North America Archive

Investigators for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) have concluded that, due primarily to a lack of effective centralized training and coordination, DOD personnel involved in previous counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations may have violated Americans’ civil liberties when reviewing their financial and other personal records. According to documents recently released under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, the department has issued 455 national security letters — subpoenas that allow authorized government officials to examine, without court order, the personal data of American citizens suspected of involvement in espionage, terrorism, and other activities that threaten the security of the United States […]

WASHINGTON — Much of the controversy surrounding a congressional committee’s approval of a resolution condemning as genocide the massacre of Armenians during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire has focused on the action’s geopolitical ramifications. But a key question remains unanswered: How did the world’s most powerful body of lawmakers come to feel compelled to register a position on an event that happened almost a century ago? By some accounts, the answer is simple: lobbying. Others, however, contend that the power of the Armenian lobby in the United States has been exaggerated and that the genocide resolution has gotten traction […]

Just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Pakistani authorities arrested two atomic scientists suspected of having aided the terror network al-Qaida in efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. One year earlier, they had founded a humanitarian aid agency for Afghanistan: the “Reconstruction of the Muslim Umma.” But for the two Taliban sympathizers, the aim of constructing a new Muslim community was not only a matter of economic and political solidarity with the faithful around the world. In their opinion, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, which they had helped to develop, were also the “property […]

TONY SOPRANO, EAT YOUR HEART OUT — Italy’s harassed store owners paid $8.5 billion in protection money to organized crime in one year, almost all of it in the south and Sicily, where the Mafia and its Neapolitan counterpart, the Camorra, hold sway. About 160,000 businesses were targeted throughout the country, according to the Italian retailers association, Confesercenti. Loan sharks took in double that amount: $17.1 billion. From 2004-2006 Mafia loan sharks “foreclosed” on 165,000 businesses nationwide, and nearly 50,000 hotels. Confesercenti — quoted in the newspaper Corriere della Sera — listed the fixed rates for protection. Market stall holders […]

Last week, the White House released an updated version of its National Strategy for Homeland Security. The Bush administration intends the document, which replaces the original July 2002 National Strategy hastily prepared in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to provide an overarching framework for assessing all U.S. homeland security programs and policies. The new National Strategy provides a well-organized summary of the numerous organizational and programmatic changes that have occurred in the area of U.S homeland security since 9/11. For example, the Department of Defense has established its first combatant command — U.S. Northern Command — […]

WIN SOME, LOSE SOME — Almost the same day that foreign ambassadors in Washington received invitations to attend Wednesday’s presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan ruler, they got letters from the Chinese ambassador urging them to boycott the ceremony. Predictably, the decision to honor the Dalai Lama has drawn strong protests from the Chinese government, which controls his mountainous country. The presentation was initiated by the U.S. Congress, and is supported by the Bush administration. But Congress also has plans to declare the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in […]

WASHINGTON — The Army’s $200-billion Future Combat Systems — the centerpiece of the service’s “network-centric” modernization — has been buffeted by cash shortages, insurmountable engineering obstacles and criticism that lighter, smarter, sensor-laden vehicles are not what the Army needs to fight tomorrow’s wars. The program aims to equip 15 of the Army’s roughly 70 combat brigades with new robots and hybrid diesel-electric manned vehicles connected by a secure radio network and equipped with high-tech sensors. After a difficult 2006 that saw four of FCS’ robot designs axed due to budget constraints, this year the decade-old program achieved several milestones, wrapping […]

Last Sept. 11, German state-owned television ZDF marked the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks by broadcasting a prime-time documentary titled “September 11, 2001: What Really Happened.” By enticingly implying a discrepancy between what the film itself repeatedly terms the “official version” of 9/11 and the reality of the events, the mere title of the film already provides obvious grist for the mill of what might best be called “alternative” 9/11 conspiracy-theorizing: “alternative” because in the legal sense of the term, the 9/11 attacks were in fact the product of a conspiracy. On the ZDF Web page promoting the documentary, […]

The intense political and media scrutiny directed towards Blackwater Inc. this week evokes the old Irish saying that “calm waters run deep, but the Devil lurks in the depths.” During congressional hearings, the rock was lifted to reveal one of the most profound developments in the American way of war since perhaps the use of conscription during the Civil War: civilianization of the battlefield. Ironically, the media exposure of the stark statistic that there are today more civilian contractors serving in Iraq than members of the armed forces occurred during the same week when many Americans tuned in to the […]

UNITED NATIONS, New York — A U.N.-sponsored summit last week on climate change laid the groundwork for further unified global action on limiting greenhouse gasses, but a separate meeting organized by the Bush administration rolled out a unilateral agenda that did little more than widen the gap between the United States and other countries. First came Monday’s summit, convened by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the United Nations, and attended by numerous world leaders and heads of government. The gathering was a prelude to the U.N. conference on climate change in Bali in December, which the world organization hopes will […]

It is difficult today to recall the anxiety that shook America when, fifty years ago, Sputnik pierced the atmosphere. “No event since Pearl Harbor set off such repercussions in public life,” University of Pennsylvania historian Walter A. McDougall has observed. Sputnik was the starting gun for a desperate, urgent race between the United States and the Soviet Union for space superiority — and the military advantages it might confer — which would consume billions while leaving neither nation safer. These days, the phrase “space race” seems antiquated, an almost quaint relic of a bygone era. But behind the competition to […]

IT ALL STARTED WITH MALTA — It was clear from U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s personal involvement with last Monday’s summit on climate change sponsored by the world body that he wants to make the issue a priority of his term of office. A senior U.N. adviser said shaping the proposed post-Kyoto agreement (the Kyoto Protocol emission reduction targets will expire in 2012) will continue to be one of Ban Ki-moon’s main targets. The Korean doesn’t have his predecessor Kofi Annan’s public persona, but inside the organization he is widely judged to have had an effective first year in the […]

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — When Natalia Rodrigues was 15, Marxist guerrillas invaded her family’s apartment building and took nine residents hostage, including her, her father and an uncle. For more than three years, the three were held captive in guerrilla jungle camps, never knowing when they would be freed — or whether their captivity would end at all. “There were moments in which one became desperate,” she said. “Everything was very monotonous, every day you did the same thing, the same rules, sit down, eat, sleep, and kill the hours,” Rodrigues, now 21 and a university student, recalled. During that time, […]