Crossing the Atlantic again. According to the plane’s little video map, I’m somewhere over Newfoundland, with just over 3 and a half hours to Denver. All I can say is God bless aisle seats and God bless The New Yorker! I’ve read the March 10 issue nearly cover to cover at this point, and so I thought to further pass the time, I might provide a summary of a few of the more interesting tidbits, along with my own commentary:
“Lost in the Jihad”
The article about John Walker Lindh is a bit distressing, unfortunately—especially to the extent that it details the government’s borderline coercion of a confession from Lindh, and then goes on to reveal that the FBI withheld some very important information from him in Pakistan (namely that his parents had retained counsel for him back in the US), ignored the advice of their own internal ethics watchdogs, and essentially engaged in a cover-up by hiding emails from a federal judge. To me, the government’s behaviour in this case has really smacked of In the Name of the Father—which I guess just shows what a grave threat terrorism (domestic or international) poses to civil liberties.
I certainly think that there is a case against Lindh—he did, as the article points out, voluntarily remain at the training camp in Afghanistan even after being offered a “martyr” missions attacking American and Israeli civilian targets. Though he declined them, the fact that he knew about them proves that he was aware of his association with terrorists. He was definitely caught aiding enemies of the United States (even if his more specific goal was to simply to fight the Northern Alliance and thereby futher the cause of Islamic fundamentalist government in Afghanistan), and I think that that constitutes treason. I just wish the US could have been a little more American and a little less Taliban in dealing with the “poor fellow” (as President Bush called him).
“Empire of the Obscene”
An amusing story about a porn king (Reuben Sturman) and his refusal to concede defeat to the US government. As a piece on the First Amendment and obscenity it doesn’t really cover any ground that hasn’t already been well-trodden by the likes of The People vs. Larry Flynt, but it works well as a portrait of an ideosyncratic businessman and his Quixotic battle with the Feds. After years of playing cat and mouse with the government, continually beating obscenity raps while constantly restructing his maze of holding companies to obscure their real ownership, Sturman was finally nailed by an ambitious young agent. The charge? Tax evasion, of course (I know—how cliché)!
Not to be defeated, however, he hatched several ridiculous schemes to avoid prison: to bribe a judge, have his young wife seduce a juror, and, finally, to escape from his minimum security prison in Boron, CA (the last of which was not so ridiculous, I suppose, because it actually worked). As an added bonus, the article provides some interesting background on the techniques involved in money laundering (did you know, for example, that you can hide your purchases from prying eyes by getting a Visa card issued by as Swiss bank?), which was interesting.
“Teen Spirit”
The latest in a series of “Russia is Dead” stories that have been appearing in American publications (the Atlantic had one awhile back). OK, I suppose this one isn’t quite that severe—the author’s declared intention is to see, in the wake of Tatu’s invasion of first the British and then the American pop charts, if there are signs of cultural life amid the oft lamented decay of Russian society.
His answer is pretty indeterminate. He spends about half the article talking about (and to) Tatu, and, while you cartainly won’t hear any complaining about that here, I’m not sure a couple of hypersexed, teen, lesbian, pop singers represent anything more than an interesting anomaly on the international pop music scene (honestly, I find it very difficult to take seriously all of the pundits who profess astonishment at Tatu’s popularity—the appeal is pretty obvious to me!). On the other hand, I suppose they do represent the “New Russia” pretty well: young, materialistic, utterly self-absorbed, and completely myopic. Or so I have read…
On a lighter note, only the product a good Marxist education could maintain a straight face, as Tatu’s manager does, while suggesting that his pop group is “the result of historical processes.” The guy’s obviously smart, though, and you can’t argue with success—can it be long before the works of Hegel replace the copies of Billboard on the desks of American record execs?
“Eyes on the Prize”
Not a whole lot to say here—the article is mainly a comparison of the various proposed designs for the World Trade Center site, as well as a discussion of why Libeskind won. The only big revelation for me was that there are really three interests at play in the rebuilding process: the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (which sponsored the competition), the Port Authority, and Larry Silverstein (the owner of the WTC lease). This means that, as ballyhooed as the competition was, it may well have been meaningless, since it is only really officially recognized by the LMDC.
Still, it looks like a major reason Libeskind was chose was the fact that his design was most likely to appeal to all of the interested parties, so maybe it will still get built without excessive alteration. Personally I wasn’t overly thrilled with any of the competition proposals, but I do think Libeskind has the best ideas about the memorial (though architecture critics seem to think it’s a bit too cute, I like his idea of a Stonehenge-like “wedge of light” that will be visible every September 11th).
“Connecting the Dots”
This article, which discusses the problem of intelligence failure, is probably one of the most informative pieces in the whole issue. It certainly changed my opinion about the government’s inability to anticipate the events of September 11th.
Essentially, it argues that it is easy, in the aftermath of a surprise attack, to construct a story showing why the authorities should have been ready. This is essentially what post-mortems like The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It have done. It turns out, however, that it is a lot more difficult is to construct the same convenient narrative going forwards. This is mainly due to a “signal to noise” problem—it is very difficult for intelligence agencies to separate one piece of good intelligence from the sea of bad intelligence they receive. Unfortunately the failure of September 11th had less to do with myopia or infighting between America’s intelligence agencies, as people have frequently suggested, than with limitations of the intelligence business itself.
