For that reason he stresses the need for citizens to practice situational awareness, since they are in the best position to pick-up on lone wolf terror planning such as their surveillance of targets, acquisition of bomb making material and other suspicious behaviors
Since he mentioned bombs, as is my habit when that topic arises I turned to blonde bombshells in looking for the Hot Stratfor Babe for the article. After a careful and detailed search I selected Kim Novak for the honor.
In 1954, when Marylin Monroe had burst on to the scene, the other studios scrambled to find their version of her. Columbia Studio hired Kim Novak to fit the role for them. Over her career she made a number of movies, often starring opposite of Jimmy Stewart or Jack Lemon, which were variously received. By far and away her best known movie role was in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
By the 60's she began to wind her movie career down. Ms Novak, who has been married to the veterinarian Dr. Robert Malloy since 1976, now spends her time painting and raising animals on a ranch.
As a bonus, after the article I've embedded the Zodiac Club scene from Bell, book and Candle. It is a wonderful mixture of witchery and beatnik era tom-foolishness.
FIGHTING GRASSROOTS TERRORISM: HOW LOCAL VIGILANCE CAN HELP
By Scott Stewart, August 4, 2011
In the wake of the July 22 Oslo attacks, as I have talked with people in the United States and Europe, I have noticed two themes in the conversations. The first is the claim that the attacks came from an unexpected source and were therefore impossible to stop. The second theme is that detecting such attacks is the sole province of dedicated counterterrorism authorities.
As discussed in last week's Security Weekly, even in so-called "unexpected" attacks there are specific operational tasks that must be executed in order to conduct an operation. Such tasks can be detected, and unexpected attacks emanating from lone wolf actors can indeed be thwarted if such indicators are being looked for. Alleged Oslo attack perpetrator Anders Breivik reportedly conducted several actions that would have made him vulnerable to detection had the authorities been vigilant and focused on those possible actions.
This is why it is critical to look at the mechanics of attacks in order to identify the steps that must be undertaken to complete them and then focus on identifying people taking such steps. Focusing on the "how" rather than the "who" is an effective way for authorities to get on the proactive side of the action/reaction continuum.
Considering this concept of focusing on the how, one quickly reaches a convergence with the second theme, which involves the role and capabilities of dedicated counterterrorism resources. The primary agency tasked with counterterrorism in most countries tends to have limited resources that are stretched thin trying to cover known or suspected threats. These agencies simply do not have the manpower to look for attack-planning indicators -- especially in a world where militant actors are increasingly adopting the leaderless-resistance model, which is designed to avoid detection by counterterrorism forces.
When these factors are combined they highlight the fact that, as the threat posed by militants adhering to the leaderless-resistance model (whom we frequently refer to as "grassroots militants") increases, so does the need for grassroots defenders.
Grassroots Threats
As we noted last week, Andres Breivik's concept of self-appointed and anonymous "Justiciar Knights" who operate as lone wolves or in small phantom cells is not a unique concept. Breivik was clearly influenced by the militant-group case studies he outlined in his manifesto. In recent decades, governments have become fairly efficient at identifying and gathering intelligence on known groups that pose a threat to conduct violent attacks. This is especially true in the realm of technical intelligence, where dramatic increases have been made in the ability to capture and process huge amounts of data from landline, cellphone and Internet communications, but governments have also become quite adept at penetrating militant groups and recruiting informants. Even before 9/11, government successes against militant groups had led white supremacist groups and militant animal-rights and environmentalist groups to adopt a leaderless resistance model for their violent and illegal activities.
In the post-9/11 world, intelligence and security services have dramatically increased the resources dedicated to counterterrorism, and the efforts of these services have proved very effective when focused on known organizations and individuals. Indeed, in recent years we have seen a trend where jihadist groups like al Qaeda and its franchises have encouraged aspiring militants to undertake lone wolf and small cell activities rather than travel to places like Pakistan and Yemen to link up with the groups and receive training in terrorist tradecraft. For several years now, STRATFOR has emphasized the nature of this decentralized threat.
We see no sign of this trend toward leaderless resistance reversing in the near future, and our forecast is that the grassroots threat will continue to grow, not only from the jihadist realm but also from far-right and far-left actors.
Stretched Thin
As noted above, most counterterrorism intelligence efforts have been designed to identify and track people with links to known militant groups, and in that regard they are fairly effective. However, they have been largely ineffective in identifying grassroots militants. The focus on identifying and monitoring the activities of someone connected to a known militant group is understandable given that operatives connected to groups such as Hezbollah or al Qaeda have access to much better training and far greater resources than their grassroots counterparts. In general, militants linked to organizations pose a more severe threat than do most grassroots militants, and thus counterterrorism agencies focus much of their attention on the more potent threat. [continued after the jump]
