Violent Radicalization / Political Violence - a new lexicon on Terror - experts gather

A new Terminology has entered the lexicon in the unending War on Terror ...
The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act ...is finding its's way into law in the US .. and The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence is preparing for it's first conference... The First International Conference on Radicalisation and Political Violence in London, 17-18 January 2008.

This will follow up from The Global State of Radicalisation which was the was the title of two events, which took place at the Penn Club in New York on 17 October 2007. Speakers included Harvey Rubin from the University of Pennsylvania, Sir Lawrence Freedman from King's College London, Peter Neumann, Director of ICSR, and Henry Sweetbaum, a founder of ISCR. Yasar Qatarneh of the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy and Boaz Ganor from the Interdiscplinary Center Herzliya participated via video-link from Amman and Tel Aviv respectively.... it appears these are the brains if not the money men behind this curious academic institute.

Anyway this first conference has invited some some fascinating participants from the world of Political Violence under the guise of nascent global but homegrown radicalism - take ....

Michael Hurley, another fucking lawyer, this one is president of Team 3i LLC, an international strategy company. He is Special Advisor for Counterterrorism to the Washington, D.C.-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI)(founded by Ted Turner and Georgia Senator Sam Nunn - Warren Buffet is an Advisor)

He was Special Advisor on Counterterrorism to the U.S. State Department. As a Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, he directed its counterterrorism policy investigation and co-authored its final report (so he likes a good joke). He was National Security Council director for the Balkans (great success). A career CIA operations officer, he led Agency personnel and U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan immediately after the 9/11 attacks (another huge success) . He served three tours in Afghanistan post-9/11, leading Agency employees and Special Forces in southeastern Afghanistan. He was one of the Agency's lead coordinators on the ground of Operation Anaconda, the largest battle against al Qaeda in the campaign in Afghanistan.

He also was a leader in the Kosovo and Bosnia conflicts and in the international intervention in Haiti (Ho.Ho.Ho.).( The alleged success of Op. Anaconda has been widely criticised ****)

Not much he doesn't know about fomenting radicalism and organising political violence then.

Sir David Omand (Corpus Christie) who has spent much of his career in the Ministry of Defence, including as Deputy Secretary for Policy, Under Secretary in charge of the defence programme, and Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State. He served for seven years on the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee, and was Director of Government Communications Head Quarters(GCHQ) from 1996-1997, and the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office from 1997-2000. He retired from public service in 2005, and is now a visiting professor at the Department of War Studies at King's College London. In 2002 Sir David was appointed as the first ever UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, exercising overall direction on behalf of the Prime Minister of the national counter-terrorism strategy and responsible for homeland security - since retirement he has been elected for 4 years to the board of The Natural History Museum.

It was of course Mr (now Sir) John Scarlett (chum of Alastair Campbell, now Head of MI6 and ex - Magdelen) ) who sent a "note" to Sir David Omand, the Cabinet Office security and intelligence co-ordinator, in which he said that Dr Kelly needed "a proper security-style interview" to clarify apparent inconsistencies in his statement about his meeting with Gilligan.

Dr David Kelly was found dead shortly after... Political Violence ?

Avi Dichter, the public security minister and a former head of the Shin Bet internal security agency, had been invited to take part in the ICSRPV conference but he was also due to speak at a conference on security at King's College London.

However he was recently advised by Israel's foreign and justice ministries not to risk a visit to the UK.

Dichter as head of Shin Bet was involved in a Israeli military attack on July 22nd 2002 on a house in Gaza that killed Hamas military commander Salah Shehadeh, his bodyguard and 13 civilians, including children. The strike drew criticism, including from then UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who warned Israel to comply with international law.The attack involved an Israeli F-16 dropping a one-ton bomb in a densely populated area of Gaza City.They had ruled out a helicopter attack because it was not thought to be powerful enough, and had decided against the use of ground forces for fear that it would lead to many Israeli casualties.

British law allows individuals to seek warrants for the arrest of those suspected of serious human rights abuses abroad hence his concern. Dichter is not the first Israeli official to risk arrest under this law. In September 2005 detectives were waiting at Heathrow airport to arrest a retired Israeli general, Doron Almog, on war crimes charges relating to house demolitions and "targeted killings" in Gaza. Almog's plane landed but he was tipped off by Israeli diplomats and stayed on board until the El -Al flight took off again for Israel.

A year later former military chief Moshe Ya'alon, cancelled a trip to London for fear of arrest and Israeli authorities warned the then chief of staff, Dan Halutz, that he should also avoid travelling to the UK. Both men were also involved in the decision to attack Shehadeh in 2002.In a Ha’aretz interview, Israeli Air Force Commander at the time Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz claimed to be satisfied both "militarily and morally" with the operation.

Political Violence ... another expert ...

Check out the other invited speakers

Peter Bergen
Yezid Sayigh
Ely Karmon
Jack DuVall
Kjell Magne Bondevik
Satish Nambiar
Audrey Kurth Cronin
Anne Speckhard
Frank Gardner
Terry Davis
Kim Campbell
Francisco Santos Calderon
Olivier Roy
Dan Benjamin
Sadig Al-Mahdi
Saad Eddin Ibrahim
William Zartman
Cem Özdemir
Andrés Pastrana

Curiously no mention of Old Age Pensioner Lady Dame Jane Pauline Neville Jones ... yet.

PS : ****

"Since it kicked off at the start of March 2002, Operation Anaconda has been a minefield of contradictory statements and unanswered questions. Was it an 'absolute success' (3), or a 'big mistake' (4)? Did it wipe out the last 'pockets of al-Qaeda and Taliban resistance' (5), or did al-Qaeda fighters 'escape' to fight again (6)? Did America's first combined ground-and-air offensive of the war kill 800 of the enemy (7), or about 20 (8)? One US commentator says, 'We don't know, the Afghans don't know - and the US military doesn't seem to know'."

See also