Speed Of History

First, there is this paper on the condition in Somalia:

Many people believe that Somalia’s economy has been in chaos since the collapse of its national government in 1991. We take a comparative institutional approach to examine Somalia’s performance relative to other African countries both when Somalia had a government and during its extended period of anarchy. We find that although Somalia is poor, its relative economic performance has improved during its period of statelessness. We also describe how Somalia has provided basic law and order and a currency, which have enabled the country to achieve the coordination that has led to improvements in its standard of living.

And then this rather biting video response:

Saturday, June 14th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
posted by Isaiah Thompson

At about 10 o’clock yesterday morning, Philadelphia police officers from the 9th District, including plain-clothes detectives and a police captain, showed up at a worn-down building on Ridge Avenue and 17th Street and began knocking.

Daniel Moffat, a 28-year-old resident and co-owner of the building, answered the door. It was not long before he was taken outside and detained. Moffat watched from the squad car as the officers entered the building and detained three other residents who were inside.

Then a funny thing happened: Homeland Security showed up. And more detectives. And then the Crime Scene unit. And then more detectives. And the Fire Marshall. And Licensing and Inspection. And then more detectives. All day long and into Friday evening, the building was crawling with officials from one agency or another.

Why the fuss?

9th District Captain Dennis Wilson told the four detained — and later insisted to City Paper — that he and his officers came to respond to a simple complaint that people were staying in a vacant house. It was only after his officers entered, he says, that he found further cause to detain the residents and, indeed, call in Homeland Security and a small army of detectives.

“Everything’s wrong in here,” he told CP gravely from the building’s doorway. “We’re still investigating this property and we’re still investigating these people.”

Indeed. At least three police officers at the scene, including Wilson himself, confirmed in one way or another that — whatever the initial motivation for their visit — they were now busy investigating the residents, whom they accused vaguely of being “terrorists.”

“Lemme ask you this,” said one Crime Scene officer. “Why’s there literature about killing cops in there?” He declined to be more specific.

“Propaganda against the government,” chimed in officer John Taggert, also with Crime Scene. Taggert, who was nice enough to grant CP “three questions, and only three questions,” didn’t elaborate on the nature of the “propaganda.”

Captain Wilson took the accusations a step further. “They’re a hate group,” he asserted. “We’re trying to drum up charges against them, but, unfortunately, we’ll probably have to let them go.”

Let them go they did — 12 to 14 hours after the residents had been detained, they were mysteriously set free without charges (the police released the last two, both female, at 3:30 in the morning, says Moffat).

Without charges, of course, the police are under no obligation to provide evidence of terrorism or other malfeasance. But the Fearsome Four (let’s call them) have their own theory as to what motivated the police to come calling yesterday.

Some of the residents of the building, including Moffat, had been circulating a petition protesting recently added police cameras in the neighborhood. Moffat also helped distribute a petition calling for further investigation into the recent and infamous police beating of three unarmed suspects.

Moffat and others believe that the police are targeting them for their neighborhood activism. “If they interpret that as being hate literature, that’s their prerogative, but it’s my constitutional right, you know?”

None of the literature, Moffat insists, contains hateful, violent, or incendiary language.

The building, meanwhile, has been sealed shut. Robert Gilbert, who co-owns the building with Moffat (no relation, he says, to the Gilbert of the ‘Gilbert’s Shoes’ sign in front of the building) was on the scene yesterday afternoon, looking out, he said, for his friends’ property and his own building. “What I don’t understand is why they came in without notifying me, the owner,” he said. “My name’s on the deed. It’s not hard to find me.”

Here is the residents press release.

http://phillyimc.org/en/node/68939

Sacramento-area man sentenced to 19 years in terrorism plot
By Denny Walsh - dwalsh@sacbee.com

Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, May 9, 2008

Eric McDavid, who went on the road to learn what was beyond his middle-class, suburban Sacramento upbringing and returned a prisoner, was sentenced Thursday to 19 years and seven months in prison.

At the conclusion of a lengthy hearing before a crowded courtroom, U.S. District Judge Morrison C. England Jr. found McDavid’s plan to “disrupt government and commercial installations” overrides his lack of a criminal history and a reputation among family and friends as “a peaceful individual.”

England denied defense lawyer Mark Reichel’s request for bail pending appeal.

In an extremely unusual move, deputy U.S. marshals allowed McDavid’s traumatized and tearful mother, father and two sisters to hug him before he was taken away.

McDavid, 30, was found guilty by a jury in September of conspiring with two others to burn or blow up a federal facility.

Two veteran lawyers – Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Steven Lapham and Reichel – went head to head on whether the terrorism sentence enhancement should apply.

Reichel argued forcefully the jury did not find a necessary element: that his client conspired with Zachary Jenson and Lauren Weiner to target the government installations specified in the indictment.

He argued that even Jenson and Weiner, who testified against McDavid in return for leniency, said there was no conspiracy among the three of them to focus on a U.S. Forest Service genetics lab in Placerville and the Nimbus Dam and neighboring fish hatchery in Rancho Cordova.

He said the conspiracy against those facilities, if there was one, was between McDavid and “Anna,” an undercover FBI operative and the fourth member of the group, with whom McDavid was infatuated.

But Lapham said it is “undeniable … that McDavid was the one who first advocated using explosives when he recruited Weiner and Jenson in August 2005,” and that he targeted the genetics lab even though he knew people were living there and could be accidentally killed.

McDavid’s parents and sisters addressed England, telling him their son and brother is a caring, gentle person who would never deliberately harm someone.

Lapham, however, said he cannot reconcile that image with “what Eric McDavid became.”

“I don’t believe it was all talk,” England declared, adding it ceased to be that when the foursome bought bomb-making materials and began trying to make an explosive device.

England acknowledged that the terrorism enhancement is “an onerous provision of the law” but said he is convinced Congress meant it to be applied in cases like McDavid’s.

“It’s a new world since Sept. 11, 2001,” he observed.

With credit for the maximum amount of time off for good behavior and the two years and four months he has spent in jail since his arrest, McDavid should be released in mid-2022.

He was studying philosophy at Sierra College in Rocklin when he decided to crisscross the country by hopping trains.

But some of what he would learn was unimaginable as he embarked on this odyssey.

He learned merely talking of blowing things up and attempting, however unsuccessfully, to make a bomb is domestic terrorism, especially in post-9/11 America.

And, while it’s unlikely any lawyer could have done a better job than Reichel, he learned the government has crack prosecutors like Lapham ready to go after him with all the tools at their disposal.

Finally, he learned that femme fatales are not just characters in old Raymond Chandler detective novels.

McDavid’s anti-Iraq invasion stance led to loose associations with self-styled anarchists and radical environmentalists who traveled the country demonstrating at events.

Anna came into his life and, for him, the association morphed into a romantic attachment. She was attractive, strong-willed, exciting and older. Although cagey about her age, she is probably somewhere in her 30s.

A Florida college student, she was recruited by the FBI in 2004 to penetrate the protest movement. For any such investigation to get around U.S. citizens’ freedom of assembly, the agents need proof of criminal acts. That’s where Anna came in.

She was invited to a CrimethInc Convergence in Des Moines, Iowa, in August. Through Jenson, whom she had met earlier at a G-8 economic summit near Atlanta, she made her first contact with McDavid.

Then 27, he grew up in Orangevale, played football at Casa Roble Fundamental High School and worked as a carpenter while at Sierra.

They were together later that month at the Republican National Convention in New York – where Anna’s aggressive behavior got her arrested – and again in the summer of 2005 at Weiner’s apartment in Philadelphia.

At the latter location, Anna testified, she noticed right away that McDavid seemed dramatically more radical. It was also then that he first expressed his deep feelings for her. Just how much of his transformation was to impress her became a critical issue at the trial.

Reichel tried to build an entrapment defense around Anna and again argued entrapment Thursday.

But Lapham scoffed at the theory, and England refused to adopt it.

Jenson and Weiner, both 22, were allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges that carry a five-year prison cap. Jenson is scheduled for sentencing Aug. 7; Weiner’s is set for Thursday.

And here is an article about the agent provocateur, “Anna”, and her entrapment from the most recent issue of ELLE magazine.