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Maple syrup producer ends factory floor tours
For almost a century Maple Grove Farms of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, has produced maple syrup and maple candies; for much of that time, tourists have been able to watch the production process from the factory floor — but not anymore: fears about terrorists, disguised as visitors, contaminating some of the more than twelve million pounds of maple products processed every year lead company to end tours
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FBI grants more top secret clearances for terrorism cases
Security clearances granted to members of the FBI’s network of regional terrorism task forces jumped to 878 in 2009, up from 125 in 2007, signaling intensified attention to domestic terror threats; part of the increase is because of the rapid expansion of the terrorism task forces created after the 2001 assaults to disrupt future terror plots; since 2001 the number of terror units, which draw on federal, state, and local investigators, have grown from 35 to 104 nationwide
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U Rochester lands $15 million to study medical response to nuclear terrorism
Research has revealed that it is not just the immediate effect of radiation that makes adults and children sick; rather, the radiation damage can remain relatively undetected in key tissues and organs, but will trigger life-threatening illnesses after an injury that occurs later; new project places the University of Rochester Medical Center firmly in a leadership position in the counterterrorism effort
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U.K. Muslim group holds antiterrorism summer camp
More than 1,000 attend 3-day al Hidayah event at University of Warwick campus to learn how to fight arguments of extremists; those attending are taught practical ways of countering extremist views in their schools, universities, and communities, and are learning how to engage with people expressing extremist views and are being directed to passages in the Qur’an and other Islamic texts to allow them to argue against them
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Indonesia joins countries mulling BlackBerry ban to fight terror
Indonesia considers joining a growing list of countries, including India, Saudi Arabia and the UAE in banning BlackBerry devices; Research in Motion is receiving increasing pressure to allow government access to data generated by the hand-held devices
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TSA enlisting parking attendants and meter maids in anti-terror campaign
From the 1993 attempt on the Twin towers, to Timothy McVeigh, to Faisal Shahzad, the United States has experience with terrorists using vehicles to carry out their plots; TSA’s First Observer program will roll out lesson plans for workers such as parking attendants and meter maids to help them become the latest anti-terror weapons
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End to water-boarding: Using brain waves to reading terrorists minds about imminent attacks
There may soon be no need for water-boarding or other “enhanced interrogation” to extract vital information about pending attacks from captured terrorists or terrorism suspects; Researchers at Northwestern university were able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab
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A Qaeda attacks Jordanian port city; 1 killed, 3 hurt
A Grad rocket exploded early Monday in the Jordanian seaside resort of Aqaba, killing one person and injuring at least three; al Qaeda operatives launched a similar rocket attack on Aqaba on 8 July 2007, in which a Jordanian soldier was killed; one of the targets of the 2007 attack was the USS Ashland, which was docking at the Aqaba port at the time
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Leaked U.S. documents: Pakistan collaborates with the Taliban to kill Americans
Leaked U.S. military documents offer detailed and disturbing accounts of the degree and scope of the cooperation between Pakistan’s intelligence agency and anti-American forces in Afghanistan; this cooperation comes from an agency of a country that receives more than $1 billion a year in aid from the United States; ISI, the Pakistani secret service, recruits insurgents, trains them, supplies them, helps them choose targets, and provides them with the weapons to carry out attacks; the cooperation has resulted in the death of many American soldiers and, more broadly, is aimed to undermine U.S. strategy and goals in Afghanistan
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Petraeus pushes for labeling Afghanistan's Haqqani network as terrorists
Gen. David H. Petraeus is pushing the Obama administration to have top leaders of the Haqqani network, a feared insurgent group run by an old warlord family, designated as terrorists; the group’s power lies in its deep connections to Pakistan’s spy agency, the ISI, which sees the Haqqani network as a way to exercise its own leverage in Afghanistan; move could add more tension to U.S.-Pakistan relations, and complicate Afghan political settlement with the Taliban
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India: Pakistan ISI behind Mumbai attacks
For the first time since the December 2008 Mumbai attacks, in which 166 people were killed and hundreds injured, India officially and explicitly accuses ISI, the Pakistani secret service, of planning, controlling, and coordinating the attacks; some of the evidence against the ISI emerged from the interrogation by Indian officials of a Chicago man, David Headley, who pleaded guilty to working with the jihadist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) to plan the attacks
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To prevent terrorism we need better understanding of the process of radicalization
Why do some radical people turn to violence while others do not? Experts say that we really do not know for sure, but we need to know if we want to strengthen our counter-terrorism measures; until the understanding of this improves, the efforts to stop further terrorist attacks will continue to rely on a lot of luck
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Rising number of domestic terrorism cases make Muslim Americans grapple with homegrown jihad
Recent arrests of Muslim men in terrorism plots lead some adherents to ask whether there is a need for more urgency in approaching the risks of homegrown jihadists; says one Muslim scholar: “There is this tug of war inside ourselves of trying to reconcile Islam and being an American”
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7/7 London bombings: "The rules of the game have changed"
Two weeks after the 7 July attacks, the then prime minister, Tony Blair, called a press conference at which he warned: “Let no one be in doubt. The rules of the game have changed”; he outlined twelve new measures that aimed to transform the landscape of British counterterrorism; together, they were intended to offer a greater degree of collective security; each came at considerable cost to the liberties of both individuals and groups of people; the controversial Terrorism Act 2006 passed after the 7 July bombings has led to increased arrests and convictions
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Report: Terrorism in Britain "mostly home grown"
New study finds that that 69 percent of terrorist offenses in the United Kingdom were perpetrated by individuals holding British nationality; 46 percent of offenders had their origins in south Asia including 28 percent who had Pakistani heritage; 31 percent had attended university and 10 percent were still students when they were arrested; 35 percent were unemployed and living on benefits
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More headlines
The long view
Extremist Ideology Is Hard to Pin Down
When it comes to extremist motivations for political violence, their varied sources and the role of mental health make it difficult to attribute a root cause and who might have been responsible for leading them down that road. Benjamin Allison writes that thelack of ideological clarity among those who commit acts of political violence is not uncommon.
U.S. Domestic Terrorism Is Increasingly Motivated by Partisan Politics
One of the most alarming trends in terrorism is the growth in anti-government extremism. “The heightened risk of terrorist attacks motivated by partisan beliefs does not just endanger individual lives but also threatens the democratic process itself, casting a shadow over open discourse and discouraging civic engagement,” Riley McCabe writes.