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Here are a few of the better things I have read online this week.

  • The great Robert F. Worth on role reversal in Libya for the NYT. The plot of novel by Elias Khoury combined with the restraint of great reportage http://nyti.ms/KXkpL8.
  • (Speaking of which, the wonderful archipelago books has just published an English translation of Khoury's As Though She Were Sleeping -- you can hear Khoury talking about the book here).
  • Here is an interesting Dan Diner essay from Mittelweg 36 on Jean Améry's once much-read essay on torture. It contains the following suggestive comment on French history:

"French history is marked by a unique constellation. An West-East historical orientation focuses on events in Europe, on the continent. A North-South perspective foregrounds events in the colonies. In actual fact, the two axes – the horizontal and the vertical – merge with the one another. This has significant consequences both on the plane of reality and in the realm of memory."

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Washington Monthly article leads to Senate inquiry

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At the beginning of the month, Meg Stalcup and I published an article in the Washington Monthly. It analyzes the unregulated explosion of counterterrorism trainers in America. Building off sham qualifications and a very dubious knowledge of Islam, they capitalize on America's fear, and teach law enforcement tactics that will neither help them fight terrorism, nor build good relations with the Muslim community they should be serving. You can read the article here. The Nation Institute Investigative Fund, who funded our investigation, has a good round-up of the reaction to the story in the sidebar here.

Yesterday, Senators Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman started a Senate inquiry into counterterrorism training, quoting the article.

I never thought I would say this, but thank you Joe Lieberman.

A response to the Bail letter

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After Meg Stalcup and I published an article in the Washington Monthly, criticizing badly regulated counterterrorism training for law enforcement in America, some of the trainers who we criticized responded, and a friend of theirs, Joseph M. Bail Jr, wrote a letter claiming to "rebut" our claims. His letter, which you can read in the side panel here, did no such thing. We responded to his letter, rebutting his claims. The response is below.
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