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By: Ryan Jaroncyk, THL Contributor
More and more Americans are growing tired of the bitter partisanship that has come to define our nation's politics. Republicans hate the Democrats, and Democrats hate the Republicans.
George W. Bush was supposed to be a "uniter, not a divider," yet he ended up bitterly dividing a nation. President Obama was supposed to heal those divisions, yet the nation seems even more polarized than ever under his leadership so far.
There is however, one individual who continues to buck the trend. This individual has demonstrated an uncanny ability to unite diverse political factions on a slew of critical issues. If there was ever a model for effective and principled bipartisanship, this individual fits the mold.
On Afghanistan, he has joined one other Republican and two Democrats, so far, in proposing legislation for an immediate withdrawal. In addition, his concerns about the war in Afghanistan have inspired bipartisan criticism of the protracted effort.
For example, conservative commentator, George Will has issued a call for a much more limited and narrowly focused mission. Conservative Ret. Lieutenant Colonel, Ralph Peters has argued against further troop increases and has recommended far more limited objectives.
Richard Haas, a former Bush State Department official, has questioned the wisdom of committing more troops to an open-ended occupation. Robert Baer, a former CIA field operative, has called for a different strategy.
On the Democratic side, Vice President Biden appears to be offering significant resistance to more troops, and Arianna Huffington, the uber-"liberal", wrote an elegant, thought-provoking piece questioning the necessity of more troops and open-ended nation building.


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The International Risk Governance Council working group on Bioenergy, chaired by IUCN's Chief Scientist Jeff McNeely, released their Policy Brief "Risk Governance Guidelines for Bioenergy Policies" which examines the opportunities and risks of bioenergy to meet goals such as energy security, rural development and climate change mitigation. It identifies deficits in the current governance of those risks, and presents IRGC's recommendations for improvements to the risk governance of bioenergy.
Policy recommendations
The Governance of Bioenegy working group developed policy guidelines on the following areas related to the sustainable development of bioenergy.
While at a local scale and in specific situations bioenergy can provide numerous prospects for local and rural development, particularly with regards to meeting energy needs in developing countries, IRGC is concerned about the current development of large-scale bioethanol and biodiesel production. Current policies and accompanying economic incentives do not enable a balanced resolution of the trade-offs that need to be made between :
biomass for fuel versus food ;
energy security and independence versus climate change mitigation ;
different uses of land, with direct and indirect impact on GHG emissions, soil degradation and water resources ; and
local, regional and global needs
Risk management strategies should strike a balance between the case-specific opportunities offered by bioenergy and the risks it poses. Practical actions and instruments that could help policymakers and industry develop sustainable bioenergy production and policies include :
Assessing realistic capacities to produce domestic feedstock for bioenergy and avoiding over-optimistic projections about the potential contribution of bioenergy to the energy mix.
Implementing land-use policies which will reduce the risk of land with recognised high biodiversity value or high carbon stocks being converted to grow biomass feedstock, and encourage the use of marginal land only when environmentally and socially appropriate
Promoting more sustainable agricultural practices, both for food and fuel production
Fostering research and development that enables a faster move toward new forms of bioenergy (including so-called 2nd generation, but also transitional technologies), which may require less land, and may enable a more efficient use of wastes and non-food feedstock
Managing the impact of bioenergy generation (and in general of all agricultural practices) on water resources
Maximising the use of waste, particularly sewage, but only deliberately using food crop residues when doing so does not erode soil or lead to humus depletion
Further developing and using risk assessment methodologies such as the widely accepted 'cradle to grave' LCAs, and applying them locally
Adopting internationally agreed sustainability standards and criteria for certification which would be recognised under international trade rules
Clarifying the definitions under international law of bioenergy products ; for example, ethanol is currently treated by WTO as an agricultural product and biodiesel as an energy product
Developing adaptive regulatory frameworks that set the conditions for transparent and balanced markets for producing and exporting countries to meet, first, their domestic needs, and, second, the needs of international trade
Employing only technology-neutral economic instruments to assure technological diversity in how environmental performance standards are met
Engaging consumers with transparent communication and thereby helping them to make well-informed choices so that they, too, can contribute to promoting sustainable bioenergy and managing the associated risks
IRGC hopes that future public policies will emphasise :
market-oriented approaches, to reduce existing distortions in liquid biofuel and agricultural markets ;
environmental sustainability, protecting land and water resources from depletion and environmental damage ;
adaptive regulation, production and behaviour, to allow rapid improvements in the economic and physical efficiencies in the production and conversion processes such as those implied in second generation technologies ;
the acceptance under WTO rules of obligatory biomass certification taking account of greenhouse gas balance (including carbon sinks), biodiversity protection and protection of the local environment, to cover some aspects of sustainability at least ; and
priority given to economic concerns for developing countries, with a focus on food, employment and energy needs.

subset: commoncrawl


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A woman I have known for a couple of years approached me. I did not know her well enough to know her first name, but I have seen and spoken to her many times because her son and mine attend some of the same classes.
She said, "I didn't know you are a writer."
Surprised, I said, "Yes, I have been writing for many years now. Did you see my column somewhere?"
I was hoping for a friendly critique.
"Yes, actually. I was cleaning my guinea pig cage yesterday and when I spread some newspaper in the bottom, I saw your face."
Not exactly what I had expected, but I've learned to roll with those kinds of punches. So what if her guinea pig would use my face as his latrine? That's life. I'm just happy she recognized me.
She continued, "So I checked out your website and found some really funny stuff there!"
Well, that's something, anyway.
I smiled, loving her honesty. She'd make a great best friend.
Over the years, I have received many honest reactions to my work. Some wrote to tell me how much they enjoyed it, and others were apparently mentally ill.
I write a humor column about life. Many times, life is quite funny, but sometimes it can make you cry and sometimes it can make you angry. Your attitude toward life is a telling characteristic.
Many readers see the same humor in life that I do; the strangeness of humanity if viewed with the eye of a visitor to our planet.
Some readers will be angry because I inadvertently used a politically incorrect term or dissed a certain sector of the population. They missed the opportunity for joy and chose to be angry at my error instead.
A few years ago, I wrote about the concern I was feeling for my young son because he was having trouble keeping his grades up. His dream, which I was all too willing to foster, was a Phd in Biology, but his grades said he'd be riding on the back of a garbage truck.
Apparently, there is a certain sector of the population that resented that comparison including a less-than eloquent trash collector that emailed me from his cell phone and told me exactly what he thought of my mother's resemblance to a canine, the supposed promiscuity of my sex life and his hopes for my speedy demise. His words were a little different.
Obviously, the humor was lost on this man. I, on the other hand, found a boatload of humor in the fact that his anonymous, but rude, message was rendered "Not Anonymous" by the fact that his cell phone number was listed under "From" on the email.
I was concerned that the poor man might use that language on someone less tolerant of idiots than me, so I wrote back to advise him of his error.
He immediately and profusely apologized... which made my day. I have never heard from him again. Thank goodness. If ever someone needed a bit of humor, it was that hard-working man. Unfortunately, he chose to be angry instead.
But that's life... Sometimes your face gets posted behind a refrigerator magnet and sometimes it's lining a rodent cage. Either way, it's funny, isn't it?
Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist, author & speaker. You can reach Laura at email@example.com Or visit her website www.lauraonlife.com for more info.
© Copyright 2002-2014 by Magic City Morning Star
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L – Oilers 0, Stars 3 – Game 20 – 2013-11-13 @ 8:00 PM MST – TSN
So… Let's see what's been happening as of late. We traded away a reliable stay at home D-man and a goaltending prospect for a better prospect and a unproven center so we could sign a somewhat unstable Russian. Maybe he's the one who's been whispering into Yakupov's ear about passive aggressively requesting more ice time. Another heart and soul guy will be back on the ice, except this time he'll be playing on the opposing team. Be kind Oil Country. You rode him out of town, don't be classless and boo him on his return. Maybe we can pick something up from his work ethic.
At the very least the team has started putting the puck in the net again, coincidentally timed with Taylor Hall's return. The PP numbers are up, but the GAA is still steady. The D still need to solidify and that's team wide. If Bryz can recapture some of his greatness, it will take some pressure off, but he's still in conditioning with Dubnyk starting tonight.
Should be a fairly open game with a lot of speed so hopefully Dubnyk plays like he doesn't want to give up the starting role.
Line ups are a little less frightening tonight but Justin Schultz is still injured.
Continue reading 'L – Oilers 0, Stars 3 – Game 20 – 2013-11-13 @ 8:00 PM MST – TSN'»


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This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. This Saturday marks the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks in the city of Mumbai in India. For three days, 10 young Pakistani men held the city hostage by planting bombs in taxis and shooting Indians and tourists at several sites, including the luxurious Taj Mahal Hotel.
The only surviving attacker was captured. Around 170 people were killed, including six Americans. The attack was carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a radical Pakistani Islamist group, which allegedly had help from members of Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, and that raises a lot of unresolved questions about a country that's supposed to be our ally.
Tomorrow, the PBS series "Frontline" will feature a documentary about the siege of Mumbai, focusing on David Coleman Headley, who did the reconnaissance and surveillance and worked out the logistics for the attack. Headley was born in the U.S. to a Pakistani father and an American mother. He was captured by American authorities in 2009. He's now in prison awaiting sentencing.
My guest, Sebastian Rotella, has been covering David Headley for the investigative news website ProPublica. He's also the lead reporter for the "Frontline" documentary "A Perfect Terrorist." Rotella was a reporter for the L.A. Times for 23 years and has covered Islamic terrorist groups since 9/11.
Sebastian Rotella, welcome to FRESH AIR. So your "Frontline" documentary focuses on David Headley, who is a really interesting character. And I'm going to ask you to just describe some of his background before he becomes a terrorist.
SEBASTIAN ROTELLA: He's kind of this walking mix of cultures, or clash of cultures. His father is a renowned Pakistani broadcaster who meets his mother in Washington, D.C. His mother's from Philadelphia high society. His name was Daood Gilani when he was born. Soon after his birth, they moved back to Pakistan. The mother and the father divorced. The mother leaves, but Headley grows up in Pakistan in a very conservative, Islamic, Pakistani nationalist environment, goes to elite military schools.
But at age 17, he's having trouble with the family there, with his stepmother. He's starting to dabble in drugs, and he communicates with his real mother, who's now back in Philadelphia, and comes back to live with her in Philadelphia. And she, at the time, is running, you know, a very well-known bar, the Khyber Pass Pub, and he becomes part of her life and that scene there in Philadelphia.
And it's kind of this collision with the West, you know, after this upbringing in Pakistan. And, you know, as a young man, he slides into drug addiction and drug trafficking.
GROSS: This was such a shocking story to me when I found out because one of the leading people behind the attacks in Mumbai turns out to be the son of the woman who owns a really famous pub in Philly. Like when I moved here in the 1970s, the Khyber Pass, it was such - and that's when she still owned it - the Khyber Pass was like a gathering place to have a beer, hear some music.
And, you know, it's still there under different ownership, but it was really, really shocking. And I'm just thinking about what it was like for him, after having grown up in a very strict Muslim background with his father, and then coming to Philly in this, you know, kind of counter-culturish pub where he's surrounded by alcohol and by, you know, people who are like dating or meeting people. It's such - it's such a cultural conflict.
ROTELLA: Absolutely, and I interviewed people who were part of that scene and were connected to the pub at the time, and they recall him - in one way, you know, he was a bit of a celebrity there. His mother had - was this colorful character who talked a lot about her adventures. She's had quite a number of adventures in Pakistan and even things in which her life was in danger. And so he sort of added to that mystique.
And as you say, it was a big clash for him. On the one hand, he was very smooth, very cultured. He had a bit of this South Asian-British accent. He was, you know, he was popular, handsome. They refer to him as the prince. But on the other hand, yes, he was having trouble dealing with it.
You know, there were a lot of - Serrill Headley, who owned this pub, used to hire a lot of strong women, women who were graduate students, people like that, and I've been told it just was, it was very difficult for him to maneuver what was going on in that world at that time. And I think that, you know, all these things colliding is part of what perhaps he finds very difficult to adapt to and which may, you know, have helped push him, you know, as a young man into heroin addiction and then into heroin trafficking, which involves going back and forth to Pakistan and smuggling heroin.
GROSS: Yeah, so he goes back and forth to Pakistan, starts smuggling heroin, and he's busted.
ROTELLA: It's kind of a classic trajectory. You know, you see this a lot. I've been covering terrorism and organized crime around the world for years, and here's someone who starts out as kind of a small-time drug smuggler, gets caught, is very adept. You know, he gets caught in '88. He betrays immediately and helps set up his accomplices. So he gets a shorter sentence than they do.
He gets out. But again in '97, by which time he's moved to New York, he gets busted again in a sting, again with heroin smuggling from Pakistan. And now he's got a real problem. So he doesn't just cooperate against his accomplices, but he actually becomes an informant for the DEA.
And he's a very talented one because here's someone who, again, because of this cultural mix, speaks English incredibly well, is very Westernized in a lot of ways, knows a lot about movies and pop culture and all that but also speaks Urdu, can function in Pakistan, has contacts in the elite and in the underworld in Pakistan. And the DEA uses him to infiltrate Pakistani heroin rings on the East Coast and even sends him, at one point, to do undercover work in Pakistan itself. So that really kind of launches him into this kind of increasing - sort of this crescendo of activity in the late '90s where he's working as a DEA informant but also radicalizing.
He connects with the group Lashkar-e-Taiba. He's taking unauthorized trips back to Pakistan because he's on probation in 2000, 2001, and he's joining this very militant, very popular Pakistani group and showing all the sort of classic signs of radicalization while working for the DEA.
Then September 11th happens, and that kind of changes everything and propels him even sort of more rapidly into the world of terrorism.
GROSS: And it just makes you wonder: How can somebody be an informant for the Drug Enforcement Agency and at the same time be making all these connections with a radical Islamic group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the DEA, like, doesn't know about it?
ROTELLA: Yes, one of the things that's remarkable is the DEA says that in this period, though people around him say that he was very sort of overtly and angrily becoming a radical militant, that they weren't aware of that. But right after 9/11, in fact on September 12, 2001, his DEA handler calls him - he's in New York at this point - and recruits him along - many informants for understandable reasons with the DEA are being recruited, anyone who might be helpful on Islamic terrorism, and asks him to gather what information he can on Islamic terrorism. So he does.
He goes. He goes to a mosque in New York and finds out what he can. He starts working sources by phone in Pakistan. They're trying to get phone numbers for extremists and drug traffickers, so essentially his role for the DEA expands from anti-drug work to anti-terror work.
At the same time, there's the first allegation of what will be many that he's an extremist because of a conversation he has shortly after 9/11. A girlfriend talks to someone who calls the FBI on him because he's been talking, praising the 9/11 attacks allegedly and talking about how he wants to go to Pakistan to fight jihad.
So in October of '01, he's interviewed by the FBI in front of his DEA handlers, and he denies it all. He says no, I'm working for you guys. You know, I'm an informant. I've been helping you out on anti-terrorism stuff. It's not true. And he wriggles his way out of it. And, you know, a month later, something very extraordinary happens.
There's a very rushed hearing in New York in federal court at which his probation is ended almost three years early, which is very unusual. And he goes off to Pakistan. Now, the versions about what - how that happens and what happens are completely murky and contradictory.
What a probation officer and his defense lawyer and others familiar with what happened then say what happens is that the government sought to end his probation early so he could go to Pakistan and continue his counter-terror work there as an informant.
The DEA denies that it sent him, however. So now you have this question of what happened. What a number of my sources think is what happened is that he made the transition from official, formal law enforcement source to off-the-books intelligence informant. But who he was working for and who sent him remains murky.
The point is that within weeks, he's in Pakistan, and he starts training in Lashkar training camps.
GROSS: And maybe the DEA thinks he's training there to bring back information, but he's actually training for real.
ROTELLA: He's training for real, along with a lot of other Westerners, because Lashkar was - because it doesn't attack Pakistan, it had huge training camps that function pretty much out in the open, unlike al-Qaida. And so he does the full gamut. He does five training stints over three years and everything from, you know, basic ideology to counter-surveillance to survival. He's becoming, you know, a holy warrior.
But he's going back and forth to the States, and there continue to be these warnings about him. In 2002, an associate of the family comes forward to the FBI to say look, this guy's mother says he's training in these camps in Pakistan, and he's meeting people who are dying in combat there.
Again, for whatever reason, he's not interviewed. In 2005 in New York, he gets into a domestic dispute with one of his numerous wives, and she calls the FBI on him, and they interview her three times. And she says this guy is training in Pakistan. He's, you know, he's going back and forth to these camps. He's calling me. He's singing the praises of this group. He's trying to get equipment here, night-vision goggles.
He's very militant. You know, she gives him a lot of detail. But again, they don't interview him. He gets away with it and keeps going into this trajectory that will make him something unique because now he's not only a highly trained terrorist, but he gets recruited by the Pakistani intelligence service and gets separate training from them. So now he's essentially both a terrorist and a spy.
GROSS: So let me just stop things here for a moment and mention that you slipped in the phrase his numerous wives. And so did his numerous wives know that there were other wives? Was this numerous wives under Islamic law, or was he just kind of cheating and lying?
ROTELLA: Well basically, and the reason it's important, in addition to just being colorful, is because several of them end up reporting him to the authorities. He has a wife from an arranged marriage in 1999. At the same time that he sort of has an ongoing relationship and family with her, he marries a Canadian woman in the U.S. and at some point in Pakistan marries a Moroccan woman.
So some of them knew about each other, some of them didn't, and it created constant problems for him, in fact even endangering his cover at different points, whether they were reporting him to the FBI, or the Moroccan wife reports him to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. It's part of - he's this guy who lives on adrenaline, on risk-taking, and he's a very meticulous, highly trained undercover operative who does a lot of things very professionally, probably more professionally than most terrorists preparing attacks.
But he has this human side, too, and this weakness that creates constant problems for him.
GROSS: My guest is Sebastian Rotella. He's the reporter on tomorrow's PBS "Frontline" documentary "The Perfect Terrorist." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Sebastian Rotella. He's an investigative reporter for ProPublica and before that reported on terrorism for the L.A. Times, terrorism and other issues. And now he has teamed up with "Frontline" to report on a documentary about David Headley, the Pakistani-American who was the chief reconnaissance man and did a lot of logistics for the attacks on Mumbai three years ago. And that documentary is called "A Perfect Terrorist." It airs tomorrow night on public television.
It's curious that at a time when U.S. intelligence was rounding up so many people who seemed the least bit suspicious, and they were rounding up a lot of people who really weren't suspicious at all, I mean, they were being rounded up because they were Muslim. So - and here's this guy who has ties to Pakistan, and people are reporting him. People are saying, people close to him are saying oh, he was really enthusiastic watching 9/11. So no action is taken against him. It's just odd.
ROTELLA: Yes, I mean, the allegations pile up. And so there's the question: Is he slipping through the cracks? Is the system not working because the way the bureaucracy works, different people are getting different tips in different places and not putting them together?
The other theory is that because he was or because he may still have some connections to the U.S. government, is there this sense that he's not seen as a threat, or there's some awareness of him and some interest in letting him continue to operate and see what happens.
There's a lot of intense suspicion, a lot of mystery about this case that leads from one end of the spectrum to the other. On the most extreme end of the spectrum, we interviewed high-ranking Indian officials who insist, people in intelligence, people in law enforcement, that they feel he was a double agent.
On the other end of the spectrum, very serious U.S. sources tell me, look, the reality is, in the real world, it's not as easy as you think beforehand to detect a terrorist. The fact is, the guy gets away with it, and he puts together this, you know, this incredible blueprint for terror that's played out in Mumbai.
And most people think that if it hadn't been for that scouting he did, the Mumbai attacks could not have been pulled off the way they were because they were absolutely reliant on the surveillance and the reconnaissance and the planning he helped do.
GROSS: Now he trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is an Islamic radical group, a terrorist group. But there is a lot of suspicion that they are connected in some way to Pakistan's intelligence agency and that Pakistan wants them to be active in Pakistan's interests. What are those interests?
ROTELLA: Basically, Lashkar had been the proxy army for Pakistan going back years in its battle against India, in Kashmir and doing attacks in India itself. What Western agencies, a lot of them, mistakenly thought was that Lashkar was sort of this obedient terrorist group that just did the bidding of the Pakistani security forces, which funded and directed it.
In fact, it always had a global jihadi agenda, was doing plots and recruiting people like Headley from around the world, people from the States, including people from the States.
And what Headley becomes is a unique phenomenon. He becomes simultaneously a trained ISI operative and a Lashkar operative. And these missions he does in Mumbai, don't forget, are directed jointly by an intelligence handler from the Pakistani intelligence service named Major Iqbal, and for a terrorist handler for Lashkar named Sajid Mir. So it's a joint operation.
And again, what's startling about it is that it, you know, there's very strong evidence in this case, based not just on Headley's confessions but a lot of corroborating evidence, that this is a plot in which elements of the ISI and Lashkar sit down and plan an attack where they want to make sure to kill Americans, to kill Westerners, to kill Jews, to really make this group's mark on the world stage in a way they never had before.
GROSS: Now we should mention this Major Iqbal, who you say was Headley's handler from the intelligence agency of Pakistan. Pakistan's intelligence agency denies even knowing the name.
ROTELLA: They deny any role in terrorism, any role in the Mumbai attacks. They say they don't know anything about this Major Iqbal. Major Iqbal exists. There are emails from him. You know, there's descriptions of him. It's pretty clear that there's a man named Major Iqbal who was involved in this, and a lot of the emails suggest that he's involved specifically in espionage.
Sajid Mir, this other handler, is also identified because if you remember in the Mumbai attacks, there are these very chilling phone conversations where you actually - Indian intelligence intercepts the phone calls between the handlers and the terrorists. So you can actually hear in real time the directions being given to them.
GROSS: In fact you have a recording of that phone call in your documentary because the phone call was intercepted by Indian intelligence. And we might as well pause here and listen to that recording, though I should say it's not the best sound quality, it's a little hard to make out what's being said. So I'm going to ask you before we hear it to walk us through what's being said, and some of it is in Urdu, so you'd better translate that part for us.
ROTELLA: First you'll hear Sajid Mir talking to this woman, Norma(ph), this hostage. She's actually a Mexican who is staying at the chabad(ph) house, and he's using her because he wants her to help negotiate with the Israeli and Indian authorities because one of his attackers has been wounded and captured. He's trying to get him back.
So he's trying to convince, you know, calm her down and use her to negotiate. The next conversation, which is some hours later, he's realized that it's not going to work, and he basically and brutally tells his gunman on the other end of the line, okay, you know, get rid of this woman, kill her, and you hear them shoot her and another hostage.
GROSS: And that last part that you're describing is in Urdu, so...
ROTELLA: It's in Urdu, yeah.
GROSS: But it still sounds pretty chilling. So even if you can't understand the words. So here's that phone call.
SAJID MIR: I'm asking your name.
NORMA: My name is Norma.
MIR: Listen, Norma. We are all listening. Don't do anything wrong, okay? Don't argue (unintelligible).
ROTELLA: It was Sajid Mir directing the siege from Karachi.
MIR: All we want is to (unintelligible), and let's negotiate.
ROTELLA: He wanted to bargain for his wounded attacker. He reassured Norma.
NORMA: What is it that you want to negotiate?
MIR: Just sit back and relax and don't worry. Maybe you're going to, you know, celebrate your Sabbath with your family.
ROTELLA: The prisoner swap didn't happen. Then another call from Sajid Mir.
MIR: (Foreign language spoken)
ROTELLA: This time he's speaking in Urdu.
MIR: (Foreign language spoken)
GROSS: And that's Sebastian Rotella, reporting on the story for a "Frontline" documentary that airs tomorrow night on public television, and it's called "A Perfect Terrorist." So is that a tape that you got, or was it already out there?
ROTELLA: That's a tape that was already out there. Here's what we got, and here's one of the things that I worked the hardest on in investigating this story, which was, you know, these broadcasts of these conversations had been out there for a while.
What I heard early on was that the guy on the line, the guy, one of the masterminds of Mumbai, was Sajid Mir. Sajid Mir was somebody I already knew about because I'd been covering cases going back into the decade that he'd been popping up in American, French, British and Australian cases.
And it was amazing to me that it could be him, but as I did more and more digging, it turned out to be true. The reason it was amazing to me was because the French in particular, a very sort of hard-charging investigative magistrate had connected him to this network of Lashkar operatives who had been involved in procurement of weapons in the U.S. and in a bomb plot in Australia and had actually charged him and convicted him in absentia in France and issued an Interpol warrant for him in the middle of the decade and in 2007 convicted him.
And the Pakistanis received the warrant and the news of the conviction and did nothing. Sajid Mir should have been in jail instead of on the phone directing this slaughter. And the incredible thing is that even though his voice has been broadcast, and his picture has been shown, and he's been charged in India and in the U.S., he has not been touched, all sources say, in Pakistan.
He went right ahead after the Mumbai attacks and started plotting an attack in Denmark, and as far as we know, he's sitting pretty in Pakistan. That's one of the - it's a remarkable sort of 10-year tale of impunity as far as he's concerned.
GROSS: Are you suggesting that this might be a sign that Pakistan is helping to protect him?
ROTELLA: I'd say most everyone I've talked to in the U.S. and Western and Indian governments feels that that is the case.
GROSS: Sebastian Rotella will be back in the second half of the show. He's the lead reporter on the "Frontline" ProPublica investigation "A Perfect Terrorist," which airs tomorrow night on public TV. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH air.
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're talking about tomorrow's PBS Frontline documentary, "A Perfect Terrorist," a joint production with investigative journalism website ProPublica. It focuses on the role of American-born David Headley in the terrorist attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai three years ago. The program raises questions about the alleged involvement of members of Pakistan's intelligence service in planning the attack which killed about 170 people, including six Americans. My guest, Sebastian Rotella, is the lead reporter for the documentary.
So let's get back to David Headley again. He is the son of a Pakistani father, American mother who becomes a heroine addict and that a drug dealer, becomes an informant for the drug enforcement agency after he cops a plea. And then as he goes to Pakistan to do intelligence for the DEA, he also starts training in this Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist camp and becomes one of the main planners of the Mumbai attacks. And what he's good at is the logistics. He cases places, and he figures out the positions for a GPS, so that when the actual terrorists come to do the attacks, they know exactly where they're going and they know exactly what the timing's going to be. So that was pretty critical work.
ROTELLA: It was absolutely critical, and it also required a profile that was very hard to find. Headley's American. He's got an American passport. He changed his name specifically from Daood Gilani to David Coleman Headley so there was any - wasn't any sense that he was connected to Pakistan, or even a Muslim. And he's older than most typical jihadis. He was a guy, at this point, who was in his 40s.
So he's able to spend time in these luxury hotels and in places where Westerners go and do this kind of reconnaissance that just wouldn't be possible for, you know, 95 percent of the otherwise very capable operatives that Lashkar has. You know, he was unique in this sense. And yes, I mean so, what happens during the siege, for example, in the Taj, and talking to Indian policemen who were involved in the siege is that the gunman know the place inside out, even though they've never been near Mumbai, let alone a luxury hotel.
In fact, you can hear in the intercepts that they're marveling at the glories of this luxury hotel as they're slaughtering people. But that was all thanks to this preliminary work that Headley had done with his skills and his charms and his slickness, you know, just mapping out every step of the way and videotaping it and setting it up. And it's absolutely crucial, and it's very unusual for a terrorist attack.
GROSS: And did Headley know that these were going to be attacks that ended in the murder of many people, and that also the people who were doing the attacks, it was basically going to be a suicide mission for them?
ROTELLA: Yes. I mean, he was kept apprised every step of the way. So he's communicating with his intelligence handler and his terrorist handler, and they're assembling this plot and the dimensions of it. Lashkar doesn't do classic suicide attacks. They don't believe in actually committing suicide. They believe in fighting to the death.
For a long time, he was setting it up with the idea that these guys would escape. Oftentimes, they'll do hit-and-run attacks and try to escape. But at some point, what they realize is for the maximum drama, maximum impact, they're going to do what's called the stronghold action, where they're going to kill as many people as they can, take hostages, barricade themselves and draw it out as long as possible, with the media in mind.
You know, they're very much choreographing it, thinking about what it's going to look like, and he's helping them do that. So they want, for example, that image that everyone associates with Mumbai, which is with the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in flames, as something they very much had set out to have been the iconic image, and they succeeded of that attack.
GROSS: What was the point of these Mumbai attacks?
ROTELLA: It's very interesting. I mean, Headley's confession reveals part of it, that there's - what's going on in Lashkar, because this group was very faithful and didn't - doesn't attack Pakistan and was sort of obedient to the Pakistani security forces, there was increasing tension within the group because of the pressure that a lot of the militants within it wanted to focus more on global jihad, on attacking Western targets, on fighting in Afghanistan.
And at a certain point, there's a feeling that Lashkar needs to maintain its cohesion and end, sort of, defections and dissent within by doing a big strike that will put it on the map and show it has global jihadi credentials. So sadly, what they realize is that you can go to Mumbai and killed 200 people, but if you don't kill Westerners, it won't have as much as a media impact. They sent out and very, you know, sort of coldly design an attack to get maximum media attention by going out of their way to kill Americans and Westerners and Jews.
GROSS: So David Headley's very successful on his mission in Mumbai. Then there's another mission. The next mission that his handlers want him to do is to blow up the newspaper in Denmark that published the cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. And these are the cartoons that set off the so-called cartoon riots in many parts of the Islamic world. And so his handlers decide later to, like, drop this plot.
ROTELLA: Yes.
GROSS: But he continues it with - through al-Qaida. He finds an al-Qaida leader named Ilyas Kashmiri, and Kashmiri signs on. Do I have the story right so far?
ROTELLA: That's right. I mean, it's fascinating, because his handlers from Lashkar and the ISI sit down with them and begin plotting this attack, which is going to go into the heart of Europe. It's only going to escalate this Jihad. You know, Mumbai has had a huge impact, but now they're plotting to do something that al-Qaida hasn't been able to do since 2005, which is an attack on the heart of Europe against this newspaper that all these Jihadis all over the world have sworn that they will destroy.
So it's Lashkar and the ISI who launch him on the first scouting mission in January of 2009. He does surveillance. He comes back, but now there is some pressure because of the Mumbai attacks, and they decide to back off. But as you said, now he's a star. Now he's really sort of just riding the adrenaline and the triumph of what he did in Mumbai. So he had already been talking to Lashkar defectors who had joined Ilyas Kashmiri, who is a Pakistani terrorist who has become affiliated with al-Qaida, and he basically changes sponsors. You know, he gets recruited by a new group, and he joins a new group, and they sent it back. And now he's going back to Denmark intent on doing exactly the same king of thing he did in Mumbai: doing reconnaissance, doing undercover work, insinuating himself into the newspaper, trying to meet people who work there.
But what happens now is Europe is a harder target, and the web of intelligence is a lot more intense, and the people Kashmiri sends them to see - he goes to see people in Britain - are under surveillance. So now when Headley is starting to do his surveillance in Denmark in July of 2009 for the second time, he's being watched. The Danish intelligence is shadowing him, and now we're getting into the final part of his odyssey, where when he comes back to the States, the FBI is on him. And now, you know, everything is focused on him. In October of 2009, finally, you know, his luck runs out and his odyssey ends at O'Hare Airport in Chicago as he's preparing to go back for the third time to Pakistan and then to Denmark to, you know, carry this plot forward.
GROSS: My guest is Sebastian Rotella. He's the reporter on tomorrow's PBS "Frontline" documentary, "A Perfect Terrorist," about David Headley and the terrorist attack on Mumbai three years ago. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: The PBS series "Frontline" is airing a documentary tomorrow night in conjunction with ProPublica called "A Perfect Terrorist," about the role of American-born David Headley in helping plan the terrorist attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai three years ago. My guest is the documentary's lead reporter Sebastian Rotella.
So after David Headley is busted because intelligence agencies from various countries are onto him, he pleads guilty to doing reconnaissance in Mumbai, and then becomes the star witness against somebody who's charged with being his accomplice. And this person is his old high school friend from Pakistan who ran a company that helped Pakistanis get visas and gave cover to David Headley when he was doing reconnaissance - because he could say he was working for this company, and that's why he was scouting out this place. So what's some of the information that David Headley gives up as a star witness in the trial?
ROTELLA: What Headley does for the first time is give specific, concrete and detailed evidence about something that there have been glimmers and pieces of popping up in previous cases or in intelligence reports, but never with so much, such a volume of information in a U.S. courtroom, which is show the intensely close alliance between the ISI and the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group and show how that works, how the training works, how the funding works, how the coordinated decision-making works and how they set out again to do this attack together.
And he talks about names. He talks about places. He talks about communications. They have this computer so they can see all these emails that he's communicating with. They match it to other information. They have these really - he's a goldmine for showing how this double game, as it's been called in Pakistan, where the Pakistani security forces sometimes seem to be working with us and sometimes against us, how that's really played.
And it's very devastating. You know, it's very powerful, because the result of it, among other things, is that for the first time this year, as a result of his evidence, the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago indicted Major Iqbal, his handler, which is the first time you had a serving Pakistani intelligence officer charged in the murder of Americans in a terrorist attack.
So it really, you know, people talk about, you know, things like the bin Laden killing, things like - if you remember Admiral Mullen's statements a while ago about criticizing Pakistanis for supporting militants. But this case really provides the most intense, you know, dense, detailed evidence about that alliance and that collusion. And it's had a really damaging impact, I think, on the U.S.-Pakistani relationship and really helped changed the way a lot of people in the U.S. government see their relationship with the Pakistani security forces, partly because three years have gone by, and basically, except for, you know, a couple of token arrests, the masterminds are free.
GROSS: So give us some example of some of the information that came out in the trial through Headley's testimony about the coordination between the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba and Pakistani intelligence.
ROTELLA: Sure. For example, when he's going to, you know, he spends these two years doing reconnaissance in Mumbai, he describes - and again, with, you know, a lot of evidence backs it up in terms of communications - how he goes - before and after each mission, he meets with his ISI handler and he meets with his Lashkar handler. And it's clear that they're communicating with each other, but for purposes of operational security or deniability. He never meets them together. But it's clear they're communicating with each other, and they will give him his marching orders, sometimes focusing on the same thing.
So they were both telling him we want more information about the Taj Mahal Hotel, because they both want that to be the centerpiece of the attack. But then what - because he's being shared, he's essentially a shared operative of this intelligence service and this terrorist group, his - Major Iqbal will also ask them to give specific intelligence on more military troop movements or, you know, military targets in Delhi, which is more pure espionage. And his terrorist handler will ask them to focus more on, you know, sort of pure terrorist targets.
So it really shows an interesting interplay, where he's being shared, used and, for example, the ISI is funding - the ISI are the ones who are giving him the money for the trip. And the - and then there's another incredible moment where he describes a meeting - because, again, this is going to be a maritime attack, which is a very difficult thing to do.
So he describes a meeting where he goes to Lashkar headquarters and the top Lashkar chiefs are there, but there's also a clean-cut military man there who's been provided, allegedly, by the ISI, who's there. He's a frogman from the Pakistani navy, and he gives them expert advice. Okay, this is - if you want to do a maritime attack, he's actually got maritime charts with him, and they spend two days going over how you go about attacking Mumbai - again, something that a terrorist group on its own would find it very hard to do, but with the support of a state apparatus, becomes feasible. And what they end up doing is something very complex. They end up hijacking an Indian fishing vessel, using that to get to Mumbai, and then going ashore in a dinghy.
So that's - again, that shows the interplay of a pure terrorist group and its state sponsor in putting together an attack, according to Headley's evidence.
GROSS: You've been following this story for a year, investigating it. Now you're reporting on it for "Frontline." You've been reporting on it for ProPublica. Tell us two questions that are in your mind that you would eventually really like to get answers to.
ROTELLA: I guess they would - the two questions would be one on the Pakistani side and one on the U.S. side. The one on the Pakistani side is there's a lot of suspicion. There's a lot of allegations. There's a lot of evidence about, I think, that it seems clear - of ISI involvement at some level.
The question would be: Are we talking about Major Iqbal and a few other people in the Pakistani intelligence service, as some would assert? Or are we talking about how high up did the knowledge of this attack and the involvement of this attack go in the Pakistan military hierarchy? I think that's a very important question for the future of this relationship, because it, you know, an attack where an ally that we give billions of dollars to sets out to kill Americans. It has a powerful impact. That would be the one on the Pakistani side.
And on the U.S. side, the bottom line question would be: What exactly did Headley do for the U.S. government? How long did his work for the U.S. government last, and what did the U.S. government really know about Headley before the Mumbai attacks? Did he really just slip through the cracks and just - did these warnings about him just repeatedly sort of not get followed up on because that's the way the system sometimes works or doesn't work? Or is there something else going on, as some sources have said, where there was at least some fragments of knowledge about him beforehand, and - that wasn't followed up on?
One thing that's interesting is that the Indians were warned several times before the attacks about an impending attack on Mumbai, so the U.S. did warn India. The U.S. was getting intelligence from somewhere to warn India. Did Headley play any role in that?
GROSS: Well, if he did, he'd be informing on himself.
ROTELLA: Well, yeah. But there are different versions. The Indians would see him as a classic double agent, but I think there's other information that would suggest that sometimes you could gather information on someone more, sort of, having bits and pieces of knowing about their movements. Not that he was actually agent, but that there was some awareness of him. But, again, you know, it's a genuine mystery, you know, and I've learned a lot about this case.
I try and be very careful with what I report and what I say about it, because, as much has become clear since I started working on it, it's still one of these profoundly difficult, complex, and troubling cases where things are not yet clear.
GROSS: In a Philadelphia weekly paper, the reporter Jonathan Valania interviewed David Headley's mother's brother. So this would be David Headley's American uncle. And he said, I believe - and he's using the name Daood here, because that's David Headley's name he received at birth, his Pakistani name. So he says: I believe Daood's upbringing damaged him in a way that he never really stood a chance in life. His father was unbelievably strict. He lived and died by the Koran.
His mother was a Libertine. Her creed was if it feels good, do it. And he was never able to reconcile those two worlds because they can't be reconciled. There is a reason he was a heroin addict and there's a reason he became a Jihadist. I have to believe that. It's the only way I can make peace with what happened. Does that ring true to you?
ROTELLA: You know, it does. I mean, I interviewed, actually, his uncle as well, before he passed away. I talked to him, and he said things like that to me. And others have said things like that to me, kind of the whiplash effect. You know, as I said, I mean, it's kind of this walking clash of civilizations. And to extend the metaphor, if you remember Samuel Huntington talks about the idea of torn countries, you know, that aren't sure which -
- you know, they're sort of in one civilization, then the other. Well, Headley, maybe, was kind of a torn person. I don't know if that excuses, kind of, some of the ruthlessness and cruelty of what he ends up doing, but certainly if you look at radicalization, you know, in cases around the world, as I have, that is kind of the classic pattern of people who find themselves, you know, sort of searching for an identity because their identity is so conflicted, so torn, so problematic.
Because upbringing and his moving back and forth between these two worlds, which he seemed to do very well - because we're talking about someone who, on the one hand, could tell you all about the Cohen brothers' films, you know, and loved talking about movies; and on the other hand, was this stern fundamentalist who would, you know, spout all this anti-Semitic stuff.
So he seemed to be able to go back and forth like a chameleon, and exist in one world and then exist in the other, but it seems like there was some profound problem he had that sort of drove this aggression and this violence and this manipulation that seems to characterize his odyssey.
GROSS: And what did he get through the plea bargain and through turning on the people who he worked with?
ROTELLA: He pleaded guilty to his roll in the Mumbai attacks and in the Denmark attacks, and he's looking at a long time in prison. I mean, this is a guy who already had two federal convictions and has pleaded guilty to very serious crimes and he's in custody and will remain there, and he's going to be sentenced. What he basically gained with the plea bargain was avoiding the death penalty and avoiding extradition to India which would've amounted to the death penalty.
So he made a deal that saved his life, but he's looking at a lot of prison time, is what everyone seems to think.
GROSS: All right. Well, thank you so much for talking with us.
ROTELLA: My pleasure.
GROSS: Sebastian Rotella is the lead reporter for the documentary "A Perfect Terrorist" which is a joint production of Frontline and ProPublica that airs tomorrow night on public television. He's a reporter for ProPublica and author of the new ebook "Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks: the Untold Story." You'll find links to his ProPublica articles about the Mumbai attacks on our website freshair.npr.org.
Coming up, Lloyd Schwartz tells us why he was so moved by the show "Degas and the Nude" at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. This is FRESH AIR.
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9 X 20 inch piece of fabric starched
1-piece of 3/4 inch wide Velcro measuring 1 and 1/4 inch long and cut in half lengthwise.
2- pieces of thin plastic cut 3 and 1/2 by 3 and 3/4 inches.I used a thin placemat from the $store but you could cut up a thin margarine top as long as your sewing machine needle can sew through it with the fabric. You can use Pellon iron on stiffener instead of the plastic if you prefer.
1.Make a paper pattern 9X20 inches and mark the fold lines with a pencil. Measure up at the 9 inch end at these intervals 2 and 1/2, 2, 1 and 3/4, 2 and 1/2, 1 and 3/4, 2 and 1/2. The last section should measure 4and 1/4 if you have drawn your lines correctly.
2.Fold your paper as indicated in the picture like an accordion with the first 2and 1/2 fold being a valley and so on. Your paper pattern should be exactly like the finished wallet with seam allowances extra.
Use your paper pattern to transfer the marks and folds to the wrong side of the fabric with a pencil.
3.Pin the folds at the edges and press in the folds with your iron.
4.Fold the 4and 1/4 inch piece down with right sides together stitch a 1/4 inch seam on both ends of the wallet and 1 and 1/4 inch in along the bottom edge. The middle of the bottom is left open to turn and put in the plastic pieces.
5.Clip off the extra fabric at the sewn corners and turn the wallet right side out.
6.Slid in the plastic pieces being careful to get them positioned at the back along the 4 side. Fold the wallet in half and mark the center for your center seam.
7.Start sewing at the bottom of the center seam and go up to the top and down to the bottom and start then 1/8 inch top stitching around the outside. I place the small lengths of Velcro in the center of the 4 inch sides and sew over it with the 1/8 in top stitching. I back stitch at beginning and end of each Velcro section. You may hear the needle sewing through the plastic, just go slowly.
Your wallet should be ready to use .


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Painting, the expression of ideas and emotions, with the creation of certain aesthetic qualities, in a two-dimensional visual language. The elements of this language—its shapes, lines, colours, tones, and textures—are used in various ways to produce sensations of volume, space, movement, and light on a flat surface. These elements are combined into expressive patterns in order to represent real or supernatural phenomena, to interpret a narrative theme, or to create wholly abstract visual relationships. An artist's decision to use a particular medium, such as tempera, fresco, oil, acrylic, watercolour or other water-based paints, ink, gouache, encaustic, or casein, as well as the choice of a particular form, such as mural, easel, panel, miniature, manuscript illumination, scroll, screen or fan, panorama, or any of a variety of modern forms, is based on the sensuous qualities and the expressive possibilities and limitations of those options. The choices of the medium and the form, as well as the artist's own technique, combine to realize a unique visual image.
Earlier cultural traditions—of tribes, religions, guilds, royal courts, and states—largely controlled the craft, form, imagery, and subject matter of painting and determined its function, whether ritualistic, devotional, decorative, entertaining, or educational. Painters were employed more as skilled artisans than as creative artists. Later the notion of the "fine artist" developed in Asia and Renaissance Europe. Prominent painters were afforded the social status of scholars and courtiers; they signed their work, decided its design and often its subject and imagery, and established a more personal—if not always amicable—relationship with their patrons.
During the 19th century painters in Western societies began to lose their social position and secure patronage. Some artists countered the decline in patronage support by holding their own exhibitions and charging an entrance fee. Others earned an income through touring exhibitions of their work. The need to appeal to a marketplace had replaced the similar (if less impersonal) demands of patronage, and its effect on the art itself was probably similar as well. Generally, artists can now reach an audience only through commercial galleries and public museums, although their work may be occasionally reproduced in art periodicals. They may also be assisted by financial awards or commissions from industry and the state. They have, however, gained the freedom to invent their own visual language and to experiment with new forms and unconventional materials and techniques. For example, some painters have combined other media, such as sculpture, with painting to produce three-dimensional abstract designs. Other artists have attached real objects to the canvas in collage fashion or used electricity to operate coloured kinetic panels and boxes. Conceptual artists frequently express their ideas in the form of a proposal for an unrealizable project, while performance artists are an integral part of their own compositions. The restless endeavour to extend the boundaries of expression in Western art produces continuous international stylistic changes. The often bewildering succession of new movements in painting is further stimulated by the swift interchange of ideas by means of international art journals, traveling exhibitions, and art centres.
This article is concerned with the elements and principles of design in painting and with the various mediums, forms, imagery, subject matter, and symbolism employed or adopted or created by the painter. For the history of painting in ancient Egypt, see Egyptian art and architecture. The development of painting in different regions is treated in a number of articles: Western painting; African art; Central Asian arts; Chinese painting; Islamic arts; Japanese art; Korean art; Native American art; Oceanic art and architecture; South Asian arts; Southeast Asian arts. For the conservation and restoration of paintings, see art conservation and restoration. For a discussion of the forgery of works of art, see forgery. For a discussion of the role of painting and other arts in religion, as well as of the use of religious symbols in art, see religious symbolism and iconography. For information on other arts related to painting, see articles such as drawing; folk art; printmaking.
Elements and principles of design
The design of a painting is its visual format: the arrangement of its lines, shapes, colours, tones, and textures into an expressive pattern. It is the sense of inevitability in this formal organization that gives a great painting its self-sufficiency and presence.
The colours and placing of the principal images in a design may be sometimes largely decided by representational and symbolic considerations. Yet it is the formal interplay of colours and shapes that alone is capable of communicating a particular mood, producing optical sensations of space, volume, movement, and light and creating forces of both harmony and tension, even when a painting's narrative symbolism is obscure.
Elements of design
Each of the design elements has special expressive qualities. Line, for example, is an intuitive, primeval convention for representing things; the simple linear imagery of young children's drawings and prehistoric rock paintings is universally understood. The formal relationships of thick with thin lines, of broken with continuous, and of sinuous with jagged are forces of contrast and repetition in the design of many paintings in all periods of history. Variations in the painted contours of images also provide a direct method of describing the volume, weight, spatial position, light, and textural characteristics of things. The finest examples of this pictorial shorthand are found in Japanese ink painting, where an expressive economy and vitality of line is closely linked to a traditional mastery of calligraphy.
In addition to painted contours, a linear design is composed of all of the edges of tone and colour masses, of the axial directions of images, and of the lines that are implied by alignments of shapes across the picture. The manner in which these various kinds of line are echoed and repeated animates the design. The artist, whether acting consciously or intuitively, also places them in relationship to one another across the picture, so that they weave a unifying rhythmic network throughout the painting.
Apart from the obvious associations of some linear patterns with particular actions—undulating lines suggesting buoyant movement, for instance—emotive sensations are produced by certain linear relationships. Thus, lines moving upward express feelings of joy and aspiration, those directing the eye downward evoke moods of sadness or defeat, while lines at angles opening to the right of a design are more agreeable and welcoming than those spreading outward to the left.
Shape and mass
Shape and mass, as elements of design, include all areas of different colour, tone, and texture, as well as individual and grouped images.
Children instinctively represent the things they see by geometrical symbols. Not only have sophisticated modern artists, such as Paul Klee and Jean Dubuffet, borrowed this untutored imagery, but the more arresting and expressive shapes and masses in most styles of painting and those to which most people intuitively respond will generally be found to have been clearly based on such archetypal forms. A square or a circle will tend to dominate a design and will therefore often be found at its focal centre—the square window framing Christ in Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, for example, the hovering "sun" in an Adolph Gottlieb abstract, or the halo encircling a Christian or Buddhist deity. A firmly based triangular image or group of shapes seems reassuring, even uplifting, while the precarious balance implied by an inverted triangular shape or mass produces feelings of tension. Oval, lozenge, and rectangular forms suggest stability and protection and often surround vulnerable figures in narrative paintings.
There is generally a cellular unity, or "family likeness," between the shapes and masses in a design similar to the visual harmony of all units to the whole observed in natural forms—the gills, fins, and scales in character with the overall shape of a fish, for example.
The negative spaces between shapes and masses are also carefully considered by the artist, since they can be so adjusted as to enhance the action and character of the positive images. They can be as important to the design as time intervals in music or the voids of an architectural facade.
In many styles and periods of painting, the functions of colour are primarily decorative and descriptive, often serving merely to reinforce the expression of an idea or subject communicated essentially in terms of line and tone. In much of modern painting, however, the full-spectrum range of pigments available has allowed colour to be the primary expressive element.
The principal dimensions of colour in painting are the variables or attributes of hue, tone, and intensity. Red, yellow, and blue are the basic hues from which all others on the chromatic scale can be made by mixtures. These three opaque hues are the subtractive pigment primaries and should not be confused with the behaviour of the additive triads and mixtures of transparent, coloured light. Mixtures of primary pairs produce the secondary hues of orange, violet, and green. By increasing the amount of one primary in each of these mixtures, the tertiary colours of yellow-orange, orange-red, red-violet, violet-blue, blue-green, and green-yellow, respectively, are made. The primary colours, with their basic secondary and tertiary mixtures, can be usefully notated as the 12 segments of a circle. The secondary and tertiary colour segments between a pair of parent primaries can then be seen to share a harmonious family relationship with one another—the yellow-orange, orange, and orange-red hues that lie between yellow and red, for example.
Local hues are the inherent and associative colours of things. In everyday life, familiar things are described by particular colours, and these often are identified by reference to familiar things; the green of grass and the grass green of paint, for instance. Although, as the Impressionists demonstrated, the inherent colours of forms in the real world are usually changed by effects of light and atmosphere, many of the great "primitive" and classical styles of representational painting are expressed in terms of local hues.
Tone is a colour's relative degree, or value, of lightness or darkness. The tonal pattern of a painting is shown in a monochrome reproduction. A painting dominated by dark colours, such as a Rembrandt, is in a low tonal key, while one painted in the pale range of a late Claude Monet is said to be high keyed. The tonal range of pigments is too narrow for the painter to be able to match the brightest lights and deepest darks of nature. Therefore, in order to express effects of illumination and dense shadow, he must lower the overall tonal key of his design, thus intensifying the brightness value of his lightest pigment colours.
The Greco-Roman, Renaissance, and Neoclassical method of representing volume and space in painting was by a system of notated tonal values, the direction of each plane in the design being indicated by a particular degree of lightness or darkness. Each tonal value was determined by the angle at which a plane was meant to appear to turn away from an imaginary source of light. The tonal modeling, or shading, of forms was often first completed in a monochrome underpainting. This was then coloured with transparent washes of local hues, a technique similar to that of colour tinting a black-and-white photograph.
Each hue has an intrinsic tonal value in relation to others on the chromatic scale; orange is inherently lighter than red, for instance, and violet is darker than green. Any reversal of this natural tonal order creates a colour discord. An optical shock is therefore produced when orange is juxtaposed with pink (a lighter tone of red) or pale violet is placed against dark green. Such contrasts as these are deliberately created in paintings for the purpose of achieving these dramatic and disturbing effects.
The intensity of a colour is its degree of purity or hue saturation. The colour of a geranium, therefore, is said to be more intense, more highly saturated with pure orange-red than is mahogany. The pigment vermilion is orange-red at maximum intensity; the brown earth pigment burnt sienna is grayer and has a lower degree of orange-red saturation.
Intense hues are termed chromatic colours. The achromatic range is made up of hues reduced in intensity by the addition of white, making the tints, or pastel colours, such as cream and pink; or of black, producing the shades, or earth colours, such as mustard and moss green; or of both white and black, creating the neutralized hues, or colour-tinged grays, such as oatmeal and charcoal.
An achromatic colour will seem more intense if it is surrounded by neutralized hues or juxtaposed with its complementary colour. Complementaries are colour opposites. The complementary colour to one of the primary hues is the mixture of the other two; the complementary to red pigment, for example, is green—that is, blue mixed with yellow. The colour wheel shows that the tertiaries also have their colour opposites, the complementary to orange-red, for instance, being blue-green. Under clear light the complementary to any chroma, shade, or tint can be seen if one "fixates," or stares at, one colour intently for a few seconds then looks at a neutral, preferably white, surface. The colour afterimage will appear to glow on the neutral surface. Mutual enhancement of colour intensity results from juxtaposing a complementary pair, red becoming more intensely red, for instance, and green more fiercely green when these are contiguous than either would appear if surrounded by harmonious hues. The 19th-century physicist Michel-Eugène Chevreul referred to this mutual exaltation of opposites as the law of simultaneous contrast. Chevreul's second law, of successive contrast, referred to the optical sensation that a complementary colour halo appears gradually to surround an intense hue. This complementary glow is superimposed on surrounding weaker colours, a gray becoming greenish when juxtaposed with red, reddish in close relationship with green, yellowish against violet, and so on.
Hues containing a high proportion of blue (the violet to green range) appear cooler than those with a high content of yellow or red (the green-yellow to red-violet range). This difference in the temperature of hues in a particular painting is, of course, relative to the range and juxtaposition of colours in the design. A green will appear cool if surrounded by intense yellow, while it will seem warm against blue-green. The optical tendency for warm colours to advance before cold had been long exploited by European and Asian painters as a method of suggesting spatial depth. Changes in temperature and intensity can be observed in the atmospheric effects of nature, where the colours of distant forms become cooler, grayer, and bluish, while foreground planes and features appear more intense and usually warmer in colour.
The apparent changes in a hue as it passes through zones of different colour has enabled painters in many periods to create the illusion of having employed a wide range of pigment hues with, in fact, the use of very few. And, although painters had applied many of the optical principles of colour behaviour intuitively in the past, the publication of research findings by Chevreul and others stimulated the Neo-Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and the later Orphist and Op art painters to extend systematically the expressive possibilities of these principles in order to create illusions of volume and space and vibrating sensations of light and movement. Paul Cézanne, for example, demonstrated that subtle changes in the surface of a form and in its spatial relationship to others could be expressed primarily in facets of colour, modulated by varying degrees of tone, intensity, and temperature and by the introduction of complementary colour accents.
While the often complex religious and cultural colour symbologies may be understood by very few, the emotional response to certain colour combinations appears to be almost universal. Optical harmonies and discords seem to affect everyone in the same way, if in varying degrees. Thus, an image repeated in different schemes of colour will express a different mood in each change.
Pointillism (a term given to the Neo-Impressionist system of representing the shimmer of atmospheric light with spots of coloured pigment) produced an overall granular texture. As an element of design, texture includes all areas of a painting enriched or animated by vibrating patterns of lines, shapes, tones, and colours, in addition to the tactile textures created by the plastic qualities of certain mediums. Decorative textures may be of geometrical repeat patterns, as in much of Indian, Islamic, and medieval European painting and other art, or of representations of patterns in nature, such as scattered leaves, falling snow, and flights of birds.
Volume and space
The perceptual and conceptual methods of representing volume and space on the flat surface of a painting are related to the two levels of understanding spatial relationships in everyday life.
Perceptual space is the view of things at a particular time and from a fixed position. This is the stationary window view recorded by the camera and represented in the later periods of ancient Greek and Roman paintings and in most Western schools of painting since the Renaissance. Illusions of perceptual space are generally created by use of the linear perspectival system, based on the observations that objects appear to the eye to shrink and parallel lines and planes to converge as they approach the horizon, or viewer's eye level.
Young children and untrained artists, however, do not understand space in this way and represent it conceptually. Their paintings, therefore, show objects and surroundings independently of one another and from the views that best present their most characteristic features. The notion of scale in their pictures is also subjective, the relative size of things being decided by the artist either by their degree of emotional significance for him or by their narrative importance in the picture (interest perspective).
The conceptual, polydimensional representation of space has been used at some period in most cultures. In much of ancient Egyptian and Cretan painting, for example, the head and legs of a figure were shown in profile, but the eye and torso were drawn frontally. And in Indian, Islamic, and pre-Renaissance European painting, vertical forms and surfaces were represented by their most informative elevation view (as if seen from ground level), while the horizontal planes on which they stood were shown in isometric plan (as if viewed from above). This system produces the overall effect that objects and their surroundings have been compressed within a shallow space behind the picture plane.
By the end of the 19th century Cézanne had flattened the conventional Renaissance picture space, tilting horizontal planes so that they appeared to push vertical forms and surfaces forward from the picture plane and toward the spectator. This illusion of the picture surface as an integrated structure in projecting low relief was developed further in the early 20th century by the Cubists. The conceptual, rotary perspective of a Cubist painting shows not only the components of things from different viewpoints but presents every plane of an object and its immediate surroundings simultaneously. This gives the composite impression of things in space that is gained by having examined their surfaces and construction from every angle.
In modern painting, both conceptual and perceptual methods of representing space are often combined. And, where the orbital movement of forms—which has been a basic element in European design since the Renaissance—was intended to hold the spectator's attention within the frame, the expanding picture space in late 20th- and early 21st-century mural-size abstract paintings directs the eye outward to the surrounding wall, and their shapes and colours seem about to invade the observer's own territory.
Time and movement
Time and movement in painting are not restricted to representations of physical energy, but they are elements of all design. Part of the viewer's full experience of a great painting is to allow the arrangement of lines, shapes, and accents of tone or colour to guide the eye across the picture surface at controlled tempos and rhythmic directions. These arrangements contribute overall to the expression of a particular mood, vision, and idea.
Centuries before cinematography, painters attempted to produce kinetic sensations on a flat surface. A mural of 2000 bce in an Egyptian tomb at Beni Hasan, for instance, is designed as a continuous strip sequence of wrestling holds and throws, so accurately articulated and notated that it might be photographed as an animated film cartoon. The gradual unrolling of a 12th-century Japanese hand scroll produces the visual sensation of a helicopter flight along a river valley, while the experience of walking to the end of a long, processional Renaissance mural by Andrea Mantegna or Benozzo Gozzoli is similar to that of having witnessed a passing pageant as a standing spectator.
In the Eastern and Western narrative convention of continuous representation, various incidents in a story were depicted together within one design, the chief characters in the drama easily identified as they reappeared in different situations and settings throughout the painting. In Byzantine murals and in Indian and medieval manuscript paintings, narrative sequences were depicted in grid patterns, each "compartment" of the design representing a visual chapter in a religious story or a mythological or historical epic.
The Cubists aimed to give the viewer the time experience of moving around static forms in order to examine their volume and structure and their relationships to the space surrounding them. In paintings such as Nude Descending a Staircase, Girl Running on a Balcony, and Dog on Leash, Marcel Duchamp and Giacomo Balla combined the Cubist technique of projected, interlocking planes with the superimposed time-motion sequences of cinematography. This technique enabled the artists to analyze the structural mechanics of forms, which are represented as moving in space past the viewer.
Principles of design
Because painting is a two-dimensional art, the flat pattern of lines and shapes is an important aspect of design, even for those painters concerned with creating illusions of great depth. And, since any mark made on the painting surface can be perceived as a spatial statement—for it rests upon it—there are also qualities of three-dimensional design in paintings composed primarily of flat shapes. Shapes in a painting, therefore, may be balanced with one another as units of a flat pattern and considered at the same time as components in a spatial design, balanced one behind another. A symmetrical balance of tone and colour masses of equal weight creates a serene and sometimes monumental design, while a more dynamic effect is created by an asymmetrical balance.
Geometrical shapes and masses are often the basic units in the design of both "flat patterns," such as Byzantine and Islamic paintings, and "sculptural compositions," such as Baroque and Neoclassical figure tableaux. The flat, overlapping squares, circles, and triangles that create the pattern of a Romanesque mural, for example, become the interlocking cubic, spherical, and pyramidal components that enclose the grouped figures and surrounding features in a Renaissance or a Neoclassical composition.
An emphasis upon the proportion of the parts to the whole is a characteristic of Classical styles of painting. The Golden Mean, or Section, has been used as an ideal proportion on which to base the framework of lines and shapes in the design of a painting. The Renaissance mathematician Lucas Pacioli defined this aesthetically satisfying ratio as the division of a line so that the shorter part is to the longer as the longer is to the whole (approximately 8 to 13). His treatise (Divina proportione) influenced Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer. The Neo-Impressionists Georges Seurat and Paul Signac based the linear pattern of many of their compositions upon the principle of this "divine proportion." Golden Mean proportions can be discovered in the design of many other styles of painting, although often they may have been created more by intuitive judgment than by calculated measurement.
Tension is created in paintings, as it is experienced in everyday life, by the anticipation of an event or by an unexpected change in the order of things. Optical and psychological tensions occur in passages of a design, therefore, when lines or shapes almost touch or seem about to collide, when a harmonious colour progression is interrupted by a sudden discord, or when an asymmetrical balance of lines, shapes, tones, or colours is barely held.
Contrasts in line, shape, tone, and colour create vitality; rectilinear shapes played against curvilinear, for instance, or warm colours against cool. Or a painting may be composed in contrasted overall patterns, superimposed in counterpoint to one another—a colour scheme laid across contrasting patterns of lines and tones, for example.
Design relationships between painting and other visual arts
The philosophy and spirit of a particular period in painting usually have been reflected in many of its other visual arts. The ideas and aspirations of the ancient cultures, of the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Neoclassical periods of Western art and, more recently, of the 19th-century Art Nouveau and Secessionist movements were expressed in much of the architecture, interior design, furniture, textiles, ceramics, dress design, and handicrafts, as well as in the fine arts, of their times. Following the Industrial Revolution, with the redundancy of handcraftmanship and the loss of direct communication between the fine artist and society, idealistic efforts to unite the arts and crafts in service to the community were made by William Morris in Victorian England and by the Bauhaus in 20th-century Germany. Although their aims were not fully realized, their influences, like those of the short-lived de Stijl and Constructivist movements, have been far-reaching, particularly in architectural, furniture, and typographic design.
Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were painters, sculptors, and architects. Although no artists since have excelled in so wide a range of creative design, leading 20th-century painters expressed their ideas in many other mediums. In graphic design, for example, Pierre Bonnard, Henri Matisse, and Raoul Dufy produced posters and illustrated books; André Derain, Fernand Léger, Marc Chagall, Mikhail Larionov, Robert Rauschenberg, and David Hockney designed for the theatre; Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, and Chagall worked in ceramics; Georges Braque and Salvador Dalí designed jewelry; and Dalí, Hans Richter, and Andy Warhol made films. Many of these, with other modern painters, have also been sculptors and printmakers and have designed for textiles, tapestries, mosaics, and stained glass, while there are few mediums of the visual arts that Picasso did not work in and revitalize.
In turn, painters have been stimulated by the imagery, techniques, and design of other visual arts. One of the earliest of these influences was possibly from the theatre, where the ancient Greeks are thought to have been the first to employ the illusions of optical perspective. The discovery or reappraisal of design techniques and imagery in the art forms and processes of other cultures has been an important stimulus to the development of more recent styles of Western painting, whether or not their traditional significance have been fully understood. The influence of Japanese woodcut prints on Synthetism and the Nabis, for example, and of African sculpture on Cubism and the German Expressionists helped to create visual vocabularies and syntax with which to express new visions and ideas. The invention of photography introduced painters to new aspects of nature, while eventually prompting others to abandon representational painting altogether. Painters of everyday life, such as Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Édouard Vuillard, and Bonnard, exploited the design innovations of camera cutoffs, close-ups, and unconventional viewpoints in order to give the spectator the sensation of sharing an intimate picture space with the figures and objects in the painting.


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Target confirmed Friday that the hack attack against the retailer's point-of-sale (POS) systems that began in late November triggered alarms, which its information security team evaluated and chose to ignore.
"Like any large company, each week at Target there are a vast number of technical events that take place and are logged. Through our investigation, we learned that after these criminals entered our network, a small amount of their activity was logged and surfaced to our team," said Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder via email. "That activity was evaluated and acted upon."
Unfortunately, however, the security team appears to have made the wrong call. "Based on their interpretation and evaluation of that activity, the team determined that it did not warrant immediate follow up," she said. "With the benefit of hindsight, we are investigating whether, if different judgments had been made, the outcome may have been different."
[Collaboration with competitors may be the key to slowing security threats. See Retail Industry May Pool Intel To Stop Breaches.]
Target arguably wasn't breached because it failed to invest in proper information security defenses. In fact, Snyder said the company had "invested hundreds of millions of dollars in data security, had a robust system in place, and had recently been certified as PCI-compliant." Likewise, the retailer apparently heeded multiple warnings from US-CERT -- part of the Department of Homeland Security -- about the increasing threat of POS-malware attacks against retailers.
Unusually for a retailer, Target was even running its own security operations center in Minneapolis, according to a report published Thursday by Bloomberg Businessweek. Among its security defenses, following a months-long testing period and May 2013 implementation, was software from attack-detection firm FireEye, which caught the initial November 30 infection of Target's payment system by malware. All told, up to five "malware.binary" alarms reportedly sounded, each graded at the top of FireEye's criticality scale, and which were seen by Target's information security teams first in Bangalore, and then Minneapolis.
When reviewing Target's log files, digital forensic investigators also found the November 30 alerts, as well as multiple alerts from December 2, all of which tied to attackers installing multiple versions of their malware -- with the alerts including details for the external servers to which data was being sent -- Bloomberg Businessweek reported. Later on December 2, attackers began siphoning 40 million credit and debit card numbers from POS terminals, as well as personal information on 70 million customers. Ultimately, they exfiltrated at least 11 GB of data, according to Aviv Raff, CTO of Israel-based cybersecurity technology company Seculert, which found one of three FTP servers to which the data was sent. From there, the data was transferred to a server hosted by Russian-based hosting service vpsville.ru.
Obviously, had Target's security team reacted differently, they might have contained what turned into a massive data breach. But the security team didn't even have to be in the loop. The FireEye software could have been setMathew Schwartz served as the InformationWeek information security reporter from 2010 until mid-2014. View Full Bio


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NMT Listed as "Best Value" in Princeton Review , March 29, 2006
by George Zamora
SOCORRO, N.M., March 29, 2006 – New Mexico Tech is one of the nation's "best value" undergraduate institutions, according to The Princeton Review. The New York-based education services company features the state-supported research university in the new 2007 edition of its college guidebook, America's Best Value Colleges.
The latest edition of the annual guide, which is currently on sale, profiles 150 colleges with outstanding academics, generous financial aid packages, and relatively low costs. It includes 103 public and 47 private colleges and universities in 40 states. The Princeton Review also has posted a complete list of the selected schools in the book on its website at www.princetonreview.com.
New Mexico Tech also was included in the category of "Best Western Colleges" in the current edition of America's Best Value Colleges.
The Princeton Review compiled the ranking list and chose the colleges for the guidebook based on data the company obtained from administrators at 646 colleges, as well as from surveys of students attending them.
Says Robert Franek, V.P-Publishing, The Princeton Review, "We considered over 30 factors to rate the colleges in four categories: Academics, Tuition GPA (the sticker price minus average amount students receive in scholarships and grants), Financial Aid (how well colleges meet students' financial need), and student borrowing. We recommend the 150 schools in this book as America's best college education deals."
America's Best Value Colleges has three-page profiles on the included colleges, lists of the top 10 best value private colleges and the top 10 best public colleges, and advice about applying for admission and financial aid. It is one of more than 200 Princeton Review books published by Random House in a line that includes the annual Best 361 Colleges and Paying for College without Going Broke.
Known for its test-prep courses, books, and college and grad school admissions services, The Princeton Review is an education services company, and is not affiliated with Princeton University or ETS.
Media Contact for Princeton Review Books: Jeanne Krier, 212.539.1350.


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