror-group.html

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OPINION

War is hell

You can't judge a war by the atrocities committed fighting it.

By Jonathan Zimmerman

November 3, 2010

Most Americans regard World War II as a "just war" because the United States helped stem the vicious tide of global fascism. But during that war, American soldiers dismembered Japanese corpses and collected their body parts as souvenirs.

A contradiction? Not really. You can commit war crimes on behalf of a just war just as easily as an unjust one.

But you wouldn't know that by reading comments about five U.S. soldiers accused of civilian murders this year in Afghanistan.

According to news reports, the soldiers also cut off fingers from corpses and posed in photographs with them. When the Army announced in October that it would court-martial one of the soldiers, Spc. Jeremy Morlock, reaction from antiwar activists was quick and predictable: The war was a mistake all along, and our military crimes prove it.

Meanwhile, Army officials moved to keep photographs of the atrocities out of the public eye. If the photos go viral, officials say, people around the world will turn against America's struggle in Afghanistan.

Just like the antiwar crowd, ironically, the Army is assuming that war crimes will become a metaphor for the war itself.

They're both wrong. The soldiers' alleged acts are horrible, of course, and the military should prosecute the charges to the fullest. But these crimes don't speak to the larger purpose and validity of the war in Afghanistan, any more than American atrocities during WW II reflected on the justice of our campaign against the Japanese.

Let's leave aside the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which the U.S. justified as a way to prevent further carnage. On the battlefield, American soldiers routinely killed Japanese civilians and mutilated Japanese bodies. Yes, our enemies committed all kinds of atrocities during the war. But so did we.

Americans collected bones, scalps and skulls from the Japanese dead or near-dead. None of this was a secret either. In 1944, Life magazine published a full-page photograph of an attractive young woman posing with a Japanese skull. " Arizona war worker writes her Navy boyfriend a thank-you note for the Jap skull he sent her," the caption declared.

But skulls were difficult to carry and — especially — to prepare: Soldiers first had to remove the flesh from the severed head, either by boiling the head or by leaving it out for ants to eat. So they preferred to collect ears, which were tidy and small.

"The other night Stanley emptied his pockets of 'souvenirs' — eleven ears from dead Japs," read a 1943 article in a Marine newspaper. "It was not disgusting, as it would be from the civilian point of view."

Actually, most civilians seemed fine with the practice. That same year, a Baltimore newspaper reported that a local mother had asked authorities to allow her son to send her an ear he had cut off a Japanese soldier. She wanted to nail it to her door, she said, so everyone could see it.

Most of all, some American servicemen collected gold teeth. One Marine boasted of collecting 17 teeth, the last from a Japanese soldier who was still moving his hands. Another Marine slit a wounded Japanese's cheeks open and carved out his teeth with a knife while the victim thrashed on the ground.

Although some Americans did object to these atrocities at the time, it would be much later before WW II veterans expressed regret for them. In a 1981 memoir, American biologist E.B. Sledge recalled watching American soldiers cut off a hand from a dead Japanese, urinate into the mouth of another corpse and shoot an old woman who was "just an old gook," as one of Sledge's comrades told him. "The fierce struggle for survival eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all," Sledge wrote.

Significantly, though, Sledge continued to believe in the larger purpose of the war. The Japanese had attacked the United States and conquered much of East Asia, and they had to be stopped. Some U.S. military men had committed monstrous acts, to be sure, but America's larger military cause remained just.

Is the cause in Afghanistan also just? I really don't know. But here's what I do know: The alleged crimes committed by Morlock and his platoon don't speak to the answer. Atrocities happen in almost every war, just and unjust alike. So it's far too simple — and a bit dishonest — to claim that the crimes of this war make the war itself criminal.

But it's also dishonest for military officials to keep hiding the photographs of the atrocities, which should be released as soon as possible. If the war is just, it remains so regardless of what these soldiers did; and if it isn't, we should pull up stakes and come home.

The photos will also remind us how far we've come since WW II, as a people and as a nation. Back then, most Americans accepted or even celebrated wartime mutilations; today, we're mortified by them. But we shouldn't let the atrocities color our overall view of the war, no matter how hard it is to look at them. That's the easy way out.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author, most recently, of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-adv-zimmerman-atrocities-20101103,0,5467007,print.story

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From the New York Times

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NATO Sees Threats, but Is Reluctant to Say Just Who the Enemy Might Be

BRUSSELS — NATO 's secretary general expects two headlines out of this month's annual summit meeting in Lisbon: an agreement to build an alliance-wide missile defense system, and NATO's own “reset” with Russia , whose president has accepted an invitation to the meeting and says Moscow will explore cooperation on missile defense.

NATO is still negotiating key points in a new strategic doctrine, its first since 1999, to be published in Lisbon.

These issues include nuclear disarmament, which divides France and Germany, and the alliance's relationship with the European Union , which gets tangled up, as always, in the complications of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey.

And there is the equally problematic issue of missile defense, starting with the basic rationale for having such a thing. The alliance's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen , a former Danish prime minister, was reluctant in an interview in his newly remodeled office here (Danish modern, with an Oval Office-like carpet with the NATO seal) to specify where such a missile threat might come from.

“More than 30 countries in the world have missile technology, and some of them can hit targets in allied territory,” he said.

The main threat is perceived to be from Iran, which is building sophisticated missiles to go with its nuclear program. But President Obama and the Europeans are offering yet another round of talks to the Iranians, to get them to stop enriching uranium, and Turkey does not want the missile system to be seen as aimed at Tehran, so it is diplomatically impolite to mention Iran.

Russia is also not mentioned as a threat, given the desire for a better relationship with Moscow and the willingness of Russia's president, Dmitri A. Medvedev , to come to Lisbon and discuss Russian participation in the new missile shield, which his predecessor and possible successor, Vladimir V. Putin , has regularly condemned.

It all marks a change from 2008 in Bucharest, Romania, when Mr. Putin crashed the summit dinner and lectured President George W. Bush about encirclement and the dangers of inviting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO.

In Lisbon, Mr. Rasmussen said, “I would expect NATO allies to decide that we will develop a NATO-based missile defense system. But at the same time we will invite Russia to cooperate, and then, of course, we have to work out how to cooperate.” Missile defense, he argues, presents “the greatest potential for enhancing our cooperation.”

Mr. Rasmussen will have a delicate task to perform when he visits Moscow on Wednesday to prepare for the summit meeting two weeks later, as relations between NATO and Russia have been strained.

Mr. Putin regards NATO expansion to parts of the former Soviet Union as offensive, while the West was affronted by Russia's occupation of two key provinces of Georgia after the Russian-Georgian war of 2008, which it generally saw as Moscow's riposte to NATO's vague promise of membership to Georgia. Moscow still refuses to remove its troops.

Asked what he would tell anxious Georgians about the “reset” with Russia, Mr. Rasmussen said that the alliance would not recognize the independence, autonomy or annexation of the two provinces, Abkhazia and South Ossetia; that it continues to respect Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity; and that NATO would keep its promise to some day admit both Georgia and Ukraine.

He argued that a closer alliance relationship with Russia would help Georgia regain its territory, saying, “I do believe that an improved relationship between NATO and Russia is the best chance to ensure peaceful solutions to such disputes.”

Many Georgians and East Europeans, however, do not believe Russia will ever cede the two provinces or come to see NATO as a partner.

Asked about planning to defend all NATO members, including the Baltic nations and Poland, which had previously been left unclear, Mr. Rasmussen said carefully: “We never go into details about our military plan. But I can assure you, and that goes for all allies, that we have the necessary plans in place to defend them against any threats.”

Mr. Rasmussen and NATO are emphasizing the new strategic doctrine, nearly finished. One question has been how to balance a Russian reset with NATO's principles.

But Mr. Rasmussen argues that NATO and Russia are best served finding areas of mutual security interest and then acting together on those — issues like Afghanistan, terrorism, narcotics, piracy, cyberwar and even missile defense — while leaving aside areas of contention, like Georgia and Ukraine.

When it was suggested that it was generally accepted that Russia launched a cyberattack against a NATO member, Estonia, in 2007, he stopped for a moment, then said that Moscow's involvement was never fully proved.

“The problem is that attacks from cyberspace can be very difficult to trace,” he said. “So we have to develop a capacity to protect our societies across the board.”

NATO is trying to find a similar balance in its new doctrine between France, a nuclear-armed nation that insists on the primacy of nuclear deterrence, and Germany, which wants to enshrine the aspiration of a nonnuclear world.

While NATO officials and ambassadors say the language is not finished, it will probably follow President Obama's own formulation — to work toward a nonnuclear world while maintaining a nuclear deterrent. “We are pretty close to a consensus,” Mr. Rasmussen said. Missile defense, he said, enhances deterrence, but does not replace it. While nuclear weapons still exist, he said, “The alliance will remain a nuclear alliance.”

In general, Mr. Rasmussen gets high marks for managing the new strategic doctrine, naming an expert group led by Madeleine K. Albright , the former secretary of state. Her report was unwieldy, but found key compromises, while identifying areas of disagreement.

Mr. Rasmussen then wrote his own version, a terser statement of what NATO is and wants to be in this century, a time when the cold war is over; European tank battles are unimaginable; and new threats come from terrorism, missiles, failed states, piracy, poverty and cyberwarfare.

The point of the new doctrine is educational, trying to answer the question, “Why is NATO still here?” The summit meeting, one ambassador said, “is designed to turn an organization founded on territorial defense against an identified threat to a more dynamic, flexible organization that is about building security and enhancing the safety of its citizens through cooperating with others.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/world/03nato.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Greece Suspends Outgoing Airmail After Wave of Bombs

BERLIN — A package bomb addressed to the German chancellor and shipped by air from Greece was found in her office's mailroom on Tuesday, even as Athens was shaken by a second day of letter bombs aimed at foreign embassies and experts defused explosives addressed to European leaders.

In the aftermath, Greece suspended all mail deliveries to foreign destinations for 48 hours, according to news reports.

Though only one person was injured, and only lightly, and most of the devices were neutralized, the wave of bombs unnerved European officials already scrambling to secure the continent's air-cargo system after two explosive devices were intercepted en route from Yemen to the United States last Friday.

In a token of heightened tension, a plane from the TNT cargo airline made an emergency landing at Bologna, Italy, after officials in Greece realized that it was carrying a package addressed to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and warned the pilot, The Associated Press reported.

“A little flame was sparked,” when bomb experts defused the package after closing the airport to traffic for several hours, police spokeswoman Donatella Dosi was quoted as saying. No one was injured. The plane was heading for Paris and Liége, Belgium.

Earlier, anxiety spilled over in Athens as officials destroyed one suspicious package at the airport's cargo terminal. In all, Greek officials dealt with nine confirmed bombs — four on Monday and five on Tuesday — including one addressed to the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy , as well as the embassies of Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Chile, Mexico and Russia.

In Berlin, officials said that the bomb addressed to Chancellor Angela Merkel was found at the chancellery, the seat of the federal government, about 1 p.m. and that it had been moved outside by robot and demolished with a water cannon. The interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, said that it had been sent by airmail from Greece two days earlier and that it appeared in design and construction similar to a device that exploded outside the Swiss Embassy in Athens.

At that embassy on Tuesday, staff members thought the package looked suspicious and hurled it outdoors, where it exploded without harm.

Greek officials said they had charged two young men who were arrested Monday with committing terrorist acts. At least one of them was suspected of being tied to radical leftist organizations, and a government spokesman, Giorgos Petalotis, said the goal was apparently to “disturb the peace and order of Greek society,” in advance of local elections scheduled for Sunday. But he spoke before the device was found in Germany, clouding the issue of motive.

Without clarity on the rationale, analysts saw the package bombs as a sideshow, though a disturbing one, to the threat posed by radical Islamic groups.

“I think that the threat posed by the Islamists is a lot more dangerous than the packaged explosives,” said Guido Steinberg, an expert on Islamic terrorism with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “We have been talking about a Mumbai-style plot, different scenarios, kidnappings, this is a lot more the threat we face in the future.”

Officials in Germany and Greece said they were confident that there was no link between the relatively small letter bombs and the more powerful explosive devices sent from Yemen, which officials believe were sent by an Al Qaeda affiliate there. One of the bombs passed through the Cologne-Bonn airport in Germany before being intercepted at a cargo hub in northern England.

The back-to-back brushes with crisis have challenged Germany's public posture that it faces a mostly abstract threat of terrorism. German officials have resisted pressure from Washington to be more proactive and public in counterterrorism.

German officials were in the early stages of addressing the vulnerability of their nation's air cargo system when they were alerted to the device in the mailroom of the chancellery. The regional criminal police locked down the building, then robotically removed the bomb. Mrs. Merkel was in Belgium.

“The investigation showed that the parcel's content was suitable to hurt people,” said the government spokesman, Steffen Seibert.

The daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the device, discovered during a routine check, was a pipe bomb concealed in a hollowed-out book. Die Zeit and other German news outlets reported that the package was sent by air freight, but that the bomb used black powder — a considerably less sophisticated explosive than that used in the packages sent from Yemen. Die Zeit disputed the Süddeutsche Zeitung report of a pipe bomb.

Though no one had revealed a motive for singling out Mrs. Merkel, there was speculation that it had to do with Germany's position during the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, when she and other German officials insisted that any bailout of Greece come with harsh austerity measures.

But Margarita Mathiopoulos, chief executive of the EAG European Advisory Group, a firm in Berlin that advises companies and governments on counterterrorism and other security issues, said it was unlikely that the bomb was intended to punish Germany for its policies. More likely, the sender simply sought a prominent target, she said.

“There is no reason behind it. They also found a package for Sarkozy and Sarkozy was supposed to be nice to Greece,” she said, referring to the French president, who took a more forgiving view toward Greece. “Tomorrow it will come from Rio de Janeiro, then from Rome, God knows where.”

The letter-bomb campaign began Monday in Athens when a package addressed to the Mexican Embassy exploded in the hands of a courier service worker, causing minor wounds. At that time, the police detained the two suspects and destroyed three letter bombs: the one addressed to Mr. Sarkozy, and two others addressed to the Belgian and Dutch Embassies.

On Tuesday, after the bomb exploded at the Swiss Embassy, another went off at the Russian Embassy. A device sent to the Bulgarian Embassy was destroyed by police bomb disposal experts. Another letter bomb, addressed to the Chilean Embassy, was destroyed by police officers outside Parliament. A package addressed to the German Embassy was returned to the courier company that had delivered it and was destroyed.

In Greece, parcel bombs have rarely been used by domestic terror groups. In June, however, one person was killed when security officials unwittingly took a similar device into the Greek Public Order Ministry, killing the chief aide to the minister at the time, who had been the intended target. No group has claimed responsibility for that attack.

Greece has had a history of domestic terrorism since the fall of the military dictatorship in the mid-1970s. That wave peaked in the 1980s, but the fatal shooting of a teenager by a police officer in December 2008 caused the emergence of several new militant guerrilla groups, some of which have engaged in terrorism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/world/europe/04greece.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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In Parcel Bomb Plot, 2 Dark Inside Jokes

WASHINGTON — The would-be terrorists in Yemen made a sardonic choice when they sent two package bombs to Chicago last week: they addressed the parcels to two historical figures notorious in Middle Eastern lore for the persecution of Muslims.

One of the addressees, Diego Deza, was known for his cruelty in performing his duties as Grand Inquisitor during the Spanish Inquisition, succeeding the infamous Tomás de Torquemada in the job. Reynald Krak, to whom the second package was addressed, is another name for Reynald of Châtillon — a French knight of the Second Crusade who wantonly killed Muslim pilgrims and was later beheaded by Saladin, the Kurdish warrior famous for his defeat of Western invaders in the 12th century.

That the packages were addressed to two people who have been dead for hundreds of years is one reason investigators on three continents have concluded that the parcel bombs — printer cartridges packed with explosives sent by FedEx and United Parcel Service — were probably designed to blow up before they reached Chicago.

As Yemen faced increased pressure to move against Al Qaeda, prosecutors in Sana, the Yemeni capital, on Tuesday charged and immediately began a criminal trial in absentia for Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical cleric now in hiding and operating as a recruiter and propagandist for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Mr. Awlaki, 39, has not yet been tied directly to the bomb plot, but American intelligence officials believe he is playing an increasingly important role in the terrorist group's operations.

The chief prosecutor, Ali Al-Sanea'a, called Mr. Awlaki “yesterday a regular visitor of bars and discothèques in America” but now “the catalyst for shedding the blood of foreigners and security forces,” according to a statement. He said Mr. Awlaki was a leader of Al Qaeda and “a figure prone to evil, devoid of any conscience, religion or law.”

Mr. Awlaki was charged along with his cousin Othman al-Awlaki, who is also at large, and Hesham Mohammed Asem, who was present in court, with “forming an armed group to carry out criminal acts targeting foreigners” as part of Al Qaeda. Mr. Asem, 19, a security guard, is accused of shooting to death a French engineer on Oct. 6 in the Sana headquarters of the Austrian oil company OMV.

President Obama spoke by phone Tuesday with Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, about the plot, air cargo security and the countries' campaign against Al Qaeda. American officials have praised Mr. Saleh for stepping up pressure on the group in the past year, even as the United States has carried out at least four missile strikes against suspected Qaeda camps.

An administration official said Tuesday that the government had broadened the screening of “high risk” cargo bound for the United States after a “dry run” of suspicious material sent from Yemen to Chicago in September. Officials said the episode had given clues about a possible terrorist tactic of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but it is unclear whether the enhanced screening made in September had aided investigators in finding the two parcel bombs sent from Yemen to addresses in Chicago.

"Anytime new intelligence is obtained, it factors into our assessment of the threat as well as into the security and counterterrorism measures we take operationally," a senior administration official said.

Whoever is behind the package has at least a cursory understanding of history. According to scholars of the Crusades, Reynald of Châtillon went to the Middle East in the first half of the 12th century, steadily gaining prominence through two strategic marriages and a reputation for wanton killing of Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca.

“He's well known in Muslim folklore as a bogyman,” said Alfred J. Andrea, a professor emeritus at the University of Vermont and president of the World History Association.

Shortly after his defeat at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, Reynald was beheaded by the conquering Saladin, and his head was brandished victoriously around the streets of Damascus.

Born 300 years later, Diego Deza used sadistic interrogation methods on Muslims and Jewish converts to Christianity who he suspected were secretly practicing their original faith.

Brian Fishman, who studies terrorism at the New America Foundation, said the choice of historic enemies as addressees for the parcel bombs was a sort of inside joke that reflects the Qaeda ideologists' view of history.

“The jihadis draw a straight line from the Prophet Muhammad through the Crusades, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American invasion of Iraq, to the present day,” Mr. Fishman said. “The narrative is that non-Muslims are always on the attack, always trying to take Muslim lands. The jihadis like the narrative because it justifies violence, since they claim that they're only defending Islam.”

If the names on the packages ran a slight risk of detection, there was an element of taunting in the addresses, Mr. Fishman said, as there may have been in the picture of Chicago's skyline in the latest edition of Inspire, the English-language magazine of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

That recalled Osama bin Laden's decision to pose in 1998 in front of a map of East Africa, where Qaeda operatives were about to attack two American Embassies, he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/world/03terror.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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National Parks Reach Out to Blacks Who Aren't Visiting

When Shelton Johnson was 5, his family took him to Berchtesgaden National Park in the Bavarian Alps. To this day, he remembers his sense of awe.

“The mountains, the sky being so close — it affected me profoundly,” said Mr. Johnson, who now works as a ranger at Yosemite National Park in California.

In 23 years on the job, Mr. Johnson, 52, has been equally struck by how few of his fellow African-Americans visit the national parks, Yosemite included. A few years ago, he decided to do something about it.

In a plaintive letter to Oprah Winfrey, he wrote:

“Every year, America is becoming increasingly diverse, but that diversity is not reflected in the national parks, even though African-Americans and other groups played a vital role in the founding of national parks. If the national parks are America's playground, then why are we not playing in the most beautiful places in America?”

On Friday, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” devoted the full hour to a segment that was taped at Yosemite in response to Mr. Johnson's appeal. Part 2 of the episode is to be broadcast on Wednesday.

The visitors issue is a pressing one for the National Park Service, which is expanding its efforts to diversify both its guests and its work force as the agency prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2016.

Studies and surveys show that visitors to the nation's 393 national parks — there were 285.5 million of them in 2009 — are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic whites, with blacks the least likely group to visit. That reality has not changed since the 1960s, when it was first identified as an issue. The Park Service now says the problem is linked to the parks' very survival.

“If the American public doesn't know that we exist or doesn't care, our mission is potentially in jeopardy,” said Jonathan B. Jarvis, who took over as director of the Park Service last year. “There's a disconnect that needs addressing.”

The Park Service does not log attendance numbers at individual parks by race or ethnicity. But in a comprehensive survey it commissioned in 2000, only 13 percent of black respondents reported visiting a national park in the previous two years. That compared with 27 percent for Latinos, 29 percent for Asians and 36 percent for whites.

Jim Gramann, a visiting social scientist with the Park Service who is overseeing a review of a follow-up survey in 2008 and 2009 that is to be released early next year, said the gap persisted.

“The demographic face of America is not reflected in national park visitation, with a few exceptions,” Mr. Gramann said. In the large Western parks especially, he added, visitors are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic white, highly educated and affluent.

Park Service officials have identified factors like cost, travel distance and lack of information — for example, ignorance about what activities the parks offer — as barriers to visits.

But some officials acknowledge that the parks may not seem welcoming to specific ethnic groups. They cited rules that limit the number of people in picnic areas or the number of tents that can be pitched at specific sites, which can clash with the vacation style of extended Latino families.

Yet no group avoids national parks as much as African-Americans. The 2000 survey found that blacks were three times as likely as whites to believe that park employees gave them poor service and that parks were “uncomfortable places.”

Park Service officials emphasize that the demographics vary, and that parks like the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta and the Manzanar National Historic Site in Independence, Calif., site of a World War II detention camp for Japanese-Americans, draw diverse crowds.

But attendance tends to be more homogenously white at wilderness parks like Yosemite, where a 2009 survey found that 77 percent of the visitors were white, 11 percent Latino, 11 percent Asian and 1 percent black.

When Ms. Winfrey visited Yosemite this month to tape her show, Mr. Johnson said, he was not surprised to hear that it was her first trip to the park and her first time camping. He said he was more likely to meet someone from Finland or Israel in the park than from, say, Harlem or Oakland, Calif.

“It's something that's pervasive in the culture — it doesn't matter whether you're Oprah or a postal worker,” Mr. Johnson said. (Ms. Winfrey was traveling and unavailable for an interview, a spokeswoman said.)

Nina Roberts, a former education specialist for the Park Service who is an associate professor of recreation, parks and tourism at San Francisco State University, said her research showed that many blacks were anxious about the people they might encounter in the parks, a wariness that gets passed on through the generations.

Ms. Roberts said a 19-year-old woman in a focus group in Denver had told her: “My granddaddy told me the K.K.K. hangs out up in the mountains. Why would I want to go?”

Mr. Johnson, who was born in Detroit, said he visited Berchtesgaden in the Alps when his father was stationed in Germany as a staff sergeant in the Army.

Mr. Johnson, who majored in English literature and creative writing at the University of Michigan, became a ranger in 1987 after what he described as a lark of a summer job washing dishes at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park.

As he learned more about the Park Service's early history, he embarked on a work of fiction, “ Gloryland: A Novel,” published last year by Sierra Club/Counterpoint. The novel recounts the experience of a black cavalryman in the Army, one of the so-called Buffalo Soldiers who patrolled national parklands in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Today, the Park Service's 25,000 employees are 83 percent white.

Incorporating stories like the Buffalo Soldiers' tale into tours and brochures is one step the Park Service has taken to be more welcoming as well as more accurate. But such efforts are scattered, said Mr. Jarvis, the agency's director, and far more are needed.

Mr. Jarvis said the Park Service was planning more partnerships with high schools that arrange park jobs for students and more naturalization ceremonies for new citizens in parks. It is also seeking to recruit employees at black colleges.

With the “The Oprah Winfrey Show” segments and a black family in the White House who made a point of vacationing in Yellowstone last summer, some experts suggest that the climate is favorable for a turnaround in park visits.

“It's all layered,” said Carolyn Finney, an assistant professor of environmental science policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who is working on a book about blacks' relationship to the natural environment. “You need ways to make people think about the parks differently.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/science/earth/03parks.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Fifth Shooting Involving Military Offices in Virginia Is Investigated

WOODBRIDGE, Va. — At least one shot was fired at a United States Coast Guard recruiting center near a suburban mall overnight Monday in the latest of a series of shootings at military offices.

No one was injured in the latest incident, which mirrored recent overnight shootings at the Pentagon, at a Marine Corps recruiting station in Chantilly, Va., and twice at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Va. All of the shots were aimed at buildings.

“The four incidents have been linked — this one, not yet,” said Sgt. Kim Chinn, spokeswoman for the Prince William County Police Department. “It's a possibility, for sure.”

On Tuesday morning, an employee at the Coast Guard recruiting office about a quarter of a mile from I-95 discovered a damaged front window. The bullet, which struck the window to the right of the front door, about four feet off the ground, did not penetrate the glass, Sergeant Chinn said. She would not comment on whether the bullet was found.

Lisa Novak, a spokeswoman at Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, also declined to comment.

The police and officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation closed nearby parking lots and searched for evidence. A row of officers walked slowly across one section of a lot near an AMC Theater, looking at the ground. Two officers carrying metal detectors checked for evidence along a sidewalk across from the recruiting office.

Officials have not identified a suspect in the previous four shootings, all of which occurred late at night or early in the morning. Testing confirmed that the shots came from the same gun.

After the second shooting at the museum on Friday, F.B.I. officials said the gunman was believed to have a grievance with the Marine Corps. They said the shootings might be connected to a personal crisis like a divorce or death of a loved one.

It is too early to determine if the selection of a Coast Guard recruiting office would alter that analysis, said Andrew Ames, an F.B.I. spokesman.

“You're jumping way ahead here,” Mr. Ames said. “We're on scene at the request of the Prince William County Police Department.”

Recruiters have been checking their windows and surroundings each morning.

“We're staying vigilant,” Sgt. Edwin Brennan of the Air Force said Tuesday at a recruiting office a quarter of a mile from the latest shooting. The United States Army and Marines have recruiting offices in the same area.

The Coast Guard recruiting office is surrounded by chain restaurants, including Chili's Grill and Olive Garden.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/us/03shooting.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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EDITORIAL

Major Technical Difficulties

Behind closed doors in Washington, American officials are shaping an overhaul of the 1994 federal statute that requires phone and broadband carriers to ensure their networks can be wiretapped.

Based on a chilling recent precedent, the risk is substantial that this so-called technical updating will spread far beyond what's said to be contemplated — and greatly expand the already expansive power of the government to spy on Americans. Congress should be especially cautious about the scope of the revision.

The precedent is the 2008 amendment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. While it also needed updating to keep pace with technology, the Bush administration added measures that sanctioned spying without a warrant, without suspicion, and without court approval. Retroactively, it gave legal cover to more than five years of the administration's illegal spying. Congress turned those provisions into law.

The Obama administration has no similar tracks to cover, but the risks of executive overreach are still there. It's essential for Congress to be deliberate about providing a check on the executive branch and striking a balance with other American interests.

In September, The Times reported that officials were “preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet,” so that all communications services — e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook, peer-to-peer providers like Skype — will be able to comply with a wiretap order as online communications increasingly replace phone calls.

Last month, The Times reported that it's not just new technologies that officials are focusing on, it's those already covered by the 16-year-old law, like phone and broadband carriers, because they “have begun new services and made system upgrades that caused technical problems for surveillance.”

The government's contention is that it seeks only to maintain its ability to conduct surveillance so that it can engage in legitimate spying via new technologies with the same proficiency that it can via old ones. If the goal were as straightforward as that, it would be difficult to challenge. Despite its abuses, wiretapping has long been accepted as a tool of law enforcement when used properly.

The problem is that the hub-and-spoke design of phone and broadband communication is very different from the decentralized design of the Internet — and even more so from peer-to-peer connections. If, as some experts say, requiring Internet providers to be able to unscramble encrypted messages or intercept any transmitted communication also calls for them to function like centralized carriers, the shift will reverse what made the Internet — and made it a fount of economic growth.

The huge scale of the potential disruption underscores how little we know about why this overhaul is needed. Officials have recounted how some carriers have been unable to carry out wiretap orders and how the F.B.I. has spent tens of millions of dollars to help fix the problems. But there is no public data about how often a communication service's technical makeup thwarts surveillance approved by a court. Congress must understand why these changes are so pressing before it considers the likely major new legal requirements needed to ensure that new technologies can be wiretapped.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/opinion/03wed1.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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EDITORIAL

Katrina's Unfinished Business

New Orleans is finally rebounding from much of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. But five years later, a big problem remains: blighted neighborhoods. To attract a vibrant middle class, these neighborhoods need to be repaired and restored, or, at the very least, stabilized. Residents who have been unable to rebuild because storm relief grants were too small or unfairly calculated need more help from the city and state.

The problem is detailed in a new report issued by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, a nonpartisan research group. It says the city has 53,000 abandoned addresses — former homes and apartments — and is, by some measures, the most blighted city in the country.

This presents a huge challenge, especially in mainly minority neighborhoods where most of the blight is found. In the current real estate market, it will be difficult to sell vacant properties. At the same time, the city should resist the temptation to sell properties to bargain-hunting speculators, who would likely sit on them, possibly for years.

A better strategy would be to get properties into the hands of local residents who have already restored their own homes and who have a vested interest in quickly improving weed-filled lots next door. The city and state should also work closely with local nonprofit groups that have already contributed enormously to the rebuilding by fixing up many abandoned homes.

There are 10,000 mainly minority homeowners who have yet to repair their homes, even though they were given grants under the $8.65 billion Road Home program. A lower court found a likely prima facie case of discrimination, asserting that black homeowners had “received lower awards than they would have if their homes were in predominantly white neighborhoods.” A federal appeals court will hear the case sometime next year. In the interest of rebuilding New Orleans, and justice, the state must find a way to help these people now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/opinion/03wed3.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the White House

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Crowdsourcing Solutions to Prepare Our Communities

Last week I had the opportunity to speak in front of leaders from a variety of fields at the 2010 TEDMED conference in San Diego.  The conference gave business leaders, journalists, entertainment figures, scientists, artists and authors the opportunity to share their diverse experiences about how their fields intersect with health and medicine.  I talked about FEMA's vision for emergency management and how we can't respond to disasters alone – it has to be a team effort, and that team includes the entire federal family, state and local government, faith-based and non-profit organizations, the private sector and especially the public.

At FEMA, we are working every day to strengthen that team, but we can and we must do more.  At the conference, I took the opportunity to challenge all of the leaders to come up with ideas on how we can prepare our communities before a disaster strikes. Now I'm using this blog to pose this same challenge to all of you.

Visit www.challenge.gov/fema to accept the challenge.

 Whether it's a program to engage the public to personally prepare for disasters, a public service announcement for business preparedness, or a new device to mitigate the effects of disaster – the sky is the limit.  We want ideas from all ends of the spectrum, from whatever field you work in. If you're a doctor, what role can the medical community play? If you're an artist, how can you use your medium to contribute?

The best, most unique idea will be selected and highlighted on FEMA's website.

I want to crowdsource a solution, so ask your friends and coworkers to take on this challenge, tweet about it, share it on Facebook. We want as many ideas as possible, because the more we work together as a team, the more resilient our communities and our country will be.

Thank you in advance for your help and participation, and I look forward to seeing your ideas.

Craig Fugate is the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/11/02/crowdsourcing-solutions-prepare-our-communities

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From the Justice Department

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Department Commemorates the 10th Anniversary of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act

The Justice Department commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act at an event last week highlighting the department's achievements over a decade of enforcement.

Attorney General Eric Holder was joined by Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez of the Civil Rights Division, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Steven M. Dettelbach, chair of the Attorney General's Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys Civil Rights Subcommittee.

The Attorney General and other officials praised the broad partnerships developed within the department's components and those with other federal, state and local law enforcement as well as non-governmental victim assistance organizations that have worked with the Civil Rights Division's Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit to bring record numbers of human trafficking prosecutions. 

The Attorney General and Assistant Attorney General Perez praised the partnerships among the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Labor, and the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys for their collaboration on the forthcoming initiatives.

Attorney General Holder said:

“This crime is an affront to our common humanity.  While we have made tremendous strides in restoring the rights of human trafficking victims and bringing traffickers to justice, this depraved crime continues to deprive too many of the most vulnerable members of our society of their individual rights and freedoms.”

The Attorney General also commended the collaboration among the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and Mexican authorities on a Bilateral Enforcement Initiative to combat human trafficking networks operating on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Commenting on the event, Assistant Attorney General Perez added:

“Since the formation of the specialized Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit in 2007, we have demonstrated an unflagging commitment to prosecuting those who exploit other human beings for modern-day slavery.  As human trafficking networks grow increasingly sophisticated, so must our efforts to eradicate them.  With the introduction of new forthcoming initiatives, we will be coordinating our efforts more effectively than ever before to ensure that human traffickers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Assistant Attorney General Breuer commended the many parts of the Criminal Division that play important roles in supporting efforts to combat human trafficking:

“Since the passage of the TVPA, the Criminal Division has partnered closely with the Civil Rights Division, the U.S. Attorneys' Offices, other federal agencies, and state and local authorities to bring human traffickers to justice and seek appropriate penalties for their crimes.  Human trafficking is a reprehensible crime, and children are often the victims of the depraved criminal schemes that we prosecute. Human trafficking truly is a “modern form of slavery.  [Our] efforts are a true testament to what the U.S. government can achieve when we collaborate and share resources, and the Criminal Division is absolutely committed to working with its law enforcement partners even more closely in the future.”

The Civil Rights Division also released a report on its enforcement of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act over the past decade.

Combating human trafficking is a top priority of the Justice Department.  In each of the past two fiscal years, the Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorneys' Offices have brought record numbers of human trafficking cases.

http://blogs.usdoj.gov/blog/archives/1049

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Three Arkansas Men Indicted for Burning Cross to Intimidate African-american Resident

WASHINGTON – James Bradley Branscum, Tony Branscum, both of Salado, Ark., and Curtis Coffee of Batesville, Ark., were indicted this week by a federal grand jury on charges related to their roles in burning a cross in the yard of an African-American resident in Salado on Aug. 28, 2010.

In the three-count indictment, the three were charged with one count of conspiracy to interfere with the housing rights of another, one count of interfering with the housing rights of another and one count of using fire in the commission of a felony.

If convicted, the three face a maximum punishment of 30 years in prison and a $750,000 fine.

The case was investigated by the FBI with cooperation from Independence County, Ark., Sheriff Alan Cockrill and the Criminal Investigation Division of the Independence County Sheriff‘s Office. The case will be prosecuted by Trial Attorney Cindy Chung from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and Assistant U.S. Attorney John Ray White from the U.S. Attorney ' s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

The charges set forth in an indictment are merely accusations and the defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/November/10-crt-1241.html

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Former Kershaw County, South Carolina, Sheriff's Department Officer Charged with Civil Rights Violation

WASHINGTON - Oddie Tribble, a former police officer with the Kershaw County, S.C., Sherriff's Office, was charged today with violating the civil rights of an arrestee on Aug. 5, 2010.

The indictment alleges that Tribble was a sergeant with the Kershaw County Sherriff's Office at the time of the incident and that Tribble willfully deprived the victim of his right to be free from excessive force when he struck the victim with his police issued baton. As a result, the victim suffered a fractured leg.

If convicted, Tribble faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

An indictment is a formal accusation of criminal conduct, not evidence of guilt. The defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

This case was investigated by the Columbia, S.C., Division of the FBI with assistance from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, and is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara McGregor and Civil Rights Division Trial Attorney Christopher Lomax.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/November/10-crt-1240.html

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From the FBI

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Web of Victims

A Chilling Case of ‘Sextortion'

11/02/2010

The hacker knew every move the unsuspecting victim made. He controlled her computer webcam and microphone. He could see her in her bedroom, hear her conversations, knew every keystroke she made online. And he threatened to expose her secrets unless she bowed to his demands.

It may sound like the plot for a scary teen movie, but it actually happened, and there wasn't just one victim—there were more than 200, and dozens of them were adolescent girls.

Unlike many computer intrusions, where a hacker uses malicious software to steal identities or financial information, this case was primarily about spying and extortion—or as our Los Angeles cyber squad more aptly termed it, “sextortion.”

The hacker, a 31-year-old California man who was arrested in June after a two-year investigation, used malicious code to infect and control the computers of his victims. Then he searched for explicit pictures from their computers, downloaded them, and used the images in an attempt to extort more pictures and videos from them.

“What's so frightening about this case was how easily the victims' computers were compromised,” said Special Agent Jeff Kirkpatrick, one of our Los Angeles cyber investigators who worked the case.

After the hacker infected one computer, he used a popular social networking site—and a technique called “spear phishing”—to spread the virus. “It was a social engineering attack,” said Special Agent Tanith Rogers, co-investigator on the case. “The victims were tricked. They had no idea what had happened until it was too late.”

In several instances, the hacker posed online as a young woman's friend or sister and sent messages with attachments asking if the victim wanted to see a scary video. Because the messages appeared to be from a trusted source, the victims usually didn't think twice about opening the attachment. When they did, the virus secretly installed itself, and the hacker had total control over their computers—including all files and folders, webcams, and microphones.

Using similar spear phishing methods—posing as a friend or a trusted source—the hacker spread the virus through the social network like wildfire. In all, there were 230 victims and more than 100 computers impacted.

“And this guy was no computer genius,” Agent Kirkpatrick said. “Anybody could do what he did just by watching an online video and following the directions.”

Victims—particularly teenage girls—were understandably devastated when they learned their privacy had been so completely violated. Many were afraid to tell their parents about the situation.

“He was smart,” Agent Rogers said of the hacker. “He used their fear to try to control them.”

For example, the hacker attached a pornographic picture of one victim in an e-mail and demanded sexually explicit video of her in return for not telling her parents about the pictures he had downloaded from her computer.

“If he hadn't attempted to contact the victims,” Agent Rogers said, “he could have done this forever and gone undetected—the victims would never have known he was listening and watching. That,” she added, “is one of the most disturbing things about this case.”

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2010/november/web-of-victims/web-of-victims

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