The Oedeipal underpinnings of the Underwear Bomber

Binyavanga had a theory about him: rich family + posh school = spoilt kid = "I'm gonna show my daddy. One day."



Just look at him here!

It was compelling.

Compelling enough for me to wonder what Mr. Underpants' secret diary from 2007/2008 (when he was a student in London), as revealed in a world exclusive to Binyavanga, would contain...

Face Crime

January 2008

"He did not know how long she had been looking at him, but perhaps for as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called." - George Orwell, 1984

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners are learning to recognize a special set of forbidden facial expressions. If your face slips into one of these during a TSA inspection, you will be taken aside and given a more detailed screening:

Travelers at Sea-Tac and dozens of other major airports across America are being scrutinized by teams of TSA behavior-detection officers specially trained to discern the subtlest suspicious behaviors.

[....]

TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program--called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique)--that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent.

But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions--a flash of feelings that in a fraction of a second reflects emotions such as fear, anger, surprise or contempt, said Carl Maccario, who helped start the program for TSA.

 Source: Daily KOS

Sami Al-Haj, Al-Jazeera photographer and a Sudanese national, unexpectedly released from Guantanamo Bay.

Al-Bashir personally received Al-Haj, who overnight became something of a national hero. The Sudanese government is making much political capital out of Al-Haj's release, and anti- American sentiment is running high. Four Sudanese nationals remain in Guantanamo, and Sudan is pressing for their release. "Torture is terrorism" Al-Haj said defiantly. His release has strengthened the government's hand. The challenge for Sudan is that some of the warring Sudanese factions are getting caught up in the tsunami of anti-American hysteria. Sudan's current cumbersome hiatus brought on with all these developments is fraught with difficulties which augurs ill for Sudan. Tensions in Darfur have spiked in the past few weeks, and some of the Darfur opposition groups are now branded pro-American traitors.

Guantánamo investigations

The abuse, rising to the level of torture, of those captured and detained in the war on terror is a defining feature of the presidency of George W. Bush. Its military beginnings, however, lie not in Abu Ghraib, as is commonly thought, or in the “rendition” of prisoners to other countries for questioning, but in the treatment of the very first prisoners at Guantánamo. Starting in late 2002 a detainee bearing the number 063 was tortured over a period of more than seven weeks. In his story lies the answer to a crucial question: How was the decision made to let the U.S. military start using coercive interrogations at Guantánamo?

The United States in Somalia

Bush’s so-called war against terrorism entered a further, cynical stage with the recent classification of a Somali group as alleged ‘terrorists’. Al Shabab, the military wing of the Union of Islamic Courts, was declared by the US State Department to be a terrorist organisation. The Bush administration’s action in classifying Al Shabab as ‘terrorists’ further complicates an already difficult situation. Instead of recognising that Al Shabab is the military wing of a legitimate movement, classifying them as alleged terrorists makes efforts towards a political resolution of the conflict unlikely, if not nearly impossible, just as has happened in Iraq.

“There is a direct line between US Security Assistance (political, economic, military policing of Africa in general) and African poverty. The US is not the only culprit, Europe, China etc all play a big role and African governments bear a significant portion of the blame, but there is no doubt in my mind that US policies are responsible in part for the violence, tyranny and poverty in Africa.”

Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo

Murat Kurnaz

In October 2001, nineteen-year-old Murat Kurnaz traveled to Pakistan to visit a madrassa. During a security check a few weeks after his arrival, he was arrested without explanation and for a bounty of $3,000, the Pakistani police sold him to U.S. forces. He was first taken to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where he was severely mistreated, and then two months later he was flown to Guantanamo as Prisoner #61. For more than 1,600 days, he was tortured and lived through hell. Finally, in August 2006, Kurnaz was released, with acknowledgment of his innocence. Told with lucidity, accuracy, and wisdom, Kurnaz's story is both sobering and poignant--an important testimony about our turbulent times when innocent people get caught in the crossfire of the war on terrorism.

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (April 1, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0230603742 # ISBN-13: 978-0230603745