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After all, the risk to any individual of getting hurt in some terrorist attack is insignificant compared to everyday risks such as domestic violence, traffic accidents, smoking and illness.

Europe has seen much terrorism -- think of Baader-Meinhof/Rote Armee Fraktion, Basque separatists, IRA -- and has reacted much more soberly. The aim of any terrorist attack to get publicity and spread fear. In Europe sometimes it's been debated that the media turn themselves into tools of the terrorists by giving them publicity and spreading fear.

If terrorists want publicity, it seems rather unhealthy to not only give them massive continuous publicity for years, but even gear the entire society in relation to the terrorists. If terrorists want to spread fear and unrest, it seems unhealthy to constantly fuel and maintain the state of fear and unrest that the terrorists created long ago.

With the strongly fearful and emotional reactions of the US, terrorists can push specific buttons to get specific results.

Also from your site:

"Our consultative approach and unique analytical capabilities match and routinely out pace those of established national security and spy agencies. Because we are not limited to specific jurisdictions, foreign policies or political agendas, we respond to present day environments which are, in essence, borderless."

First, it seems to me that the terrorist threat has increased, rather than decreased, as a direct result of the war and the subsequent disorder. Kidnappings in Iraq -- the kidnappings of locals even more so than those of foreigners -- seem to have become a profitable way to finance what you might call a new kind of mafia, which is focused on terrorism, and tends to spread internationally.

The profits may make this as difficult to combat as any other mafia, while the tendency to spread internationally and the use of suicidal bombings make it more dangerous than any mafia.

Second, it also seems to me that this consequence of the war was to a large extent predictable -- and predicted -- before the war. For example, debate here in Sweden before the war focused very much on, and analysed, what would need to be done after the US would win the war. Some debaters said that the Bush administration necessarily had some plan with novel, unexpected solutions that nobody had ever heard of before, because otherwise the war made no sense, while others worried that it might have no post-war plan at all. I can't recall anyone arguing that known solutions would work, that there was no need for some completely novel and unprecedented plan.

If our media knew that this was needed, it seems intelligence agencies must have known this too.

The mainstream media, of course, isn't going to say enough about unfair taxation and offshore tax havens and financial clearinghouses, even though you will find crime and terrorism connected to all of that. The well-off have a stake in the current system and will, instinctively and consciously and semi consciously, as Peter Dale Scott notes, protect the whole ball of yarn from unravelling. I hate all kinds of (real) crime, and I hate out of control global finance because I see how it affects me and other poor folks directly. One source that I've found to be good on the subject of offshore tax havens - she pulls no punches - is Lucy Komisar, who presently is writing a book about the subject. She notes, in her article USA Bank Laws Fund Terrorists that: "Terrorist networks all over the world depend on the international bank and corporate secrecy system to hide and move their money. This structure is allowed to exist by agreement of the world's banks and financial powers, including the United States and its allies. Internationally, many make money from the system, including the owners and managers of banks that hide customers' deposits from tax authorities."

Thanks.

Why do I care? Besides caring for the reason that it's the right thing to do, I also happen to be a member of the working poor class. We are many. I have to pay 'all' of my taxes. Maybe what I pay in taxes is peanuts to someone like Maurice Greenberg  ( http://www.alternet.org/story/21517/ ) or Bernard Ebbers, who is looking at spending the rest of his life in prison, most likely, should he be convicted this summer on all nine counts related to his alleged masterminding of fraud to the tune of $11 billion dollars. Ebbers headed WorldCom, a telecommunications company now known as MCI. But to me those peanuts that I pay in taxes mean a great deal. I don't even earn a living wage. I possess no benefits and the only job security I have is luck and my ability to please my employer. I went for 4 years without a raise with this company until they finally (a few months ago) added an extra 50 cents to my hourly wage. My employer points out that the only way to get and keep contracts is to keep costs down. He wishes his clients would pay more so that he could pay us (security guards) more. So, Who exactly cares? For while my boss sympathizes with me, he also supports the system that he admits screws me. (See www.howdarethey.org and  http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/11/offshore.html and http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020506&s=schapiro  and  http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20000424&s=greider  and http://www.cbc.ca/disclosure/archives/030401.html#csl )

As my signature on so many discussion forums I frequent states: Five trillion dollars sit, untaxed, in offshore tax havens while 'leaders' whine that they can't afford social spending. Clearly, They don't want to do social spending. For one thing, The people are the enemy. The last thing you want to do is give them power. They may then not only get ideas about how society might be managed, but they may also attempt to bring about the changes they envision. In the jargon found in official government documents, as Noam Chomsky has documented, the reference is to the danger of "radical nationalism." Or "economic nationalism." Just today I read an article in the Toronto Star (I'm from Toronto, Canada) titled "World Bank No White Knight: Insider," by Olivia Ward. Talk about establishment. This fellow, John Perkins, used to be an American hit man (figuratively, although, as he notes, it also involved literal 'hits' but not by him personally) for international capitalism. His explosive (I'm sure) book is titled CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN. I'm reminded of another book that Lucy Komisar told us about way back in 2002. In her April 15, 2002 In These Times magazine article titled "Explosive Revelation$," she introduced us to a book titled "Revelation$," written by Ernest Backes and Denis Robert. The authors look at a financial clearinghouse of which Backes was at one time a high official. Through this clearinghouse, large banks and large corporations laundered billions of dollars.

"As discussed earlier, "free trade" is highly regarded by those who expect to win the competition, though honored in the breach when interests so dictate. Correspondingly, opposition to economic nationalism (for others) is virtually a reflex among global planners. It became a primary theme of US policy after its own resort to protectionism, import substitution, and other such "ultranationalist" methods enabled the US to play the game successfully." -Noam Chomsky, pg 34 of YEAR 501 - THE CONQUEST CONTINUES

"...the World Bank is not the benevolent organization it was created to be. It has worked hand in glove with the United States in a global system that sinks the neediest more deeply into the trough of poverty, through unaffordable international loans... the bank is only part of a bigger problem... For years, "bribes and threats" kept [John Perkins] from publishing his experiences, and he buried himself in research and teaching about indigenous peoples, and working with non-profit organizations. But after the World Trade Center attack, a trip to New York's Ground Zero convinced him the time had come: "I saw Osama bin Laden accepting money and weapons worth millions of dollars, from a man employed by a consulting company under contract to the United States government," he said. "Then I saw myself sitting at a computer with a blank screen."" -World Bank No White Knight: Insider," by Olivia Ward, Toronto Star, March 19, 2005

"In the tax haven of Luxembourg, a little-known outfit called Clearstream handles billions of dollars a year in stock and bond transfers for banks, investment companies and multinational corporations. But a former top official of this "clearinghouse" says Clearstream operates a secret bookkeeping system that allows its clients to hide the money that moves through their accounts.

"In these days of global markets, individuals and companies may be buying stocks, bonds or derivatives from a seller who is halfway across the world. Clearinghouses like Clearstream keep track of the "paperwork" for the transactions. Banks with accounts in the clearinghouse use a debit and credit system and, at the end of the day, the accounts (minus "handling fees," of course) are totaled up. The clearinghouse doesn't actually send money anywhere, it just debits and credits its members' accounts. It's all very efficient. But the money involved is massive. Clearstream handles more than 80 million transactions a year, and claims to have securities on deposit valued at $6.5 trillion.

"It's also an excellent mechanism for laundering drug money or hiding income from the tax collector. Banks are supposed to be subject to local government oversight. But many of Clearstream's members have real or "virtual" subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, where records are secret and investigators can't trace transactions. And Clearstream, which keeps the central records of financial trades, doesn't get even the cursory regulation that applies to offshore banks. On top of that, it deliberately has put in place a system to hide many of its clients' transactions from any authorities who might come looking." -Lucy Komisar, "Explosive Revelation$," In These Times magazine, April 15, 2002 ( http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1434/ )

Admittedly, My wages don't fall under the heading of 'social program'. But it's interesting to note that when rightwingers feel like screaming in anger at poor folks who (some of them) see as a drag on the economy when governments support them via social programs like welfare, they refer to jobs as the best social program there is. "Every time I write about poverty, I get a volley of messages pointing out that the best social program is a job. Children wouldn't be poor if their parents got off their butts and worked, irate readers insist. Taxpayers wouldn't have to waste their hard-earned money on social assistance if welfare recipients earned a living like everybody else," wrote Carol Goar in her March 18, 2005 Toronto Star Editorial titled "Sometimes A Job Is Not Enough." Goar also quotes this statistic: "As of 2000 - the last year for which he could get national figures - one-third of all working Canadians earned less than poverty wages (not enough to bring them up to Statistics Canada's low-income cut-off)."

I not only think that the scams of the capitalist class are immoral. And I not only think that there should be fair taxation and more fairness period. More than that, I am a victim and I will never, never, never submit to being defeated psychologically even if I'm defeated economically and physically. Capitalists have the power in this world. That's clear. But you'll see no Stockholm Syndrome here. I know that capitalism is my oppressor. I am a hostage to neoliberal capitalists and their 'socialize the costs and privatize the profits' mode of existence. I haven't weakened to the point where I have started seeing things the way they want me to see them. Carol Goar is perfectly establishment, for example. Like most of the writers in the (liberal) Toronto Star, she rarely uses the word 'capitalism' or it's variants. As Howard Zinn pointed out ( http://www.isreview.org/issues/39/zinn.shtml Scroll to David Barsamian's question "Is this unique to the United States?"), that's a terrible leftwing term. In other words, From the standpoint of capitalists, on the Right and Left, the game is the thing. The establishment media and assorted cultural managers (namely the first targets of propaganda, necessarily) avoid using the word 'capitalism' on the theory that what's out of sight is out of mind. So they refer to 'free markets' instead. Hopefully, We of the bewildered herd will continue to complain, loudly but incoherently and ineffectively (and our letting off steam probably reassures the capitalist class), about what capitalism and neoliberal policies do to us, for that is the result of not clearly naming and identifying the problem you face.

Whether you lose or win, The great Darwinian game of 'riches for the strongest' is all that matters. Or is there more to it? Well, I think that some of those who play this game know better than others.

Noam Chomsky (again), in commenting on so-called 'free trade' in his book, YEAR 501 - THE CONQUEST CONTINUES, perceived quite clearly the rules of the game, even though, unlike myself, he believes in Darwin, democracy and democrats: "Those who expect to win the game can be counted on to laud the rules of "free competition" - which, however, they never fail to bend to their interests." -pg 10. In other words, Many of those who have won in the game of 'riches for the strongest', who cheerlead for neoliberal capitalism and philosophies that underpin it, and who, by the way, sometimes know better - as we see from the work of folks like Ernest Backes and John Perkins - perhaps cheerlead too easily. I'm not going to suggest that you can change rich (uncaring) people, and their language, by making them poor. Changing your mind and admitting your mistakes - which is possible, but not seen much - takes humility. By definition, If you believe in and willingly play 'riches for the strongest', you lack humility. So, Being a loser in the game isn't enough, as I try to get those on the Left (who are relatively powerless and therefore more likely to be real in their language) to see. The problem isn't that we have lost in that game. The problem is that game. I don't want to be connected, unprincipled and rich enough to arrange to avoid paying my taxes or what have you. I don't want the game, period.

Peter Dale Scott wrote DEEP POLITICS  AND THE DEATH OF JFK. I first learned of the book from the Toronto Star, which said the following about it: "May well be the most thoughtful and serious-minded of the 2,500 titles [in 1993] on the subject published over the years." I may misunderstand Scott the way Scott, according to Noam Chomsky, misunderstood him (in DEEP POLITICS), but I would venture to say that organized crime and capitalism and it's institutions are all one big ball of wax that is, in fact, organized crime. If that isn't what Scott proposes, That's still what I think and that's what he leads me to be sure of. As for democracy, the word's useless. Everyone uses it and no one uses it properly. Democracy means humankind's rule over humankind, period (My Microsoft Dictionary presents the basic meaning of 'rule of the people'.) People are, for now, imperfect and that imperfection allows for all kinds of folly, even serious folly. I'm not a democrat because I believe in Jehovah and his Kingdom, which isn't to say that I don't think we weren't meant to manage ourselves. But we were not meant to be independent from God the way folks are.

"A deep political system or process is one which habitually resorts to decision-making and enforcement procedures outside as well as inside those publicly sanctioned by law and society. In popular terms, collusive secrecy and law-breaking are part of how the deep political system works. What makes these supplemental procedures "deep" is the fact that they are covert or suppressed, outside general awareness as well as outside acknowledged political processes...

"Deep political analysis focuses on the usually ignored mechanics of accommodation. From the viewpoint of conventional political science, law enforcement and the underworld are opposed to each other, the former struggling to gain control of the latter. A deep political analysis notes that in practice these efforts at control lead to the use of criminal informants... In time one may arrive at the kind of police-crime symbiosis familiar from Chicago, where the controlling hand may be more with the mob than with the police department it has now corrupted.

"It is customary to acknowledge this kind of symbiosis as a local or regional problem, not a central one. But..." -Peter Dale Scott, from the Preface to his book, DEEP POLITICS.

Perhaps we could use some of Peter Dale Scott's deep political analysis.

I hope non-question comments are also allowed.

In my part of the world nobody knows what CSIS means. The text under the photo spurs interest only if you know what that means.

Your first two sentences in this article are very good, very captivating: "Ever wanted to ask a real-life spy questions? Now's your chance." If you let the text under the photo start with that I think every visitor to our site will click on it.