A few nice example business plan images I found:
NY Mag's Classless Blog Post on Dr. Donda West
Image by Soulfull
Various media outlets and some blogs are taking a very crude approach to reporting her passing. One in particular really burns me up! Read this:
The Headline: Kanye West's Mom Goes Out Olivia Goldsmith Style
Kanye West's number-one fan, his mom Donda West, died this weekend in Los Angeles from complications related to a cosmetic procedure, CNN has just reported. Donde, 58, was the author of Raising Kanye: Life Lessons From the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar, which was released earlier this year. She once compared her son to Jesus, and the worship was apparently mutual. "Hey Mama, I wanna scream so loud for you, cuz I'm so proud of you," he sang on 2005's Late Registration. West's publicist won't say what type of cosmetic surgery she was having, but we're putting all of our liposuction plans on permanent hold. [Source: The Daily Intelligencer, a blog from New York Magazine]
Now someone PLEASE tell me why anyone thought it was suitable to publish such garbage? What is wrong with you idiots? This is someone's mother, daughter, sister, cousin. No matter what she decided to do with her body, it shouldn't be open for ridicule, especially considering she's no longer here! What sense does that make? It's one thing to be curious about the way she passed and to report the facts in an respectable fashion, but to do so in this way is completely tasteless. It's quite apparent that there are some incompetent writers with a poor sense of humor over at NY Mag and it's a damn shame that these jokers are so hell bent on reporting gossip all the freaking time that they can't even write a respectful post when it comes time to do so, as evidenced by the writer's poor excuse for publishing this crap - "Hey, commenters. We weren't at all trying to make fun of Donda West's death, which is certainly a terrible thing, but I can see how you'd be bothered by the headline, it's pretty flippant. I assure you there's no sinister reason for that, it's just sometimes there's a delay switching from the tone used for Gossip Girl coverage to one used for Obits."
Update 11/12/07 5:00PM: When I first posted this screenshot, there were only three comments from folks regarding this crude post. Now there are 18 comments and growing, with many calling for the removal of this post and/or it's writer Jessica Pressler. For example:
"To Jessica Pressler from New York Magazine, even after you were given the correct spelling of Dr. West's first name you still mis-spelled it, are you truly a journalist? You sound cynical, disrespectful, evil and ignorant, this is appauling and if you have anything to say...... direct it to me. I will plan a petition to your editor to ask for your removal and also contact the department of professional regulation if you do not issue an immediate apology and retraction from this article and it's title." - chefallyd
But my FAVORITE comment comes from a BBC journalist in London:
"Oh dear what a rather unfortunate tone New York magazine has decided to use for this piece of news. I appreciate you are trying to let you readers know, that you have more information than is being reported. However it shows that you lack the empathetic integrity that celebrated and skilled journalists have. Its very inappropriate and I am sad to say this to my colleagues in the business, I hope Kanye West and the rest of the hip hop fraternity show you the same contempt when you want an interview. Some albeit not many of her family members may of discovered her death on your page. Hope it was worth it, how very careless."
Well said, this was careless indeed!
Update 11/12/07 5:16PM:The editors over at NY Mag FINALLY made a change to this blog post, by renaming the headline to Kanye West's Mom Dies During Cosmetic Procedure:
Editor's Note: The original headline for this piece offended a few people, as the comments show. For the record, it was "Kanye West's Mom Goes Out Olivia Goldsmith Style" --a reference to the New York novelist who passed away after plastic surgery (you can read all about her here.)
dondawest newyorkmagazine kanyewest
A WORD ABOUT MR KING
Image by SS&SS
Representative Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, finds himself at the center of a media-created firestorm — all because he wants to investigate the extent to which some American Muslims have been radicalized and examine how cooperative the Muslim community has been in rooting out extremists in their midst.
Why this has developed into such a wildly controversial matter says more about those who are threatening, smearing, and hysterically criticizing King than it does about radical Islam. When the left allies itself with extremist groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in order to wave the flag of political correctness in America’s face, you realize that the problem is bigger than simply rooting out extremism. The exaggerated, over-the-top, self-righteous posturing coming from media outlets like The New York Times bespeaks a refusal to face up to the challenge of radical Islam in America and how to combat it.
And if we’re not prepared to address the threat of extremism in our own country, how can we possibly fight it overseas?
Leftists and their Muslim grievance-monger allies are deliberately seeking to block efforts to discover the extent of the problem of terrorism by viciously attacking the New York congressman. They are opposing King in the name of some misguided belief that because terrorism comes from a specific religious group, we must blind ourselves to the danger, else we would be guilty of “bigotry.”
The hearings aren’t about bigotry. Nor are they about the Muslim faith. They are about a danger that President Obama, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and Attorney General Eric Holder have all talked about recently: domestically recruited and radicalized terrorists.
It’s not as if we have no examples of this phenomenon and King is just making stuff up as he goes along. There is a man sitting in the desert in Yemen right now — a man born and raised in the United States — who has inspired and radicalized American Muslims like the Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan and served as a “spiritual advisor” to 3 of the 9/11 hijackers. Anwar al-Awlaki preached at a mosque in San Diego for years before moving to Falls Church, Virginia. There, his anti-American sermons and calls for jihad against the West fell on receptive ears. Not only Nidal Hasan answered his call to violence, but it is suspected that 5 young American Muslims from Virginia, arrested in Pakistan as they were seeking to perhaps join al-Qaeda, were also under the spell of the radical cleric. His video sermons have inspired others, such as Faisal Shahzad, who attempted to bomb Times Square, and the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
In fact, the list of radicalized, home-grown terrorists is a long one. The question isn’t why we are looking at the problem, but why anyone in their right mind would oppose the effort in the first place?
The attacks on Rep. King are as vicious as they are unfair. The New York Times, in an editorial dripping with self-righteousness, blatantly calls him a bigot. Says the Times: ”His refusal to tone down the provocation despite widespread opposition suggests that he is far more interested in exploiting ethnic misunderstanding than in trying to heal it.”
In fact, the Times won’t even grant King the benefit of the doubt regarding any radicalization of Muslims in America. It editorializes, “Mr. King, a Republican whose district is centered in Nassau County on Long Island, says the hearings will examine the supposed radicalization of American Muslims.”
The “supposed” radicalization of American Muslims? This is the CAIR position lock, stock, and barrel. The unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial promote the idea that Americans mistake extremists for devout Muslims and that preaching jihad against the West doesn’t necessarily mean that violence is being promoted. Any effort to say otherwise is met with cries of “Islamophobia” or “racism.”
In an article in the New York Daily News on February 28, CAIR accused King of all sorts of vile offenses, including “hold[ing] hearings on the alleged ‘radicalization’ of American Muslims” and lying about the lack of cooperation between the Muslim community and law enforcement when it comes to terrorism investigations.
Despite CAIR’s caterwauling, police and federal agents confirm King’s assertion. A New York Daily News article quoted local and federal law enforcement officials declaring that King was right about the lack of cooperation from Muslims in terror investigations, although they also point to similar attitudes toward tipping police from other ethnic communities. The point being, CAIR is wrong and they know it. Their goal is not to improve communication between Muslims and the FBI, but rather to stoke the flames of distrust so that their people see a greater need for a “Muslim civil rights group” to protect them from the police and the Feds.
As you would think, the most exaggerated invective directed against King comes from the hysterical left, which as never met a conservative unfit for Hitler comparisons, or, in the case of King, a paranoid Islamophobe.
Senator Harry Reid led the charge against King on Capitol Hill. The Majority Leader assured us of his terrorism fighting credentials by letting us know that he supports hunting down terrorists and “bringing them to justice wherever they live.” But Reid is “deeply concerned” about the hearings “which demonize law-abiding American Muslims who make important contributions to our society.” In fact, Reid is as concerned as he would be “about Congressional hearings to investigate Catholics, Jews or people of any other faith based solely on their religion.”
Note that Reid completely misrepresents the goal of the hearings. Muslims are not being “investigated.” Islam is not on trial. I’m sure if Catholics carried out hundreds of terror attacks that King would find time to investigate the extremism that drove them to commit such acts as well. But the left can’t bear to have their morally relative universe shaken in this way. So, like patting down 90 year old grandmothers at airports, we must also investigate other religions, other sources of domestic terror. Then it would be “fair.” Then it would be “acceptable.”
The liberal columnists are even more hysterically overwrought over this common-sense approach to terrorism (that actually looks at those who perpetrate 95% of terrorist attacks). The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen doesn’t see what all the fuss is about. He points to a study that reports that domestic terrorism went down last year; from 47 suspects in 2009 to “only” 20 in 2010. Nothing to see here, move along. If one were to take only a percentage of religious adherents who plan terrorist attacks, Cohen would be right. It took “only” 21 terrorists to kill 3,000 Americans. The problem isn’t in numbers, but intent.
Cohen also raises the Catholic canard by weirdly comparing terrorism to the sex crimes of priests: “The government has no business examining any peaceful religious group because a handful of adherents have broken the law. If it did, it would be past time to look into the Roman Catholic Church, which clearly was – or maybe still is – concealing the sex crimes of priests and others.”
Is priestly misconduct equivalent to murdering dozens, hundreds — thousands? Cohen apparently believes this to be true.
Another Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson, accuses King of stoking “irrational fears” and writes, “King offers no support for his insinuation that Muslim Americans are giving aid and comfort to terrorists; to the contrary, Muslim clerics and worshipers in this country have been vocal in their rejection of jihadist rhetoric and violence.”
King makes no such insinuation that American Muslims are “giving aid and comfort” to terrorists. That’s a monumental exaggeration and proves that Robinson, like most of the left, doesn’t care about what King is actually trying to accomplish with the hearings, but rather it is that he is holding the hearings in the first place. The witness list for the hearings includes Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim-American elected to Congress, as well as relatives of those who were radicalized in American mosques and a Los Angeles County sheriff who will testify about the extensive cooperation he has received from the Muslim community. It should be obvious to even the most partisan of King’s critics that he is bending over backward to be fair.
King has asked for extra security because of the death threats. But he seems undeterred. In fact, he is genuinely puzzled at the reaction from the left. “What are they afraid of?” he asks. “What are they hiding from? Why are they attacking me in such a rabid way?” Perhaps in through the representative’s hearings we will find out. In any event, Peter King’s perseverance through this onslaught of vicious criticism is to be applauded.
START Background Report: On the Fifth Anniversary of the 7/7 London Transit Attack
Image by University of Maryland Press Releases
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - July 7, 2010, marks the fifth anniversary of the 2005 terrorist attacks on London’s Metro system. In 2005, terrorists launched a coordinated attack against London’s transportation system, with 3 bombs detonating simultaneously at three different Metro stations and a fourth bomb exploding an hour later on a city bus. In all, there were 52 victims in these bombings with an additional 700 injuries resulting. The four terrorists who executed the attacks were killed in the explosions.
On the fifth anniversary of this deadly attack, START provides this background report to examine the degree to which these attacks reflect changing trends in terrorist activity in Great Britain and globally.
*Terrorist Attacks in Great Britain
According to START’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD), Great Britain (including England, Wales, and Scotland) has been the target of 604 terrorist attacks since 1970. Great Britain was the sixth most frequent target of terrorists in Western Europe during this period, behind Northern Ireland (3811 attacks), Spain (3182), France (2456), Italy (1494), Germany (1095), and Greece (893).
517 of these attacks on Great Britain occurred in the period between 1970 and 1994, while 87 attacks have occurred since 1994—the year of the Good Friday Agreements (or Belfast Agreement) which aimed to bring some resolution to the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland that had generated thousands of terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland, Great Britain, and Irelad since the 1970s. From 1970 to 1994, Great Britain faced an average of 21.5 terrorist attacks per year. From 1995 onward, Great Britain has been targeted by terrorists an average of 6.2 attacks per year.
14.6% percent of all terrorist attacks during this era (1970-2008) were fatal terrorist attacks, resulting in the death of one or more person. The number of annual fatal attacks peaked in 1974 (with 12 fatal attacks) and 1975 (13 fatal attacks). In all, 88 fatal attacks in Great Britain have resulted in the deaths of 553 people—an average of more than 6 deaths per fatal attack—with the deadliest terrorist attack being the hijacking and destruction of Pan Am Flight 103, as it exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people (see GTD ID# 198812210003).
*Suicide Terrorism
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the 7/7 attacks on the London Underground and transportation system was that it was conducted by suicide bombers. This willingness of terrorists in Great Britain to sacrifice their lives in an attack represented a new development. The GTD tracks the usage of suicide techniques by terrorists, and the coordinated bombing in London in 2005 marked the first recorded occurrence of suicide terrorism in Great Britain. Events in subsequent years, however, have demonstrated that suicide terrorism is not the norm in Great Britain: Since the 7/7 attacks, there has been only one other attempted suicide attack in Britain—a 2007 attack on Glasgow Airport in which one of the attackers died after the failed attack from burns suffered during the attempt (see GTD ID# 200706300003).
The infrequency of suicide attacks in Great Britain does not mean that suicide terrorism rates are holding steady globally. Rather, around the world, suicide terrorism has been on the rise in recent years, with a relatively steady increase in recent years, starting from 1997 through 2007. A modest decrease in suicide terrorism is reported for 2008, when 191 such incidents were reported. This frequency of suicide attacks, though, is still well above the average number of suicide attacks per year (1997-2008) of 113 attacks globally. In all, 1438 suicide terrorist attacks occurred worldwide during this period.
*Terrorist Perpetrators in Great Britain
Between 1970 and 1999, almost two-thirds of all terrorist attacks in Great Britain with a known perpetrator were the responsibility of the Irish Republican Army or a related Irish nationalist splinter group, responsible for 293 attacks or 64% of terrorist activity in Great Britain during this period. While terrorist activity did decline in the late 1990s and 2000s, following the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland, IRA-related groups were still the main source of British terrorist activity, responsible for 58% of incidents with known perpetrators during this period.
The 7/7 attacks in 2005 represented a departure in terms of the types of perpetrators targeting Great Britain. A previously unknown group called the Secret Organization of al-Qa’ida in Europe claimed responsibility for the four coordinated bombings in London on July 7, 2005. On a posting on an Islamic militant website following the attacks, this group indicated that the deadly attacks were launched in retaliation for British involvement in armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Since 2005, Great Britain has experienced attacks from a diverse group of terrorist organizations: In addition to the 7/7 attacks by the Secret Organization of al-Qa’ida in Europe , another Jihadist group—Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades—launched an attack on the London transit system just two weeks after the 7/7 attacks (see GTD ID# 200507210008). While this second coordinated attack did not inflict the destruction that the 7/7 attack did, it did create and sustain concerns about Jihadist threats to Great Britain, which has also experienced attacks by animal rights groups and far-right extremists since 2005. In contrast, there were no attacks during this period conducted by Irish nationalists (Irish Republican Army or IRA splinter groups), marking a profound shift from Britain’s recent past. This long-time threat has been replaced by a broad array of new threats, including several new groups, willing to take violent action against the British people and government.
The 7/7 Metro attacks are the only known terrorist attack by the Secret Organization of al-Qa’ida in Europe, although the group also made unsubstantiated claims of responsibility for terrorist attacks on Madrid commuter trains in March 2004. This emergence of new groups, with no past history of terrorist attacks, is a discernable global trend in this decade. Since 1975, 1923 organizations have been identified as terrorist perpetrators, each responsible for at least 1 terrorist attack around the world. From 1975 to 2008, an average of almost 58 new groups emerged per year—groups with no past history of engaging in terrorist attacks—peaking in 1992 with 117 new organizations.
While the mid- to late-1990s saw a decrease in the number of new groups emerging annually (with a low of 19 new groups emerging in 1998), during the last decade, the average number of emergent organizations has been on the increase again worldwide, with 41 new organizations emerging annually on average since 2000, with an increasing amount emerging each year since 2004. This trend is similar to peaks evident in the late-1980s—an era of high levels of terrorist activity.
As evidenced by the British example, emergent organizations today do not reflect one ideology but, rather, there are new groups representing a wide array of ideological beliefs and particular goals, complicating counterterrorism and anti-terrorism efforts in countries around the world.
*Coordinated Terrorist Attacks
Coordinated events involving multiple targets being attacked at the same time and place, like the 7/7 attacks, account for approximately 13% of all attacks worldwide since 1970. These attacks are most often bombings (60%) and are unusual in terms of the degree of organizational sophistication and planning required to carry them out. Coordinated attacks can also pose a unique challenge to responders, creating a strain on resources and a particularly chaotic environment.
Although coordinated attacks were fairly rare in the 1970s and early 1980s, making up only 2% to 10% of all attacks. In the mid-1980s this figure doubled, peaking at 30% in 1998. The past ten years have seen a steady decline in the prevalence of coordinated attacks, averaging around 15% of all attacks.
There have been a number of high-profile coordinated attacks in recent years, including the events of September 11, 2001, in the United States, the Bali nightclub bombings in 2002, the commuter train bombings in Madrid in 2004, and the series of armed assaults in Mumbai in November 2008. As suggested by the highly lethal nature of these cases, on average fatal attacks that are part of a coordinated event result in 44% more deaths than fatal attacks that are not part of a coordinated event (averaging 7.8 deaths compared to 5.4 deaths).
*Terrorists and Transportation Targets
The 7/7 attacks directly targeted London’s transit system, as did the subsequent attack 2 weeks later in London claimed by Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades. In addition to these British attacks on transportation targets, recent years have borne witness to terrorist attacks on trains and metro targets in Tokyo, Paris, Sri Lanka, Manila, Angola, Moscow, Madrid, and Mumbai. These high-profile, deadly attacks have raised questions about whether transportation infrastructure is especially prone to terrorist activity.
RECENT HIGH-CASUALTY ATTACKS ON TRAINS AND SUBWAY TARGETS
Date Location Casualties
March 1995 Tokyo Subway 12 killed; 5500 injured
July 1995 Paris Metro 7 killed; 80 injured
July 1996 Sri Lanka Commuter Train 61 killed; 390 injured
August 2000 Moscow Subway 12 killed; 90 injured
December 2000 Manila Train 2 killed; 20 injured
August 2001 Angola Passenger Train 259 killed; 160 injured
February 2004 Moscow Subway 40 killed; 120 injured
March 2004 Madrid Commuter Trains 191 killed; 1800 injured
August 2004 Moscow Subway 10 killed; 50 injured
July 2005 London Transit 56 killed; 700 injured
July 2006 Mumbai Trains 187 killed; 800 injured
March 2010 Moscow Subway 39 killed; 70 injured
In Great Britain, businesses—not transportation infrastructure—have traditionally been the favored targets of terrorists, with 38% of British attacks from 1970 through 2008 directed against private businesses. In contrast, only 7% of terrorist incidents have attacked British transportation targets during this period—a total of 44 such attacks. This rate of attacks against British transportation targets is consistent with the global average:
While the rate of such terrorist activity varies from year to year, it peaked in 1995 and 1996 with attacks on transportation targets representing 8% of the total terrorist activity globally. Worldwide, there was an increase in attacks on transportation targets in 2008, with a jump from 48 such attacks in 2007 to 293 transportation-focused attacks in 2008. However, this still represents only 8% of all terrorist activity in 2008.
Rather than a concentrated focus of terrorist organizations on transportation targets, or any one kind of target, these violent actors continue to attack a wide range of targets. In 2005—the year of the 7/7 attacks—almost half of all terrorist activity in Great Britain targeted transportation. However, in the previous year (2004), no terrorist attacks in Britain focused on such targets. Rather, almost 80% of attacks targeted businesses. And, in 2006, one year after the 7/7 attacks, diplomatic government facilities were the sole target of terrorists in Britain.
This variation in terrorist targeting is no doubt in part a function of terrorists’ perception of successful counterterrorism tactics applied to specific target types but, to the degree to which shifting targets is a strategy of terrorist organizations, it serves to complicate effective and efficient counterterrorism measures in Britain and around the world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Notes on this Report:
The Global Terrorism Database (GTD, www.start.umd.edu/gtd) contains information on more than 87,000 terrorist incidents that have occurred around the world since 1970. An updated version of this open-source database, with information on incidents through 2008, was released in June 2010.
GTD is a project of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terror (START), a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence. START, based at the University of Maryland, College Park, aims to provide timely guidance on how to disrupt terrorist networks, reduce the incidence of terrorism, and enhance the resilience of U.S. society in the face of the terrorist threat.
The material presented here is the product of START and does not express the opinions of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
For additional information, please contact START at 301 405 6600 or emiller1@start.umd.edu. Questions specifically on the GTD can be directed to gtd@start.umd.edu.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
© National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), College Park MD, 2010.
