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From the Los Angeles Times

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Mexican expats warned about holiday travel home

The Mexican government advises them to travel in convoys and only in daylight because of the drug war.

By Daniel Hernandez, Los Angeles Times

November 24, 2010

Reporting from Mexico City

It is an annual ritual, a pilgrimage that Mexicans living in the United States make to visit hometowns and families for the holidays.

But this year, the terrifying drug war violence sweeping parts of Mexico is taking its toll.

The Mexican government is warning travelers driving into Mexico for the holiday season — many from Southern California — to move in convoys and only during daylight hours.

These convoys can be "escorted or monitored" if travelers check in with federal agents upon crossing the border, the government said. The Mexican army is also offering protection.

The recommendation signals an acknowledgement that hold-ups and violence on Mexico's roads attributed to drug-trafficking gangs could affect the holiday travel crush.

"When our own government says it's not safe to travel in our own country, it really makes you feel sad," Luis Garcia, head of one of the numerous clubs that Mexicans belong to in the Los Angeles area, said in a telephone interview from Lynwood.

Garcia said many of the nearly 2,300 members of his Federacion Veracruzana, an association of people originally from the coastal state of Veracruz, have decided to cancel their trips this year. The topic has been a top concern among Mexican expat clubs, and "people are really worried," he said.

Too often, Garcia said, motorists come upon roadblocks where people disguised as police demand money or the travelers' possessions. And waiting to form convoys can be time-consuming.

Mexicans living in the U.S., legally or illegally, often return to their hometowns for extended breaks from late November through early January.

The Interior Ministry made its travel recommendations this week in an announcement timed to coincide with the launch of its Compatriot Program. The multi-agency effort is designed to ease returning Mexicans back into their home regions by reminding them of rules and services.

"Compatriots can call free of charge the number 060, from any phone inside Mexican territory, to ask for information, report crimes or seek help," the ministry said in its statement.

Cash remittances from the estimated 12 million Mexican-born adults living in the United States are Mexico's second-largest source of foreign income, after oil exports.

Mexican state governments have predicted that travel home this holiday season may be down as much as 50%.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-convoys-20101124,0,6381293,print.story

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U.S. scrambles to limit Korea hostilities

Washington and allies begin trying to round up support for a U.N. Security Council statement that would condemn North Korea's shelling of South Korea's Yeonpyeong island. The U.S. hopes to enlist China's aid.

By Paul Richter and John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

November 24, 2010

Reporting from Washington and Seoul

As Seoul threatened retaliation for North Korea's deadly shelling of a South Korean island, U.S. officials scrambled Tuesday to avert any catastrophic escalation of hostilities after one of the most serious confrontations on the Korean peninsula in decades.

The shelling — which killed two soldiers and injured 19 people, including three civilians — sent South Koreans fleeing the west coast island of Yeonpyeong as their government put the air force on high alert and declared that North Korea would face "stern retaliation" if it launched further attacks.

Condemnation of the North came swiftly from foreign capitals. President Obama was "outraged," an aide said, saying the Pyongyang government was "an ongoing threat that needs to be dealt with." The White House called on North Korea to end "its belligerent action."

The Obama administration sought to build diplomatic pressure on North Korea by enlisting the help of China, which provides vital energy assistance and other aid to the impoverished communist country. U.S. officials and allies began trying to round up support for a U.N. Security Council statement that would condemn Pyongyang's action, diplomats said.

Such a statement would mark a significant shift for China, which strongly resisted international efforts to penalize North Korea after an international inquiry found that Pyongyang sank a South Korean warship, the Cheonan, in March. Diplomats said it was not immediately clear whether China would be willing to condemn its neighbor, despite the growing international pressure.

Visiting Beijing on Wednesday, U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth read from a statement calling on North Korea to "cease its provocative and irresponsible actions against its neighbors" and fully abide by the armistice that ended the fighting in the Korean War in 1953.

Bosworth did not answer questions about whether the United States would be able to enlist Beijing's support in reining in the North. But signals from China's state media were not encouraging. The Global Times, which has close ties to the ruling Communist Party, barely chastised North Korea for the attack and pointed to the "hard-line policies" of South Korea and the "futile" economic sanctions by the United States.

A number of high-ranking members of Congress on Tuesday called on China to exert stronger influence on the North.

Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged Beijing to "immediately suspend its economic and energy assistance to show Pyongyang that its aggression has consequences."

The South Korean military was conducting drills near the island, which is close to the North-South border, when the North opened fire about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Pyongyang had sent messages to Seoul that it considered the exercises "preparation for an invasion."

The killing of soldiers and the attack on civilians put South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in the difficult position of having to respond strongly while avoiding dangerous escalation, analysts said.

Senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, met at the White House on Tuesday to discuss the crisis. Obama planned to call Lee late Tuesday to express a firm U.S. commitment to South Korean security, officials said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who was visiting Belarus, warned on Russian television of "a colossal danger that the accident may deteriorate into combat actions."

He called on Koreans to show restraint.

U.S. officials said they were consulting with their allies, especially South Korea, to jointly decide the next step. They also suggested that Washington probably would not make any immediate fundamental changes in its approach to North Korea.

A U.S. Defense official said Tuesday that he saw no signs of movement of North or South Korean troops or equipment in the region.

The South Korean Defense Ministry said Wednesday that it would conduct a military drill with the U.S. off the Korean peninsula's west coast on Sunday. It said an American aircraft carrier would take part.

Tuesday's attack followed the disclosure over the weekend that North Korea was building a uranium enrichment plant at its nuclear site in Yongbyon, news that suggests the secretive regime is seeking a second method of building nuclear weapons.

That disclosure, followed by the attack on the island, stirred wide speculation that North Korea was seeking to pressure the U.S. to agree to further diplomatic concessions and aid.

There was also talk that Pyongyang might want to make a show of force to help establish military and popular support for Kim Jong Eun, the son of and presumed successor to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Senior U.S. officials refused to speculate publicly, however. Gates told reporters that he had no answer for any question about North Korea that began with "Why."

Another U.S. official acknowledged that the North Koreans have often launched provocations "to try to get other nations to sit down and talk. That could be what's going on here, but it's hard to tell."

Several officials said Tuesday that they found the events alarming because of the North's apparent willingness to risk military confrontation and its interest in expanding its nuclear program.

At the same time, officials did not indicate any greater willingness to bend to North Korean pressure to return to the negotiating table.

Administration officials have insisted for months that they will not resume talks until there are signs that North Korea is willing to wind down its nuclear program.

Michael Green, a former top Asia advisor to President George W. Bush who is now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the North Koreans were "really pushing hard to create a crisis."

He said U.S. strategists have long tried to imagine how military encounters could lead to war on the Korean peninsula, and they have regularly considered the possibility that the North might begin shelling the island.

"This was a step that we thought was not too far from total war," he said.

Analysts said the developments put China in an embarrassing position because Beijing has repeatedly resisted international attempts to punish the North.

The Chinese argued this spring that it was a mistake to penalize North Korea after the sinking of the warship.

Green said China's unwillingness to penalize North Korea may have been read by Pyongyang as a green light for further action.

L. Gordon Flake, a longtime Korea analyst at the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation in Washington, said China had been put in "a really rough position" by the developments.

"My guess is there's going to be a real reevaluation going on in China," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-fg-korea-attack-20101124,0,4932581,print.story

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PETN: The explosive that airport security is targeting

Full-body scans and aggressive pat-downs now under scrutiny are designed to seek out the explosive powder that was used in several failed terrorist bombings recently, officials say.

By Brian Bennett, Tribune Washington Bureau

November 24, 2010

Reporting from Washington

New airport security procedures that have stirred the emotions of air travelers — full-body scans and aggressive pat-downs — were largely designed to detect an explosive powder called PETN, which has been a staple of Al Qaeda bomb makers for nearly a decade.

It was PETN that was molded into the sole of Richard Reid's black high-top sneaker when he walked onto American Airlines Flight 63 bound for Miami in December 2001.

It was PETN that was sewn into the underwear of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, authorities say, when he boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

And it was PETN that suspected Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen packed inside computer printer cartridges that were shipped Oct. 28, intending to blow up planes en route to Chicago.

None of the plots succeeded in taking down an aircraft, but top U.S. officials are concerned about fresh indications that Al Qaeda remains determined to get PETN on airplanes by trying to exploit vulnerabilities in passenger and cargo screening.

Not only has the terrorist network acknowledged its role in bomb plots, it is also sharing what it knows about building bombs on the Web and elsewhere.

PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, presents some vexing problems for security experts. A powder about the consistency of fine popcorn salt, it will not trigger an alarm on a metal detector. Because of its more stable molecules, PETN gives off less vapor, making it more difficult to detect by bomb-sniffing dogs and the trace swabs used by the Transportation Security Administration.

PETN's stability makes it easy to hide and easily transformed. When mixed with rubber cement or putty, it becomes a rudimentary plastic explosive — a baseball-sized amount can blow a hole in an airplane fuselage.

"PETN is hard to detect and lends itself to being concealed," said an intelligence official who was not authorized to speak on the record. "It packs a punch."

One way to detect PETN is through its detonator, which typically uses materials that are easier to trace. Reid's shoe bomb combined PETN with a volatile explosive accelerant called TATP that can be made from dime-store nail polish and hydrogen peroxide. The Yemen printer cartridge bombs placed the PETN around small homemade blasting caps containing the chemical lead azide.

The fact that PETN has been the common denominator in all of the bombs is a major reason why the TSA is unlikely to yield substantially in its search for practical ways to prevent the deadly powder from making it aboard a plane.

The new aggressive pat-downs and the increased use of full-body scanners — there are more than 400 machines in 69 U.S. airports — were a direct response to last year's alleged bombing attempt on Christmas Day, when Abdulmutallab passed through screening with 80 grams of PETN, authorities say.

Some passengers have objected to the enhanced screening as an invasion of privacy, though several polls show air travelers consider safety far more important.

"I know people want to bomb us," TSA chief John Pistole told reporters Monday. Pistole isn't just worried about terrorists in Yemen. He said he is particularly concerned that home-grown terrorists might "get ahold of a PETN device."

PETN can be made in a rudimentary lab or salvaged from old munitions. It can scraped from old bombs or stripped out of detonator cord, a fast-burning fuse about the diameter of a clothesline that is commonly used in road construction and mining. The amount of PETN in 5 feet of detonator cord has enough explosive power to buckle the roof of a car.

Smuggling explosives onto airplanes is a vulnerability that the TSA has known about since 2005, when covert testing teams run by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general were able to penetrate TSA airport security with explosive-like test devices, Pistole said.

The best technological weapons that the TSA has now are body scans of passengers and X-rays of cargo and baggage. But the scanners can't see anything hidden inside body cavities, and their effectiveness relies on operators identifying something unusual.

The scanners are "just anomaly detectors. Someone has to notice, has to have some expertise," said former Homeland Security Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin, who managed covert testing teams in 2003 and 2004 that were able to get guns, knives and explosives through TSA screening.

There are new techniques available for cargo, baggage and passenger screening that can detect individual explosive molecules using mass spectrometry, a technology that would be better at identifying PETN than the swab machines in use by the TSA.

"There is no question that the technology now deployed can't do it," Ervin said.

Even technology can only detect so much. The printer cartridge bombs from Yemen were sealed in plastic and cleaned with solvents to remove PETN molecules. The packages were discovered because of a tip from Saudi intelligence services.

Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University, said security screening needed to be less predictable, "so Al Qaeda and our [other] adversaries can't simply game the system."

The TSA also should invest in better human intelligence and institute a method of questioning passengers that Israel uses at airport checkpoints, said Edward Luttwak, an expert on security strategy and a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In recent discussions with members of the security services in Israel, Luttwak found "general puzzlement about TSA's enthusiasm for these machines."

The TSA's plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars deploying more than 1,000 full-body scanners by the end of 2011 "is a syndrome of having no budget limits and maybe aggressive salesmanship," Luttwak said.

Israeli screeners, he added, are not looking for people who fit a physical profile, but a behavioral profile of avoidance and inconsistency. In Luttwak's view, it is easier for terrorists to design a bomb that can get past a screening regime than it is to find someone who is both a good actor and willing to be a suicide bomber.

A TSA program to identify suspicious behavior in search lines has deployed about 3,000 agents in more than 160 U.S. airports. Officers are trained to identify suspicious facial expressions and body language by walking up and down the line, initiating conversations and pulling passengers for additional screening.

In a glossy, color magazine released this week by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemeni-based group vowed to continue using PETN. The magazine, written in English, included photos and a detailed description of how the printer cartridge bombs were made and packaged to avoid detection by bomb-sniffing dogs.

The authors encouraged copycat attacks: "Do you think that our research will only be used by Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula and won't be shared with other mujahidin?"

The headline on the magazine was simply "$4,200" — the amount the group says it spent to build and ship the bombs.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-petn-20101124,0,2741199,print.story

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Shellshocked by N. Korea

Its attack on a South Korean island shows just how erratic, and dangerous, Pyongyang can be.

November 24, 2010

Such Middle Eastern trouble spots as Iran and Afghanistan get most of the attention in this country, but North Korea is determined to demonstrate that it is the world's biggest threat to stability. The Obama administration has few good options for dealing with Pyongyang's reckless regime, but the North's shelling of a South Korean island on Tuesday, among the most outrageous of its provocations since the end of the Korean War, shows that the region must be at the top of the diplomatic priority list.

To outside observers, the behavior of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il often seems bizarre. After the North escalated tensions to a height seldom seen in decades with its reported sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan in March, the U.S. and South Korea responded by ending economic assistance and stepping up military readiness. A rational response to the economic sanctions that are strangling the country would be to end them by de-escalating, but punishing Kim only seems to make him more aggressive. North Korean officials recently showed off a worrisome new uranium-enrichment facility to a visiting American scholar, raising fears that the regime's nuclear capabilities are growing. And Tuesday's artillery fire is believed to have killed two South Korean soldiers and injured several more, as well as wounding three civilians.

Close observers, though, see a logic to Kim's madness. Attacking South Korea burnishes the leadership and military credentials of Kim's heir apparent, his son Kim Jong Un. Meanwhile, long experience has taught Pyongyang that aggression can be rewarded; when sticks don't change the regime's behavior, the international community sometimes resorts to carrots, hoping that food aid, closer economic ties or the lifting of some sanctions will improve cooperation. The strategy occasionally even works — until it doesn't anymore.

The top U.S. priorities, now as ever, are to avoid a resumption of all-out war and to prevent North Korea from increasing its nuclear arsenal. But how can that be done when neither sanctions nor rewards seem to have any impact? Experts have been wrestling with that question for decades without coming up with satisfactory answers. Most acknowledge that the key to a breakthrough is China, North Korea's patron. Yet Beijing seems far more interested in keeping the Pyongyang government stable, in order to head off a refugee crisis on its border, than it is in Kim's saber-rattling.

Some analysts think North Korea's goal is to draw the U.S. back into nuclear talks in hopes of winning concessions. Instead, President Obama is probably better off talking to China and Russia in an attempt to find strategic common ground. If there's a way out of this mess, it lies in diplomacy rather than military force.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-norkor-20101124,0,365838,print.story

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First Thanksgiving got it right

As xenophobia sweeps over the U.S., it's a good time to remember what the holiday is supposed to mean.

November 24, 2010

This year Thanksgiving arrives at a propitious moment, delivering its message of gratitude at a time when many Americans would be wise to recall it.

Across the country, xenophobia is enjoying a heyday. Oklahomans, of all people, recently approved a ballot measure to ban the use of international law and, specifically, Sharia law, in their courts. As has been widely noted, that manages the rare feat of being both unnecessary and unconstitutional. More troubling, it suggests the degree to which voters have become motivated by fear and the extent to which they are willing to retreat into insularity.

Politicians feel it and exploit it. Elected officials who know better prey upon the public's anxiety by suggesting that immigrants, especially those in the country illegally, are to blame for the economic collapse of the George W. Bush years or the long, hard climb out of it. Some argue for retooling the Constitution itself, as if limiting citizenship to those born in the United States would create jobs or ease home foreclosures. Immigrants are somehow cast as threats to the society they risk their lives to join.

American Muslims, who enjoy every right of every American, also suffer from? this inward-looking narrowness. When a popular commentator confesses that he is? unnerved to sit next to a Muslim on an ?airplane, too many Americans reflexively sympathize. When another commentator questions whether Jews have a right to? consider themselves an oppressed minority, those same Americans should feel the recoil of their bigotry. Many do not. The freedom to practice one's religion is celebrated this week, but of late, it is denigrated too often, as if this were a Christian country or a? Judeo-Christian country rather than one of magnificent, intentional diversity.

As families sit down Thursday for Thanksgiving, our wish as Americans would be that they recapture a measure of the original meaning of this holiday. It was a? day when native-born Americans welcomed undocumented immigrants, here in search of work and religious freedom, with benevolence and goodwill. Those native hosts were naive, perhaps, but well intentioned, imbued with an American spirit before America existed. The hosts and guests that day spoke different languages, followed different faiths. And yet they ate together, appreciated one another, saw their common humanity across their vast differences of culture.

This holiday is testament to those most fundamental American values — tolerance, curiosity, shared appreciation for struggle. As we celebrate the day, we should remember its meaning.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-xenophobia-20101124,0,6223854,print.story

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From the New York Times

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U.S. to Send Carrier for Joint Exercises Off Korea

WASHINGTON — President Obama and South Korea 's president agreed Tuesday night to hold joint military exercises as a first response to North Korea 's deadly shelling of a South Korean military installation, as both countries struggled for the second time this year to keep a North Korean provocation from escalating into war.

The exercise will include sending the aircraft carrier George Washington and a number of accompanying ships into the region, both to deter further attacks by the North and to signal to China that unless it reins in its unruly ally it will see an even larger American presence in the vicinity.

The decision came after Mr. Obama attended the end of an emergency session in the White House Situation Room and then emerged to call President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea to express American solidarity and talk about a coordinated response.

But as a former national security official who dealt frequently with North Korea in the Bush administration, Victor Cha, said just a few hours before the attack began, North Korea is “the land of lousy options.”

Mr. Obama is once again forced to choose among unpalatable choices: responding with verbal condemnations and a modest tightening of sanctions, which has done little to halt new attacks; starting military exercises that are largely symbolic; or reacting strongly, which could risk a broad war in which South Korea's capital, Seoul, would be the first target.

The decision to send the aircraft carrier came as the South Korean military went into what it termed “crisis status.” President Lee said he would order strikes on a North Korean base if there were indications of new attacks.

North Korea's artillery shells fell on Yeonpyeong Island, a fishing village whose residents fled by ferry to the mainland city of Inchon — where Gen. Douglas MacArthur's troops landed 60 years ago this fall, three months after the outbreak of the Korean War.

Today, Inchon is the site of South Korea's main international airport, symbolizing the vulnerability of one of the world's most vibrant economies to the artillery of one of the world's poorest and most isolated nations.

A senior American official said that an early American assessment indicated that a total of about 175 artillery shells were fired by the North and by the South in response on Tuesday.

But an American official who had looked at satellite images said there was no visible evidence of preparations for a general war. Historically, the North's attacks have been lightning raids, after which the North Koreans have backed off to watch the world's reaction. This one came just hours after the South Koreans had completed a long-planned set of military exercises, suggesting that the North Korean attack was “premeditated,” a senior American official said.

Television reports showed large plumes of black smoke spiraling from the island, as dozens of houses caught fire. The shelling killed two marines and wounded 18 people. The South put its fighter planes on alert — but, tellingly, did not put them in the air or strike at the North's artillery bases. Mr. Obama was awakened at 3:55 a.m. by his new national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, who told him of the attack.

Just 11 days before, North Korea had invited a Stanford nuclear scientist to Yongbyon, its primary nuclear site, and showed him what was described as a just-completed centrifuge plant that, if it becomes fully operational, should enable North Korea to enrich uranium into nuclear fuel and add to its arsenal of 8 to 12 nuclear weapons.

Taken together, the nuclear demonstration and the attack were widely interpreted as an effort to bolster the credentials of Kim Jong-un, the heir apparent as the country's leader, and the son and grandson of the only two men who have run the country. When his father, Kim Jong-il, North Korea's ailing leader, was establishing his credentials, the North conducted a similar series of attacks.

“They have a 60-year history of military provocations — it's in their DNA,” said a senior administration official. “What we are trying to do is break the cycle,” a cycle, he said, that has North Korea's bad behavior rewarded with “talks, inducements and rewards.” He said that the shelling would delay any effort to resume the six-nation talks about the North's nuclear program.

While Mr. Obama was elected on a promise of diplomatic engagement, his strategy toward the North for the past two years, called “strategic patience,” has been to demonstrate that Washington would not engage until the North ceased provocations and demonstrated that it was living up to past commitments to dismantle, and ultimately give up, its nuclear capacity.

The provocations have now increased markedly, and it is not clear what new options are available. Beijing's first reaction on Tuesday was to call for a resumption of the six-nation talks involving North and South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the United States. The last meeting was two years ago, at the end of the Bush administration.

Mr. Obama's aides made it clear in interviews that the United States had no intention of returning to those talks soon. But its leverage is limited.

When North Korea set off a nuclear test last year just months after Mr. Obama took office, the United States won passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution that imposed far harsher sanctions. The sanctions gave countries the right, and responsibility, to board North Korean ships and planes that landed at ports around the world and to inspect them for weapons. The effort seemed partly successful — but the equipment in the centrifuge plant is so new that it is clear that the trade restrictions did not stop the North from building what Siegfried S. Hecker, the visiting scientist, called an “ultramodern” nuclear complex.

By far the biggest recent disruption of relations came in March, when a sudden explosion sank a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors. South Korean and international investigators said the blast was caused by a North Korean torpedo. The North has vehemently denied it. If the North was responsible for the sinking, it would be the most lethal military attack since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

President Lee of South Korea decided not to respond militarily to the sinking and was praised by Washington for his restraint. To make North Korea pay a price, he imposed new food restrictions on the North and ended trade worth several hundred million dollars that had been intended to induce the desperately poor North Koreans to choose income over military strikes. But some analysts believe that the cutoff in food aid was an excuse, if not a motivation, for Tuesday's attack.

Choi Jin-wook, a North Korea expert at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a research institute in Seoul, said, “It's a sign of North Korea's increasing frustration.”

“Washington has turned a deaf ear to Pyongyang, and North Korea is saying: ‘Look here. We're still alive. We can cause trouble. You can't ignore us.' ”

Yet for Mr. Obama, much stronger responses, including a naval quarantine of the North, carry huge risks. A face-off on the Korean Peninsula would require tens of thousands of troops, air power and the possibility of a resumption of the Korean War, a battle that American officials believe would not last long, but might end in the destruction of Seoul if the North unleashed artillery batteries near the border.

Pressing against a precipitous reaction is that the North's attacks have a choreographed character, even a back-to-the-future feel. The last time North Korea engaged in acts this destructive was in the 1980s, when it blew up a South Korean airliner and also detonated a bomb in Myanmar in a botched attempt to assassinate the visiting South Korean president. Both attacks were said to be ordered by Kim Jong-il, who was then the heir to Kim Il-sung, his father and North Korea's founder.

Now Mr. Kim's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, is in that position. He was promoted on Sept. 28 to the rank of four-star general, a prerequisite for his ascendancy to power. Many see these attacks as the effort of a man the Chinese now say is 25 years old to establish his military credentials.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/world/asia/24nkorea.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

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Smoke rising from South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island after North Korea fired dozens of shells at it on Nov. 23.

How to Respond to North Korea Introduction President Obama and the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, agreed on Tuesday night to hold joint military exercises as a first response to North Korea's bombardment of a South Korean island, which killed two of the South's soldiers and drew return fire from the South. Sending an aircraft carrier and other ships to the region is intended to deter further attacks by the North, as the U.S. and South Korea struggled to keep the deadly clash from escalating into war. The isolated North, analysts say, has become increasingly desperate under sanctions imposed by the international community and the United States for its nuclear enrichment efforts. Is this military aggression motivated by frustration with the sanctions or are there other factors? What other steps should the U.S. take now? What steps should the U.S. take after the artillery attack on a South Korean island?

Belligerence and Internal Weakness

November 24, 2010

Victor Cha is a professor of government at Georgetown University and Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He was director for Asian affairs in the Bush administration and served as deputy head of the U.S. delegation to the six-party talks on North Korean disarmament.

The military actions by North Korea today have, in my opinion, very little to do with “frustration” with the American negotiating position or with sanctions. Such a view presumes that all the U.S. need do is sit down with the North and all will be good. As a former negotiator who has sat down for many hours with them, I can tell you that that is far from the problem.

These provocations have to be seen as the latest in a series of belligerent acts — starting with the April 2009 missile test, the May 2009 nuclear test, the March 2010 sinking of the Cheonan, and now this. The government's actions are part of a deliberate strategy to show external strength to the world and its own people as it undergoes a shaky leadership transition. Regimes of this nature do not become passive or nice when they are internally weak. On the contrary, they show belligerence.

The U.S. has a special envoy in the region now. This would be a good opportunity to focus on China's response. First, the Chinese must clearly state that they condemn the North Korean attack and view it as a violation of the 1953 armistice of which they are a signatory.

Beijing cannot make excuses for the North Korean military strike as it did for the Cheonan sinking. Second, the U.S. and the other permanent members of the Security Council need to consult in the United Nations about what appropriate measures need to be taken to condemn the action. Third, the U.S. needs to consult with its military allies in the region to ensure readiness in case of further provocation.

With the South Koreans in particular, the difficult challenge will be to fashion a response that is strong enough to deter, but not too strong so as to escalate to a war. This is a tough needle to thread.

Some will say that all the North wants is a peace treaty and assistance, but I find this hard to swallow. For the past 20 years, the offer of a peace agreement, energy, food, and diplomatic recognition have been on the negotiation table — whether this was George H.W. Bush's “modest proposal”; Bill Clinton's "Agreed Framework;" George Bush's "Six Party Joint Statement" or Barack Obama's “Strategic Patience” approach. The problem is not the United States' approach.

Very Limited Options

November 23, 2010

Bruce Klingner is a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He previously served 20 years in the C.I.A. and Defense Intelligence Agency, including as the C.I.A.'s deputy division chief for Korean analysis.

Pyongyang has again dangerously raised tensions, this time by attacking a small South Korea island in the first artillery strike since the Korean War. The situation on the Korean Peninsula is tense but unlikely to lead to war. Seoul will be constrained by all the same factors that hindered a strong South Korean response to North Korea's attack in March on the Cheonan naval ship.

South Korea fears that even a limited retaliatory attack could degenerate into an all-out conflagration. President Lee Myung-bak called for a “stern response” but also took care not to escalate the situation further. As with the Cheonan attack, it shows the limited leverage and options that Seoul and Washington have toward North Korea.

The artillery attack furthers the North's tactical objectives of asserting sovereignty over the Western Sea Area. But, more importantly, it furthers its strategic goals and is part of a continuing pattern of provocations to force the United States and South Korea to abandon pressure tactics, including sanctions. Similarly, North Korea's disclosure of a covert nuclear facility is another action to force the U.S. and its allies back to the negotiating table by raising fears of an expanding nuclear arsenal.

It is worrisome, if not frightening, how far Pyongyang is now willing to go to achieve its foreign policy objectives. North Korea appears to have abandoned previously self-imposed constraints on its behavior. Although the new brazenness could be linked to the North Korean leadership succession, it may also reflect growing desperation brought on by deteriorating economic and political conditions.

Pyongyang's actions are designed to weaken U.S. and South Korean resolve but will likely have the opposite effect. Washington responded to this weekend's disclosure of a covert uranium enrichment facility by rejecting calls for a hasty return to the six-party talks nuclear negotiations. The U.S. and South Korean governments have properly resisted entreaties to acquiesce to North Korean demands. This, in turn, may very well cause North Korea to do something even more provocative.

China resisted efforts for a U.N. response to North Korea's blatant act of war in the Cheonan attack, even refusing to accept the evidence of the international investigation team. It is unacceptable for Beijing to continue to take a neutral position or pressure Washington to a premature return to the six-party talks.

Although Seoul will likely exercise restraint in this situation, Pyongyang is venturing into new territory in its actions. North Korea's willingness to engage in ever more provocative acts has created a growing risk of miscalculation by either side. The Cheonan attack, the revelation of a uranium enrichment facility, and today's artillery attack shows the previously static situation is unraveling.

Focus Now on China

November 23, 2010

L. Gordon Flake is the executive director of The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation and a long-time North Korea watcher. His most recent edited volumes include "New Political Realities in Seoul: Working toward a Common Approach to Strengthen U.S.-Korean Relations" and co-edited with Scott Snyder, "Paved with Good Intentions: the NGO Experience in North Korea."

Attempting to explain the actions of North Korea is a very risky venture. Given the continuing speculation about the failing health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, many will assume that recent provocative and erratic behavior on the part of Pyongyang is tied to the process of succession in North Korea.

The notion that such provocations as the artillery attack on Tuesday are part of a strategy to give credibility to Kim Jong-il's designated successor Kim Jong-un makes for a compelling story line. However, I have seen no evidence to suggest that Kim Jong-il has relinquished any authority, responsibility or decision-making power or that his sonhas assumed any such powers.

From a United States perspective, this most recent action might be explained as an indication of North Korean displeasure with the U.S. policy of strategic patience and ongoing sanctions on North Korea. It might also be seen as a diversionary tactic designed to draw U.S. attention away from responding to recent revelations regarding North Korea's uranium enrichment facilities at Yongbyon. Both these explanations, however, probably presume too much that North Korea's decisionmaking is focused on U.S. responses.

The most compelling explanation for Tuesday's shelling is that it is part of an ongoing series of provocations that are uniquely intra-Korean in nature. Tensions on the peninsula have risen in recent months with clashes on the D.M.Z., and ongoing disputes surrounding the Northern Limit Line which demarcates the West Sea boundary, which North Korea does not recognize.

Moreover, after a decade in which the South Korean government sent food and cash support to the North, President Lee Myung Bok has instead severely curtailed South Korean aid. Accordingly, North Korea's approach to Seoul over the past year has vacillated between threats, inducements and outright provocations, of which the attack on Yeonjeong Island is just the latest and perhaps most dangerous manifestation.

Can this situation be handled diplomatically? The focus of our diplomatic efforts should be on China.

In recent months, China made a clear decision to double down on its bet that it could moderate North Korean behavior through more overt support of the regime in Pyongyang. While this approach appeared to bear fruit since North Korea has not recently tested long-range missiles, and did not disrupt the G-20 meetings in Seoul, the series of actions taken by North Korea over the last week have exposed China's impotence in influencing North Korean behavior.

The U.S. and South Korea will need to make a strong case to China that its support for Pyongyang has enabled North Korea behavior. For its part, China will need to shape North Korean expectations about its obtaining recognition as a nuclear power, and the consequences of future provocations.

Tuesday's dangerous action sets off many alarms. But in responding to that event, the United States and the international community must make sure North Korea's recent revelation about its uranium enrichment program does not go unchallenged.

Reframing Future Negotiations

November 23, 2010

Bradley Babson is chair of the DPRK Economic Forum at the US-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and serves on the Executive Committee of the National Committee on North Korea.

After a period of inward focus on its future leadership transition and coping with the failed economic reform effort in late 2009 and early 2010, North Korea seems ready to return to the bargaining table on its nuclear program and other issues on the stalled agenda outlined in the September 2005 Joint Statement. This period of internal political and economic change has coincided with the doctrine of “strategic patience” that the Obama administration has been following since the missile launch of March 2009.

The tactical question for both sides has been how to reframe any future negotiations in more meaningful ways than the hesitant and unsatisfying process that characterized the uncompleted phase 2 of the six-party talks.

The North Koreans have been signaling for some time that they are moving ahead with a plan to become a more prosperous nation. While they have stumbled in important respects on the economic side, it is now clear that they have continued to develop their nuclear program and are still trying to make progress on economic objectives, improving the energy situation, and expanding their economic relationship with China.

U.S. and U.N.-sponsored sanctions may be hindering this plan, but not fully derailing it. Two messages I took away from an informal visit to Pyongyang in September were that they are not destitute despite the recent flooding, and are making progress in technological innovations that reduce dependence on imports, can stimulate domestic production and employment, and create products for export.

It seems to me that one major motivation for returning to the bargaining table is to expand trade that will help with economic development and solidify public support for the regime transition now underway.

Revelations of nuclear advances and provocations like the military action on Tuesday are a sure way to grab attention and they could easily lead to increased conflict. Gestures from the North Koreans are needed, and the report of the North's willingness to put the un-processed nuclear fuel rods on the table may be a teaser for getting some sort of negotiations process off the ground in the coming weeks.

Cooling down the tensions on the Korean Peninsula will be as high on the agenda as the nuclear program, which says to me that getting serious about a peace agreement cannot be ignored in any future negotiations that address the nuclear issue.

The economic side of any future negotiations must be approached more creatively than in the past. Both the Agreed Framework and the six-party talks were fundamentally weak in this area. What is needed is an effort to agree on a future vision for the North Korean economy — one that includes moving towards a market economy and meaningful integration in the international economic system, not just integration in Northeast China, or exploiting North Korean labor for South Korean companies and the pockets of Kim Jong-il.

Getting serious about economic reform and development might just make bargaining for peace and denuclearization easier to achieve.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/11/23/how-to-respond-to-north-korea?ref=world

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Analysts Puzzle Over Cause of Flare-Up

SEOUL, South Korea — As nerves began to calm the day after a prolonged and deadly artillery exchange between North and South Korea, focus turned on Wednesday to the possible motivations for the assault and whether the South might have provoked it.

The Koreas blame each other for instigating the artillery barrages on Tuesday afternoon. The exchange, which lasted about an hour, centered on the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, which lies in the western sea, eight miles off the North Korean coast.

The incident killed two South Korean soldiers and President Lee Myung-bak expressed regret Wednesday afternoon over “the passing of the two marines who met a glorious death in defense of the homeland.”

The charred bodies of two civilians also were discovered as military teams canvassed the wreckage of the island. Yeonpyeong, essentially a fishing village, is about twice the size of New York's Central Park. About 1,600 civilians live there, along with a marine garrison of about 1,000.

The South Korean Defense Ministry said the attack on the island was unprovoked. In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Lee called the attack “unprecedented.”

“It was a premeditated provocation and an indiscriminate attack against civilians,” he said.

But North Korea, through its official news agency, said the South had fired first, sending live rounds from a battery on another island onto its side of the maritime border.

“What has been missing in all the analysis is that we're not listening to what North Korea says,” said Michael Breen, the author of a book about the two Koreas and a biography of Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader. “Because of the blustering language the North Koreans always use, you tend to dismiss it.

“But if the North was holding live-fire exercises five miles offshore from South Korea, it wouldn't just be business as usual. These waters, they consider theirs. What's the point, anyway, of doing these live-fire drills so close to North Korea?”

The South Korean deputy defense minister acknowledged Tuesday night that the South had fired artillery close to North Korea, but he insisted the shots were aimed away from the North. Defense officials also said the North had known about the exercises.

“But a military exercise is classically a cover for the real thing,” said Mr. Breen. “The North Koreans may have reasoned, in their paranoia, that an invasion was happening.”

Another analyst said military exercises close to the North Korean coast have always angered Pyongyang.

“It's part of their threat perception,” said John Delury, a professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul. “It contributes to the atmosphere of tension and conflict, and it makes it easier for North Korean hardliners to make something happen.”

Mr. Delury and other analysts said the North knew it was raising the stakes in firing on an island with a civilian population, twice, in broad daylight, in the middle of the afternoon. There was no fog-of-war explanation for it, he said.

“I find it hard to believe they felt they had no choice but to attack,” Mr. Delury said. “They knew they were ratcheting things up.”

As diplomatic responses to the incident were being drafted in Washington, Seoul, Beijing and other capitals, the American and South Korean militaries announced Wednesday that an aircraft carrier strike group would lead a four-day exercise in the western sea beginning on Sunday. The strike group is led by the United States carrier George Washington.

Mr. Breen called it “foolishness.”

“The whole idea is just to give them the bird,” he said.

“China is not going to react well to this,” added Mr. Delury. “They may wait a day or two, but they're going to be upset.”

North Korea scholars in Seoul said the arrival of the aircraft carrier, as a potent symbol of gunboat diplomacy, would likely bolster the hardliners inside the North Korean regime.

“These guys want aircraft carriers,” Mr. Delury said. “This is exactly the response they want.”

The American military, which called the upcoming drill “defensive in nature,” said it had been planned before the artillery exchange occurred. The previous exercises were postponed due to bad weather.

The American general who heads the United Nations Command in South Korea, Gen. Walter L. Sharp, also called Wednesday for military talks with senior officers of the North Korean People's Army “in order to initiate an exchange of information and deescalate the situation.”

Many political analysts in Seoul agreed that the barrage by the North was probably approved by Kim Jong-il, reputed to be an all-knowing micro-manager who famously dispenses “on-the-spot guidance” to farmers, factory managers, generals, physicists, pilots, textile workers or anyone else he visits.

“Something like this has to be cleared at the highest level, no matter what,” said Lee Sung-yoon, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Mr. Lee rejected the idea that a maverick military commander seeking to curry favor or score political points with Mr. Kim might have authorized the attack on his own.

“There is no ‘rogue elements' theory applicable here,” Mr. Lee said. “This is how North Korea approaches negotiations — not through the conventions of diplomatic courtesy but through raising the stakes through provocations. It's been a potent formula, this provocation-negotiation-concession schema.”

Mr. Breen, the Kim Jong-il biographer, said the widely held notion of Mr. Kim as unbalanced was inaccurate. Eccentric, perhaps. A dictator, certainly. But politically inept, no.

“He's not a foolish man at all,” Mr. Breen said. “He's not crazy, not at all. He's not nuts. That's a very shallow analysis.

“If he was here on a conference call with us, he'd say, “Look, if there's a war, my country will be finished within a week. I know that. I'm not trying to start a war, I just don't like enemy states holding live-fire exercises within stone-throwing distance of my coast.”

As his artillery was pounding Yeonpyeong on Tuesday, Mr. Kim and his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, apparently toured a soy sauce factory and a medical school, according to an item from the North's official news agency that was cited by the Yonhap news agency in Seoul. The item appeared Tuesday, although it was not clear that the father-son outing had taken place the same day.

Kim Jong-un, who is believed to be 27 or 28, recently emerged as the apparent heir to his father. (The elder Kim had taken over from his father, the founding president of North Korea, Kim Il-sung.) Kim Jong-un recently was given significant political posts in the ruling Korean Workers' Party and was awarded the rank of four star general despite no known record of having served in the military.

Mr. Lee and other North Korea analysts said the clash on Tuesday was likely intended to bolster the political standing and military credentials of the son. The North would likely claim, he said, that “this is how the young general showed his mettle.”

Mr. Lee said he expects further incidents by the North — including perhaps another nuclear test — in the coming weeks, perhaps to coincide with Kim Jong-un's birthday on Jan. 8. The North has previously tested two nuclear devices.

“North Korea will have a strong incentive to celebrate the heir apparent's strategic genius on Jan. 8,” said Mr. Lee. “Whether the Boy Who Would Be King can sustain his impoverished kingdom over the long run is an entirely different question.”

Meanwhile, the KOSPI stock index in Seoul opened nervously on Wednesday, but closed down just 0.2 percent. The index, one of the best-performing markets in the Asia-Pacific region, is up more than 20 percent from a year ago.

The Nikkei index in Japan in lost 0.8 percent, although other markets in the region shook off worries about an escalation of the artillery incident and managed small gains.

The Unification Ministry, the South Korean department that deals with most of the nonmilitary inter-Korean issues, said on Wednesday that further aid shipments to North Korea had been suspended. Under a previous agreement between the two Koreas, the South had already shipped 5,000 tons of rice, 3,000 tons of cement and 3 million cups of instant noodles to the North.

In addition to Yeonpyeong, South Korea has other islands in the western sea that lie just off the North Korean coast. They fall under the Inchon metropolitan government, which ordered the residents of Baeknyeong, Daecheong and Socheong islands to evacuate, according to the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo. The islands have air raid bunkers and bomb shelters, and local government officials said about 6,000 islanders took cover in 98 shelters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/world/asia/25kim.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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A Day After Island Shelling, Seoul Takes Fear in Stride

SEOUL, South Korea — The forests on distant Yeonpyeong Island were ablaze on Wednesday, one day after a ferocious artillery exchange between North and South Korean military units. But to many residents of Seoul, the violent attack on the tiny island seemed largely contained and unthreatening.

“I was talking with a friend this morning and we wondered why we weren't more concerned,” a Seoul restaurant owner, Pyun Sung-ja, said on Wednesday. “I guess it's because the area of the shelling is so far from here. It feels like it happened in another country.”

The artillery exchange that lasted for about an hour on Tuesday afternoon killed two South Korean marines and two civilians who lived on the island, which is about twice the size of New York's Central Park. The South's military went on high alert, fighter-bombers were ready on the tarmac and the president plotted strategy with his advisers in the underground Situation Room in Seoul. The incident rattled diplomatic nerves in capitals not only in the region but also around the world. Residents of Seoul, however, seemed to display only a mild anxiety on Wednesday, caught somewhere between calm and dread, and maybe breathing a collective sigh of relief that things had not escalated.

John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, said he heard strong reactions Wednesday afternoon to the news that two dead civilians had been found on the island earlier in the day, their burned bodies discovered as damage from the shelling was being cleared away.

“This is extremely serious,” he said. “In all my conversations today, the first thing people are saying is, ‘We don't want war.' On any level — human, economic, political — there's just no appetite for it.”

Kwak Kyeh-nyong, a lighting designer, said the situation certainly had him worried on Tuesday night.

“It felt quite serious last night, and I was thinking that if a war started I would have to go back into military service,” he said, sipping an early-morning espresso to nurse a hangover after a night of pre-birthday partying. He turned 27 on Wednesday.

“I did my military service very close to the North Korean border. Every day I went to the DMZ. If a war had started I would have been dead within five minutes.”

Kim Chung-gil, 40, defected from North Korea six years ago, and said Wednesday that the attack was the North “throwing a tantrum” over South Korean military exercises off the North Korean coast.

“Even if they were retaliating, like they said, against South Korean drills, they shouldn't have attacked civilians,” he said.

Mr. Kim, 40, now a wallpaper salesman in Seoul, said North Koreans have typically felt proud, and even happy, about violent clashes with the South.

“But now that the North Korean economy has collapsed and they are in dire circumstances, maybe they are feeling more insecure.”

Mr. Kwak and others expressed a certain pride and confidence in the South Korean government and the military.

“Our government reacted properly,” said Ms. Pyun, adding that she thought the South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, had handled himself well during the first hours of the crisis.

Ms. Pyun said TV news reports showed Mr. Lee — whom she referred to as “MB,” his initials — looked capable and “ready for action,” especially in the black leather jacket he was wearing in place of his usual bespoke business suits.

“It was,” she said, “the correct clothing.”

She also felt somehow more secure being in Seoul, even though it is just 110 miles from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and within easy range of the North's missiles and artillery along the heavily militarized border.

“We think the government will be more protective of us here, and it's safer than in any other part of the country,” Ms. Pyun said.

She noted that South Koreans were conditioned to expect dramatic encounters with the North. She recalled the 1983 defection of a North Korean fighter pilot who flew over the Yellow Sea and landed his MiG-19 jet in Seoul. She was 13 at the time and was in her family's garden picking potatoes when the air raid sirens went off.

“At first people thought we were being attacked, but it wasn't that at all,” she said. “That experience and my memory of it makes me less worried about these things now.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/world/asia/25seoul.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Police Arrest Suspects in Plot Against Belgium

BRUSSELS — In a series of early morning raids, the police in three European countries arrested 11 people on Tuesday, saying that some were part of an international jihadist group planning a terrorist attack in Belgium and that others were members of a Chechen group.

Belgian television showed pictures of arrests by police officers in two areas of Antwerp, a port city with a large immigrant population, where 7 of the 11 people were detained.

Three arrests were made in Amsterdam, and one in Aachen, near Germany's border with Belgium.

The suspects were Belgian, Dutch, Moroccan and Russian of Chechen origin, said Leen Nuyts, a spokeswoman for the Belgian federal prosecutor's office.

The German authorities said the suspect arrested in Aachen was 31 and of Russian origin. They said he would be transferred to Belgium.

Ms. Nuyts said the arrests were not related to the recent reports of possible terrorist attacks that had put Germany on a heightened state of alert.

Nonetheless, the intense police activity centering on Belgium coincided with concerns in European countries that an attack could be imminent. The arrests were coordinated among the security services of several nations.

The group suspected of planning an attack in Belgium used the Web site Ansar al-Mujahideen, said a statement from the Belgian federal prosecutors. No specific target was identified. The statement said the other arrests focused on “the recruiters, candidate jihadists and financing of a Chechen terrorist organization (the Caucasus Emirate).”

Belgium's investigations, which began at the end of 2009, were led by Judge Philippe Van Linthout and have resulted in the detention of several suspects in Spain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, the statement added.

In a separate effort to uncover terrorist group financing, the Belgian police searched 17 homes in and around Brussels and questioned people in an inquiry focused on the Belgian Islamic Center, the Belgian broadcaster VRT reported on its Web site.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/world/europe/24belgium.html?ref=world&pagewanted=print

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Somalis in Twin Cities Shaken by Charges of Sex Trafficking

MINNEAPOLIS — When the girl now identified as Jane Doe 2 came under their control in 2006, at age 12, the Somali Outlaws and the Somali Mafia gangs set a firm rule: Their members could have sex with her for nothing; others had to pay with money or drugs.

Repeatedly over the next three years, in apartments, motel rooms and shopping center bathrooms in Minnesota and Tennessee, the girl performed sexual acts for gang members and paying customers in succession, according to a federal indictment that charged 29 Somalis and Somali-Americans with drawing young girls into prostitution over the last decade, using abuse and threats to keep them in line, and other crimes. The suspects, now aged 19 to 38, sported nicknames like Hollywood, Cash Money and Forehead, prosecutors said.

The allegations of organized trafficking, unsealed this month, were a deep shock for the tens of thousands of Somalis in the Minneapolis area, who fled civil war and famine to build new lives in the United States and now wonder how some of their youths could have strayed so far. Last week, in quiet murmurings over tea and in an emergency public meeting, parents and elders expressed bewilderment and sometimes outrage — anger with the authorities for not acting sooner to stop the criminals, and with themselves for not saving their young.

The indictment was the latest in a series of jolting revelations starting around 2007, when a spate of deadly shootings in the Twin Cities made it impossible to ignore the emergence of Somali gangs. Then came the discovery that more than 20 men had returned to Somalia to fight for Islamic extremists, bringing what many Somalis feel has been harsh and unfair scrutiny from law enforcement and the news media.

“And now it's this sex ring,” said Zuhur Ahmed, 25, who discusses Somali issues on her weekly program on KFAI community radio in Minneapolis. “Everybody is wondering what's going to be the next thing.”

Cawo Abdi, a Somali sociologist at the University of Minnesota, said that past surges in concern about troubled youths had not been followed up with money and programs to help them. “This is viewed as such a huge scandal and outrage,” she said of the new charges, “that it has to lead to some kind of action.”

Many Somali immigrants are adapting well to the United States, as demonstrated on a major Islamic holiday last week when, in what has become an annual ritual, thousands streamed from morning prayers to enjoy the giant indoor amusement park at the Mall of America. Girls in traditional head scarves and boys in their best white shirts lined up for wild rides like the Splat-O-Sphere and the Log Chute. Yet poverty remains common, and their wrenching history creates some special obstacles for Somali families.

“The migrant youth are more at risk than other kids,” said Dahir Jibreel, a former teacher who is the executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, a small nonprofit group that hopes to develop community programs.

Typically, the parents grew up in Somalia while their children have grown up in America, and they inhabit different cultural worlds. The parents, some of whom have not mastered English, expect obedience and modesty and closely follow politics back in East Africa; the children are focused not on the homeland but on the money, clothes and excitement dangled by American culture.

Compounding the challenges, some young Somalis arrived in the United States after traumatic years in refugee camps, and without their parents. A significant minority have dropped out of school, only to spend time lurking in the streets around Riverside Plaza, a low-income high-rise complex in the neighborhood some call Little Mogadishu, or around one of the city's Somali shopping centers.

The indictment that set off the current soul-searching accuses the members of three interlinked gangs — the Somali Outlaws, the Somali Mafia and the Lady Outlaws — of involvement with the sex trafficking as well as thefts and large-scale credit card fraud.

One girl, identified as Jane Doe 1, was not yet 14 in 2005 when gang members first drove her to Tennessee and Ohio to trade sex for money and drugs, according to the indictment. Another girl, Jane Doe 3, was 15 in 2008 when she argued with her mother and fled to a gang member known as Boss Lady, only 18 herself, who put her up while managing her prostitution.

Some Somali leaders, including relatives of some of those charged, insisted that federal agencies were exaggerating both the crimes and the reach of any gangs.

The authorities have identified “a couple of hundred” Somalis who are members or associates of several different gangs, said Jeanine Brudenell, a community liaison with the Minneapolis police. The groups tend to be loosely structured, and while they are known for robberies and occasional marijuana dealing, they are not large-scale hard-drug syndicates like some American gangs.

Mr. Jibreel, the former teacher, said he had heard other examples of teenage girls who ended up as sex slaves. He said he had recently helped one girl who ran off at 12 and turned to prostitution and drugs under the aegis of gangs. She had a baby at 16 who was taken away by child protective services and continued her underworld life — under threat of death if she tried to leave it — until she recently gave birth to a second child whom she is determined to keep.

In a community that shies away from public discussion of sex and crime, some religious leaders and social workers have tried in the past to warn about the perils facing Somali youths.

“I see these indictments as a wake-up call for parents,” said Hassan Mohamud, a lawyer and imam of the Da'wah Islamic center in St. Paul.

Imam Mohamud visits Somalis in prison, trying to lure them to the fold, and his mosque offers after-school Koran classes to scores of young people, but he added that the community needed money for things like soccer coaches as well as stronger religious training.

One former gang leader he helped is Abdulkadir Sheriff, 31, whose tale, though many details cannot be independently confirmed, seems to encapsulate the strains and temptations of many Somali youths.

Mr. Sheriff said he fled Somalia for Kenya after seeing two sisters raped and murdered. He ended up in Minneapolis in 1996 with a sister and her husband, at the age of 17. They moved into the forbidding towers of Riverside Plaza, and he was kicked out of high school within a month after getting into fights. (To this day, he cannot read or write.)

Mr. Sheriff said he helped form Somali gangs for protection and self-esteem. “The only way to survive is to be somebody,” he said. He admitted carrying guns and selling drugs, spent a year in prison for car theft and beat a murder rap, but he insists that he was not involved in prostitution.

In 2007, as Mr. Sheriff emerged from a bar near the apartment towers, a rival stabbed him in the neck and left him for dead. His recovery, he said, “was a sign from God,” and his conversion was cemented by a visit from Imam Mohamud. Now Mr. Sheriff, who speaks with a raspy voice because of damage to his vocal cords, works as security chief at the Da'wah center and leads an Islamic 12-step program to help others stop drinking.

When he sees his surgical scars in the mirror, Mr. Sheriff said, “This reminds me that I've got a second chance.”

“There won't be another one,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/us/24gang.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Aggrieved Fliers Ask, ‘What Now?'

As if air travel could get any worse.

The airlines have already taken away the free meals and the pillows. They have been charging for checked bags and extra legroom and raising fares whenever they can get away with it. They have been packing more people onto planes as they slashed the number of flights scheduled each day. And passengers now have fewer options if bad weather cancels or delays their flights.

Now, just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday — traditionally the busiest time of the year — the Transportation Security Administration has imposed tough new security measures.

And that may have been the last straw for many travelers.

Judy Dugan, the research director at Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, argues that the anger that has welled up against the new security procedures is an expression of fliers' overall attitude toward air travel.

“Passengers are angry and frustrated about most of the flying experience — the whole ‘shut up and sit down' experience of flying,” Ms. Dugan said. “But unless they're professional travelers, they can't pin the frustration on individual airlines. It's easy, though, to focus on the T.S.A., which is a big and omnipresent part of every flight for everyone.”

And don't expect any change for the better anytime soon. While many travelers may complain about their travel experience, the industry for the first time in years has found a way back to profitability by holding the line on the number of flights they offer.

United States airlines scheduled 526,000 flights in September, according to the Air Consumer Travel Report, down from more than 600,000 in September 2007. And each flight is now fuller. Load factors, which measure how many seats are filled by paying customers, have risen above 80 percent on average at most airlines and will probably be 90 percent or more over the holidays. Only a few years ago, airlines were achieving load factors of 70 percent.

Just between Chicago O'Hare International Airport and La Guardia Airport in New York, American Airlines and United Airlines scheduled 1,400 fewer flights in the first nine months of this year compared with the same period three years ago, a drop of 17 percent.

Fees are also piling up. Bag fees, for instance, brought in $1.7 billion in extra revenue in the first half of the year. In many cases, passengers are paying for services that were once free. Changing a ticket on US Airways , for instance, now costs $150 to $250; sending an unaccompanied minor on a Delta Air Lines flight, $100. Pet charge on Southwest, $75; an alcoholic drink on United, as much as $9.

“Air travel used to be glamorous and exciting — and now, it's just a pain,” said Mary C. Gilly, a professor of marketing at the University of California, Irvine. “Airlines have become very cost-oriented as opposed to service-oriented. They are catering to their investors, not their customers.”

More problems may be on the horizon, some experts say. New federal rules have pretty much abolished instances of planes sitting on the tarmac for more than three hours. But the rule, which went into effect in May, may have had the unintended effect of forcing more flights to be canceled, some airline experts say.

Airlines said they have a strong incentive to comply with the tarmac rule given that the potential fines of $27,500 per passenger could end up costing around $3 million per delayed flight. But as a result, airlines have been canceling flights that they expect may face a long delay. When a plane returns to the gate to avoid the three-hour penalty, there is also an extra chance it will get canceled.

From May to September, the last month for which data is publicly available, only 12 flights remained on the tarmac more than three hours. That compares with 535 in the same period last year. But more flights were canceled in the same period, even as airlines reduced their overall capacity. Even so, airline experts say it is too early to determine whether the rule has benefited customers.

“We haven't gone through a big winter yet,” said Brett Snyder, the author of the Cranky Flyer blog and the president of Cranky Concierge, an air travel assistance Web site. “We need those long snowstorms that mess things up to know the impact of the rule. I think we need to wait.”

With fewer flights, though, travelers could end up waiting for hours at the airport, or even spend the night there, without any compensation for the inconvenience if bad weather delays operations.

Weather, in fact, more than security checkpoint delays, may turn into the bigger headache of the holiday period.

Airlines certainly anticipate full flights for the next week. The Air Transportation Association predicted that the number of passengers over this Thanksgiving holiday — which is defined as a 12-day period that began on Nov. 19 and ends on Tuesday — will rise 3.5 percent from last year, to 24 million people.

To help ease travel delays, the Federal Aviation Administration, as it has done in previous years, said it would clear the way for some commercial planes to fly in airspace normally reserved for the military. Airlines have also taken steps to meet the crowds. At many airports, extra airline employees will be on hand to help direct passengers to their gates, or help them move to the head of security lines if they are running late.

Southwest, the largest domestic carrier, said it would strive to accommodate every passenger, especially Wednesday and Sunday, traditionally among the busiest days, adding extra flights if needed.

“We do everything we can do to make sure you can get to your destination,” said Greg Wells, the vice president for operations at Southwest Airlines.

Continental and United, which recently merged, have several measures in place to handle the influx of holiday travelers, according to Christen David, a spokeswoman for both airlines. The carriers have brought in additional customer service agents, gate agents and bag handlers. They are also asking managers and clerical personnel to work on the front lines on the day before Thanksgiving.

“It's all hands on deck,” she said.

Upset with the security measures, Rachelle Desrochers, a health insurance analyst who works in Providence, R.I., said she rarely flew these days, preferring to drive or take the train instead. “I may never get to the West Coast again,” she said, half-jokingly.

Other travelers appeared more stoic about the current state of the airline business.

“We want cheap airline tickets but we don't want to accept the fact that airlines are turning into Greyhound buses,” said Christopher F. Childres, a managing partner at Edgewater Capital Partners, a private equity firm. “But if we pay Greyhound bus prices, we should expect Greyhound bus service.”

He said that his worst experiences were generally not with the airlines but with other passengers, “whether it is a person walking through security with all the jewelry they own, or the person that doesn't buy two seats but lifts the armrest and takes up half your seat.”

But, he added, “If you're paying $200 to fly 800 miles in two hours, there has to be an economic reason it's that cheap. You can't have a customer experience for $200.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/business/24travel.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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OPINION

Worse Than Vietnam

You have to give the people at Al Qaeda this much: They plan ahead. And they stick with their goals. If bombing the U.S.S. Cole failed to get American troops mired in Afghanistan, maybe 9/11 would do the trick?

You might say. Last week at the NATO summit President Obama pushed the light at the end of the tunnel further down the tracks. By the end of 2014, he now tells us, American combat operations in Afghanistan will cease.

It's not as if we need those four years to set any records. At just over nine years of age, this war is already the longest in American history. And this Saturday we'll eclipse the Soviet Union's misadventure in Afghanistan; the Soviets brought their own personal Vietnam to an end after nine years and seven weeks.

Is Afghanistan, as some people say, America's second Vietnam? Actually, a point-by-point comparison of the two wars suggests that it's worse than that.

For starters, though Vietnam was hugely destructive in human terms, strategically it was just a medium-sized blunder. It was a waste of resources, yes, but the war didn't make America more vulnerable to enemy attack.

The Afghanistan war does. Just as Al Qaeda planned, it empowers the narrative of terrorist recruiters — that America is at war with Islam. The would-be Times Square bomber said he was working to avenge the killing of Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And Major Nidal Hasan, who at Fort Hood perpetrated the biggest post-9/11 terrorist attack on American soil, was enraged by the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

And how many anti-American jihadists has the war created on the battlefield itself? There's no telling, but recent headlines suggest this admittedly impressionistic conclusion: We're creating them faster than we're killing them. And some of these enemies, unlike the Vietcong, could wind up killing Americans after the war is over — in South Asia, in the Middle East, in Europe, in America.

Hawks sometimes try to turn this logic to their advantage: It's precisely because our enemies could remain dangerous after the war that we have to deny them a “platform” — an Afghanistan that's partly or wholly under Taliban control; Communists weren't going to use Vietnam as a base from which to attack America, but we saw on 9/11 that Afghanistan can be used that way.

Actually, we didn't. The staging ground for the 9/11 attacks was Germany — and some American flight schools — as much as Afghanistan. The distinctive challenge posed by terrorism is that the enemy doesn't need to occupy much turf to harm us. (For a good deflating of the various catastrophe scenarios that would supposedly unfold after American withdrawal from Afghanistan, see this handy list of myths about the war, part of a highly sensible report published recently by the Afghanistan Study Group.)

Both the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars were fought in the name of a good cause. There was indeed a hostile force that had to be kept at bay — communism and terrorism, respectively. And in each case the mistake was overestimating the intrinsic power of that force.

In the case of communism, this mistake became vivid to me in 1990, when I walked into the finest department store in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), went to the home appliance section and saw no washing machines but only stacks and stacks of washboards. Our enemy had wed its fate to an economic system that was bound to drag it further and further behind us. All we really had to do was stay vigilant and wait for it to self-destruct.

So too with jihadism; Al Qaeda's ideology offers nothing that many of the world's Muslims actually want — except, perhaps, when they feel threatened by the West, a feeling that isn't exactly dulled by the presence of American troops in Muslim countries.

There are, of course, people who say that it wouldn't have been enough to let communism self-destruct. This view, which credits Ronald Reagan with turning up the heat on the Soviets in Latin America and Afghanistan, has a grain of truth: imposing costs on a crumbling economic system can hasten the crumbling.

But look at the price we paid for slightly accelerating the inevitable. In Afghanistan, we now realize, our proxy war against the Soviet Union — our support of the mujahedeen — helped create Al Qaeda. In retrospect, this was a kind of segue between the cold war and the war on terrorism, and it illuminates that crucial difference between the two: when you're dealing with state-based communism, nonessential intervention is wasteful; when you're dealing with non-state-based terrorism, such intervention can be actively counterproductive.

Of course, wastefulness is a pretty bad thing in its own right. Spending on Vietnam helped fuel inflation that was eventually subdued only with a stiff monetary policy that brought much unemployment. And the cost of the Afghanistan war already exceeds the cost of the Vietnam and Korean Wars combined, even in inflation-adjusted dollars. At $100 billion a year (seven times the gross domestic product of Afghanistan) this war is feeding a deficit that will eventually take its toll in real, human terms. I encourage Tea Partiers and other fiscal conservatives to ponder the tension between deficit hawkism and military hawkism.

All told, then: in terms of the long-run impact on America's economic and physical security, the Afghanistan war is as bad as the Vietnam War except for the ways in which it's worse.

Still, the strategy in whose name both wars were launched, containment, makes sense if wisely calibrated. A well tuned terrorism containment strategy — dubbed containment 2.0 by the foreign policy blogger Eric Martin — would require strong leadership in the White House and in Congress. It would mean convincing Americans that — sometimes, at least — we have to absorb terrorist attacks stoically, refraining from retaliation that brings large-scale blowback.

That's a tough sell, because few things are more deeply engrained in human nature than the impulse to punish enemies. So maybe the message should be put like this: Could we please stop doing Al Qaeda's work for it?

Postscript: Patrick Porter of King's College, London has made a very acute assessment of the dangers of an overactive containment policy in the war on terrorism. And the aforementioned report of the Afghanistan Study Group can be found in PDF form here. The Study Group's blog is here. And here is a new Afghanistan report from the Center for American Progress. The quote from Mohammed Atef at the outset of this piece is sometimes attributed to Osama Bin Laden, but apparently that attribution is erroneous, as the original source, Peter Bergen's oral history “The Osama bin Laden I Know,” attributes it to Atef (p. 255). And, finally, my calculation of the duration of the Soviet-Afghanistan war, whose endpoints are subject to interpretation, takes Dec. 27, 1979, as the beginning and Feb. 15, 1989, as the end.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/afghanistan-and-vietnam/?pagemode=print

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From the Chicago Sun Times

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Ex-con dies fighting crime

LAWNDALE | 'He really wanted to make a difference': Shot to death by purse snatcher as he came to aid of victim

November 24, 2010

BY KIM JANSSEN

Heroin addict Bobby Butler had vowed to turn his life around before. But this time -- at the ripe age of 55 -- it seemed finally to have stuck.

Just five months out of prison, where he had spent much of the last 20 years for a series of drug offenses, the fast-talking father of four was drug-free and church-going, proudly working as a telemarketer downtown and saving up to move into a new apartment with his mom.

His days on the street were done, he had told family and friends.

But as he walked home from the Central Park L stop in Lawndale at 6 p.m. Monday, the street claimed him anyway.

Gunned down by a robber as he ran to the aid of a young woman whose purse had been snatched, Butler died not a criminal, but a hero.

"When he got out of prison we had a big long talk," his brother, Jeffrey Butler, said Tuesday as detectives hunted for the killer. "He regretted that he wasn't there when his other brother died of cancer, and he really wanted to make a difference -- but he'd have helped this woman even when he wasn't in his right frame of mind, before he got clean. It's just how he was."

Butler died of a gunshot wound in his chest during surgery Tuesday at Mount Sinai Hospital.

He had first offered to protect the woman from the rain with his umbrella as they both left the L station Monday night, a police source said.

Moments after she declined, a man in dark clothing showed her a handgun stuffed in his waistband and took her purse, telling her to "just hand it over," police said.

Butler had shouted "Hey, hey!" and started to move across the street toward the robber when he was shot in the 2100 block of South Millard, according to a police report.

"There was one shot, and as the shooter ran away down the alley he was lying in the middle of the street, saying, 'I can't feel my legs!' " said a witness who spoke with police but asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.

Butler's roommate, Arthur Railey, described him as a streetwise ladies' man who avoided conflict but couldn't bear to see a woman victimized.

When he and Butler got in an argument with a group of teenage gang-bangers who cut them off in their car on Sunday, Butler acted as peacemaker and warned Railey, "These kids will shoot you over anything."

Noting that Butler was fatally shot a day later, Railey said, "I think his pride would not let him watch someone treat a woman that way in front of him."

Butler had used his charm and hard work to win a series of "better and better" sales jobs since he was released from prison this summer, his brother said.

Butler's boss, David Gronowski, said his death stunned and saddened co-workers at Transnational Bankcard.

However, "It surprised none of us that he was trying to help someone when he died," Gronowski said.

Butler's optimistic personality and "gratefulness in life were an inspiration," he added.

Butler's niece, Tameka Herred, who had recently helped him set up a Facebook profile, said his hard life had not diminished his love of jokes and fun. "I've never seen anyone so happy to have a paycheck and be able to pay the rent," she said.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/2919832,CST-NWS-goodsam1124.article

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Found bone not Natalee Holloway's

November 24, 2010

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- A jawbone found on an Aruba beach does not belong to missing Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, prosecutors in the Dutch Caribbean island said Tuesday.

Dutch investigators compared the lone tooth on the bone with dental records supplied by Holloway's family and "it can be ruled out that the bone fragment came from Natalee Holloway," the prosecutors said.

The bone was found recently by a tourist on a beach.

John Kelly, an attorney for Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty, hinted that the media found out about the test results before she did.

"Beth accepts the forensic conclusions, is emotionally exhausted from the inexplicably long wait and deeply disappointed in the time and manner in which she learned of the results," he said in a statement. "Apparently Aruban prosecutors were more sensitive to media concerns than the painful vigil of a mother." AP

http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/2919894,CST-NWS-holloway1124.article

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From the Department of Justice

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Man Found Guilty for Forcing Women and Juveniles into Prostitution

WASHINGTON - A federal jury today convicted Amador Cortes-Meza, 36, of Mexico, of multiple charges of sex trafficking and human smuggling offenses related to a scheme to force women and juveniles into prostitution. The jury found Cortes-Meza guilty on all 19 counts after a trial lasting approximately two weeks.

“The exploitation of these vulnerable individuals is a violation of the fundamental rights on which our country was founded, and is intolerable in a nation that prides itself on freedom,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “The Department of Justice will continue to prosecute vigorously the trafficking of human beings to vindicate the rights of those held in modern-day slavery, whether for labor or for sexual exploitation.”

U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said, “This defendant preyed on the most vulnerable of victims--girls and young women hoping for a better life-- through promises of jobs or marriage. He then physically abused them, enslaved them, and forced them into prostitution. This trial provided a glimpse into the monstrous world of human trafficking. We are committed to giving voice to the victims of these horrific crimes and holding the defendants accountable for their crimes.”

“We hope that the victims who suffered at the hands of this monster can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that justice has been served,” said Brock Nicholson, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) office that oversees the Carolinas and Georgia. “We are committed to working with our local, state and federal partners to target human traffickers who think that their heinous crimes will go unchecked.”

According to the evidence presented in court, from Spring 2006 through June 2008, Amador Cortes-Meza and others charged in the conspiracy recruited and enticed approximately 10 victims to enter the United States illegally from Mexico and come to the Atlanta area.  Amador Cortes-Meza then forced them into prostitution for the financial benefit of the members of the conspiracy. He lured the young women and girls to the U.S. by promising better lives, legitimate employment or romantic relationships with him. A brother and two nephews of Amador Cortes-Meza were previously convicted after pleading guilty to sex trafficking charges related to this scheme.

Nine of the victims addressed the court about what they suffered at the hands of this sex trafficking ring, telling of physical threats, beatings, and intimidation which caused them to work as prostitutes against their will. Evidence at trial showed that after smuggling the victims into the United States, Amador Cortes-Meza forced them to engage in prostitution by isolating them from their families, brutally beating them, and threatening to harm them and their loved ones.  One victim testified that he told her that “he was going to hit her where it hurt the most” and she took that to mean he was going to go after her family.  Another victim testified that the defendant told her he would kill her parents in Mexico if he was ever arrested. On a nightly basis, Amador Cortes-Meza provided the victims to drivers who drove them to apartments and homes in Duluth, Ga.; Chamblee, Ga.; Canton, Ga.; Marietta, Ga.; Forrest Park, Ga.; and as far away as Alabama and North Carolina to provide commercial sex to as many as 40 customers a night. The victims testified that the clients were charged $25-30 for 10 to 15 minutes of time with them from which the drivers were given $10. 

The jury convicted Amador Cortes-Meza on 19 counts, including offenses of sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion; sex trafficking of minors; conspiracy; importation and harboring of aliens for the purposes of prostitution; and smuggling aliens into the United States.  Amador Cortes-Meza faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Human trafficking prosecutions are a top priority for the Justice Department.  The Department of Homeland Security Tip Line to report trafficking crimes is 1-866-347-2423.

This case was investigated by ICE/HSI Special Agents assigned to the Atlanta Special Agent in Charge office.  

Deputy Chief Karima Maloney of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Coppedge prosecuted the case.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/November/10-crt-1347.html

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Attorney General Eric Holder Names 18 Experts to New Science Advisory Board

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder today named 18 experts – scholars and practitioners in criminology, statistics, sociology and practitioners in the criminal and juvenile justice fields – to the newly created Office of Justice Programs (OJP) Science Advisory Board. Laurie O. Robinson, OJP's Assistant Attorney General, recommended the creation of the advisory board as a means of bridging the divide between research and practice in criminal justice fields. The first meeting of the board will take place early in 2011.

“This Administration is committed to using science to help inform and guide policy development.  By providing advice and counsel to the Department of Justice, the members of this advisory board will help us focus on evidence-based approaches to prevent and reduce crime,” said Attorney General Holder.

In FY 2010, OJP, which administers grants on behalf of the department, awarded nearly 5,000 grants totaling $2.6 billion to the criminal and juvenile justice field, including federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies, and community organizations. The funding supports a wide range of activities, including research and evaluation programs designed to encourage innovative programs to prevent and control crime, assist victims, and increase the capacity of state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies.

“I look forward to working with this advisory board to ensure that OJP's research is scientifically rigorous and that it is translated effectively for policymakers and practitioners in the criminal and juvenile justice fields,” said Assistant Attorney General Robinson.

The advisory board will provide an extra-agency review of and recommendations for OJP research, statistics and grant programs, ensuring the programs and activities are scientifically sound and pertinent to policymakers and practitioners. The members of the advisory board named today include:

Chair: Alfred Blumstein, Ph.D., The H. John Heinz III College, Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Blumstein is a previous winner of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology and serves as the J. Erik Jonsson Professor of Urban Systems and Operations Research at Carnegie Mellon Heinz College.

William J. Bratton, Chairman, Altegrity Risk International. Mr. Bratton most recently served as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Andrea J. Cabral, Sheriff, Suffolk County, Mass. Sheriff Cabral was elected as the 30 th Sheriff of Suffolk County and she is the first female in the commonwealth's history to hold the position.

Frank Cullen, Ph.D., Distinguished Research Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati. Dr. Cullen is the past editor of Justice Quarterly and Journal of Crime and Justice and was president of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

Tony Fabelo, Ph.D., Director of Research, Council of State Governments Justice Center. Dr. Fabelo was a member of the National Research Council panel of the National Academy of Sciences that issued two national reports in 2000 and 2001 on juvenile crime and juvenile justice.

James M. Lepkowski, Ph.D., Chair, Program in Survey Methodology, University of Michigan. Dr. Lepkowski is Senior Research Scientist at the Survey Research Center and Associate Professor of Bio-statistics at the University of Michigan.

Alan I. Leshner, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Leshner has been the Chief Executive Officer of the AAAS and Executive Publisher of the journal, Science , since December 2001.

Mark Lipsey, Ph.D., Director, Peabody Research Institute, Vanderbilt University.

Dr. Lipsey is the director of the Peabody Research Institute and his research and teaching interests include public policy, program evaluation and social intervention with an emphasis on programs for children and youth.

Colin Loftin, Ph.D., School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York. Dr. Loftin is co-director of the Violence Research Group, a research collaboration with colleagues at the University at Albany and the University of Maryland that conducts research on the causes and consequences of interpersonal violence.

The Honorable Theodore A. McKee, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Prior to his appointment to the bench, Judge McKee served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney where he prosecuted cases of public corruption, police brutality and civil rights violations.

Tracey L. Meares, J.D., Deputy Dean and Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law, Yale University. Professor Meares' research and teaching interests center on criminal procedure and criminal law policy, with a particular emphasis on empirical investigation of these subjects.

Edward P. Mulvey, Ph.D., Director, Law & Psychiatry Research, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Mulvey is a fellow of both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society.

Joan Petersilia, Ph.D., Faculty Co-director, Stanford Criminal Justice Center

Dr. Petersilia is the author of 11 books about crime and public policy and has conducted research about parole reform, prisoner reintegration, and sentencing policy.

Joycelyn Pollock, Ph.D., Department of Criminal Justice, Texas State University. Dr. Pollock began her career in criminal justice as a probation and parole officer in the state of Washington. Her primary research areas include prisons, women in the system (as professionals, offenders and victims) and legal topics.

Richard Rosenfeld, Ph.D., Professor, Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri. Dr. Rosenfeld is the Curators Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He recently served as the President of the American Society of Criminology. Dr. Rosenfeld is the co-author with Steven Messner of Crime and the American Dream , now in its fourth edition.

Elizabeth A. Stasny, Ph.D., Professor of Statistics and Vice Chair of Graduate Studies in Statistics and Bio-Statistics, Ohio State University . Dr. Stasny has served on the editor boards of the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Survey Methodology. She is a recognized expert in dealing with missing data and other response errors in surveys.

Robert J. Sampson, Ph.D., Professor of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Harvard University . Dr. Sampson is the 2011 co-recipient of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology. He and Dr. John H. Laub, Director of the National Institute of Justice, are joint winners for their work on understanding how and why criminals stop committing crime.  Dr. Sampson currently is on a one-year research sabbatical from Harvard University to the Russell Sage Foundation. Professor Sampson's research interests center on crime and violence, the life course, neighborhood effects and the sociology of the modern city.

David Weisburd, Ph.D., Professor of Law and Criminal Justice, Hebrew University and George Mason University. Dr. Weisburd is the 2010 winner of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology and one of the early proponents of place-based experimental research in criminology.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/November/10-ag-1344.html

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From ICE

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ICE arrests 85 convicted criminal aliens, fugitives in enforcement surge throughout Colorado, and part of Wyoming DENVER - During a four-day targeted enforcement operation throughout Colorado ending Friday, 85 convicted criminal aliens and immigration fugitives have been arrested by agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). During the operation, which ended Nov. 19, ICE officers located and arrested 78 aliens with prior criminal convictions. Many of the criminal aliens taken into custody have prior convictions for serious or violent crimes, such as:  contributing to the delinquency of a minor, sexual assault, possessing and selling dangerous drugs, drunken driving, sexual contact and battery, and assault.

Eighty-two aliens were arrested in the following Colorado cities: Denver, Colorado Springs, Aurora, Lakewood, Commerce City, Longmont, Littleton, Westminster, Federal Heights, Greeley, Weldona, Estes Park, Johnston, Englewood, Thornton, Delta, Montrose, Carbondale, Basalt, Centennial, Highlands Ranch, Boulder, Windsor, Fort Collins, Evans, Glenwood Springs, Avon, Edwards, Vail, Grand Junction, Milliken, Lafayette, Fort Morgan, Brush, and Loveland.  Three arrests were made in Wyoming.
The following law enforcement agencies assisted ICE ERO officers with these arrests:  Montrose Police Department, Carbondale Police Department, Mesa County Sheriff's Office, Garfield County Sheriff's Office, Avon Police Department, and ICE Homeland Security Investigations.

"This four-day ICE operation targeted criminal and fugitive aliens throughout Colorado," said ICE Director John Morton.  "These surge operations, and our daily targeting of aliens with criminal convictions, are some of the many tools that ICE uses to effectively reduce crime at the street level in communities throughout the United States."
Twenty one of those arrested had been previously deported.  A conviction for felony re-entry carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison.

Below are two case examples of those arrested during this operation:

• A 40-year-old man from Mexico who is a U.S. permanent resident has been convicted of controlled substance violations, and other crimes. He was also convicted on Nov. 5, 2010 in the Denver District Court for sexual contact-no consent, for which he was sentenced to five years sex offender supervision. He was also convicted in 1993 in the Los Angeles Municipal Court for possessing cocaine, and was sentenced to 16 months in prison. He was taken into ICE custody in Denver during this operation and was served a Notice to Appear before a federal immigration judge.
  
  
• A 42-year-old man from Mexico, who is a U.S. permanent resident, has convictions for illegally possessing/selling a switch blade knife, inflicting corporal injury to a spouse/ cohabitant, drunken driving, and possession for sale of cocaine. He was arrested by ICE in Thornton, Colo. He was served a new Notice to Appear and placed in removal proceedings.

The foreign nationals detained during the operation who are not being criminally prosecuted will be processed administratively for removal from the United States.  Those who have outstanding orders of deportation, or who returned to the United States illegally after being deported, are subject to immediate removal from the country.  The remaining aliens are in ICE custody awaiting a hearing before an immigration judge, or pending travel arrangements for removal in the near future.

Of those arrested, 73 were men and 12 were women. They represent the following nine countries:  El Salvador (7), Poland (1), Dominican Republic (1), Guatemala (2), Mexico (66), Uganda (1), S. Korea (1), Honduras (5), and Mongolia (1).  They range in age from 34 to 63.

This week's special enforcement action was spearheaded by ICE's Fugitive Operations Program, which is responsible for locating, arresting and removing at-large criminal aliens and immigration fugitives - aliens who have ignored final orders of deportation handed down by the nation's immigration courts. ICE's Fugitive Operations Teams (FOTs) give top priority to cases involving aliens who pose a threat to national security and public safety, including members of transnational street gangs and child sex offenders.

The officers who conducted this week's operation received substantial assistance from ICE's Fugitive Operations Support Center (FOSC) located in Williston, Vt. The FOSC conducted exhaustive database checks on the targeted cases to help ensure the viability of the leads and accuracy of the criminal histories. The FOSC was established in 2006 to improve the integrity of the data available on at large criminal aliens and immigration fugitives nationwide. Since its inception, the FOSC has forwarded more than 550,000 case leads to ICE enforcement personnel in the field.

ICE's Fugitive Operations Program is just one facet of the Department of Homeland Security's broader strategy to heighten the federal government's effectiveness at identifying and removing dangerous criminal aliens from the United States. Other initiatives that figure prominently in this effort are the Criminal Alien Program, Secure Communities and the agency's partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies under 287(g).

Largely as a result of these initiatives, ICE last year removed more than 392,800 aliens from the United States, which is a record number; of that number more than 195,700 were aliens with criminal convictions.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1011/101122denver.htm

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ICE arrests 18 in Maryland operation targeting criminal aliens charged with DUI

? BALTIMORE - Last week in a three-day enforcement operation throughout Maryland, 18 immigration fugitives and immigration violators, almost all convicted of Driving Under the Influence (DUI), were arrested by officers with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

Of those taken into custody, 13 were immigration fugitives with outstanding orders of deportation, and two were previously deported aliens who returned to the United States illegally after being removed. Ninety-nine percent of the aliens arrested during the enforcement action also had criminal records, in addition to being in the country illegally. Their criminal histories included prior arrests and convictions for a variety of violations, including possession of drugs, possession of weapon, assault, forgery and theft.

"This targeted enforcement action is an example of ICE's commitment to tough law enforcement investigations that locate and arrest criminal aliens and ultimately remove those aliens from the United States that pose a threat to public safety in our communities," said Calvin McCormick, ICE ERO field office director in Baltimore.

The operation was spearheaded by ICE's Fugitive Operations Program (FOP), which is responsible for locating, arresting and removing at-large criminal aliens and immigration fugitives. ICE's Fugitive Operations Teams (FOT) give top priority to cases involving aliens who pose a threat to national security and public safety, including members of transnational street gangs, child sex offenders and DUI violators.

In fiscal year 2010, ICE's FOTs nationwide have made 30,787 arrests. More than 89 percent of those arrests involved immigration fugitives and aliens with prior criminal convictions. Locally, the Baltimore FOTs have made 756 total arrests in fiscal year 2010, surpassing the 683 total arrests made in fiscal year 2009.

The arrests were made in the following Maryland Cities: Aldelphi, Annapolis, Baltimore, Edgewood, Gaithersburg, Germantown, Gwynn Oak, Hyattsville, Montgomery Village, Rockville, and Silver Spring.

The following are examples of the individuals arrested:

• A 44-year-old citizen of Mexico with multiple DUI convictions in Maryland and California was arrested in Gwynn Oak, Md. He was convicted in California of DUI and causing bodily injury and was sentenced to 60 days in jail and 36 months probation. A year and a half later he was convicted of hit and run/death or injury and was sentenced to 37 days in jail and 36 months probation. Later he was also convicted of false identification to a peace officer where he was sentenced to 180 days in jail and 36 months probation. In Maryland, he was convicted of DUI twice and was sentenced to two years in jail, of which 21 months was suspended for the first conviction. On the second conviction he was sentenced to one year in jail of which nine months was suspended with supervised probation.
  

• A 42-year-old El Salvadoran national convicted of DUI and sentenced to one year probation was arrested at his home in Rockville, Md. In addition to the DUI conviction, he has also been arrested for manufacture or delivery of a controlled dangerous substance, possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to deliver, and conspiracy to manufacture or deliver a narcotic. These charges are currently pending.

All 18 were arrested administratively for being in violation of immigration law and all are being held in ICE custody pending immigration removal proceedings or removal from the United States. The arrested individuals are nationals from the following countries: Bolivia, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.

ICE's Fugitive Operations Program is just one facet of the Department of Homeland Security's broader strategy to height the federal government's effectiveness at identifying and removing dangerous criminal aliens from the United States. Other initiatives that figure prominently in this effort are the Criminal Alien Program, Secure Communities and agency's partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies under 287(g).

In fiscal year 2010, ICE set a record for overall removals of illegal aliens, with more than 392,000 removals nationwide. Half of those removed - more than 195,000 - were convicted criminals.

http://www.ice.gov/news/releases/1011/101123baltimore.htm

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From the ATF

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ATF Launces Text-Based Crime Tip Submission System

WASHINGTON — The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information, today announced the launch of a text messaging crime tip submission system. During the course of this six-month pilot program, crime tips can be submitted anonymously by text message to ATF's Joint Support and Operations Center for review and processing.

The general public will benefit from the easy to use, anonymous system that will allow them to readily relay information from any cell phone. ATF will benefit from an increased flow of real—time intelligence, which will enhance its investigative capabilities and help keep communities safer.

To submit a crime tip, one can begin by texting a message with ATF in the body of the message to the number 274637 (CRIMES). The initial submission will trigger an auto response from the secure transaction server. The text sender will receive a response, including a unique code number, which must be remembered for encryption and identification purposes. The sender and ATF coordinator may then elect to engage in a secure and encrypted two-way dialog with no additional keywords being required.

The sender can also text STOP to the number 274637 (CRIMES) at anytime to pause the system. This is helpful in situations where you cannot be replied to by ATF. If you do not send STOP to the short code number, messages from that point will not get a reply, but are received by ATF. Any new text messages would require repeating these steps from the beginning, utilizing a new code number generated by the system.

For additional information on ATF's SMS text messaging capability, please visit http://www.atf.gov/contact/sms/. For additional information concerning submission of crime tips to ATF, please refer to http://www.atf.gov/contact/hotlines/.

http://www.atf.gov/press/releases/2010/11/112210-text-based-crime-submission-system.html

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