Not much here, but noted in passing.

What’s a fair trial and how much due process does it require?

In the Hamdan case last June, four of the justices who voted against the commissions stressed that the president could always go back to Congress to get the authority he wanted.

The issue, then, is more about the court of public opinion: how a trial, without the customary procedural rights, would be perceived in the United States and abroad.

In the first World Trade Center bombing case in 1993, prosecutors had to give the defense a list of 200 unindicted co-conspirators. The list was delivered to bin Laden and was later found during the investigation of the African embassy bombings.

A Terror Trial, With or Without Due Process

If Charles Dickens were alive today, he would watch “The Wire,” unless, that is, he was already writing for it.

Television You Can’t Put Down

Check out William Gibson's op-ed in today's NYT. (One wonders how he managed to qualify as someone with "experience in security and counterterrorism.")

Did we just get lucky?

The Op-Ed page asked 10 people with experience in security and counterterrorism to answer the following question: What is one major reason the United States has not suffered a major attack since 2001, and what is the one thing you would recommend the nation do in order to avoid attacks in the future?

Giving Muslims Hope, By THOMAS KEAN and LEE HAMILTON

We must stop the radicalization of young Muslims from Jakarta to London, offer moral leadership, and put forward an an agenda of opportunity for the Islamic world.

We Can't Kill an Ideology, By MELISSA BOYLE MAHLE

AQ has not hit America because it has chosen not to. It’s time to start discrediting Al Qaeda’s ideology and offering Muslims nonviolent alternatives. The first step is to acknowledge that their grievances are legitimate. The second is to acknowledge that our current approach is only helping Al Qaeda go mainstream.

How War Can Bring Peace, By JACK GOLDSMITH and ADRIAN VERMEULE

Going forward, we should more vigorously embrace technology as a tool. Properly designed programs can produce large gains in security in return for small losses of privacy and liberty.

Don't Forget Our Values, By JOSCHKA FISCHER

Immediately after 9/11, Al Qaeda seemed to be losing its battle with America and the West. Unfortunately, that changed. What are we in the West fighting for?

Less Political Correctness, By RAFI RON

We must be less politically correct, and begin a program that looks for risks where they are most likely to be found.

Qaeda Set the Bar High, By CLARK KENT ERVIN

After spending some $20 billion on securing the nation’s airways since 9/11, one shudders to think how much more vulnerable our other assets are.

Keep American Muslims on Our Side, By JESSICA STERN

The jihadists understand that they are fighting a war of ideas. Major strikes can backfire. Let’s not make that mistake again.

Gibson offers his take on the "why no attacks?" question:

ANOTHER attempt on the scale of the 2001 attacks hasn't been necessary. The last one is still doing the trick, and the terrorists' resources are limited. The fear induced by terrorism mirrors the irrational psychology that makes state lotteries an utterly reliable form of stupidity tax. A huge statistical asymmetry serves as fulcrum for a spectral yet powerful lever: apprehension of the next jackpot. We're terrorized not by the actual explosion, which statistically we’re almost never present for, but by our apprehension of the next one.

The terrorist tactic that matters most is the next one used, one we haven't seen yet. In order to know it, we must know the terrorists. Without a national security policy that concentrates on the vigorous and politically agnostic maximization of intelligence rather than, in the phrase of the security expert Bruce Schneier, "security theater," that may well prove impossible.

10 Ways to Avoid the Next 9/11

Dana Priest sums up the situation.

In the last three months, following a request from President Bush to "flood the zone," the CIA has sharply increased the number of intelligence officers and assets devoted to the pursuit of bin Laden.

The problem, former and current counterterrorism officials say, is that no one is certain where the "zone" is.

The Afghan-Pakistan border is about 1,500 miles.

At least 23 senior anti-Taliban tribesmen have been assassinated in South and North Waziristan since May 2005.

Pakistan has now all but stopped looking for bin Laden.

"Once again, we have lost track of Ayman al-Zawahiri," the Pakistani intelligence official said in a recent interview. "He keeps popping on television screens. It's miserable, but we don't know where he or his boss are hiding."

"There's nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden!" one frustrated counterterrorism official shouted. "Nobody!"

"We work by consensus," explained Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr. "It's not that effective, or we'd find the guy."

This is an interesting vignette:

In early November 2002, a CIA drone armed with a Hellfire missile killed a top al-Qaeda leader traveling through the Yemeni desert. About a week later, Rumsfeld expressed anger that it was the CIA, not the Defense Department, that had carried out the successful strike.

"How did they get the intel?" he demanded.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, then director of the National Security Agency and technically part of the Defense Department, said he had given it to them.

"Why aren't you giving it to us?" Rumsfeld wanted to know.

Hayden, according to this source, told Rumsfeld that the information-sharing mechanism with the CIA was working well. Rumsfeld said it would have to stop.

Bin Laden Trail 'Stone Cold'

Over the last year, as Iran, Iraq and Lebanon have dominated headlines, hopes of gaining firmer control of a largely forgotten corner of the war on terrorism — the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region — have quietly evaporated.

On Tuesday, the Pakistani government signed a "truce" with militants which lets militants remain in the area as long as they promised to halt attacks.

Is this the "separate peace" that Rumsfeld was talking about? He must be furious about this, right?

The Taliban leadership is believed to have established a base of operations in and around the Pakistani city of Quetta. The Pakistani government sees the group as a tool to counter growing Indian influence in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, roadside bomb attacks have doubled this year, and suicide bombings have tripled.

This year, the United States cut its aid to Afghanistan by 30 percent.

Al Qaeda and the Taliban are no doubt betting that time is on their side.

Al Qaeda Finds Its Center of Gravity

This Week In Review article by Lowell Bergman follows up on the essay -- previously recommended here -- in the current issue of Foreign Affairs.

There are few counterterrorism success stories more compelling than that of Raed al-Banna.

The absence of new attacks, even as terrorist violence worldwide has increased and bombers have struck in Madrid, London and beyond, "is not pure luck."

The Age of Terror, at least inside the United States, has morphed into the Age of the Foiled Plot. But this very success has led to a new debate.

A new study of all "terrorism-related" prosecutions since 9/11 found that of 417 people charged in the cases, the overwhelming majority faced immigration or other lesser charges. Just 39 have been convicted so far on terrorism-related charges, and only three of actual terrorism.

Tom Kean, the chairman of the 9/11 commission, says that the FBI has sometimes squandered huge resources on minor domestic cases.

"I’d prefer to bust conspiracies so early that someone doesn’t have access to a weapon."

Mr. Arquilla said, "I think making arrests in the Florida case actually made us less secure."

Adding Up the Ounces of Prevention

Alas, it turns out that even among the MySpace generation, there is such a thing as too much information.

That threshold was reached, unexpectedly, earlier this week when the social networking site Facebook unveiled what was to be its killer app. In the past, to keep up with the doings of friends, Facebook members had to make some sort of effort — by visiting the friend’s Web page from time to time, or actually sending an e-mail or instant message to ask how things were going.

Facebook’s new feature, a news "feed," does that heavy lifting for you. The program monitors the activity on its members’ pages — a change in one’s relationship status, the addition of a new person to one’s friends list, the listing of a new favorite song or interest — and sends that information to everyone in your circle in a constantly updating news ticker. Imagine a device that monitors the social marketplace the way a blinking Bloomberg terminal tracks incremental changes in the bond market and you’ll get the idea.

When Information Becomes T.M.I.

At this year's Cannes film festival, one of the more ardently argued questions had to do with the Spanish actress Penélope Cruz, whose performance in Pedro Almodóvar’s "Volver" was one of the festival's high points. The movie was widely beloved -- so much so that at the closing ceremonies its two prizes, for Mr. Almodóvar's screenplay and for its remarkable ensemble of actresses, seemed almost disappointing -- and Ms. Cruz in particular had no shortage of admirers.

In "Volver" Pedro Almodóvar has transformed Penélope Cruz into a melodramatic heroine.

Few were inclined to dispute the wit or dexterity of her acting, which steers "Volver" from screwball to weepie and back again with intoxicating verve. But many viewers -- not all of them low-minded, lecherous types by any means -- noticed that her usually sparrowlike figure seemed fuller than usual, especially around the hips.

Had Mr. Almodóvar padded his star's skirt? One source, connected with the film's American distributor, was sure he had. Another, who had encountered Ms. Cruz at a party, swore that what we had seen on the screen was there, as it were, in the flesh.

American audiences, accustomed to speculating about the authenticity of various movie-star body parts, will have a chance to assess this issue when "Volver" is released in the United States on Nov. 3. (It will also be the centerpiece, on Oct. 7 and 8, of the New York Film Festival.) But there is no doubt that, with or without cushioning, Ms. Cruz reveals a new dimension in this film, and that Mr. Almodóvar, who created it in part as a showcase for her talents, has provided her with her most substantial role to date.

From Everygirl to Everywoman: Penélope Cruz's Journey

Each year, TED hosts some of the world's most fascinating people: Trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses. The talks they deliver have had had such a great impact, we thought they deserved a wider audience. So now - with our sponsor BMW and production partner WNYC/New York Public Radio we're sharing some of the most remarkable TED talks with the world at large. Each week, we'll release a new talk, in audio and video, to download or watch online. For best effect, plan to listen to at least three, start to finish. They have a cumulative effect...

TEDTalks (audio, video)

As evidence mounts that we're somehow hard-wired to be musical, some thinkers are turning their attention to the next logical question: How did that come to be? And as the McGill University neuroscientist Daniel Levitin writes in his just-published book, "This is Your Brain on Music," "To ask a question about a basic, omnipresent human ability is to implicitly ask questions about evolution."

I almost bought this book two weeks ago. I still may. It definitely seemed worth the read; it's a question of time.

Survival of the harmonious