Even after Bin Laden's departure from the area, CIA officers hoped he might return, seeing the camp as a magnet that could draw him for as long as it was still set up. The military maintained readiness for another strike opportunity. On March 7, 1999, Clarke called a UAE official to express his concerns about possible associations between Emirati officials and Bin Laden. Clarke later wrote in a memorandum of this conversation that the call had been approved at an interagency meeting and cleared with the CIA. When the former Bin Laden unit chief found out about Clarke's call, he questioned CIA officials, who denied having given such a clearance. Imagery confirmed that less than a week after Clarke's phone call the camp was hurriedly dismantled, and the site was deserted. CIA officers, including Deputy Director for Operations Pavitt, were irate." Mike" thought the dismantling of the camp erased a possible site for targeting Bin Laden. The United Arab Emirates was becoming both a valued counterterrorism ally of the United States and a persistent counterterrorism problem. From 1999 through early 2001, the United States, and President Clinton personally, pressed the UAE, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off its ties and enforce sanctions, especially those relating to flights to and from Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/11. In July 1999, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hamdan bin Zayid threatened to break relations with the Taliban over Bin Laden. The Taliban did not take him seriously, however. Bin Zayid later told an American diplomat that the UAE valued its relations with the Taliban because the Afghan radicals offered a counterbalance to "Iranian dangers" in the region, but he also noted that the UAE did not want to upset the United States.

How did the UAE both help and hinder anti-terrorism efforts?

Madame White Snake: East Asian Femme Fatale of Old The Chinese legend of Madame White Snake, the snake demon that takes human form and becomes the wife of a man, has exerted a lasting influence over East Asian folktales and fiction for centuries. Two quintessential novellas, "The Lust of the White Serpant" from Ugetsu Monogatari by the Japanese author Ueda Akinari and "Eternal Prisoner under Thunder Peak Pagoda" a traditional Chinese story, are both relatively complex and demonstrate not only the evolution of the White Snake figure to become a more believable human, but also what aspects may have given her enduring appeal. While both these stories are ostensibly morality tales about the dangerous beauty of this femme fatale, the true source of pleasure from these narratives is the femme fatale's transgressive behavior, not her eventual punishment for it. Early tales of Madame White Snake appeared in China as early as the Song Dynasty, and initially her portrayal was fairly direct, as a villainous demon who drains the life force out of her human husband. But over time, characterizations of her became more complex, and the persona of Madame White Snake became more sympathetic, and perhaps even a model of the ideal Confucian wife, particularly in "Pagoda". Whalen Lai notes, "She was a loving wife, a caring mother, rescuer of her family from the first flood, and, at that point, a general benefactor of man. She took on the virtues of a traditional Chinese female, particularly forbearance". But if she were really an ideal wife, why could she not live happily with her human mate? Her dangerous sexuality is the key. Femme fatale might seem an unusual term to apply to a character from pre-modern Chinese and Japanese literature who may exemplify the virtues of an ideal Confucian wife, since it is primarily associated with film characters, particularly those of the film noir genre. But this term, which is relatively speaking, a neologism (The earliest uses were around the beginning of the 20th century

What type of stories are "The Lust of the White Serpant" and "Eternal Prisoner under Thunder Peak Pagoda"?

At length, as I entered the pass, the huge rocks began to close around in all their wild, mysterious impressiveness, when suddenly, as I was gazing eagerly about me, a drove of gray hairy beings came in sight, lumbering toward me with a kind of boneless, wallowing motion like bears. I never turn back, though often so inclined, and in this particular instance, amid such surroundings, everything seemed singularly unfavorable for the calm acceptance of so grim a company. Suppressing my fears, I soon discovered that although as hairy as bears and as crooked as summit pines, the strange creatures were sufficiently erect to belong to our own species. They proved to be nothing more formidable than Mono Indians dressed in the skins of sage-rabbits. Both the men and the women begged persistently for whisky and tobacco, and seemed so accustomed to denials that I found it impossible to convince them that I had none to give. Excepting the names of these two products of civilization, they seemed to understand not a word of English; but I afterward learned that they were on their way to Yosemite Valley to feast awhile on trout and procure a load of acorns to carry back through the pass to their huts on the shore of Mono Lake.
What did the strangers want and what were they wearing?