According to federal officials, a number of copycat terror cells have sprung up recently inside the United States. Among them are a group of New Yorkers now on trial and six suspects busted by the FBI earlier this month who planned to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey. The men weren’t exactly professional conspirators; the Jersey group was uncovered when they brought a training DVD to Circuit City to have it copied. But that’s exactly what makes them dangerous, say government sources: the new plotters are mostly amateur freelancers, with little or no connection to Al Qaeda or any other formal terror group.
It’s not all bad news: because the homegrown groups lack the expertise of Qaeda-trained terrorists, they are probably more prone to blunder. But this lack of affiliation may also make them harder to identify and track. Al Qaeda and its affiliates seem to be well aware of this fact and are now using sophisticated English-language videos (the group made 48 last year) and Web sites to inspire followers in Europe and America. U.S. officials speak of an increase in sites, as well as a sophisticated advertising blitz on the Web by the terrorists eager to win new converts.
It remains uncertain whether any of the suspects had the means to do real damage to the United States, and critics charge that the FBI has been overzealous in snaring troubled individuals by using aggressive undercover tactics. But the rise in homegrown subversives clearly has the government worried. “Al Qaeda is banking on the idea that if they pump up the volume and increase the number of messages, they’ll be able to push fence sitters over the edge,” says a senior law-enforcement official who asked not to be named discussing intelligence issues. —Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
EVEN IN PARADISE The global era is witnessing a widening gap between rich and poor everywhere from the United States to China and, now, even in North Korea, the world’s most isolated state.
On a recent visit to the North, a NEWSWEEK reporter saw women with handbags labeled Chanel, men sporting the latest Sony digital handycams and drivers maneuvering Mercedes sedans and Toyota SUVs down otherwise deserted streets. Most North Koreans still scrape to buy food, much less cars. Little of the evidence of conspicuous consumption was evident just a few years ago.
Ever since Pyongyang began to allow limited private markets in 2002, more and more North Koreans have been trading for a living, some very successfully. Trade with China, in particular, is way up, from $800 million in 2002 to $1.7 billion in 2006.
While some get rich, complains one recent defector to the South, “others nearly starve.” If a growing income gap is not unique to North Korea, it is particularly threatening to a nation that has worked so hard to shut out global forces, and still claims to be an egalitarian paradise. —Christian Caryl, B. J. LEE and Akiko Kashiwagi
DOUBLE TAKE When Daimler’s management punted 80 percent of Chrysler to a private-equity firm, it marked a watershed for Germany’s shareholder-rights revolution. Activist shareholders have rationalized ownership, diversified boards and raised performance standards. But the Chrysler sale suggests they don’t necessarily have the wisdom to match their newfound muscle. In paying a net $700 million to relieve themselves of an asset for which management paid $36 billion, they’ve realized the classic investor blunder of buying high and selling low. —John Sparks
EYE ON IRAQ Reality-television shows are based on personalities, connection with the audience and drama. Does “Hometown Baghdad,” a new Web-based series shot in Iraq (hometownbaghdad.com), deliver?
LIGHT READING Few of us find the time to read literary tomes like “Moby-Dick.” But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t love to offer an attempt at literary criticism at cocktail parties. With that in mind, London-based Orion Publishing Group has launched a series of “compact” editions of classics like “The Mill on the Floss” and “David Copperfield.” Via what Orion calls “sympathetic editing,” the prose is cut down to its bare essentials—the editors cut about 20 minor characters (Prince Kuzovlev and Countess Mary Borisovna among them) from “Anna Karenina.” For “Moby-Dick,” the editors simply omitted the history and mythology of whaling from the story line.
Even skeptics admit that these versions might inspire people to pursue more lengthy books. “If people who wouldn’t read ‘Moby-Dick’ otherwise read this cut-down version and get interested, then maybe that’s good,” says Philip Horne, an English professor at University College London. —Silvia Spring
REALITY CHECK Scientists at MIT have found that mice lost the ability to find food in a maze—and avoid electric shocks in the process—after induced brain degeneration. But through mental stimulation the same mice were able to remember their way. These findings could help patients with memory-impairing neurodegenerative diseases avoid dementia.
In an art world filled with big, raucous abstract paintings—not to mention video installations as jumpy and noisy as action movies—a museum exhibition of a 20th-century realist could seem dated and, well, boring. That’s not the case with the new retrospective of about 100 works by the American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. But the reasons aren’t the familiar ones about how “alienation” or “melancholy” are the secrets to Hopper’s power. In Hopper icons such as the 1942 café scene “Nighthawks,” he was simply depicting a pre-cell-phone America in which there were still moments of silence. The former illustrator painted urban life with a sincere and guileless affection that Andy Warhol would later morph into irony and cleverness. A lot of Hopper’s comparatively cheerful oils are devoid of people, but that’s because his composition is so pared down to essentials that little figures would clutter it up.
The Hopper formula—if it can be called that—is about 70 percent common sense (fidelity to the subject, but no extraneous details) and 30 percent subdued lyricism. Two wonderful bits of business almost explain it all. The translucent window beside the diners with the cloche hats in “Chop Suey” (1929) is a deft combination of a tiny patch of canvas left unpainted, daringly opaque paint used to depict transparent scuzz and an array of swamp greens. The rows of overhead lights reflected in the nighttime window in “Automat” (1927) recede like UFOs surveilling the woman alone with her coffee. Trivial? Hardly. They’re like lines you remember from great movies. Which isn’t surprising, seeing how Hopper was, in movie-star terms, the Henry Fonda of American art. —Peter Plagens
