Quotations and notes from "The Terror Factory" - Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism by Trevor Aaronson
"A Senate oversight committee found in 1975 the FBI had 1,500 informants. In 1980.., 2,800 ...Six years later .. 6,000 .." Today, after the Moslem{Muslim} terrorist attacks on 9/11, the FBI has an "official roster" of 15,000 informants. The author, Trevor Aaronson, writes that the FBI has a "vast army of spies, located in every community in the United States with enough Muslims to support a mosque.."
"The FBI currently spends $3 billion annually to hunt an enemy that is largely of its own creation."
"According to government and federal court records, the Justice Department has prosecuted more than 500 terrorism defendants since 9/11."
"Of the 508 defendants, 243 had been targeted through an FBI informant, 158 had been caught in an FBI terrorism sting, and 49 had encountered an agent provocateur. Most of the people who didn't face off against an informant weren't directely involved with terrorism at all, but were .. small-time criminals with distant links to terrorists overseas."
"Of the 508 cases, I could count on one hand the number of actual terrorists .."
This is a very provocative book on a very controversial subject.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Friday, March 22, 2013
Experimental Blog # 151
Comments on "The Terror Courts" - Rough Justice at Guantanamo Bay by Jess Bravin
President George W. Bush created the Special Military Commission by executive order in November of 2001 to deal with the captured foreign terrorists after the 9/11 attacks on America. It seems that neither he nor his administration had any confidence in the existing American judicial system.
The "offshore" commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was authorized to use what might be called "torture lite" to obtain confessions and other useful information. The prisoners were not to be tortured to death or physically injured. It seems that they had to be in such condition that, after a day or two of rest, they could be brought into the courtroom and not appear to be injured or abused. Numerous times the author also mentions the "clandestine network" of CIA prisons that are secretly located in foreign countries, but not much seems to be known about what transpired in these places.
Jess Bravin apparently concludes that the Guantanamo military commission was actually much slower to produce results than the established American judicial system would have been. Very few convictions could be obtained because confessions or evidence produced under such allowed conditions could not be upheld. Several prisoners were released for political reasons to England and Australia.
For its own political reasons the administration of President Barak Obama has continued the military commission at Guantanamo Bay. However, substantial changes have been made; for instance, "torture lite" is no longer supposed to be used to obtain evidence or confessions. Besides that the author writes that if prisoners are actually convicted of anything, they seem to receive a more lenient sentence than they would receive from the established American judicial system.
President George W. Bush created the Special Military Commission by executive order in November of 2001 to deal with the captured foreign terrorists after the 9/11 attacks on America. It seems that neither he nor his administration had any confidence in the existing American judicial system.
The "offshore" commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba was authorized to use what might be called "torture lite" to obtain confessions and other useful information. The prisoners were not to be tortured to death or physically injured. It seems that they had to be in such condition that, after a day or two of rest, they could be brought into the courtroom and not appear to be injured or abused. Numerous times the author also mentions the "clandestine network" of CIA prisons that are secretly located in foreign countries, but not much seems to be known about what transpired in these places.
Jess Bravin apparently concludes that the Guantanamo military commission was actually much slower to produce results than the established American judicial system would have been. Very few convictions could be obtained because confessions or evidence produced under such allowed conditions could not be upheld. Several prisoners were released for political reasons to England and Australia.
For its own political reasons the administration of President Barak Obama has continued the military commission at Guantanamo Bay. However, substantial changes have been made; for instance, "torture lite" is no longer supposed to be used to obtain evidence or confessions. Besides that the author writes that if prisoners are actually convicted of anything, they seem to receive a more lenient sentence than they would receive from the established American judicial system.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Experimental Blog # 150
Quotations and notes from "The Joy of X" - A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity by Steven Strogatz
"... numbers have lives of their own. ..Even though they exist in our minds, once we decide what we mean by them,..They obey certain laws and have certain properties, .. and ways of combining with one another ...they are eerily reminiscent of atoms and stars, the things of this world ...except that those things exist outside our heads."
"The Babylonians ..numerical system was based on 60 ...Sixty is the smallest number that can be divided evenly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6{besides 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30}. ..Because of its promiscuous divisibilty, 60 is much more congenial .. for any sort of calculation or measurement that involves cutting things into equal parts"{such as hours or minutes or circles}.
"Quantum mechanics describes real atoms, and hence all of matter, as packets of sine waves. Even at the cosmological scale, sine waves form the seeds of all that exists."!
"...vector calculus is helping to explain how dragonflies, bumblebees, and hummingbirds can fly - something that had long been a mystery to conventional fixed-wing aerodynamics."
"With the notions of divergence and curl ...{Using mathematical maneuvers equivalent to vector calculus} Maxwell's equations .. express" the four fundamental laws of electric and magnetic fields: how electricity and magnetism are related to their sources of charged particles and currents and how they interact over space and time to produce undulating waves.
The laws of probability turn individual randomness into collective regularity.
"... numbers have lives of their own. ..Even though they exist in our minds, once we decide what we mean by them,..They obey certain laws and have certain properties, .. and ways of combining with one another ...they are eerily reminiscent of atoms and stars, the things of this world ...except that those things exist outside our heads."
"The Babylonians ..numerical system was based on 60 ...Sixty is the smallest number that can be divided evenly by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6{besides 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30}. ..Because of its promiscuous divisibilty, 60 is much more congenial .. for any sort of calculation or measurement that involves cutting things into equal parts"{such as hours or minutes or circles}.
"Quantum mechanics describes real atoms, and hence all of matter, as packets of sine waves. Even at the cosmological scale, sine waves form the seeds of all that exists."!
"...vector calculus is helping to explain how dragonflies, bumblebees, and hummingbirds can fly - something that had long been a mystery to conventional fixed-wing aerodynamics."
"With the notions of divergence and curl ...{Using mathematical maneuvers equivalent to vector calculus} Maxwell's equations .. express" the four fundamental laws of electric and magnetic fields: how electricity and magnetism are related to their sources of charged particles and currents and how they interact over space and time to produce undulating waves.
The laws of probability turn individual randomness into collective regularity.
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