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thursday, january 31, 2002

condemning terrorism

Christopher Johnson parses the “Beirut Declaration on Condemning Terrorism,” a self-serving hypocritical statement by 17 Arab countries that says—hey, guess what?—Israel is the only terrorist in the Middle East.

security woes at SFO

I’ve been holding off on writing about the possible shoe bomber who sauntered away from SFO security yesterday, because as Ken says, the media has totally botched the reporting on this one. I’ve now heard and/or read at least four different stories; just getting the basic facts has been ridiculously difficult.

But as William Quick (whose archives don’t seem to be working) says, the details that are finally emerging demonstrate how pathetic our airline security still is. Remember those people who were working security on September 11? Well, they’re all still there today, and now they’re even harder to fire than ever! Doesn’t that give you a warm, cozy feeling?

send us to cuba!

Many Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners in Afghan jails are pleading, “We want to go to an American prison!”

bad dog, no bloggie

Thanks to everyone who voted for us in the Bloggies™. But alas, it was not to be. Congratulations to the people at fark.com.

terror targets

More information is coming out about the Al Qaeda documents found in Mohammed Atef’s house:

- Documents found in Afghanistan spotlight the U.S. Capitol, Seattle's Space Needle and a portion of Los Angeles, suggesting these areas were being considered for a terrorist attack, ABCNEWS has learned, as new violence threatens Afghan stability.

Sources said the documents were recovered from the home of Osama bin Laden's top military commander, Mohammed Atef, who was killed in the U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan. Atef's home was the site where officials also found the recently released videotapes of five "suicide terrorists" being sought by the U.S. government.

The documents, sources said, referred to Washington, D.C., specifically the U.S. Capitol. Among the items found in Afghanistan were a picture of the Space Needle and a satellite image of a six-block area of what officials say appears to be a portion of Los Angeles, the sources said.

I sure would like to know exactly which six-block area of Los Angeles is in that photo.

sharon regrets

Ariel Sharon says Israel should have “eliminated” Arafat when they had him trapped in Beirut in 1982.

wednesday, january 30, 2002

egyptian sea change

The Jerusalem Post reports that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is applying pressure on Yasser Arafat to rein in terrorism.

google takes a stand

Three cheers for Google. They’ve taken a public stand against pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-arounds, and all the other advertising hell-spawn that have been turning the web into an increasingly annoying experience.

pilger fact check

On that Pilger bilge I wrote about earlier, Kathy Kinsley and Anthony Adragna have ganged up on him and fact-checked his sorry ass into next week. They fact-checked him so hard they debunked his whole family. They fact-checked him like a red-headed stepchild. They fact-checked the taste out his mouth.

the photo ID that wasnít

Today’s jaw-dropper: a Muslim woman is suing Florida for suspending her driver’s license after she refused to remove her face-covering veil for the photograph. The ACLU is handling her case. And CAIR, of course, is outraged that the state of Florida would actually expect a photo ID to be useful for identification.

"To take it off would be the equivalent of some other woman being forced to remove her blouse," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based Islamic advocacy group.

Amazingly, she was allowed to get two previous driver’s licenses, posing with a veil that revealed only her eyes.

Next time I have to renew my driver’s license I’m going to claim my religion requires me to wear Mickey Mouse ears and a scuba mask.

sanity watch

MEMRI has translations of an amazing series of articles by Qatari liberal Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, calling for reform in Arab educational systems, and the renunciation of violence and xenophobia.

"I am among those who maintain that some of the preachers in the mosques incite hatred towards those of a different religion. It is they who caused the Afghan-Arab phenomenon; it is they who portrayed the war in Afghanistan as a crusader war between Islam and Christianity. This is a lie that many youth fell for, and fell victim to. Questions must be addressed to the inciters, because they are partners to the same crimes. Incitement, radicalization, [and] calling for the destruction of the Christian enemies of Islam have become mandatory for some preachers. If Allah had destroyed the Christians, the Muslim preacher would not have a microphone to preach with, or the air conditioner or the car he so enjoys..."

"It is unfair to name the American response [to September 11] 'terrorism,' because by so doing we are confusing the concepts of terrorism and self-defense or response to aggression... and at a time when we are demanding that the international community not confuse 'terrorism' with 'legitimate resistance.' What happened in America is terrorism; the American response is a response to that aggression, and there is a world-wide consensus on this."

"...[O]nly those with a hatred-of-America complex, whose goal is to permit the perpetrators to escape, [name America's response 'terrorism']. Any other country in which such an act of terror had taken place would have hastened to respond and to annihilate everything... we have many examples of this in Arab history."

I’ll bet this guy gets some interesting mail.

it’s awesome rant day

Found on the referrer page: some guy I never heard of, “David Lee Beowulf,” who also goes by the handle “Angry Viking,” has written a great rant about blogs, Chomsky, Gitmo, and the mental stability of US soldiers. Read the whole thing or he’ll kick your ass, damn it.

one day when iím rich

I think Ken has been dipping into the Peruvian marching powder again; at 4 am this morning he penned this awesome rant, beginning with the etymology of the word “gadget” and ending with Muslims on spaceships.

But somewhere in the middle, while extolling the virtues of true multiculturalism, he makes this scurrilous and pernicious statement:

Jesus, just try to eat Spanish food. It's like eating a sock filled with ham.

You’ve been chowing down in the wrong dives, Layne. Next time you’re in Vitoria, have dinner at El Portalon, and you’ll wish you’d never written such evil slander. (Or is it libel?)

I had one of the most memorable evenings of my life in the Caballo Dining Room, when the Al Jarreau Band took over the restaurant after a concert at the Vitoria Jazz Festival. After many bottles of stupidly expensive wine from their incredible cellar, and course after course of mind-numbingly delicious food, drummer Alex Acuna was overcome with feelings of love for Al and decided he had to embrace him. Immediately. Even though Al was on the other side of the museum-piece antique dining table. The shortest distance between two points was, of course, directly across the table. Which promptly collapsed with a gigantic crash.

The mark of a true restaurant of quality: the staff simply came in and cleaned up, with no bad vibes. (To be honest, I think some money also changed hands.) Even though we were all cackling like a bunch of liquored-up ugly American/Peruvian goons. And they let us come back the year after.

state of the union speech

Here is the full text of President Bush’s State of the Union Address.

I was struck by several passages that seemed to be directed at Saudi Arabia. For example:

America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere. No nation owns these aspirations and no nation is exempt from them. We have no intention of imposing our culture, but America will always stand firm for the non- negotiable demands of human dignity, the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice and religious tolerance.

America will take the side of brave men and women who advocate these values around the world, including the Islamic world, because we have a greater objective than eliminating threats and containing resentment.

arrogant bush

Iran says we’re arrogant, and the war on terror is a plot to distract the world from the evil Jews.

Manila says we’re arrogant, and the war on terror is a plot to justify intervention in other countries’ internal affairs.

Bilious John Pilger has gone completely off his rocker, and says the war on terror is a US plot to take over the world. Curses! He’s on to us; we’ll have to change our plans.

Dubya must be doing something right.

(Pilger, by the way, quotes the infamous “report” by Women’s Studies Professor Marc Herold on civilian casualties in Afghanistan—but he must have thought Herold’s bogus figure of 4000 deaths didn’t sound dramatic enough, since he unaccountably tacks on another bogus thousand. A thoroughly dishonest piece of writing.)

tuesday, january 29, 2002

arab hypocrites

At the Arab News—the official mouthpiece of a corrupt and parasitic regime that brutally executes homosexuals, beats women for revealing their ankles, and exports religious extremism around the world—they’re accusing America of savagery.

realignments?

Ha’aretz has more on what may be signs of the beginning of the end for Arafat, as high-level meetings take place between Israel and Egypt.

egyptian about-face

DEBKA is reporting that Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has had a sudden change of heart toward the Sharon government, and is joining the US-Israel-Jordan bloc against Yasser Arafat.

unlawful combatants

Law professor Ronald D. Rotunda writes about unlawful combatants, American law, and the Geneva Convention: No POWs.

detainee business

The Washington Post reports on Saudi Arabia’s demands that Saudi prisoners at Guantanamo Bay be returned to them for “interrogation.” (They’re probably worried that the US will discover further evidence of Al Qaeda ties to the Kingdom.)

The article contains this reaction from a Human Rights Watch official, about the decision to declare the detainees outside the protection of the Geneva Conventions:

Human rights organizations are aghast at the decision.

"It's a legal impossibility not to be covered by the Geneva Conventions" once one has been captured in a war, said Tom Malinowski, a Washington representative for Human Rights Watch . "It's profoundly dangerous, because if they say the conventions don't apply in this new war on terrorism, that implies they don't apply to our forces either."

Apparently, Mr. Malinowski isn’t aware (or maybe he forgot) that captured US soldiers have been consistently mistreated, tortured, and abused in every conflict for the last, oh, 100 years or so.

shameless self-promotion

This is your last day to vote for LGF in the Second Annual Weblog Awards. Scroll down to “Best Weblog About Politics.” Hey, who does that handsome green football belong to? And with such a lonely button beneath it, just begging to be clicked.

Come on, loyal LGF readers—help us win! (We could really use the $20.02.)

OK. How about if we give you a link to a funny monkey picture?

thank you, newsrack

Thanks to Thomas Nephew for the very nice things he said about us. Be sure to visit his weblog often; he speaks fluent German and provides translations of interesting stories in German media (and German weblogs!).

monday, january 28, 2002

europe dithers while the world burns

Sadly, the European Union proves once again that they are incapable of taking a disciplined moral stand: EU Stands by Arafat.

give íem back

Of the 158 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, nearly 100 are Saudis, according to the Arab News. Interior Minister Prince Naif is deeply concerned:

He said the Riyadh government was deeply concerned over the Saudi detainees. “We’ll demand that the Saudi detainees be handed over, because they are subject to the Kingdom’s rules,” he added.

Great idea! That should satisfy the human rights whingers. If the Saudis don’t immediately set these terrorists free, they’ll torture them first and then hack their heads off with swords. (Or is that punishment only for homosexuals?)

just like george

Yasser Arafat wants us to know that he’s just like George Washington.

(Except with suicide bombers and anti-semitism.)

war and gitmo

Victor Hanson weighs in on the issue of the detainees in Cuba: Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

Neither the Taliban government nor al Qaeda signed the Geneva Convention, which, like the U.N. proclamations on human rights, is solely a product of the Western liberal tradition of jurisprudence. They should have read Thucydides's warning that in times of unrest groups typically ignore or trample on the very laws that might protect them later on in their own hour of crisis. While for purposes of public relations and in accord with American values we must continue to treat the terrorists humanely, we are under no obligation to follow to the letter international accords concerning prisoners of war.

You know, I was just thinking “But what about Thucydides’s warning?” Ahem.

reporter kidnapped

Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal is in big trouble, kidnapped by a Pakistani terrorist group with ties to Al Qaeda. Unfortunately for him, there’s no way the US government can even acknowledge the demands of his kidnappers—which does not bode well for Pearl.

where danger lurks

After many years of war, Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous places on Earth. Here’s a good article at TIME.com on the risks facing US forces as they try to clean out pockets of Al Qaeda and Taliban resistance: Where Danger Lurks.

On an icy, still night in Kabul, two weeks ago, Marine guards in full combat gear at the U.S. embassy were startled by the whoosh of a fireball exploding underneath wintry trees at the far end of the diplomatic compound. The resident bomb-disposal expert decided to wait until dawn before venturing out of the fortified embassy to investigate. That's what makes him an expert. The explosion was only a decoy. The real killer was a land mine that was invisible in the dark but was spotted in the daylight half buried. Says Corporal Matthew Roberson of the Marine antiterrorist unit at the embassy: "It looked like somebody did it so we'd come running out and step on the mine."

sunday, january 27, 2002

a perfect soldier

In today’s LA Times Terry McDermott has an in-depth look at the background of Mohammed Atta: A Perfect Soldier.

watch out bozos

Jeff Jarvis says:

Watch out, bozos

: If the anti-world-trade bozos coming to New York cause me the slightest inconvenience or fear as I head into the city, I swear, I will bite their noses off and spray them with mace and spit on them and find any way I can to humiliate the little twerps. The last thing New York needs is trouble and we will not tolerate it.

...and I suspect a lot of New Yorkers feel the same.

rumsfeld vs. powell

Donald has a message for Colin.

On his flight down to Cuba, Rumsfeld told reporters that whatever comes of any debate, the Cuba detainees will not be designated prisoners of war.

"They are not POWs," he said. "They will not be determined to be POWs."

"These are among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth," he added. "And that means that the people taking care of them, detaining them, managing their transit, have to be just exceedingly careful."

enough

Andrew, please. Enough with the Krugman already.

the truth about the pbc

The usual screamers were screaming as usual when Israel destroyed the headquarters of the Palestinian Broadcasting Company. But as Andrea Levin writes, the PBC is a hate machine:

One week after the Dolphinarium bombing on June 1, 2001 in Tel Aviv in which 21 people, mainly young girls, were killed, PA television carried the sermon of Sheik Ibrahim Al-Madhi. He said: "Blessings to whoever waged Jihad for the sake of Allah; blessings to whoever raided for the sake of Allah; blessings to whoever put a belt of explosives on his body or on his sons' and plunged into the midst of the Jews, crying ‘Allahu Akbar...'" In July, a Friday sermon on PA TV exhorted Palestinians to train their children in the "love of Jihad for the sake of Allah and the love of fighting for the sake of Allah." Sheik Ibrahim Al-Madhi told his audience that "local" Jews not from other countries, and Christians, could live as "Dhimmis" among the Muslims – as unequal, subordinate peoples. ...

One Palestinian broadcast that made news in 2001 on American television was that containing, in the words of NBC correspondent Martin Fletcher, a "commercial" for child martyrdom. In vivid re-enactments, Palestinian boys and girls were shown to put down their "toys" and pick up rocks and follow the path of martyrs. In the video, paradise awaiting after death is depicted as an inviting, green, sunlit meadow where friends meet and play.

where was the cia?

I have to agree with Alex Knapp, who says that instead of investigating Enron, we should be looking into the failure of our intelligence services to prevent the 9/11 attacks.

the lion of kabul

A very sad story: Lion of Kabul roars his last.

new video of flight 587

TIME.com reports that a new video of the crash of flight 587 in Queens has been discovered, taken by a surveillance camera in a toll booth.

a female bomber

In a really ugly new twist, today’s suicide bomber in Jerusalem was a female student from Al-Najah University.

the moral low ground

The terrorists are doing their best to provoke Israel into open war; another suicide bomber has struck at innocent civilians in Jerusalem, killing one person and injuring dozens.

Israel has dismissed the cease-fire calls by the Palestinian leadership as meaningless, and says Arafat has simultaneously been encouraging militants. Israel has kept Arafat confined to his headquarters in Ramallah on the West Bank for almost two months.

In a speech Saturday, Arafat said the Palestinians were "facing a military crisis, but despite all this, no one has complained of the suffering. They have said, 'God is great, and jihad, jihad, jihad."'

"Jihad" is an Arabic word that can be interpreted variously as "resistance," "struggle," or "holy war," and the context was not clear in Arafat's statement.

“The context was not clear” ... give me a break.

The people who plan these attacks are the lowest, most despicable human beings on the face of the earth. They’re not simply trying to kill Israeli women and children, although of course they take great joy in doing so. Their loathsome equation of violence isn’t complete unless Palestinians are also killed, in a way that can be exploited for maximum propaganda value (“children throwing stones” against missiles and tanks).

I wonder if there would be less screaming about “disproportionate retaliation” if Israel began sending suicide attackers to bomb and shoot unsuspecting Palestinians at their schools and restaurants.

saudi boycott threat

The Saudis revealed their true colors yet again, at last week’s International Conference on Reconstruction Assistance to Afghanistan in Tokyo, by threatening to boycott the conference if Israel attended.

"The Americans said they would support any decision we took," an Israeli diplomat in Washington said. "They promised us their full support. The Saudis blackballed us. They said, 'If you want our help, keep Israel out.' While they try to project a moderate image, they refuse to sit with Israel even in the framework of a multilateral forum."

saturday, january 26, 2002

saudi warnings

The NY Times reports that Saudi Arabia’s senior intelligence official today called Yasser Arafat “a man of peace” and urged the US not to “weaken” him—and the article also contains this shocking bit of information about Saudi feelings toward the US:

In a wide-ranging interview, Prince Nawwaf bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's director of the intelligence service, also acknowledged that after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the vast majority of Saudi young adults felt considerable sympathy for the cause of the Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden, even though they rejected the attacks in New York and Washington.

A classified American intelligence report taken from a Saudi intelligence survey in mid-October of educated Saudis between the ages of 25 and 41 concluded that 95 percent of them supported Mr. bin Laden's cause, according to a senior administration official with access to intelligence reports.

95 percent of educated Saudi citizens supported Bin Laden’s cause—and I shouldn’t need to remind regular LGF readers that “Bin Laden’s cause” is total war against the United States.

the sellout

Colbert King says it’s time to stop participating in The Saudi Sellout.

The kingdom publicly boasts of its proselytizing in America under King Fahd, heralding the fact that it has spent millions of dollars funding an Islamic academy in Washington, 15 mosques and Islamic centers, and nine Islamic research institutes across the length and breadth of America.

Okay, that's fine by me.

But get this. If an American shows up in Saudi Arabia carrying a Bible, wearing a cross or a Star of David -- or if he or she gathers with a handful of like-minded Christians, Jews, Sikhs, etc., for the express purpose of holding public worship -- he or she will be subject to harassment or worse by Saudi authorities.

In short, U.S. respect and tolerance for Saudi Arabia's promotion of its official religion in America is reciprocated with contempt when non-Muslim Americans seek to observe -- not propagate, simply observe -- their faith on Saudi soil.

the you-know-who watch

I’m starting a new category for Saudi/Arab news items, called the “You-Know-Who Watch.” I’ve been seeing more and more of this lately—they don’t want to say “the Jews” or “the Zionists” outright, because they’re starting to get a clue that it makes them look like a bunch of unhinged anti-semites. So they do the nudge-nudge routine instead. Which still makes them look like a bunch of unhinged anti-semites.

Our first entry in this category belongs to Crown Prince Abdullah:

Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, said yesterday that the people of Saudi Arabia will uphold the Islamic faith "until Allah claims our souls". "The people of the Kingdom have not been affected by what certain newspapers publish and you know who is behind this campaign," the crown prince said.

serious weapons program

As documents obtained in Afghanistan are exhaustively analyzed, more evidence is emerging of Al Qaeda’s serious weapons program with a heavy emphasis on developing a nuclear device.

we was tricked

Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told a French newspaper that Saudi Arabians who took part in the 9/11 attacks were unwitting dupes of Osama Bin Laden, based on the videotape where he laughs about their lack of knowledge.

Uh, wait a minute. I thought that tape was supposed to be a forgery?

powell urges pow status

Colin Powell, showing the lack of spine for which he is well-known, is recommending that the Gitmo prisoners be given POW status. I hope this idea is resisted until we’ve extracted every drop of valuable intelligence from these freakazoids.

If ever there were a time for hard-headed pragmatism, it’s now. I really don’t care much about the legalistic arguments; it’s clear the Geneva Conventions were not designed to deal with aberrations like Al Qaeda. By all means, treat them humanely, but some of the rights and privileges they’d be granted as POWs are not only ridiculous but dangerous.

The most important thing is to find out everything we can from them, so we have a fighting chance—because this is not over. Al Qaeda and their many Islamo-fascist bloodbrothers are not through with us yet.

This article in today’s NY Times illustrates the danger of underestimating our enemies: Sleeper Cells in Singapore Show Al Qaeda's Long Reach.

i missed it

I missed all the fun last night. While every other weblogger in Los Angeles was carousing at Brian Linse’s Bacchanalian revel, I was fending off Saudi assassins nursing a strained back. Sorry I missed it, everyone; next time you won’t be so lucky!

friday, january 25, 2002

veiled threat

At the New Republic, Martin Peretz has an eye-opening piece about his 1991 trip to Saudi Arabia: Veiled Threat.

When I applied for a visa, my Saudi hosts suggested that on the line marked "religion," I answer "Christian." I explained that my ancestors died rather than abjure their faith. "What about leaving the line blank?" Again I said, "No." Then I was asked to procure a new passport, one without those irritating Israeli entry stamps. (Again I said, "No.") The irony is that I was invited in large part because the kingdom wanted certain American Jews (American Zionists, in fact) to visit. They had an anti-Semite's--that is to say, a wildly exaggerated--estimation of the power Jews wield in the United States. And they wanted to speak to that supposed power. ...

I think it was that night that we were taken to the desert ranch of another prince--the governor of a province, if I remember rightly. Before dinner we stood around a TV set hooked up to something in the desert, and watched the Clarence Thomas hearings. I didn't think that anything truly terrible had been proven against Thomas, so I was not against his confirmation. But our hosts took a different view. They simply assumed that the allegations were true. As one prince asked his cousin: "What kind of man doesn't do something like this to a woman every day?" The cousin's answer: "Only a man without a dick."

not down with the ICRC

The American Red Cross would like us to know that they have nothing to do with their numbskull European namesakes, the International Committee of the Red Cross.

veiled insults

The Saudis want the right to oppress US servicewomen the same way they oppress their own women: Saudis Want US Servicewomen Veiled.

A member of the Committee for the Preservation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, a government agency for enforcing Islamic law, said all women must wear the robe, or "abaya" in Arabic, irrespective of religion, nationality or profession.

If that committee sounds familiar, it’s because the Taliban had one with the same name.

worth 1000 words

One of the articles at today’s Arab News denies that Palestinian/Arab media stirs up public opinion against Israel. I was going to quote from the article (which also calls for all Arab nations to “boycott everything American”) but then I discovered this “editorial cartoon” that proves my point far more eloquently than mere words. (Warning: this is an extremely ugly piece of work. Not for weak stomachs.)

continental shift

A member of the Saudi Shura Council (a committee that advises Saudi leaders on strategic matters) says the Saudis are being wrongly accused of supporting terrorism by Zionist US media, and it’s time to shift allegiances to Europe. (The author assumes they’ll find more support for their anti-semitic agenda in the EU.)

"Perhaps Saudi Arabia will start relying on Europe more than on the U.S. for partnership in economic and strategic interests. Perhaps America will accept this situation if it realizes that linking Saudi interests to Europe will not directly harm its own interests. If America decides that its main interests are linked to Israel at this stage, then it would be natural for Saudi Arabia to seek another partner to serve its interests."

"This partner... who would replace America and be able to enter into a strong relationship of mutual interests [with Saudi Arabia]... is Europe. America will find it difficult to oppose the strengthening of interest-based ties between Europe and Saudi Arabia. Countries with different interests may go their separate ways, without necessarily becoming enemies."

"In truth, Europe today is an important part of the [mutual] interests of the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. In the event that this scenario comes to pass, what will change is that Europe will replace America as Saudi Arabia's first strategic ally... and, in the new framework of Saudi-Western relations, America will take second place."

And they call us arrogant.

american self-doubt

Every three or four days, Victor Hanson produces another great column: Roots of American Self-Doubt.

In the midst of one of the most stunning military campaigns in the last half-century, characterized by both the daring and competence of our military, Americans are still advised to be full of doubt concerning the war ahead. We are told that we must supply legal proof that Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11 (= a decade-long violation of armistice agreements is still not grounds for belatedly precipitating hostilities). There is continual griping over the temporary escape of Mullah Omar and bin Laden (= prior warnings about the quagmire of employing US infantry are now replaced by blame for not using enough troops on the ground). We read stories about the pernicious warlords in Afghanistan (= as if they appeared post October 7 and were not there 2,300 years ago when Alexander the Great arrived). Some admonish America about triggering the India-Pakistan "war" (= somehow we "destabilized" the region and so sparked hostilities that have a nasty habit of breaking out about every decade or so) and deplore the rubble of Kabul (= as if the city were Paris before the American bombers hit Taliban lines). ...

Of course, constant national self-reflection and occasional uncertainty is a tradition. Western strength, and Americans in general have benefited from their trademark moderation and introspection. But what lies behind this vast chasm of reality and perception — the distance between from what most Americans know to be true and the glumness that they hear hourly from their elites? Why are we in such doubt, worried more about what the Muslim world thinks of us rather than we of them? Why have we not seen one American offer back a "Who Cares?" or "Too bad."

I guess Hanson isn’t aware of the growing legion of anti-idiotarian webloggers, who voice these sentiments daily. And I would add another question to Hanson’s short list: “What the hell is wrong with these people?”

attack in tel aviv

Another suicide bombing in Israel, this time in a crowded shopping mall in Tel Aviv. Such heroes these Palestinians are; one of the victims is a 4-year old boy.

Here’s the Arab response, from an article in today’s NY Times:

In Morocco, the Islamic Conference Organization's Jerusalem Committee, Islam's main world body, urged the international community to help end Israel's "arbitrary and violent acts" against Palestinians, including a blockade on Arafat.

thursday, january 24, 2002

the evidence

President Bush has presented the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan with evidence of Yasser Arafat’s complicity in the Karine-A smuggling incident: Bush Gives Arabs Smuggling Evidence.

not a blog

That wacky bunch of conservatives at the National Review has a new, uh, thing on their site that they don’t want to call a weblog: The Corner.

(Psst. It’s a weblog. Pass it on.)

the forgotten suspects

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, human rights organizations are nowhere to be seen as more than 4800 Afghan and Pakistani prisoners face truly inhumane conditions: The forgotten suspects - inside an Afghan prison.

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -

With each step deeper into the ground, the air grows colder and staler.

The stairs give way to a dark basement corridor, where a guard unlocks a door, revealing some of his keep: shivering Pakistani men, piled eight or nine to a space fit for two or three, in a bare cement cell that's as cold as a meat locker.

The cell has no washroom or latrine, and the stench of sour milk, unwashed clothes, and fear hang heavily in the air. ...

"They say different things, but some of them were arrested with weapons. We know that none of them were civilians. We've proven that already," says Ahmed Jawed, another investigator here.

"Most of them say they came here for work. They try to absolve themselves like this. If they don't admit their crimes, then we will force them," says Jawed, noting that "some pressure" may be used on them. He is not sure whether he will have to resort to the use of "instruments."

how ridiculous can you get

Mark Steyn has a good piece about the UK’s anti-American Guardianistas: How ridiculous can you guys get?

...according to an ITN report carried on PBS over here, these poor prisoners will have to ‘endure the searing heat’. Actually, these beach huts are perfectly designed for one of the most agreeable climates on earth — a daytime high in the mid-eighties and an overnight low in the low seventies, with a wafting breeze caressing one’s cheek. My advice to Fleet Street is to steer clear of weather for the rest of the war. The merest nudge of the thermostat is enough to send excitable reporters rocketing from one extreme to the other, like the old cartoon of the shower faucet with only the tiniest calibration between ‘Scalding’ and ‘Freezing’: Kabul in the sixties is the ‘brutal winter’, Cuba in the low seventies is the ‘searing heat’.

So take it from me, Don Rumsfeld’s Club Fed huts are cool in the day and balmy at night. They’re a lot more comfortable than the windowless ‘concrete coffins’ of Belmarsh in which your terrorist suspects are banged up 22 hours a day. True, it’s a shame they have to have wraparound wire mesh to spoil the view, and there are no banana daiquiris from room service, but the idea is (in case you’ve forgotten) that they’re meant to be prisoners. And, unlike the three-to-a-cell arrangements in, say, Barlinnie, the Talebannies each have a room of their own, so they won’t be taking it up the keister from Butch every night. They get three square meals a day, thrice-daily opportunities for showers, calls to prayer, copies of the Koran, a prayer mat — all part of a regime the Mirror calls ‘a sick attempt to appeal to the worst redneck prejudices’.

the bloggies

Hey, somehow we got into the finalists for the 2002 Bloggies™! (Scroll down to “Best Weblog About Politics.”) Our esteemed competition includes kill your tv, fark, Jeff Jarvis, and Andrew Sullivan. (No, you don’t get links to them; they are now our sworn enemies, and we’re going to eat their children.)

So get over there, loyal LGF readers, and pack that ballot box!

wednesday, january 23, 2002

who loves ya, baby?

Muhammad ibn Saeed Al-Ahmad says, “Hey, come on! Who ya gonna trust? The American media ... or your buddies, the House of Saud?”

The fear, my American friends, is that you may be persuaded by what seems to be fact since it is so often repeated by those whom you normally believe and trust. ...

This opinion then becomes that of the majority though it is not representative of anything except a certain group of New York residents who support or do not support certain political moves related to the Palestinian question.

Spit it out, Muhammad! Ah, never mind, we know who you mean.

It’s interesting that he has enough shame about his anti-semitism to smear it with a liberal amount of verbal Vaseline, but not enough shame to avoid saying it entirely. It’s clear he expects his readers to understand the nudge-nudge wink-wink routine. So who is this weaselly language directed at ... the Aryan Nation?

defiantly in the minority

The editors of London tabloid The Mirror defend their right to be proud anti-Americans, even though more than 90% of their readers disagree: Jail Parade Will Breed New Terror.

It is wrong to assume that the prisoners have committed evil - they are innocent until proved guilty. Some may be released without charge.

So abusing them, humiliating them, parading them as trophies, undermines our greatest strength.

So it’s wrong to assume the prisoners have done evil, but just fine to assume the Americans have.

The second reason is one of pure self-interest. Those photos of prisoners kneeling, bowed, blindfolded and hooded, are the greatest advertisement for al-Qaeda there could be.

They will confirm to those impressionable young Muslims who are toying with fanaticism that America and its allies are the great enemy.

Pure self-interest, all right, in the noble tradition of Neville Chamberlain. As for whether the photos will encourage terrorists—what do you think was going through this young man’s newly shaven head?

run, sammy, run

Thomas Friedman in today’s NY Times, writing about the Arab world’s sympathy for murderers like Osama Bin Laden: Run, Osama, Run.

On the way back from Kabul, I passed through Pakistan, the Persian Gulf, London and Belgium, where I had a variety of talks with Arab and Muslim journalists and business people and Muslim community leaders in Europe. All of them were educated, intelligent and thoughtful — and virtually none of them believed that Osama bin Laden was guilty.

Let's see, there was the serious Arab journalist in Bahrain who said that Arabs could never have pulled off something as complex as Sept. 11; there was the Euro-Muslim woman in Brussels who looked at me as if I was a fool when I said that the bin Laden tape in which he boasted of the World Trade Center attack was surely authentic and had not been doctored by the Pentagon; there was the American-educated Arab student who insisted that somehow the C.I.A. or Mossad must have known about Sept. 11 in advance, so why didn't they stop it? There was the Saudi businessman who declared that there was a plot in the U.S. media to smear Saudi Arabia, for absolutely no reason. And there was the Pakistani who confided that his kids' entire elementary school class believed the canard that 4,000 Jews who worked in the World Trade Center were warned not to go to the office on Sept. 11.

I think Friedman is missing something here, though, when he says “none of them believed that Osama bin Laden was guilty.” It’s more complex than that; these people don’t really believe that stuff. They’re aware of the truth. They know Osama’s guilty. But stories like this scare and piss off Westerners like Friedman—and that’s what they’re after. A quick fix of anti-Americanism is much more pleasant than painful self-examination, and those Americans squirm so beautifully.

They even write all about it in the New York Times.

first person

Here’s a collection of first person accounts from the most recent terrorist attack in Jerusalem.

If things like this were happening in a US city, what do you think our response would be?

And the situation is heating up even more; Hizbullah forces in South Lebanon have been launching missile attacks against IDF border outposts.

asian terror web

The Christian Science Monitor has a good article about the Al Qaeda terror cell in Singapore that was planning devastating attacks against Western targets: 'Activated' Asian terror web busted.

indonesian islamists

Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have been working to establish a presence in Indonesia, funding local terrorist groups and providing military training: Asian terrorists trouble U.S.

If a terrorist cell could operate in rigidly controlled Singapore, American officials say they shudder at what Al Qaeda may have achieved in the disarray of Indonesia, considered one of the most fertile havens in the world for international terrorists. It has a weak central government, rampant corruption, porous borders and 220 million people, most of them Muslims, stretched over a vast archipelago of tropical islands.

Yet Indonesia, neither an American enemy nor ally, has been less cooperative with the Bush administration's terror campaign than other countries in Asia, its leadership wary of arousing anti-American sentiment. Its military contains influential officers who support the radical Islamic cause, which is gradually gaining ground among the country's traditionally moderate Muslims.

Indonesia also has declined to look for bank accounts of many of the organizations on the Bush administration's terrorist list, and it has not granted blanket overflight authority to American warplanes, which even Myanmar allowed.

the mountain is moving

US attitudes about Saudi Arabia are changing, after years of one-sided “cultural sensitivity”: Saudi Dress Code for Female Troops Revised.

tuesday, january 22, 2002

the breeding ground

Yet another compelling Victor Hanson essay, on cultural responsibility and the role of war in human society: Breeding Ground.

The breeding ground for autocracy is not only hunger and disease, but also national amnesia and ignorance. The culprit is, then, a state of mind in which millions lose their senses and in their hypnotic state allow liars and criminals to blame others for their own largely self-inflicted ills — or at least lack the courage to seek solutions from within. The Germans did not want Hitler (he, in fact, received a minority of the votes in 1932), but they did not want to face up either to their real military defeat in 1918, or to confront the fools and the bogus beliefs that had led them on the road to catastrophe in 1914.

Most Southerners did not own slaves, distrusted the plantationists, and knew the surrounding culture of latifundia was unsustainable. But most also went along with hotheads of secession, blaming their problems on abolitionists rather than on their own pyramidal society and a bankrupt system of chattel slavery. Many Muslims in the Middle East privately concede that high rates of illiteracy, tribalism, statism, autocracy, religious fundamentalism, lack of free speech and dissent, and gender apartheid better explain why people starve in Islamabad or Cairo. Yet most also know that it is far easier to publicly say Israel is the cause of their problems. The human propensity for self-delusion, fueled by the envy that arises out of a sense of inferiority, is the fuel of dictators and ultimately the breeding ground of war. A Saddam Hussein or bin Laden is usually symptomatic, rather than causal.

prioritizing

Maybe Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International should start setting some priorities. Maybe they should pay some attention to abominations like this.

With 30-foot-high walls studded with broken glass, machine guns mounted in the corners and armed guards standing behind the gate, Ejaz Arbab's warehouse in Jamrud looks much like others in the region.

One of the wealthier men in Jamrud, Mr. Arbab has been making a fortune over the past 20 years selling children — most of them the sons and daughters of penniless refugees who for years have streamed across the border to escape the warfare in Afghanistan.

Girls are auctioned off in a large rectangular room about 40 feet by 30 feet where intricate Afghan carpets cover the floor and pillows serve as seats for low tables.

Buyers puff on hookahs as the girls, escorted by an elderly woman, walk to a dais in the center of the room dressed only in thin cotton smocks. Before purchase, a buyer has the right to remove the tunic and inspect the girl in front of the crowd.

Dozens of locals say Afghan girls between the ages of 5 and 17 sell for $80 to $100. The price depends on the colors of their eyes and skin; if they are virgins, the price is higher.

smells like terror

Well, the New York Times and the Washington Post may gag on the word, but I have no trouble calling a creature who shoots unarmed civilians at a bus stop what he is—a terrorist.

more surprises from MS

Here's an interesting commentary on January's XP Surprise which awaits users that haven't activated their product through Microsoft.

the pinnacle of silliness

Damian Penny found what has to be the funniest damned thing I’ve seen in the last month. London tabloid the Mirror (think “National Enquirer” but with less class) assigned a reporter to dress up like an Al Qaeda detainee for a whole hour. Hilarity ensued!

The darkness filled me with fear. The silence was deafening. And the tight manacles made my limbs ache.

But I couldn't shout for help - for under the blacked-out goggles and swathed in a suffocating orange boiler suit, I could not speak, smell, hear or touch.

Dude. You’re in a room in a London office building. Get a grip.

My blindfolded eyes refused to adjust to the dark void that engulfed me.

This, I have heard, is the purpose of a blindfold.

I was instantly disorientated.

Dude. You’re in a room.

I gasped for air as I tried to breathe through my nose. I told myself not to panic. All I could smell was the nauseating material of the surgical mask.

As all surgeons know, one of the most difficult parts of the job is the urge to vomit in the midst of an operation. We can put a man on the moon, so why can’t we make a nice-smelling surgical mask?

And I knew my moans of discomfort went unheard.

Some friends you’ve got.

With just flip-flops on my feet, I flinched when someone trod on me.

Now they’re stepping on you?

It was a blessed relief when my handcuffs were released at last and my attire removed. The harsh glare of light blinded me. For a few minutes, I didn't know where I was.

You’re in a room in a London office building, dimwit. Those people laughing are the ones who were just stepping all over your dumb ass.

The date on this pile of horse effluvia is today, the 22nd of January. So these toads must have known the detainees are not wearing hoods, blindfolds, and manacles 24 hours a day.

The article then runs down the list of diabolical articles of clothing. The evil unsporting Americans are making it hard for the prisoners to conceal weapons!

BOILER SUIT

Stiff all-in-one uniform greatly restricts ease of movement. There are no pockets or zips - which might have been useful to hide weapons. No belt, which could be used as a weapon. Prisoner could overheat, causing exhaustion.

HANDCUFFS

Hands are tightly clamped together to rule out any chance of an attack on guards. Cuffs also prevent writing and hand signs. Objects cannot be picked up or used as missiles. Long periods of use cause bruising or cuts to wrists.

FLIP-FLOPS

Nowhere to hide a weapon. Too flimsy to kick a guard. Unsuitable for running away in. Can cause bruising if not fitted properly.

I grew up in Hawaii, wearing flip-flops every day, and oh yes, I can testify to the horrific brutality of the dreaded rubber sandal. The iron maiden, the rack, and the flip-flop.

By the way, there’s also a poll on this page that asks, “Do you condemn the US treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay?” The “yes” button is preselected for your anti-American convenience.

no abuse

The Washington Post reports on the insanely exaggerated stories about Al Qaeda detainees in the British press: British Find No Abuse of U.S. Captives At Cuba Base.

With Prime Minister Tony Blair under pressure from left and right, newspaper headlines here are screaming "TORTURE!" and "Monstrous Inhumanity" at the U.S. military camp. But a cabinet official told Parliament today that the "lurid descriptions" in the British media are "false."

A British Foreign Ministry team spent three days at the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said Ben Bradshaw, the Foreign Office parliamentary secretary.

The team talked extensively to three British subjects held there and found they had "no complaints about their treatment," he said. In contrast to media reports here, Bradshaw said, "there were no gags, no goggles, no earmuffs and no shackles while [the prisoners] are in their cells."

Of course, this hasn’t put a stop to the screaming. But the end of this article suggests that the worst damage will be to the credibility of the chattering classes:

There were signs, though, that the allegations of brutality are more a concern to the media and the political world than to the Briton-in-the-street.

After the the issue was discussed today on the "Richard and Judy Show," Britain's equivalent of "Oprah," the hosts held a telephone poll. About 5,000 responses came in, producers said.

The result: Only 8 percent felt the prison was "inhumane," with 92 percent supporting the U.S. treatment of the suspects.

hi there

If you’re visiting through a link on the antiwar.com Letters page, welcome! If I cared, my feelings would be hurt by the mean, cruel things that were said about me on that page. Instead, I’ve channeled my poor injured ego into ... a limerick!

If words were rocks I’d be a goner
Dubbed racist as an Afrikaner
But since the insults were flung
Like fistfuls of dung
By a fan of Raimondo’s ... I’m honored!

monday, january 21, 2002

kill the messenger

At Slate, Anne Applebaum says Israel is right to target the Voice of Palestine broadcasting station: Kill the Messenger.

Worst of all are the TV programs for children. I was shown some of these when in Israel a few years ago and can testify to their creepiness: I distinctly remember groups of little girls chanting, "Death to Israel" while smiling adults looked on with approval. Even when they don't advocate violence, children's television does persistently broadcast the message that all of Israel is really Palestine, and that all of Israel therefore belongs to the Arabs. A report on children's education in Palestine, written a year ago, quoted from a children's program called The Birds' Garden, which is shown on official Palestinian TV. At one point, the presenter showed a group of small children a map of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

"Today I chose a really nice drawing for you of the map of Palestine. Let's look at it together. A drawing of Palestine. It's so beautiful. There is Acre, Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias [all Israeli cities]. Palestine is so beautiful! Our country is so beautiful.

"And to all of our loved ones who are on the map, whether they are from Acre, Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth, Jerusalem [all Israeli cities again] we bid everyone a welcome."

Another important distinction here: when Israel blew up the headquarters of the Voice of Palestine, they first evacuated the building.

hit me baby

The Independent can always be counted on for a good bracing jolt of anti-Americanism, and they’ve been especially busy today.

Here’s old reliable Kabul Bob Fisk, telling us the terrorists have won: Congratulations, America. You have made bin Laden a happy man.

And here’s an article that screams about the horrible treatment of the Al Qaeda detainees, even though the British ones have said they have no complaints: It is shameful for Britain to support the degradation of these terrorist suspects.

And the pièce de résistance, about a Red Cross accusation that the US has violated the Geneva Conventions by releasing photographs of the detainees: Red Cross: US broke Geneva Conventions.

(I thought they were yelling about “secrecy” yesterday?)

the report

Here is the Human Rights Watch World Report 2002. Read it and decide for yourself.

I haven’t read it all yet. I do have a life. But the introduction makes almost no mention of the great improvement in the human rights of the people of Afghanistan, freed from the rule of the Taliban and given a chance at a representative government; this achievement is dismissed with one sentence:

The demise of this regime [the Taliban] creates an opportunity for positive change in Afghanistan.

before launching back into finger-pointing like this:

Many in the region see Western tolerance for human rights abuse reflected in the failure to rein in Israeli abuse of Palestinians or to restructure sanctions against Iraq to minimize the suffering of the Iraqi people.

Of course, there is no mention of Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians, which apparently don’t count. And the “suffering of the Iraqi people” is attributed to Western tolerance for human rights abuse, not to the evil, repressive dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

Before September 11, I had an enormous amount of respect for groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Now I feel betrayed by them, and they’ll never get another penny from me.

a deadly error

Another great piece by Daniel Pipes, looking at the dangerous folly of our current “anti-profiling” policies: A Deadly Error.

The government insists on what it calls the "but for" test. "But for this person's perceived race, ethnic heritage or religious orientation," security personnel must ask themselves, "would I have subjected this individual to additional safety or security scrutiny?" If the answer is no, extra scrutiny is not just disapproved of, but illegal.

It's like having reports of a tall, bearded mugger but requiring the police to devote equal attention to short females.

Worse, DoT regulations permit additional inspections only if passengers are "properly selected on a truly random basis." Stopping every 10th or 20th passenger is legal - but not stopping those who are nervous, shifty, or otherwise suspicious to the trained eye.

This disallows airline personnel from drawing on their experience or using their common sense, ignoring that many counterterrorism breakthroughs occurred precisely because an inspector followed a hunch. "A lot of it is in the nose," says John Beam, a former head of security for TWA.

Government regulations demand a militant dumbness and a pretense not to know what everyone does know - that the would-be hijackers come overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, from the ranks of militant Islam. They send the unfortunate signal that it is politically easier to send troops to Afghanistan than to confront the fact that the enemy has certain characteristics.

human rights fraud

Human Rights Watch has released its annual survey of rights around the world, and according to OpinionJournal it’s more of the same old anti-American idiotarianism: The Human Rights Fraud.

Start with the war in Afghanistan, where it says U.S. "conduct so far has not been auspicious." Apparently those dancing Afghans on TV were hallucinating. According to Human Rights Watch, all the war has accomplished is a return to "political fragmentation" and perhaps new oppression. Its report barely acknowledges America's role in removing the hated Taliban, except to criticize U.S. use of cluster bombs and to suggest that the small number of civilian casualties constitute "possible violations of international humanitarian law." ...

As for life back in the U.S., well, to Human Rights Watch it sounds like Baghdad without the Third World charm. "Washington stands out because its resistance to enforceable human rights standards has been most fundamental," its report actually says. More fundamental than, say, Sudan's?

no complaints

What a surprise! Apparently those arrogant Americans, even though crazed by war triumphalism and bent on barbaric vengeance, have somehow managed to restrain themselves: Captive Britons have 'no complaints'.

The prime minister's official spokesman said the government would now take time to study the report in detail. "We said people should not rush into judgement and now we know the facts," the spokesman said.

Uh huh. Right.

The three British nationals in the camp were "able to speak freely and without inhibition," he added.

"There is no sign of any mistreatment.

"They have also had contact with the Red Cross.

"They asked for a number of messages to be passed on to their families, which we are doing.

"There were no gags, no goggles, no ear muffs and no shackles while they were in their cells.

"They only wear shackles when they are outside their cells."

He said the three suspects "get three meals a day, including a "pre-packed Islamic meal for lunch", as much water as they need and daily medical checks.

The three British nationals in the camp were "able to speak freely and without inhibition," he added.

"There is no sign of any mistreatment. They have also had contact with the Red Cross. They asked for a number of messages to be passed on to their families, which we are doing. There were no gags, no goggles, no ear muffs and no shackles while they were in their cells. They only wear shackles when they are outside their cells."

He said the three suspects "get three meals a day, including a "pre-packed Islamic meal for lunch", as much water as they need and daily medical checks.

Glenn Reynolds asks, “Will the BBC and other British media learn from this?”

No’ a bleedin’ chance.

sunday, january 20, 2002

wine is good

Well, here it is 6:00 Sunday evening. I think I’ll have a glass of this nice Chilean Chardonnay I got at Trader Joe’s a couple of days ago. Mmm.

I’m so glad I don’t live in Saudi Arabia, where I would be screaming under the lash right now.

Someone remind me. They differ from the Taliban ... how?

(Update: If I don’t have another glass of wine, the terrorists will have won.)

no tv for terrorists

Brian Linse has a good take on why there should be no television cameras at Zacarias Moussaoui’s trial:

If I were on trial for my life, I'd want to be sure that the prosecutor wasn't campaigning for DA on my time. I'd want to be certain that the judge wasn't auditioning for a syndicated series. And I'd want to be damn sure that the lawyers weren't trying to get booked on Larry King. If there is even the slightest chance that a citizen might be deprived of their life, or even their freedom, then the possible impact of cameras must be seen as a threat to the Sixth Amendment. The impact on the press and the public of keeping cameras out of courtrooms is insignificant by comparison.

A great point. And I would add that in the specific case of Moussaoui (or any terror suspect) a permanent visual record of the judge, prosecutor, and witnesses exposes them to great danger of reprisals—for the rest of their lives.

iraq’s nuclear program

An in-depth interview with the former director of the Iraqi Nuclear Program: Does Saddam have nukes?

still waiting

Colin Powell is still waiting for Yasser Arafat’s explanation for the Karine-A arms shipment. Don’t hold your breath, Colin.

security and saudi arabia

A good editorial at the Washington Post examines the implications of withdrawing US forces from Saudi Arabia: Security and Saudi Arabia.

For some time, Prince Abdullah has been moving to appease the conservative Saudi clergy by distancing himself publicly from the United States and blaming the Bush administration for the worsening Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now he would effectively ratify the central message of the extremists -- that Western governments and Western troops are corrupting and repressing Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world. He would do so even while fully expecting that, were Saudi Arabia again to be threatened by Iraq or Iran, the United States would rush to its defense. ...

In the short term, at least, the United States does not have easy alternatives to cooperating on energy and security matters with the Saudi royal family. Nevertheless, the administration must now recognize that Saudi political policies have become not just an unpleasant sideshow but a genuine menace to the United States -- because the roots of Islamic extremism and terrorism lie in the intolerant ideology that Prince Abdullah bows to.

(Far be it from me to get all pedantic with the WaPo editors—but shouldn’t that be “the intolerant ideology to which Prince Abdullah bows”?)

do as we say, not as we do

With all the finger-pointing and high-handed lecturing on human rights coming from lefty Brit papers like the Guardian and the Independent, it might be illuminating to look at how the UK is treating their terrorist prisoners: UK terror detentions 'barbaric'.

The Belmarsh detainees are locked up for 22 hours a day and do not see daylight. On detention they were given no access to lawyers or to their families, while being given five days to appeal against their internment.

They are unable to speak to their families in Arabic without the presence of an approved translator who visits once a week. In some cases, clearance for phone calls to lawyers was approved only last week.

Complaints lodged with the Home Secretary have received no response. These include concerns about men being subjected to body searches by women prison officers, unacceptable to Muslims. They have also been denied prayer facilities except for 15 minutes on a Friday without an imam.

Insert appropriate cliché about glass houses here.

x-ray photos

Here’s a Yahoo slideshow of Reuters photographs of Camp X-Ray.

arafat resigning?

According to the Jerusalem Post, Yasser Arafat is considering resigning as head of the PA.

Arafat is reportedly fed up with what he considers the abandonment of the Palestinians in the face of Israeli escalation, the source said, including the continuing closure on PA territories, according to a report appearing in the Yediot Aharonot Hebrew daily this morning.

Israeli sources say PA officials, including Fuad Shubaki, heads of the PA's armed forces finance department, are in the process of liquidating real estate and oil assets in Europe prior to a possible exit from the region, Army Radio reports.

geneva talk

Bruce Rolston has a lot of good stuff on his blog about the Geneva Convention, and whether the Al Qaeda fighters should be covered under its rules. My own objection to classifying them as GC Prisoners of War lies in Article 4, Section A2, dealing with the definition of POWs:

(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions: (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

It seems clear to me that Al Qaeda fighters violate provisions b, c, and d of this section, although language elsewhere in the document seems to undercut this position.

But look, I’m no expert on this. All I can say is that, from my reading (and yes, I did read it all), there appear to be considerable grounds for doubt about whether they fit the GC definitions. Article 5 provides for this situation:

Should any doubt arise as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.

This is the crux of the biscuit—and their treatment to date more than satisfies the terms of the Geneva Convention. (Unless you think shaving them and leaving the lights on all night constitutes a war crime, as some of the more hysterical whingers in the European press do.)

Maybe it makes me an unwitting tool of the military-industrial complex, but I have faith that our government is not about to start summarily torturing or executing detainees.

going it alone

William Quick has some straight talk for European hand-wringers concerned about us poor dumb Americans and our cowboy ways.

saturday, january 19, 2002

the true definition of terrorism

A powerful essay by Representative Eric Cantor and former Senator Frank Lautenberg spells out the true definition of terrorism.

Terrorism is a very specific type of violence. It is the deliberate killing of innocent civilians in the name of a political cause. George Washington was a revolutionary, but he was no terrorist. Osama bin Laden is both.

In its war against Afghanistan-based terrorists and those who support them, the United States has made extraordinary efforts to spare innocent civilians. Nor have U.S. agents slit the throats of bin Laden's relatives or fellow countrymen — though that would certainly send a message. Instead, American fighting men and women have been careful to distinguish between soldiers and noncombatants.

This moral distinction is not a recent invention. It is not an idea cooked up by powerful countries to undermine political movements they are trying to suppress. To the contrary, it boasts an ancient and venerable history, and was developed over hundreds of years as a way of protecting the powerless.

(via Howard Fienberg.)

arafat should have emulated clinton

Here is an absolutely mind-boggling op-ed at the Arab News (where else?), that says Arafat should have acted like Clinton when he was caught smuggling 50 tons of weapons into the PA.

The issue would not have become so complicated if the PA had not attached so much importance to the seizure of the ship. Arafat should have handled the issue as the former American President Bill Clinton did regarding his involvement with Monica Levinsky. While admitting that he had some kind of relationship with the girl, Clinton denied having had illicit relations with her. Thus he brought half the issue under control. He did not deny all the charges but neither did he tell the whole truth.

I’m sure the author of this piece had no idea how nakedly he was revealing the weaselly inner workings of his mind. But go read it; it’s a fascinating and appalling look at how little value these people place on truth, honesty, treaties, agreements—small things like that.

terrorists released

Buried in this ABC News story about the Palestinian attack on a children’s party are these very revealing paragraphs:

At about 5:15 a.m. today, an Israeli F-16 warplane attacked the government headquarters in Tulkarem, destroying part of the compound and killing a policeman, said the local police chief, Mahmoud Awadallah. About an hour later, the warplane returned, dropping seven more bombs that razed the building, Awadallah said.

Nineteen prisoners were taken out of the compound before the second attack, police said. Of those, 10 suspected collaborators with Israel were moved to a different detention center, while nine suspected Islamic militants were released, Palestinian intelligence officials said.

So the PA used this opportunity to set some more killers free.

un clown show

In his very first speech to the UN Security Council, the Syrian ambassador attacked Israel by likening the bulldozing of Palestinian buildings to the 9/11 atrocities.

Proving once again that the United Nations has become an irrelevant clown show, their agenda hijacked by terrorist-supporting, anti-Semitic pond scum.

(Update: Christopher Johnson (no, we’re not related) points out an article at the Jerusalem Post that exposes Syria’s true agenda.)

another victim of terror

This is the 12-year old girl whose bat mitzvah party was destroyed by a filthy murderous animal last Thursday. The look in her eyes is heartbreaking.

racing for their lives

The mysterious Media Minder has an interesting story about bias and race baiting at a midsized Southern newspaper.

a popular dictator

The Washington Post has a story about Saddam Hussein’s popularity in the Arab world.

"The (Iraqi) leadership is working on liberating Palestine and uniting the Arab nation and this is something the enemy does not want," Loqman said after Friday prayers in the Sheik Abdel Qader al-Qeilani mosque, one of the biggest in Baghdad.

"As long as Iraq continues these things, I expect an attack if not this month then the next month; if not this year then the coming one," added Loqman, who'd just heard a sermon that spoke of U.S. "savageness" in Iraq and the Palestinian territories and called on Arabs to unite against the enemies of Islam.

Few people in Iraq would express criticism of a regime known for brutally punishing dissidents. But the sentiments expressed by Iraqis Friday reflect those heard across the region since Sept. 11: Many view President Saddam Hussein as a hero and see the United States as an oppressive presence.

Once again, hatred of Israel trumps every other rivalry in the Arab world. Saddam Hussein’s armies have killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims in wars of conquest against neighboring Arab nations, and he’s even used poison gas against his own citizens—and still he’s a hero.

But this piece misses a crucial point: the Arab world respects strength. Many view Hussein as a hero because, to them, the US is a less oppressive presence in the region, a cowardly superpower who could not defeat Iraq in the Gulf War. The Powell coalition’s disastrous decision not to finish that job is still reverberating to this day. I think events since 9/11 have shown that we’ll never change the perception of the US in the Arab world until we regain a position of strength and respect.

the herold fallacy

I’m glad to see Mark Steyn publicly debunking Marc Herold’s mendacious report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan, which has been starting to show up in the mainstream media.

friday, january 18, 2002

a lesson in americanism

In an excellent piece at the National Review (the ghost of my liberal past is spinning in its grave) Michael Long writes about the unbelievably respectful treatment afforded the Al Qaeda detainees—even though they still want to kill us all: A Lesson in Americanism.

We respect and provide for the most basic needs of these men. Not only that, we are also respecting their culture and religion. Our Taliban prisoners receive two towels, one for bathing and one for use in prayers. They receive three culturally appropriate meals each day. They have daily opportunities to shower, exercise and receive medical attention. And they are not generally photographed because, of all things, it is considered embarrassing to some of them.

Think about it: These are followers-to-the-death of Osama bin Laden, the man who said, "Our terrorism is a good accepted terrorism because it's against America." We're taking steps to prevent his disciples not only from being hungry or cold, but also from being ... embarrassed.

another sign of sanity

I refuse to be self-conscious about linking to items at MEMRI. So there.

Their latest dispatch is another hopeful sign of sanity in the Arab world: The Role of Fatwas in Incitement to Terrorism. Liberal Tunisian columnist Al-'Afif Al-Akhahdar denounces the religious fatwas that drive so much of the violence:

"The connection between the fatwa and terrorism lies in the fact that the religious ruling unleashes the terrorist's sadism and instinct for murder. It frees him from all moral restraints and shrivels what remains of his conscience. [It releases him] from any healthy sense of guilt."

"The fatwas of the last two decades of the 20th century were secret, like the organizations that issued them. In contrast, fatwas today are issued by well-known sheikhs, most of who are recognized. They are made public in the press, on television, and on the Internet, as if [they were] a religious duty... Religious authorities compete amongst themselves, issuing fatwas permitting the killing of people, groups, and nations?"

"Murder fatwas have appeared after the murder... as a Machiavellian ploy to prevent the slain from defending himself. Thus, for example, Ghanushi's fatwa stating that Sadat's assassination was in line with the Shari'ah Islamic religious law] was issued 12 years after his assassination; the fatwa permitting? the killing of [the Moroccan opposition leader] Bin Barkah [was] issued by Abd Al-Bari Al-Zamzami 36 years after the murder."

Al-'Afif (if I may call you that), you’re a brave guy. You’re up against a tidal wave of support for religiously-sanctioned murder, if the quotes in your article are any indication:

"Sheikh Ali bin Khdheir Al-Khdheir also posts his fatwas on the Internet. He presented his fatwas concerning September 11 as a response for his students in Yemen... 'The weeping, the sorrow, and the pain over the [American] victims among those termed 'innocent' are strange. Those victims were... unbelieving Americans who must not be sorrowed over, because the unbelieving American is considered a combatant due to his connection to his government, or because he supports it with money or opinion or counsel, as is customary in their political regime, may Allah not multiply such regimes... It is permissible to kill the combatants among them, as well as those who are non-combatants, for example the aged man, the blind man, and the dhimmi, as the clerics agree.'"

This [fatwa] permits the blood of all Americans, without exception, and was endorsed by Sheikh Yussef Al-Qaradhawi and the leaders of the Islamic movements who joined him in his religious ruling that encouraged Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to kill Israeli civilians. Why? Because fanaticism, as hatred for everyone who is different, removes the lobe of logic from the brain of the fanatic?"

I think I’ve found a Tunisian anti-idiotarian.

no tv for moussaoui

A federal judge has denied Zacarias Moussaoui’s request for his trial to be televised. The right decision, I think.

iraq

Moira Breen asks me to clarify my view on Iraq:

...were they all credulously swallowing any hint of an Iraqi connection to 9/11, eager to find any pretext for attack, while having no sound, pre-existing reasons for believing that Iraq should be dealt with militarily?

It’s true that when evidence of Iraqi connections to 9/11 gets reported in the press (such as the report from Poland of a meeting between Atta and an Iraqi agent), I notice it and link to it. But not because I think we need a “pretext” to attack Iraq, or because I’m blindly, jingoistically following some conservative agenda. Whether or not they participated in 9/11, my concern about Iraq is rooted in one simple, brutal fact: Saddam Hussein is working to obtain weapons of mass destruction, and he will use them when he gets them. He’s a very bad guy. Anyone who believes otherwise in the face of all the evidence will not be convinced by anything I can say.

On September 11 we learned the folly of ignoring threats and declarations of war, after almost a decade of Clintonian semi-isolationism in which our enemies were allowed to plot and carry out numerous attacks without any effective reprisal. I believe Saddam Hussein is actually more threatening to the US in the long term than Al Qaeda, and if we let him continue laying plans for our destruction without trying to preempt them in some way, our descendants will curse us for ignoring the obvious warning signs. If we have descendants.

full bore

David Carr at Libertarian Samizdata has discovered that Justin Raimondo is even creepier than he looks.

you go, girl

Andrea Harris has a most excellent rant on Euro-whinging about the evil US’s “mistreatment” of Al Qaeda detainees.

The mad dogs being held at Guantanamo Bay were not wearing uniforms. They were not fighting for a recognized nation/state. They used guerilla tactics. They continued to resist after surrender. And they have continued to make death threats against their guards. So why should they be considered “prisoners of war?” “Unlawful combatants” is exactly what they are, and our government is right to define them that way. By trying to apply the rules of the Geneva Convention in such a ludicrously one-sided manner, the chattering classes of Europe denigrate that important document.

oh, and by the way...

Arabs Still Want to Destroy Israel, writes Daniel Pipes.

As far as being target nations goes, Israel is a bit further along the learning curve. The attempt to destroy the Jewish state has gone on since it came into existence in 1948. For over a half century, the majority of Arabs have persisted in seeing the state of Israel as a temporary condition, an enemy they eventually expect to dispense with, permitting Israelis to, at best, live as a subject people in "Palestine." At worst, who knows?

The saddest thing about the Arab genocidal impulse toward Israel is how it stunts their own potential:

The great irony is that Arabs are paying the higher price for their destructive urge. The Arab focus on harming the Jewish state prevents a talented and dignified people from achieving its potential. It means they neglect improving their own standard of living, opening up their own political process, or attaining the rule of law. The result is plain to see: Arabs are among the world leaders in percentages of dictatorships, rogue states, violent conflicts, and military spending.

last one out shut off the lights

I’ve been expecting something like this: Saudis May Seek U.S. Exit. The bloated egos that rule Saudi Arabia have to come up with some kind of blustery threat to respond to the thrashing they’ve taken in US media since September 11.

Saudis give several reasons for deciding that the Americans should leave, beginning with their desire to appear self-reliant and not dependent on U.S. military support. The American presence has become a political liability in domestic politics and in the Arab world, Saudi officials say. The Saudi government has also become increasingly uncomfortable with a role in U.S. efforts to contain Saddam Hussein, and earlier ruled out use of Saudi territory as a base for bombing raids on Iraq.

This fits right in with the recent news that the Saudis are trying to repair relations with Saddam Hussein.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said this week that the United States should consider moving its forces out of the kingdom. "We need a base in that region, but it seems to me we should find a place that is more hospitable. . . . I don't think they want us to stay there."

"The Saudis actually think somehow they are doing us a favor by having us be there helping to defend them," he added.

I say we give these craven appeasing oil parasites what they want, and withdraw our forces from the region, along with all the sophisticated command and control equipment we installed. Then when Saddam Hussein marches through Kuwait into Riyadh, we’ll have a perfect excuse to go in with overwhelming force and do something about that cesspool once and for all.

flippy floppy

Here’s another meta-blog article at the Online Journalism Review, this one by Tim Cavanaugh. And just as with his previous article about MEMRI, the viewpoint flops around like a fish out of water. What am I talking about?

Geraldo had to go all the way to Afghanistan to get lost in the "fog of war," and look how much that little episode cost all of us. If the self-hating self-promoter had really wanted to learn about confusion, at a more reasonable cost, he could have just stayed home and read the war blogs. For it is in spending time with the war blogs that one comes to know the chaos, the inhumanity, the ultimate futility of war.

Sounds kind of negative, huh? But a few paragraphs later we get this:

The weblog is not the most useless weapon in the War On Terrorism. That title is still held by the nuclear submarine. But it is precisely their unconventional methods that make the war bloggers enemies to be feared. Like Al-Qaeda, the war bloggers are a loosely structured network, a shadowy underground whose flexibility and compulsive log-rolling make them as cost-effective as they are deadly. Kill Glenn Reynolds and a thousand James Tarantos will rise in his place. Try to apply the Powell Doctrine and the war bloggers will elude our grasp. Ignore them and they'll use our own weapons against us.

So ... the warblog is either the second most useless “weapon in the War On Terrorism” or it’s a shadowy underground that’s deadly and cost effective. Or it’s both. Or something.

And so it goes, with Cavanaugh taking potshots at some bloggers, praising a few others, and damning the rest with snarky little asides. I give him credit for compiling a large list of links to people trying to make sense of current events. But at the end of the piece I was left with the impression of a journalist with an overdeveloped irony reflex, desperately envious of those who’ve found something real to write about.

(Update: Ken has a rather personal take on this.)

thursday, january 17, 2002

putting our house in order

Straight talk for the House of Saud from Editor-in-chief Mort Zuckerman of US News and World Report: Putting our house in order.

President Bush may say that a tax increase would be passed only over his dead body, but what will he do–what can he do?–about the equivalent of a tax increase now imposed on us by the Saudis? With exquisite timing, the self-serving Saudi-led oil cartel we call OPEC has already begun cutting supplies so as to boost prices, hitting global incomes just when the world is in the throes of a recession. And why should Saudi Arabia care that this is a recession intensified by the fallout from 9/11, or feel any responsibility that Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, or that his money is Saudi and that 15 of his 19 terrorists were Saudis, or, perhaps most of all, that the Saudi regime funds religious schools throughout the Muslim world that brainwash children with anti-American hate?

(via Matt Welch.)

feeding the hand

I missed this excellent piece by Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies) when it appeared in the Washington Post last Sunday: Why We Must Feed the Hands That Could Bite Us, in which he makes a concise and cogent case for preventive involvement in foreign affairs, focusing on public health, family planning, and environmental awareness.

If a dozen years ago you had asked an ecologist uninterested in politics to name the countries with the most fragile environments, the most urgent public health problems and the most severe overpopulation (measured against available resources), the answer would have included Afghanistan, Burundi, Haiti, Iraq, Nepal, Rwanda, Somalia, Yugoslavia and Zimbabwe. The close match between that list and the list of the world's political hot spots today is no accident.

celebration time

According to this article at Israel Insider, celebrations broke out in the town of Nablus following the attacks against unarmed civilians at a wedding hall.

Haaretz reported that the Al Aksa Brigades, a branch of Arafat's Fatah organization, said the attack was carried out by Fatah member Abed al Salem Tsadek Hasson, from the West Bank town of Nablus. The terrorist's name was announced over loudspeakers in Tulkarm, during celebrations that took place following the attack.

The disgust I feel for people who would cheer something like this is beyond words. This is the same corrupt, fucked up, bloodthirsty crowd who cheered the 9/11 attacks, and they’re not just enemies of Israel—they’re America’s enemies too.

Israeli internal security minister Uzi Landau, reacting to the attack, said "this is war." Avi Pazner, a spokesman for Prime Minister Sharon, said that Israel "would teach the Palestinians a lesson they will not forget. We hold Arafat responsible."

And I hope they do. It’s time to crush these murderers; a civilized world has no place for them.

and again

Once again, Palestinian terrorists have launched a sickening, horrific attack against Israeli citizens—this time at a wedding hall. Five people are dead.

It’s beyond all understanding what the Palestinians hope to achieve by atrocities like this.

so unfair

The poor widdle Saudis think we’re being unfair to them. The opening paragraph of this LA Times article is priceless:

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Sheik Mohammed bin Jubeir sat comfortably on a silk-covered couch in his gold-trimmed robe and reflected on the pain Saudi Arabia has endured. Victim is the word he used. The oil-rich desert kingdom is a victim.

detainee furor

Glenn Reynolds has a post today about the status of the Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, in which he makes this excellent point:

The experience of American prisoners, from Bataan to Korea, to Vietnam, has been one of consistent maltreatment in violation of international law, which is why it is hard to generate much excitement in America over these issues. American prisoners are always treated much worse than America treats foreign prisoners. Indeed, this non-reciprocity is a major reason for the vague hostility that Americans feel toward international law.

Exactly right. This NY Times article has details about how they are being treated. It sounds very much like how maximum security prisoners are treated in US prisons. They’re getting decent housing, three meals a day, showers, medical treatment, and freedom of religion—which is more than most of the Cubans on the other side of the fence get.

And a nicely ironic touch: they get bagels and cream cheese for breakfast, a meal which is enjoyed daily by many Jewish people in New York.

In a press release issued this morning, Amnesty International said, “We’re very concerned at reports that the detainees are being fed bagels and cream cheese. Under the rules of the Geneva Convention, when such a breakfast is served smoked salmon (or ‘lox’) must also be provided. This is a flagrant violation of international law which cannot be justified under any circumstances.”

much ado about nothing

Everyone’s already linked to creepy looking Justin Raimondo’s idiotarian whine, so if you want to read it check one of the anti-idiotarians on the right. My name is in there, in a couple of quotes from Ken Layne, who writes Raimondo under the table. But what do I know? I am just a Myrmidon, newly sprung from the psychic ether. Heh.

According to an email he sent to Natalie Solent, he’s already more popular than God, so he doesn’t need any hits from us. He seems to be especially petulant toward Joanne Jacobs for some weird reason. And Sgt. Stryker actually bothered to refute some of Raimondo’s silly babbling. For more, check Justin Slotman’s rundown.

iraq defiant

Dubya and Saddam are rattling sabers at each other.

wednesday, january 16, 2002

microsoft's achilles heel

Security Flaws May Be Pitfall for Microsoft - if it's possible to stop this juggernaut, this may well end up being the best reason to do so.

"Microsoft's decade-long focus on cramming new features into its products has come at the expense of protecting computers against viruses and hacking attacks, which are costing customers billions of dollars a year and becoming a top concern of companies and government officials."

nyt bias on the front page

Yesterday in Israel, Palestinian terrorists kidnapped and killed a 71-year old man, and opened fire on a car, killing a 45-year old woman and badly wounding her aunt.

Clearly not military targets; these swine deliberately attacked an old man and a car with two women in it. So why the hell does the NY Times put this oxymoronic headline on their front page story: 2 Civilians From Israel Killed in Palestinian Militant Attacks? “Militia” members are allowed to kill civilians now?

The entire article meticulously avoids the words “terror” or “terrorism,” using “militants” and “gunmen” instead. The slant is subtler than in yesterday’s love letter to Raed al-Karmi, but still very very much in evidence.

Sad. The New York Times used to be such a great newspaper.

terrorbytes

MSNBC has more details on documents retrieved from an Al Qaeda computer, including a report on the travels of an operative who may very well be Richard Reid.

rat trap

Johnny “The Rat” Walker is not out of the woods; Ashcroft says he may still be charged with crimes that could carry the death penalty.

tuesday, january 15, 2002

what about johnny?

According to our totally unscientific poll of 193 people (so far), almost 40% of you think Johnny “The Rat” Walker should be tried for treason and then put up against a wall and shot.

Well, the government is seeking life in prison. Which is much, much worse.

That’s what I voted for.

bias at nyt

In a grotesquely worshipful article at the NY Times, James Bennet praises Raed al-Karmi, terrorist. This outrageously biased piece is accompanied by a photo of a bandaged Karmi with the caption: “The late Raed al-Karmi in September, after Israelis attacked him.” Bennet has consistently been a Palestinian apologist, but in this one he outdoes himself.

Israel calls Raed al-Karmi a terrorist, but here Palestinian children wear pictures of him on cords around their necks. Grown men sing a song praising him as "the Promise."

Children love him! Grown men sing songs about him! How bad can he be?

While the government did not claim responsibility for Mr. Karmi's death, the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon released a detailed statement this afternoon calling him a "leading extremist of a murderous Tanzim cell" and describing what it said were his attacks on Israelis.

Maybe Bennet didn’t get the news, but Karmi was actually proud of what Israel “said” were his attacks. He boasted about his activities as recently as last November, telling a Haifa newspaper, “[I have] no pangs of conscience. I killed soldiers and settlers and I'm not afraid to say it.”

Israeli forces said they had tried to kill Mr. Karmi on Sept. 6, in retaliation for what they said were his attacks on Israeli citizens and to pre- empt future attacks.

Every single reference to Karmi’s terrorist activities is qualified like this, even though Karmi himself admitted everything.

They pulverized his sport utility vehicle with rockets fired from helicopters. Two others in the S.U.V. were killed, but Mr. Karmi leaped out and sprinted away just in time, thus burnishing his legend.

Does Bennet have a big sloppy crush on this murderous thug or what?

In an interview that day, Mr. Karmi, bandaged and in hiding, vowed to continue his attacks. "I will continue killing Israeli soldiers and settlers — not civilians," he said. He was making a distinction between Israelis in the West Bank and those on the other side of the border, which Israel erased when it swept into the West Bank in the 1967 war. It is a distinction with no significance to the government, which considered Mr. Karmi a terrorist and said it wanted him jailed.

It’s a distinction with no significance to anyone who thinks people who kidnap and murder civilians are not heroes. Which obviously doesn’t include Mr. Bennet.

Among other attacks, he was wanted for kidnapping and killing two restaurateurs from Tel Aviv who stopped here to dine last January. Mr. Karmi admitted taking part in that attack but insisted that the men were undercover soldiers.

In fact, they were not undercover soldiers. They were well-known restaurant owners. And Karmi himself only started to float the “soldier” story recently. In the initial interviews where he admitted to the murders, he bragged that he fired the first shots himself and said nothing about the men being soldiers. Mr. Bennet must be aware of these facts.

The article then becomes a glowing portrait of Raed al-Karmi, the hero, as remembered by his loving terrorist buddies, who all miss him very much.

In a living room near the spot where their leader died, Mr. Karmi's comrades and friends gathered over cigarettes and tea this afternoon to remember him. The group leafed through an album of photographs of family and men with guns to select a picture for Mr. Karmi's "martyr poster."

“Look...here’s Raed with his RPG! He loved that RPG. Oh hold me, James!”

One friend of Karmi’s fondly remembered him:

The man said that about four days ago, he had told Mr. Karmi, a close friend with whom he served time in Israeli prisons after the first Palestinian uprising, or intifada, that he had missed his chance to become a martyr. "I told him, 'You lost your chance,' " the man recalled saying. " 'There is a cease-fire now.' " Mr. Karmi laughed, he said.

What a carefree Kodak moment!

I don’t know what’s going on at the New York Times; this is a disgracefully slanted, shamefully dishonest article about a person who, if he were American, would be properly called a serial killer.

Here’s the truth about the bloodstained career of this murderous creep, at the Jerusalem Post: Death of a Terrorist.

monday, january 14, 2002

self-examination

Here’s a reminder that the human spirit will not be denied: The Fault Lies in Our Education - Not in American Society.

There are good people in the Arab world, in spite of everything they’ve been through. And we need to support them.

al qaeda tapes

You may have heard about the Al Qaeda training tapes shown on ABC news in Australia. This page has the story, along with a link to RealVideo clips from the tape. Scary stuff.

the arab zone

This morning I linked to a Daniel Pipes piece about the Arab tendency to deny unpleasant facts. Well, I was going through the garbage again and hey, whaddayaknow? Here’s a perfect example at (where else?) the Arab News: Karine-A.

Venture with me if you dare, into a world where logic does not exist, a world of dreams and fantasies, a world known only as ... the Arab Zone.

The arms-laden ship, the Karine-A, raises more questions than answers. Who owned the ship? Where was the proof that Yasser Arafat ordered the weapons? Where did they come from? Who were the actual intended recipients?

OK, I’ll bite, Arab News Editor. Taking them in order:

1. The Palestinian Authority.
2. The ship’s captain is an employee of the PA, and he confessed.
3. Heh heh. Good one.
4. Iran.
5. See answer 1.

So far, the Palestinians have been trying to answer these posers.

Posers! Good word. Conundrums, too. Dilemmas, if you will. Quandaries, even.

The Palestinian Authority has categorically denied any connection and wants to prove so. Arafat signed an order for the detention of all people whose names have come up in connection with the shipment. The PA has been interrogating several people and has arrested three of its own security officers for questioning.

OK, now I’m confused. Didn’t you guys just say there was no connection and no proof? Why is the PA arresting people then?

On the other hand, Israel has already concluded that Arafat and the Authority are guilty, though it has not provided a single shred of evidence.

This really is getting tiresome. Pay attention this time; the ship belonged to the PA. There were PA officials aboard. One of them confessed. OK? Question the evidence if you want, but denying it exists just makes you look schtoopid.

While Israel’s rush to judgment is true to form, the US rush to support its ally should in itself raise eyebrows.

You know you’re reading too much of this stuff when you mentally fill in the code words. That little comment about “raising eyebrows” is nudge-nudge wink-wink slang for “it’s a Jewish plot.”

The turnaround was completed when President Bush said he was beginning to suspect that the ship was intended to promote what he described as terror.

“What he described as terror.” As if rockets and C4 were going to be used for noble purposes.

But where is the evidence? Until now, Israel has been utterly incapable of providing evidence that any link exists between the PA and the Karine-A.

Argh. Just stop it. Please.

According to the Oslo accords, the Palestinians are barred from purchasing weapons. But according to Oslo, Israel is not allowed to destroy Palestinian homes. Fifty-eight have been leveled this week, says the UN, leaving 511 people homeless. Again, according to Oslo, Israeli tanks and bulldozers should not tear up the runway of the Palestinian international airport in the Gaza Strip, Israeli missiles should not hit Palestinian naval targets in Gaza. The Israeli Army should not be waging war against Palestinian civilians, property and institutions.

Again the mind reels in confusion. Is this a rationale for the Palestinians to smuggle in weapons? So what are we talking about here? A Jewish plot, a big mistake, or justified Palestinian resistance? What the hell are you people trying to say?

It is not just Arafat whom Sharon wants to delegitimize. What he really intends is for the entire Palestinian struggle for national self-determination to become irrelevant.

We’re back to the Jewish plot again, this time with a nasty twist. They imply that Sharon (and Israel) have genocidal aims against the Palestinians—when the truth is exactly the opposite.

Let’s cut to the ending, before my logic reflex goes into permanent spasm:

Before the Karine-A incident, Sharon was apparently running out of creative ways to abandon the peace process. Not any longer.

Does this make any bleeding sense at all?

Trying to follow the tortured twists and turns of this kind of Arab blame-shifting leaves my brain feeling like it’s been in a blender. On puree. Who needs drugs when we have the Arab News?

more mideast bloodshed

After an explosion that killed Raed al-Karmi, members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade retaliated by shooting an Israeli soldier. At this point, Israel has not claimed responsibility for Karmi’s death, although they did try to get him before. I think it’s very possible it was a targeted killing, but also remember that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade boys do love to play with bombs.

Karmi, by the way, was far from an innocent Palestinian victim; last year he took part in the abduction of two Israeli restaurant owners who were kidnapped, taken to a field, and murdered in cold blood. And he is one of the militant leaders Arafat said had been “arrested.”

explaining to colin

Wall Street Journal readers came up with some funny excuses Arafat could give Colin Powell for the Karine-A affair. My favorite: “We need the weapons for self-defense, Mr. Secretary. In case you haven't heard, Palestine is lousy with trigger-happy terrorists!”

tech innovation

An amusing article about the new iMac and other innovatively designed tech gizmos - Please Lick This iMac

the only thing

To paraphrase FDR, the only thing we have to fear is the pretzel itself.

the denial

Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Schanzer write about the Arab world’s refusal to face unpleasant truths: Denial: A River in Egypt.

This pattern of avoiding unpleasant facts offers an insight into the problems of Muslim society. Turning defeat into victory, evidence into forgery, and terrorism into an "inside job" creates an alternate and more hospitable world.

But this denial avoids problems rather than dealing with them. Not acknowledging who carried out the 9/11 atrocities, for example, means ignoring its many causes, from a radicalized school curriculum to the use of Islamic "charities" for money-laundering.

Part of the U.S. war on terrorism, therefore, has to be working with Muslim governments and pressing them to face reality. This will not be easy, but so long as they remain in denial, the stage is set for fresh disasters.

the follies of modern art

A great new Lileks screed: The Follies of Modern Art.

sunday, january 13, 2002

broke

Afghanistan is flat broke, says Thomas Friedman in Kabul; they need billions to avoid falling back into anarchy. The Afghan banking system was basically destroyed by Taliban looting in the final days of their retreat from the major cities.

Friedman makes a suggestion I think should be widely publicized:

Maybe the Muslim world, which was so worried about Afghan civilians when America was bombing here, could send some cash now that the bombing is over and people need to eat?

Particularly our “friends” the Saudis, who were among the loudest complainers. Let’s see a few Princes open their petty cash drawers and put their filthy oil money where their big mouths are.

Or how about a grassroots Muslim charity campaign? There are over a billion Muslims in the world; surely they can raise an enormous amount of money for Afghanistan without even trying?

godís warrior

There’s a very good in-depth investigation into the backgrounds of the September 11 hijackers, focusing on Mohammed Atta, in the Sunday Times (requires free registration): God’s Warrior, Part One and Part Two.

saudi watch

SAUDI WATCH – Our “allies” the Saudis recently revealed their dangerous cultural imperialism by demolishing a 200-year old Ottoman castle, so they could build hotels and a convention center. Turkey, of course, is outraged, comparing it to the Taliban’s destruction of the Buddha statues at Bamiyan. The Saudi response:

In Saudi Arabia, a government-controlled newspaper on Saturday criticized what it called Turkey's ambivalent attitude toward Muslims and its ties to Israel.

"By protesting against the kingdom's decision to demolish a dilapidated structure to further expand the facilities in the holy city, Turkey has once again proved its ambivalent approach to anything that has got to do with Islam and Muslims," the English-language Riyadh Daily said.

Which, paraphrased, amounts to “Screw you and your run-down castle, Jew-lovers.” Nice.

Our Wahhabi “friends” are also starting to get cozy with Saddam.

kissinger on iraq

Crusty old cold-hearted Henry Kissinger turns his considerable intellect to the Iraq problem: Phase II and Iraq.

Anti-terrorism policy is empty if it is not backed by the threat of force. Intellectual opponents of military action as well as its likely targets will procrastinate or agree to token or symbolic remedies only. Ironically, governments on whose territory terrorists are tolerated will find it especially difficult to cooperate unless the consequences of failing to do so are made more risky than their tacit bargain with the terrorists.

Phase II of the anti-terrorism campaign must therefore involve a specific set of demands geared to a precise timetable supported by credible coercive power. These should be put forward as soon as possible as a framework. And time is of the essence. Phase II must begin while the memory of the attack on the United States is still vivid and American-deployed forces are available to back up the diplomacy.

al-jazeera in india

Given Al-Jazeera’s record of hysterical anti-Semitism and blatant sympathy for Islamo-fascism, this is not good news: Al-Jazeera to set up shop in India.

Explaining [Al-Jazeera’s] new found interest, [chief editor Ibrahim] Helal said India is a hotspot especially because of its volatile relation with its neighbour Pakistan. Besides it’s a huge potential market waiting to be tapped.

Someone needs to do a serious investigation of Al-Jazeera. Maybe the Indians will; it must be setting off warning bells that the broadcasting wing of militant Islam wants to set up shop in their country to exploit the India/Pakistan situation.

saturday, january 12, 2002

reading email headers

I don’t know about you, but ever since the start of the new year the volume of spam email I receive has doubled or tripled. It’s incredibly annoying. The people who are flooding the internet with this trash have something deeply wrong in their brains.

Here’s a good tutorial on reading email headers at the University of Illinois that can help you discover who’s responsible, in some cases.

the birds fly with one wing

Here’s a disturbing story about the reappearance of an age-old Kandahar custom: Kandahar comes out of the closet.

Now that Taleban rule is over in Mullah Omar’s former southern stronghold, it is not only televisions, kites and razors which have begun to emerge.

Visible again, too, are men with their ashna, or beloveds: young boys they have groomed for sex.

Kandahar’s Pashtuns have been notorious for their homosexuality for centuries, particularly their fondness for naive young boys. Before the Taleban arrived in 1994, the streets were filled with teenagers and their sugar daddies, flaunting their relationship.

It is called the homosexual capital of south Asia. Such is the Pashtun obsession with sodomy — locals tell you that birds fly over the city using only one wing, the other covering their posterior — that the rape of young boys by warlords was one of the key factors in Mullah Omar mobilising the Taleban.

Cultural differences?

tough love

Reid Stott has some downhome tough love for you Anti-Idiotarians who are still hosted on Blogspot. You know who you are. Yes, that’s right. You.

dictionary/thesaurus bookmarklets

OK, here are new versions of the Merriam Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus bookmarklets. I believe these new ones should also work on framed sites. Give ’em a whack and let me know.

PC versions:

Look up a definition.
Look up synonyms.

Mac versions:

Look up a definition.
Look up synonyms.

from the arab side

At the Nando Times, Linda Seebach writes about how the Karine-A arms shipment is being reported by Al-Jazeera: Looking at the story from the Arab world's side.

The Jan. 4 story describes the "massive arms cargo," 50 tons of weapons, including "antitank (missiles) of the type used by Hezbollah with telling effect against Israeli forces in Lebanon."

It continues, "In a potential armed confrontation with Israel, such weapons could have swung the balance completely. While the guided missiles would have prevented Israeli tanks and aircraft from operating as freely as they have been doing inside Palestinian territory, the long-range 'Katyushas' would have placed Israeli town and city dwellers under the same threat of bombardment felt by their Palestinian counterparts."

The writer evidently regards that prospect with approval, and moreover expects his readers feel the same.

That’s right; the bloodthirsty bastards at Al-Jazeera would like nothing more than an all out war against Israel. They’re in the business of inciting anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, and it’s shameful how they’re given a pass by US media. If a Western outfit tried to publish equivalent hateful rhetoric about Arabs it would be shut down by public protest and lack of advertisers. We’ve got our nutjobs in this part of the world too, but they’re marginalized, not mainstream—and certainly not supported by governments.

This isn’t just a “cultural difference.” A cultural difference is taking your shoes off before entering a house, or slurping your noodles loudly, as the Japanese do. Or belching after a meal, considered polite (or at least not impolite) in many cultures. What we see in the Arab press and on Al-Jazeera TV is a bloody-minded medieval way of thinking, an obsessive, illogical hatred that seems to be destroying the Arab world slowly from the inside out.

But what do I know? I’m just an Orientalist oppressor infidel brainwashed tool of the Great Satan.

Seebach’s column ends with a good question, after discussing Ahmad Abdel Rahman’s denial of Palestinian responsibility for the Karine-A:

Abdel Rahman's argument reveals both a different perception of reality and a different understanding of logic. But he must believe his arguments are persuasive to somebody, or else why would he make them?

Ask yourself, as you read, "What must the writer believe, in order to write what he did? What does he think his readers believe?"

thesaurus bookmarklet

A dictionary without a thesaurus is like pancakes without syrup. Like Cher without Sonny. It’s just slightly wrong.

Therefore I present for your edification, the Merriam Webster Thesaurus bookmarklet. Use it just like the dictionary bookmarklet.

Look up synonyms.

(Update: see this entry for the latest versions of the dictionary and thesaurus bookmarklets.)

musharraf speaks

In a brave speech, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf announced the banning of the terrorist groups responsible for the attack on India’s parliament, and promised a crack-down on madrassas that promote militancy. Here’s the full text of his speech.

friday, january 11, 2002

new merriam webster bookmarklet

Announcing a new improved version of the Merriam Webster Dictionary bookmarklet. (Alert the media!) This one should work with any browser (no need for separate PC/Mac versions), and opens the dictionary page in a new window.

To use it (as with all bookmarklets), drag the link to your browser toolbar. To look up a word either click directly on the bookmarklet and type in the word, or select a word on a web page and click the bookmarklet.

Look up a definition.

(By the way, another reason I like the Merriam Webster Dictionary: it has an audio pronunciation feature.)

(Update: see this entry for the latest versions of the dictionary and thesaurus bookmarklets.)

holy war inc.

Peter Bergen, author of Holy War, Inc. and one of the few Americans who’ve actually met Osama Bin Laden, is interviewed at the Atlantic Online: Terrorism’s CEO.

opt-out links

This is great! A list of links to opt out of many common ad servers. (via Reductio ad Absurdum.)

the new antisemitic myth

Thanks to Geoffrey Meltzner for pointing out this astonishing compilation of Arab anti-Semitic insanity, in a special report at MEMRI: A New Antisemitic Myth in the Arab Press: The September 11 Attacks Were Perpetrated by the Jews. Dozens of quotes from Arab sources illustrate their attempts to blame the 9/11 attacks on the Japanese, the Greeks, the CIA, the Bush family ... but most of all, on You-Know-Who.

You should read it; it’s a horrifying record, and shame on the US media for ignoring it. The sheer lunacy on display in these writings speaks of a very serious problem in the national identities of these people; it’s obvious that the violence will never stop while such virulent anti-Semitism rages unchecked.

I’ll just pull a couple of quotes. Here’s one of our allies, Saudi Prince Mamdouh bin Abd Al-Aziz, president of the Saudi Center for Strategic Studies, writing in London’s Al-Hayat:

"Anyone who even skims through The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Pieces on the Chessboard, or the book The World is a Pawn in the Hands of Israel, and follows current events, becomes convinced that the Jews are behind the world's current 'terrorized' atmosphere... These three books concur that there is a Zionist conspiracy...[the goal of which is] to channel everything, as much as possible, towards the interests of world Jewry, primarily those among them called 'Allah's Chosen People'..."

"Objectivity demands that we ask whether the disasters that have struck at the heart of the Arab and Islamic world over many long years were mere coincidence, or were the result of a conspiracy... I have no doubt whatsoever that many Arab Islamic countries and organizations, both religious and pan-Arab, that acted in good faith, were infiltrated by the Jews..."

And here is Egyptian Sheikh Muhammad Gamei'a, actually suggesting that if Americans knew “the truth” about the evil Zionists, they might have a change of heart about old Adolph:

"I told the American officials that the American people cannot, at this critical stage, know the real enemy who struck at its heart if it does not awaken from its slumber and stop blaming the Arabs and the Muslims. Immediately after the event, some 30% of the American people awakened [and realized] that they were the victims of deception on the part of the Jews, who presented the Arabs and the Muslims to them as a nation of barbarians and blood-shedders. It became clear to the American people that hidden hands were at play in their land. I heard from many Americans who visited me at the Islamic Center that they had been misled by the Jews and thus had come to express their support for the Arabs and Muslims. They said openly, We were deceived!!... If this [deceit] were to be known to the American people, they would do to the Jews what Hitler did to them!..."

put “chilling” on ice

I must agree with Moira Breen and Andrea Harris that it’s time to retire the word “chilling” from weblog posts about terrorism. Without making a crusade of it (ouch! sore subject!) I’ve been shunning this word already; do your part, won’t you?

I do reserve the right to use it in captions for photos of Dick Cheney, though.

the future of bin ladenism

Former CIA spy Reuel Marc Gerecht, in an op-ed for the NY Times: The Future of bin Ladenism.

The Bush administration would do well not to confuse the impact of America's military victory over the Taliban with that over Osama bin Laden. Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, was essentially a tribal chieftain — his spiritual supremacy over the Taliban was inextricably tied to the city and province of Kandahar. With Kandahar's fall, he and his inner circle lost the aura that allowed them to rule.

Osama bin Laden is different. The source of his power isn't tied to geography. His springs from bitterness and shame over the weakness of Islam's once glorious and militarily strong civilization, and a desire to make America taste that bitterness. He has promised to his suicide bombers and followers that America has not the will to sustain itself in a long "guerrilla war (of) fast-moving, light forces that work under complete secrecy."

If we hunt for him and bomb his sanctuaries but don't find and kill him, we will only add to his appeal and set him up for the next spectacular act of terrorism. Since we cannot avoid this conundrum, we must not temper our resolve to get him with the usual concern about the sovereignty of any foreign state where he may be.

the ship of truth

Charles Krauthammer at the Washington Post, on Yasser Arafat’s Ship Of Truth. I strongly agree with him that the Karine-A arms shipment could not possibly have been planned without Arafat’s knowledge:

The weapons were on the ship Israel intercepted en route from Iran to Gaza. The ship's captain has been a member of Arafat's Fatah for 25 years. He is an officer in the Palestinian navy. His ship was purchased by the Palestinian Authority. His instructions came from Arafat's arms paymaster.

Arafat is shocked -- shocked! -- by these revelations. Comically, he has ordered an investigation. This will rival Hitler's investigation of the Reichstag fire. Palestine is a nasty police state where, if you make a sideways crack about Arafat in the men's room of the local cafe, you find yourself arrested within hours by one of Arafat's eight separate security forces. To believe that a $100 million arms shipment could have been made on anything less than Arafat's orders is to know nothing about the Palestinian revolution.

The following paragraphs get to the heart of the matter; that the Powell/Mitchell vision of a “peace process” is a hopeless fantasy:

Yet the State Department professes puzzlement. "We have told him [Arafat] we need a full explanation."

Need a full explanation? I can save State the time and the translator's fees. Arafat is embarked on a strategy of war -- and has been ever since he signed the September 1993 Oslo "peace" accords on the White House lawn. Don't take it from me. Take it from the mouth of one of the leading Palestinian moderates, Faisal Husseini. Shortly before his fatal heart attack last year, he openly admitted that Oslo was "a Trojan Horse . . . just a temporary procedure . . . just a step towards something bigger."

That something bigger is "Palestine from the river to the sea," Husseini said, i.e., from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. That means eradicating Israel. Oslo? Just a way of "ambushing the Israelis and cheating them." How? Oslo gave the PLO an army, autonomy, money and territory -- the perfect base from which to fight for the ultimate eradication of Israel.

There is nothing new here. This strategy has been the declared PLO position ever since it adopted the "Phased Plan" in Cairo in 1974. Phase 1: Accept any territory offered of whatever size within Palestine. Phase 2: Make it the forward base for the war to destroy Israel.

more brinksmanship

A volatile situation that is still perilously close to spiraling out of control: India “ready for nuclear war.”

the saudi idea of root causes

The Saudis are lecturing us again about the “factors spawning terror.”

RIYADH, 11 January — Saudi Arabia urged the United States yesterday to eliminate the causes of tension in the Middle East as part of its global anti-terror campaign.

"If this campaign should extend to the Arab world, we would hope that it will concentrate on eliminating the factors conducive to violence and tension," Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News.

This should be done by "resolving outstanding problems that have deprived the region of stability and made it a victim of terrorism," he said.

Prince Saud said the war on terror would continue "so long as this phenomenon persists."

Yes, of course he’s talking about the “phenomenon” of Israel. He doesn’t say exactly what the United States should do, although I think the word “eliminate” is a pretty good tip-off.

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly clarified its tough stand against terrorism and backed the global crackdown on groups linked to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

I hate when coffee squirts out of my nose.

What an incredibly bald-faced hypocrite. Saudi Arabia is in the terrorism game up to its bloated double chin. 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudis. They export extremist Wahhabism around the world and support it with huge amounts of money. Their government press prints inflammatory racist articles daily. And after 9/11 they did everything they could to obstruct US investigations into Saudi connections—as they have obstructed every such investigation.

Needless to say, in this article about the “factors spawning terror,” Saudi Arabia accepts not one iota of responsibility.

thursday, january 10, 2002

the definition is in

Well, here’s what we’ve all been waiting for: Muslim “scholars” at a conference in Makkah have defined terrorism. And sadly, there are no surprises here.

MAKKAH, 11 January — Muslim scholars from around the world yesterday spelled out their definition of terrorism saying ‘it covers all acts of aggression unjustly committed by individuals, groups or states against human beings including attacks on their religion, life, intellect, property or honor’.

They also said "any act of violence or threat ... designed to terrorize people or endanger their lives or security" also amounts to terrorism. "Damaging the environment and public or private facilities, and endangering natural resources" is equally an act of terror, as are "murder and banditry."

They, however, described acts by the Palestinians against the Israeli occupation as a form of jihad and legitimate self-defense and called for a joint effort to counter anti-Islamic campaigns.

The ulema said anti-Muslim media campaigns which have risen following the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States are being orchestrated by Zionist organizations and designed to "stir up prejudice, animosity, hatred and discrimination against Islam and Muslims by associating them with terrorism."

At the end of a six-day conference here of the Islamic Fiqh (jurisprudence) Academy of the Muslim World League (MWL), the scholars called for distinguishing between acts of violence and legitimate self-defense by people under occupation.

They said the best example of state terrorism is the "heinous terrorism currently perpetrated by Jews in Palestine" and the one exercised by the Serbs in Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina.

"This is the most dangerous (type of) terrorism to world peace and security and its confrontation is a just self-defense and jihad in the way of Allah."

The scholars called on nations and people of the world to distinguish between legitimate jihad against oppression and acts of aggression and violence.

not the first

According to this UPI story at the Washington Times, the Karine-A was the third in a series of arms shipments to the PA—and the first two got through.

U.S. intelligence and administration sources also said that Egyptian military intelligence aided the PA in arms smuggling attempts.

"The feeling is that the Egyptians have turned a blind eye to what's been going on," said one U.S. government official.

A congressional staffer added that Egyptian forces at Alexandria, Egypt, would have had to identify the ship and its cargo by the time it transited the Suez Canal.

"The Egyptians knew and they tolerated it," he said. He added that the PA has a weapons storage site at el-Arish, in the northeastern part of the Sinai.

An Egyptian Embassy spokesman denied the allegations: "We have no idea of any of this," he said.

musharraf is trying

Pervez Musharraf seems to be getting serious about cracking down on Pakistan’s Islamo-fascist terror groups.

hanson: why muslims misjudged us

Victor Hanson is on in this wide-ranging essay for City Journal: Why the Muslims Misjudged Us.

Many Middle Easterners have performed a great media charade throughout this war. They publish newspapers and televise the news, and thereby give the appearance of being modern and Western. But their reporters and anchormen are by no means journalists by Western standards of free and truthful inquiry. Whereas CNN makes a point of talking to the victims of collateral damage in Kabul, al-Jazeera would never interview the mothers of Israeli teenagers blown apart by Palestinian bombs. Nor does any Egyptian or Syrian television station welcome freewheeling debates or Meet the Press–style talk shows permitting criticism of the government or the national religion. Instead, they quibble over their own degrees of anti-Americanism and obfuscate the internal contradictions of Islam. The chief dailies in Algiers, Teheran, and Kuwait City look like Pravda of old. The entire Islamic media is a simulacrum of the West, lacking the life-giving spirit of debate and self-criticism.

implausible denials

In the NY Times, William Safire writes about the seizure of the Palestinian arms shipment and the involvement of Iran: Arafat's Implausible Denials.

Following Saddam's Persian Gulf war defeat, Arafat switched his allegiance to Iran. The ayatollahs then armed Arafat's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon and became what the U.S. State Department last year labeled the most active state sponsor of worldwide terrorism.

European leaders are embarrassed because they recently gave Palestinians millions to feed the starving — and now find that their money went for C-4 explosive to kill the innocent. (Actually, Europe's diverted funds went a long way; thanks to Iranian subsidy, for only $10 million Arafat received arms valued at nearly five times that.)

More central to America's security, however, is the strategic reality revealed by the capture of the Karine A: Tehran has again shown itself to be the world arsenal of terror. Iran's ayatollahs have been escalating their sponsorship of terrorist war — yesterday on the "Great Satan" of America, today on Israeli Jews, tomorrow on the whole non-Islamic world.

Iran's Hashemi Rafsanjani reminded us recently of the glorious day "when the Islamic world acquires atomic weapons." He acknowledged that in a nuclear exchange the nations of Islam would suffer damage, but only one great nuclear blast "would destroy Israel completely."

saudi trash monitor

Ken Layne has delegated Bjoern Staerk and me as the daily Saudi trash monitors, in a stirring call to turn up the heat under the House of Saud. He’s right—the Saudis are spending tens of millions of dollars on public relations campaigns to fool the West into believing they’re generous, tolerant to a fault, and kind-hearted, even while their government-controlled press continues to spew the most appalling anti-Semitic hate, weird conspiracy fantasies, and victimology like a broken water main.

I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to stand the stink every day. But I agree with Ken that fact-checking the corrupt Arab press is an important function the anti-idiotarian bloggers can perform, because the mainstream US media (despite Saudi ranting about Zionist brainwashing) is largely silent about the scary prevalence of this stuff. The worst of it shows up in Arabic language publications, and most Westerners would be unaware of it if not for organizations like MEMRI.

ArabNews is an interesting case, though, because this is the face the House of Saud shows to the West; a government organ published in English, often containing reprints of Western articles (Fisk and Pilger and Rall (oh my!) are popular, of course), with the lunatic raving usually kept muzzled. I’m sure the editors were all Western-educated, because they have some of the forms of Western style journalism mastered—but they’re using these skills in the service of a corrupt regime and ideology.

Here’s an example—a typically byzantine conspiracy theory presented in weirdly muted fashion (as if it’s starting to dawn on them they’re being watched), starting with the bland title: Alternative plan?

Until Tuesday night’s suicide attack on an Israeli post in Gaza, which saw the two Palestinian attackers and four Israeli soldiers die, there had been almost a month without serious violence from the Palestinian side. This was the truce that Sharon had demanded, in the clear expectation that it would not be allowed to happen.

I don’t have the dates and numbers handy, but during the three week period they’re talking about, Israeli forces thwarted several terrorist attacks and probably prevented many more by their actions against militant leaders and locations harboring them. This hardly qualifies as a “truce,” which I’ve always understood to be a voluntary agreement entered into by two parties in good faith.

But there may have been an alternative plan to discredit the Palestinian Authority and Yasser Arafat, in the eyes of US peace envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni, who is due to return to the region in eight days’ time. The capture by Israeli commandos of the Karine A, seized in international waters in the Red Sea on Thursday, struck even the Americans as being uncannily convenient.

Here’s the setup; even the Americans think it’s “uncannily convenient.” Right. The only uncanny thing about it is Arafat’s chutzpah; but it makes perfect sense for him to try this now, while the attention of the world is elsewhere and things are relatively quiet. And I think even the most naive Americans are starting to see through the Nobel terrorist.

But watch out, here it comes:

This has all the characteristics of a sting operation, in which militant Palestinians, who see no reason why the Palestinians should not be arming themselves in the face of the hugely better-equipped Israeli occupation forces, were duped into an elaborate trap.

In other words, “Sure, they did it! But why not! And they were set up!”

Fact: according to the Oslo accords, the Palestinian Authority is not supposed to be in possession of offensive military weapons. They are not recognized as a sovereign state, and have agreed to maintain only a police force, not an armed military. But agreements are only speedbumps on Arafat’s road to genocide.

...the fact is that Yasser Arafat has denied having anything to do with the shipment.

Well, that settles it! After all, a Peace Prize winner is incapable of lying, right?

We must assume that Israeli intelligence duped a group of Palestinian militants into an elaborate trap, from which it is now intent of extracting the maximum propaganda benefit, in the hope of wrecking the Zinni mission. If the Americans did, in fact, know about the scam from the start, their initial lack of enthusiasm is explained. The subsequent change of heart, however, suggests Zionist arm-twisting.

Ta daa! Don’t you love it! “We must assume the scheming Jews are at it again!” even while they sort of admit that maybe there might have been a “group of militants” involved.

As if a freighter could be bought, $10 million dollars paid to Iran, and 50 tons of weapons smuggled into the PA—without Arafat knowing. Failing marks on the giggle test, boys.

attacks will resume

Palestine’s Islamic Jihad loons are going to keep killing Jews.

mine all mine

According to this story at the Guardian, India’s armed forces are creating an 1,800 mile minefield, along the entire length of India’s border with Pakistan, up to three miles deep in places.

blogspot blockage

Blogspot’s down again.

And I’m still not gloating.

freedom for iran

At the Washington Post, Reza Pahlavi (son of the late shah of Iran) writes about the growing youth movement in Iran: Beyond Khatami.

In no uncertain terms, the 50 million youth of Iran want secularism, freedom, economic opportunity and modernity. They have come to the painful realization that a prerequisite for attaining these goals is a complete change of regime. Our world has witnessed the dawn of new democracies, brought about by successful nonviolent civil disobedience and mass resistance movements from Africa to Latin America and through Eastern Europe. Let there be no doubt that Iranians thirst for the same chance to restore their unalienable right to self-determination, thus restoring the civility, dignity, tolerance and sovereignty for which the land of Persians was known for so many centuries.

wednesday, january 09, 2002

merriam webster bookmarklet

Mac IE5.x version: Look up a definition.

PC IE6 version: Look up a definition.

If I did it right, this should be a Javascript bookmarklet that calls the Merriam Webster online dictionary to look up any selected word on a web page. If no word is selected, it prompts you for one. At least, that’s the theory.

Cool. It works. To use it, drag the link to your toolbar. PC users: if it doesn’t work for you, let me know in a comment.

(The MW Dictionary is one of the few quality web services that is still free of those stinky pop-under windows. As of 01/09/02.)

(Update: the PC version works now. Drag it to your toolbar and experience the majesty.)

wtf?

What the? I have no idea what this is all about, but we got over 3000 hits today with this page as the referrer.

Huh?

There sure has been a lot of strange bot/crawler activity lately. Hmm.

new prisoners

We’ve captured at least two very high-ranking Al Qaeda freakazoids in the latest haul. And according to this story, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan and irrepressibly wacky spokesturban Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef is now spilling his guts to US intelligence.

the culture of hatred

I thought I’d already seen the most depraved stuff in the Arab press; nothing could shock me any more. But today at MEMRI there’s a translation of a column in the Saudi government daily Al-Riyadh, titled The Culture of Hatred, that is so over-the-top wigged-out stark raving looney that it amazed even me. This is definitely one for the “What The Hell Is Wrong With These People?” file.

Now, if you saw an article titled The Culture of Hatred in the New York Times, for example, you’d expect it to be a disapproving look at societies that instill hatred in their citizens, perhaps (if it was Maureen Dowd) ending with a nice sloppy moral about love triumphing over all.

But in the nightmare parallel universe of the Saudi press, that title is not derogatory—it’s a boast:

"When a particular culture is characterized by negative traits such as aggression, piracy, racism, or any other repulsive term, it must be hated by the other societies, except for those societies that share those very traits. This is a natural reaction..."

"On the other hand, when the hatred takes root in a particular society towards another society or nation [i.e. Western 'hatred' for the Nation of Islam] for its beliefs, for its way of life, or because it cannot come to terms with particular traditions and customs – this cannot be accepted!!!"

"For example, one cannot be amazed by the hatred of most of the nations of the world for the 'Zionist entity,' because of its history, replete not with human achievements but with barbaric massacres, deceit, and evil conscience. Hatred towards them is on the rise among the Arabs in particular, because of what they suffer from the occupation of the Arab state of Palestine, the catastrophes, the cruelty, and the injustice that are known to all."

Yes, repugnant as it may seem, the author Abdallah Al-Ka'id is actually making an argument in favor of hatred. Hatred of Jews is not only understandable, it’s their birthright:

"For this reason, Arab infants – before they reach the age of self-humiliation and submission – suckled hatred of the Zionist enemy with their mothers' milk, and this hatred cannot be uprooted despite all the talk about false peace agreements."

"However warm the kisses, and however firm the handshakes, their hearts are full of hatred, their souls are full of rage, and their eyes glance away with loathing at the sight of the flag of the Zionist entity flying in the heart of [some] Arab capitals."

"Men of honor want to rip up the flag, to dirty it on the ground. They want to expel these foreigners who came to our land, so that our Palestinian brothers will live on their land in peace and security, as do the other peoples. Don't they have the right???" ...

"These are our enemies, and our hatred towards them is rooted in our souls, and the only thing that can remove it is their departure from our lands and the purification of their defilement of our holy places!!!"

OK, folks, there it is again. This is the Saudi Arabian government talking to us. Al-Riyadh is their mouthpiece. They’re talking genocide, for God’s sake. Why do we persist in the pathetic sham of calling them our ally?

We’re told by the anti-war left that we should “rethink our Middle Eastern policies” so the Arab street won’t hate us so much—meaning, I suppose, that we should stop aiding Israel with arms and other support.

If we were so monumentally stupid as to follow this advice, shortly afterward we would watch in horror as all the surrounding Arab states overran Israel in an anti-Semitic bloodbath, emboldened by our show of weakness. They don’t even try to hide their intentions.

not gloating

Reading about all the problems my fellow Anti-Idiotarians are having with Blogger and Blogspot, I’m trying really hard (and succeeding, I think!) to avoid gloating about my blazing fast, utterly reliable, custom-built PHP content management system.

I’m so proud of myself for not gloating.

disturbing search requests

Our latest bizarre search requests: “fart inside mouth stories” (this one came from a coprophiliac in Germany) and “barefoot turd.”

Opera 5

Version 5 of the Opera browser for Mac OS 9 and X has been released. It is generating less than glowing reviews on the Versiontracker page linked above for it's poor css implementation and standards support.

more palestinian violence

Palestinian gunmen kill four Israeli soldiers, ending the so-called “lull” in the violence. Hamas has claimed responsibility in a statement that said they were retaliating for Israel’s seizure of the Palestinian arms shipment.

the Qassam brigades, in their statement, said they had decided to retaliate for Israeli incursions, the killings of Palestinians and "the piracy of capturing the ship...and dragging it to the rapist entity."

How dare those Israeli oppressors prevent the Palestinians from acquiring 50 tons of illegal offensive weapons! I guess this tends to undercut Arafat’s claim that the whole thing is an Israeli plot.

The Palestinian Authority condemned the latest assault and said it feared Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would use the incident as "an excuse to continue his military escalation and siege against our people."

An excuse! What an outrageously dehumanizing statement; as if Palestinians should be able to slaughter Israelis at will.

The PA apparently paid Iran $10 million dollars for the weapons on the Karine-A. It would never occur to these raving madmen to spend that money on roads, schools, or hospitals, instead of on rockets to kill Jews in their homes.

Meanwhile, Israel is very concerned about the Palestine/Iran connection, and it’s a serious problem—considering that Iran’s ex-president has spoken openly about the nuclear annihilation of Israel.

it all points to arafat

At the Washington Post, Michael Kelly says: It All Points to Arafat. Of course it does.

Arafat has been getting away with this kind of stuff for so long that he failed to notice the change in the weather; he thought he could carry on his murderous business as usual even though international opinion was clearly turning against him.

tuesday, january 08, 2002

angered by stereotypes

The slippery slope of racial profiling can lead to what this poor man is experiencing.

what the captain said

The National Review has published the full statement of the captain of Flight 363, about the reasons for his decision to boot Secret Service agent Walid Shatter off the plane: Security Scuffle. Very interesting stuff, backed up by another statement from an American Airlines employee.

I left my seat to speak to the individual. He appeared nervous and anxious. With all the forms that I received in error I determined that the most prudent course of action was to call dispatch to phone patch me to the SOC.

I asked them to fax me a copy of what the Secret Service credentials looks like. He advised me that BWI should have this information. BWI in fact does not.

We still were accommodating the connecting passengers and had time to further determine the proper credentials of this person.

While all this was going on the individual approached me in front of the lead agent and asked why he was being denied boarding for so long. I disclosed to him that the paper work was not correct and that I needed to have this fixed before he would be accommodated. This was an AA issue and none of his concern.

At this time the individual became very hostile with me. Upon all the information that I had up to this point -- I had doubt as to his actual representation as a Special Agent for the Secret Service.

1. *Two improperly filled out AA Form E2.
2. *Flt atts bringing to my attention what appeared to be strange behavior.
3. *Hostility toward me for trying to correct my required paper work.

I then had the Maryland Airport Authority police determine his proper ID by calling the Secret Service as to his legitimate status. This took about ten minutes to complete.

In the interim I was given a third improperly filled out AA Form E2. This had no signature of the LEO. No initial as to the traveling status of the officer. No phone number.

While the police were determining the proper status of this individual this person came up to me with loud abusive comments as to his being denied boarding. That he has the powers of the White House behind him and that this is not of [sic] the end of this matter. The police agreed with me that there was a legitimate concern because of his unprofessional behavior.

more on el fadl

I’ve written before about UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl; today the National Review has a good piece about him: Inside Islam.

Abou El Fadl doesn't have much respect for leading Muslim-American advocacy groups, who in his view shy away from addressing plainly and directly things they fear will make Muslims look bad. He says the Koran commands believers to speak truthfully and to stand for justice, no matter what the result. Less caginess and more honesty in the public square about the fundamentalist problem would be a public-relations boon to the American Muslim community, he believes.

"If you're honest, if you don't appear bigoted, or biased, or apologetic or defensive, people admire that," he says. "People become far more sympathetic towards you when they find that you are not trying to lie to them or trick them or give them a false sense of security or well-being, or a false sense of who you are. I think ultimately that people learn to admire whatever is truthful and introspective, and whoever looks to themselves before going around blaming everyone but themselves for their problems."

Abou El Fadl's books are banned in Saudi Arabia, which is the homeland of Wahhabism, and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Yet they are secretly copied and passed around samizdat-style. "That tells me there's a hunger," he says.

bombarded by rhetoric

At the National Post, another great Mark Steyn column: Bombarded by brutal rhetoric.

Here's what would have happened had the aid agencies got their way and pressured the U.S. into a bombing pause: many more Afghans would have starved to death, the Taliban would have been secured in power at least for another few months and perhaps indefinitely, but Rupert and Sebastian would have enjoyed the stage-heroic frisson of bouncing along in the truck to Jalalabad. That seems a high price for the Afghan people to pay. One expects a certain amount of reflexive anti-Americanism from these "humanitarian" types, but in the brutal Afghan fall they went too far: They ought at least to be big enough to admit they were wrong and be grateful the Pentagon ignored their bleatings.

Instead, they seem a little touchy about the fact that among the first food supplies to get through was a fresh supply of egg on their faces. When Axworthy and other self-proclaimed "humanitarians" start droning on next month about starving children in Iraq, always remember the lesson of Afghanistan: A bombing pause is not as "humanitarian" as a bomb. The quickest way to end a "humanitarian" crisis is to remove the idiot government responsible for it. Conversely, the best way to keep people starving is to cook up new wheezes to maintain the thugs in power, as Christian Aid, Oxfam, Conscience International and all the rest did in their petitions through the gullible Western media. I would urge readers to be highly selective about supporting aid agencies who operate under tyrannies. Better yet, go see for yourself: After all, for Canadians, there's no better time than now to spend a sultry two weeks in Kabul enjoying the charms of the brutal Afghan winter.

bush’s gaffe

The Times of India on how our President’s latest verbal pratfall is going over in the subcontinent: Dubya shoots from the lip, again.

WASHINGTON: President Bush dropped one of his trademark clangers on Monday, referring to Pakistanis as "Pakis", a term that is considered an ethnic slur, especially in Britain. ...

Even well-versed American commentators -- as well as many Indians -- routinely use the terms "Paks" and "Pakis" to describe Pakistanis, unaware that the expression is as insulting as other etiquette-busters such as "Japs," "Red Indians," and "Negroes."

how is tom doing?

New poll today: How satisfied are you with what Tom Ridge is doing as head of Homeland Security?

hiding from spambots

I just realized this morning that I hadn’t visited Jeffrey Zeldman’s site for a few days; what do I find there but a discussion of encoding email addresses to fool “spambots”—those heinous little tools of Satan that crawl the web 24/7 looking for email addresses, so their demonic owners can fill your Inbox with sulfurous droppings. It should be noted that no encoding will fool a really smart spambot. But most of them are dumb, and simple character encoding will still stop them.

Jeffrey’s page has lots of links to great tools people have written to encode your address; if you have admin-level access to your server, Steven Champeon’s method will let you stop the most common spambots from entering your site at all. (We don’t have such access here.)

But I wanted to mention that you don’t need to use any of these encoding tools if you post comments here, or if you save your email address permanently with our preferences page. If you enter an email address on our comment form, it will be automatically encoded by the main weblog template when the page is sent to a browser. (Or to a tool of Satan.)

In the interest of full disclosure, here’s the PHP code fragment that does the encoding before sending out the HTML:

The file is read into an array, then each array entry (each line of the file) is scanned for mailto: links. If one is found, the entire mailto: URI (everything inside the quotes following the HREF attribute) is encoded, which may be overkill. But that’s me—Mr. Overkill.

the next phase

A story in Hong Kong’s Asia Times suggests that things are about to get interesting: Afghanistan enters new phase of warfare.

KARACHI - The United States and its opponents are preparing for a new phase of combat in Afghanistan, with information suggesting that after March a renewed anti-US struggle is likely to begin in the country.

The movement will not be led by Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, but will be a combination of various Afghan factions inside and outside of Afghanistan, and even including some elements of the Northern Alliance.

And informed sources have revealed to Asia Times Online that this new movement wants to solicit the either direct or indirect support of Iran, which has serious reservations over the US presence in the region.

(Thanks to Steve Bodio for the link.)

monday, january 07, 2002

lgf artmail released!

If you run a weblog with Greymatter, you’ll be interested in this!

Now your weblog can have an “Email This Article” feature, just like you see here and on major sites like the New York Times and the Washington Post. I’m releasing my new PHP script that lets your visitors email a text copy of any Greymatter entry to their friends. The script lets you send mail to up to 10 people at once, and converts embedded hyperlinks into numbered footnotes. It’s a great way to publicize your weblog.

Features:

* Runs with PHP version 4.06 or later, and any version of Greymatter
* Easy to configure and install
* Converts Greymatter weblog entries to plain text email messages
* Specify up to 10 To: addresses
* The sender can add a personal message
* Links in entries are converted to numbered footnotes below the entry text
* Email contains IP address of the sender, for security
* Email contains a link back to the weblog page
* HTML template file can be easily customized to match your weblog
* It’s fast
* Documentation and installation instructions included
* The code is nicely commented for the geeks out there

To download the script, click here.

warning shot

God fires a warning shot across our bow.

blogspot bogged down

Looks like Blogspot is down again, which means that just about all of the Anti-Idiotarians are inaccessible. This is becoming a daily occurrence. I’m starting to suspect a vast Idiotarian conspiracy.

from the bottom of my heart

In another interesting bit at MEMRI today, Israeli leftist author A.B. Yehoshua is quoted in the Arab-Israeli newspaper Kul Al-Arab, “I Hate Arafat From the Bottom of My Heart.”

Kul Al-Arab: "Do you believe that the Israeli left still exists?"

Yehoshua: "There is no doubt that the Israeli left suffered a major blow from the Palestinians following the failure of the negotiations at Camp David."

"I believe that the main reason for the decline of the Israeli left is Yasser Arafat. When Arafat stubbornly insisted on rejecting Barak's proposals at Camp David, he brought a catastrophe upon his Palestinian people. Barak proposed to return 95% of the territory but Arafat refused, and that was a big mistake. Following [the launching of the Intifada] I met with many Palestinians and I asked them for the reason that led the Palestinians to use fire [arms] while Israel was led by a left wing government that was seeking peace and proposing solutions to reach it. The Palestinian choice of the Intifada brought about a shift in Israeli public opinion regarding Arafat and his people across the political spectrum – from the most neutral to the most radical."

Kul Al-Arab: "Do you still see Yasser Arafat as Israel's peace partner or even as a negotiation partner?"

Yehoshua: "Frankly, I'll tell you that personally, I hate Arafat from the bottom of my heart. The dream which we have been trying to realize since 1967 – the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel –amounts today to fiction. If I were a Palestinian, I would cry and scream to the world that I hate Arafat, and I would come out against him.

bitter enemy

Arafat gets a promotion, from “irrelevant” to “bitter enemy.”

bellicose saudis

More twisted Arab ranting at MEMRI today. From an editorial in the Al-Jazeera daily:

"In this article I will respond to those who launched this attack using [quotations from] the curricula in the Western schools which show that the West itself trains terrorists who disseminate corruption and oppression on the face of the Earth!!"

"A book called 'The Mission,' put out by "Express" publishing house in Britain,(2) is marketed throughout the world… The book includes a chapter entitled 'The Most Dangerous Terrorism'… It presents a possible scenario in which terrorists hijack a plane and crash it into a nuclear reactor. This made a director of a nuclear reactor in the U.S. take a light plane and crash it into the reactor to see what would happen…"

"The book also discussed biological warfare… and referred to an American research study in which anthrax was sprayed from the southern end of Manhattan when there was a southeast wind. They said that half of those exposed to the virus became ill, and half of those who became ill died. The number of victims exceeded 600,000…"

"These things were written in a textbook [used] in schools and institutes in Britain and many other countries. It presents an organized plan that lacks only the practical execution of terror operations. I am not ruling out the possibility that whoever carried out what happened at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took the idea from this book… with slight changes in execution – instead of crashing into a nuclear reactor, they crashed into buildings with economic and military significance to strike at the honor of the U.S.!!…"

Watch out, don’t let any of that froth get on you.

These guys make our most wacked-out conspiracy theorists look tame. Planes crashing into nuclear reactors! Anthrax sprayed over Manhattan! Is there nothing the evil infidel will not do? And all of it no doubt covered up by the tyrannical Jewish media!

By the way, there really is an Express Publishing house in the UK, and they do have a series of English textbooks and exam training books called Mission: FCE. FCE is the Cambridge First Certificate in English.

I couldn’t find the section about a plane crashing into a nuclear reactor. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Those evil Jews are sneaky.

The following excerpt is hereby this year’s first nominee for “Most Unintentionally Hilarious Racist Arab Statement.” Columnist Muhammad Ben Ali Al-Harafi in Al-Watan, ranting about Franklin Graham:

"Would preacher Graham you dare attack the Jewish religion and those who believe in it when you know for certain that the Jews hate those of all other races except their own, and think that they are beloved of God and His Chosen People while others are their slaves and created only to serve them? Would he dare attack them when you believe that they murdered Jesus the son of Mary? Would he dare attack them while him and the Christian community, believe that Jesus will come on Judgement Day to kill the Jews and save all the people from their evil? I swear that he would not dare, because he fears the Jews…"

"Islam is a tolerant religion…"

I don’t have to point out again that this sewage is sponsored and vetted by the Saudi government, do I?

on security

Almost four months after, it’s very disturbing that a suicidal 15-year old with a Bin Laden fixation is able to fly a plane into a building. What if it were a cropduster, loaded up with smallpox or anthrax or sarin gas?

There’s a good discussion going on among the Anti-Idiotarians about Tom Ridge, and what he is or isn’t doing; right now I’d have to agree with Jeff Jarvis that it doesn’t appear to be very much. Jeff has a detailed list of actions he thinks should be taken, and it’s hard to quibble with. But Will Vehrs is quite right to urge caution—even though he simultaneously makes the contradictory point that Ashcroft’s strong and very controversial law enforcement actions have probably prevented more terror attacks since 9/11.

Let’s face it, baggage screening and ID checks aren’t going to prevent crazy-ass kids from doing things like this, and the scary thing is that they also won’t catch the lone Al Qaeda operative with a pocketful of anthrax and a head full of martyrdom.

The two areas where we are most deficient are 1) response time to possible attacks, and 2) dealing with the aftermath.

We need to shorten the response time in scrambling fighters, alerting civil authorities, etc.—in other words, responding more quickly to possible attacks in progress. The everyday air travel passenger has already realized this, as demonstrated by the quick action of passengers and crew against Shoe-Fly Richard Reid; no passenger will ever sit blandly in his seat again if trouble breaks out on a plane.

But the government still seems to be lumbering along at pre-9/11 pace; where are the preparations for handling a serious attack with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons? Where are the aid stations, hospital annexes, vaccine stockpiles, etc., to deal with the aftermath? Why hasn’t a huge increase in public health spending been a priority? If you look at some of the possible scenarios for attacks like this, you quickly realize how frighteningly unprepared we are for this eventuality.

It’s almost as if the US still hasn’t gotten it in some important sense, as if our government is so short-term crisis-oriented that it won’t face up to the implications of these weapons being in the hands of terrorists until they’re actually used. I hope that’s not the case, and that there’s much more going on behind the scenes.

the street-fightin’ prof

Palestinian apologist Professor Edward Said (who is also an expert in ballistics) has a new essay titled “Is Israel more secure now?” in which he beats a very familiar drum; Israel is an occupier and an oppressor, they have to deal with Arafat, their actions are making them less secure, Sharon is a war criminal, etc. Steven Den Beste points out Said’s intellectual dishonesty:

A year and a half ago, the Israeli government made an offer to Arafat which gave the Palestinians everything they wanted except one thing. ...

The one thing that Israel wouldn't give up was "the right of return." The Palestinians demanded the right for all Palestinians to return to the territory held by Israel in 1967 and to resume occupancy of property in that territory which they or their ancestors had held before 1948 -- which would have destroyed Israel as a nation, and forced the vast majority of Israelis into exile. That is the one concession that Israel can never make.

But short of that, Israel finally reached the point of being willing to concede to the Palestinians every other demand they'd made.

And Arafat turned that offer down. And by so doing, he and his people no longer deserve the sympathy that Said asks for. They demonstrated by that act that nothing less than the total destruction of Israel will satisfy them.

That’s exactly right; and I would add that it’s not just the most recent offer that was refused. Since 1948 the Palestinians (who are Arabs really, and whose viewpoints are shared by all the surrounding countries) have consistently refused to negotiate with Israel at every opportunity, choosing instead to follow a violent path with goals that can only be described as genocidal.

futbols petit vert

Wow! One of our very favorite writers, James Lileks has added us to the short list of blogs on his new Screed page; what an honor! Welcome to our new visitors! (At first I thought he was linking to the BizarroWorld French version of LGF—but the URL’s ours.)

And there’s a juicy new rant on the Screed too, slicing and dicing another sloppy Stephanie Salter column like a Benihana chef.

advance warning?

Did Walid Arkeh, a Jordanian national in jail in Florida, tell the FBI about the impending attacks in August?

A jailed Seminole County man who had served time in a British prison with three suspected associates of Osama bin Laden claims the FBI ignored his warnings in August that terrorist attacks on New York City would occur "very soon."

Walid Arkeh contends that, during a late-summer interview that federal officials acknowledge took place, FBI agents scoffed at his promise to exchange more details for freedom, asylum and protection.

But since Sept. 11, the 35-year-old Jordanian national from Altamonte Springs has been grilled by federal agents and whisked to an undisclosed location by state corrections officials. His name and photo - all traces of his presence in the system - have been removed from the Department of Corrections Web site.

sunday, january 06, 2002

new iMac?

TIME canada.com has pictures and an article about the new iMac, a very cool looking new computer that will (I presume) be officially announced tomorrow in Steve Jobs' keynote address at the Macworld SF Expo.

Update: The picture has been pulled, but the story is still available here

Update II: The picture is available in this MacCentral article.

taliban?

Taliban?

similar attacks

According to this SF Chronicle story, US and British officials are concerned that Richard Reid’s bombing attempt may have been a trial run for a much bigger, coordinated attack.

Am I ever glad that I’m not in a touring band right now.

married to al qaeda

The fascinating story of April Brightsky Ray, an American Muslim woman whose husband Wadih El-Hage was Osama Bin Laden’s personal secretary and is now serving a life sentence for taking part in the 1998 bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa.

(Note to anti-profilers: is this woman throwing off enough signs to make you think she should probably be watched? Yet?)

da cat

For those of us who grew up in the ocean, it is sad to see that Miki Dora has passed away. One of the first surfboards I ever owned was a huge 9' long "Cat" board shaped by Miki. It seemed even larger to me because I was 10 years old and about 4' tall at the time.

Farewell to one of the true originals in the world of surfing...

unilateralism

Steven Den Beste has a great essay today on the downfall of multilateralism. Go now and read of it.

this oughtta be good

I’m sure this is really going to help: Scholars urged to define terrorism.

Scholars from around the world who began a six-day conference in the holy city of Makkah yesterday were urged to work out a clear definition of terrorism to help ward off a malicious smear campaign against Islam and Muslims.

As if, casting about for someone or something to blame, and seeing all attempts fall on deaf Western ears, they now want to blame words themselves for their problems.

Never mind that the day before this conference began, Makkah was the site of a rabidly anti-Western sermon.

I can’t wait for this definition. Hilarity will no doubt ensue.

maher on king

Geoff Meltzner emailed us about Larry King’s interview with Bill Maher. Since I was one of those offended by Maher’s boorish remark about lobbing cruise missiles from a distance, it’s only fair to give him his propers now, because he sounds eminently sensible in this interview. (By which I mean he agrees with me, of course.)

I couldn’t read the whole thing line by line; Larry King’s incoherence is painfully obvious with the verbal static faithfully transcribed. But a couple of moments:

KING: How about, though, when it leads to you throw a Secret Service guy off an airplane who is going to Texas to protect the president? You throw him off because he's Muslim?

MAHER: OK. He was an Arab guy with a gun.

KING: With a permit.

MAHER: A permit?

KING: With I.D.

MAHER: All right, but aren't we in the "let's be safe than sorry" phase now? An Arab guy with a gun wants to get on a plane. He flashes a badge. Now, I have police kind of badges.

KING: You question him, he says, call my leaders. Call the Secret Service, they'll tell you who I am.

MAHER: Well, and shouldn't he be willing to undergo that?

KING: They wouldn't do it. Right? They threw him off the plane.

MAHER: They threw him off the plane to check him out. Do we want the message to go out to airlines now -- because this guy called a press conference yesterday and was kind of whining about it -- do we really want the message to go out to American Airlines who I think did the right thing, do we want the message to be, look, if an Arab guy with a gun waves some kind of a badge and you are not quite sure, you know, you could get sued. So wave him on and get up in the sky.

KING: So, under that concept, in 1941 you would have probably favored putting the Japanese into camps.

MAHER: What a ridiculous jump.

No shit! And bravo to Maher for not regurgitating some PC pabulum:

MAHER: ... it was wrong. And it's part of the problem here that people do not have perspective. They can't see the difference between rounding people up and putting them in camps and just saying, you know what, we've had a problem, and tolerance works two ways. I think America has been remarkably tolerant to the Muslim community. But they have to be tolerant of our suspicions, which are justified. It is just common sense.

The interview finishes with some spot-on comments about Israel:

KING: What do you make of the Israeli situation, the Palestinian, is it ever going to solve that?

(Ed. note: Larry, please. Get a grip.)

MAHER: This again, you know, I'm like the only guy on TV who defends Israel. The media is so biased.

KING: You think they're anti-Israel?

MAHER: Of course they are. They don't -- because they don't understand what happened in that area of the world throughout the last century. They're occupied. That's a term that's just used on all newscasts. That territory is not occupied, OK? The term "occupied" refers to a country that used to be a country. There was no Palestinian Arab country, ever.

KING: There was a Palestine, though.

MAHER: Palestine. Do you know that at the 1939 World's Fair, there was a Palestinian exhibit. It was Jewish. It was a Zionist exhibit. The term Palestinian only refers to people who live in that part of the world. They are both Arab and Jew. It is as much the Jews' homeland as the Arabs'.

KING: They are cousins, too.

MAHER: They are cousins. And that's true if you've ever been to the mall and bought something. But when that land was partitioned in 1947 and the U.N. said, OK, fellow, you are going to have to share it. The Jews said OK, and the Arabs said, no, we'd rather try to wipe you out.

And right now, we live in a situation where the Jews could wipe out the Arabs in two seconds if they wanted. They have the means. They don't. Do you think if the Arabs, you think if they had the atom bomb, that the state of Israel would last? How long would it last? One minute.

OK, maybe I was wrong about this guy; maybe he’s not really as dense as a 2-year old Christmas fruitcake. But I still don’t like his show.

our true enemy

Daniel Pipes says we should aim the war on terror at militant Islam.

Islam itself--the centuries-old faith--is not the issue but one extremist variant of it is. Militant Islam derives from Islam but is a misanthropic, misogynist, triumphalist, millennarian, anti-modern, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, terroristic, jihadistic and suicidal version of it.

Fortunately, it appeals to only about 10% to 15% of Muslims, meaning that a substantial majority would prefer a more moderate version.

This implies a simple and effective strategy: weaken militant Islam around the world and strengthen the moderate alternatives to it. Fight it militarily, diplomatically, legally, intellectually and religiously. Fight it in Afghanistan, in Saudi Arabia, in the United States--in fact, everywhere.

Moderate Muslims will be key allies in this fight. Yes, they are weak and intimidated these days, but they are crucial if the Muslim world is to leave its current bout of radicalism.

rancid humor

Wasn’t Terry Jones funny in Monty Python? Or was I hallucinating those brilliant sketches and movies? (Not impossible...)

Because now his humor has gone as rancid as unrefrigerated mayonnaise. In this column he waxes snarky about the bags that were placed over the heads of some Al Qaeda prisoners. I spotted this one last night while slumming around the Guardian in a bout of insomnia, and put it in my scrapbook to write about this morning—and then I discovered Tim Blair had beat me to it.

It’s a blog eat blog world out there.

a look back

James Lileks looks back at the year 2002. I knew there had to be a reason why I woke up in the middle of the night; now I can go back to sleep. Good night.

saturday, january 05, 2002

anti-idiotarian bloggers

Glenn Reynolds (who seems to be having an off day today, with only 14 posts so far) answers the question “Where are all the non-libertarian bloggers?”

What bloggers are more than anything, I think, is anti-idiot. That makes life tough for Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and the Revs. Falwell, Robertson, Jackson, & Sharpton, for reasons that transcend traditional partisanship and ideology.

That’s it exactly! I really don’t care to affiliate myself with any of the current political parties.

But if there were an Anti-Idiotarian Party™, I’d be a member for life.

(Update: In fact, I like the sound of that so much I’ve renamed our “warblogs” section.)

the september 11 ledger

Jason Soon brought our attention to this excellent, insightful essay by Barry Rubin at Australia’s The Review: The September 11 Ledger, subtitled The truth about US Mid-East policy. Rubin defends US Middle Eastern and Arab policies, with numerous examples and lucid writing.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the new anti-Americanism–though even this point is not so new–is the contradiction between seeing the United States as an arrogant bully whose mistreatment of the Arabs and Muslims merits punishment and as a cowardly weakling.

While the radicals must portray America as a bully to provoke outrage against it, they must also portray America as weak to encourage Arabs and Muslims to fight it and believe they can win. So the revolutionaries must persuade the masses and leaders that America is simultaneously horrible and helpless.

Here, too, is a key problem with the US debate over the terrorism crisis: American opinion-makers, diplomats, and academics are defining America’s mistake in the Middle East as having been too tough. Instead, the belief that America could be defeated and the readiness to try such a strategy arises from the fact that the United States was too weak and meek in its behaviour. Far from attacking America because it is really a big bully, extremists past and present launched assaults to prove their belief that the United States was a paper tiger.

Thus, while US policy has made mistakes perhaps the biggest mistake of all is the precise opposite of what it is accused of doing by critics both at home and in the Middle East. Rather than having been guilty of bullying, the United States has been too soft to merit respect. Here is a country in which the most influential text on the Middle East, Edward Said’s book, Orientalism, charges that Americans — and especially American scholars — totally misunderstand and constantly insult the Middle East. In fact, the Middle East’s miscomprehension and hostile behaviour toward America far exceeds these same qualities on the part of the United States.

effects of sanctions on iraq

Matt Welch has put together a fantastic compilation of links for investigating the effects of sanctions on Iraq, at the Online Journalism Review. Matt must have filed this one from the land of the “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” (via Thomas Nephew.)

the jihad’s over

An op-ed in the Indian Express looks at the difficulties ahead for Gen. Musharraf as he tries to dismantle Pakistan’s jihadi regime—the Islamo-fascist elements in Pakistan’s ISI army intelligence agency.

belaboring the obvious

Israeli security officials, according to the Jerusalem Post, are telling Anthony Zinni that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are using the reduction in violence as a chance to regroup and rearm for the next wave.

sheikh yerbouti

Those wacky, irrepressible Saudi imams are at it again! Today’s Arab News delivers a nice shot of anti-Americanism as straight news, reporting on a laff-a-minute Friday night sermon: Makkah imam slams Western arrogance.

The imam of the Grand Mosque in Makkah yesterday slammed the Western arrogance saying that it thrives on humiliating and subjugating other nations.

Whereas the Saudis thrive only on humiliating and subjugating women.

Sheikh Saleh ibn Humeid also said in his Friday sermon, televised around the world by satellite channels, that there is a huge gap between theory and practice of the Western principles of democracy, freedom and human rights.

In the real world, there is always a gap between theory and practice; only religious fanatics and utopianists think it’s possible to have a perfectly realized political system—and they’re wrong.

Today’s world order is "dark, characterized by arrogance, haughtiness, humiliation and disdain. It is characterized by tyranny, suppression of peoples and nations, domination and monopolization," the imam said. "What kind of principles are these that create hatred, and educational systems that allow humiliation (of others)?"

I guess he must be talking about schools like Palisades High School up the street, where only boys are allowed and the curriculum consists entirely of rote memorization of the Koran ... wait a minute, I’m thinking of those Saudi-financed madrassas! Silly me! Sorry for the mixup. Back to our lugubrious imam:

"The world needs the formulation of a merciful policy that promotes ethics, fairness and justice ... a policy that abolishes weapons used to sow destruction ... and ends all forms of colonialism and domination," he said.

That last sentence was only an excerpt; through the magic of the Internet I’ve located the Shaky Sheikh’s full statement:

“...a policy that ends all forms of colonialism and domination and homosexuals and women’s rights and Christians and especially Jews and all other religions for that matter and labrador retrievers and that harlot Britney Spears even though I did kinda like that video with the snake.”

friday, january 04, 2002

separated at birth?

Reid Stott unearths another uncanny resemblance. Is it possible this whole “war on terror” thing is a conspiracy among Geraldo Rivera, Jacques Chirac, and Richard Starkey? Go ahead. Prove me wrong.

made in iran

And by the way, most of the weapons on that Palestinian ship were made in Iran.

busted

The Palestinian Authority, caught red-handed smuggling a huge shipment of weapons, now resort to their usual tactics of blustery denial and conspiracy theories. According to Israeli authorities the ship had been bought by the Palestinian Authority, was skippered and partly staffed by officers of the Palestinian naval police, and senior Palestinian officials were involved in financing and carrying out the smuggling operation.

The announcement had the immediate effect of shifting the public focus of General Zinni's mission to what Israeli officials say are continued Palestinian preparations for violence with the acquiescence and even support of Mr. Arafat.

"This is further proof that the Palestinian Authority has not changed its intention of achieving its aims through terrorism and violence," Deputy Defense Minister Dalia Rabin-Pelosoff said in a radio interview.

As if we needed any more proof.

“Jewish plot!” screams the PA:

The Palestinian Authority denied the Israeli assertions, saying they were deliberately timed to undermine the American envoy's mission after two weeks of relative calm that have followed a call by Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to halt armed attacks on Israelis.

"These allegations are false," said Yasir Abed Rabbo, the Palestinian minister of information. "The Palestinian Authority has nothing to do with this ship." ...

Mr. Abed Rabbo said the Israelis were trying to hijack General Zinni's agenda and turn it away from the recent progress toward restoring calm and moving toward a resumption of talks.

"We wonder why they chose this particular time, when Zinni was meeting with President Arafat, to make such a declaration," Mr. Abed Rabbo said.

Uh... maybe because this particular time is when you tried to brazenly sneak in some weapons, right under Anthony Zinni’s nose?

show trial

A criminal trial is too good for the likes of Zacarias Moussaoui, who by any definition of the words has to be considered a spy and a saboteur. But he will now be afforded all the rights and privileges of a US citizen, in a trial that has a good possibility of becoming a fiasco. This is a very misguided decision, and I hereby predict that it’s going to come back and bite someone on the ass.

Rich Lowry has a good piece on this at the National Review: Show Trial.

Like bin Laden, Moussaoui deserved only to be killed on the battlefield, which he brought here to the U.S. in violation of all the rules of war. As it turned out, his stupidity and clumsiness kept him off Flight 93, but a military tribunal could have at least given him his tawdry and evil martyrdom within a matter of weeks.

Instead, he sits in Alexandria, for a trial that, even if it is handled professionally and efficiently, should be considered a travesty.

how secret is this?

A few more thoughts on the Arab American Secret Service agent who got booted off an American Airlines flight on Christmas day:

The pilot should receive a commendation. The tendency to subject every decision made by people under pressure to a microscopic examination of their motives is wrong. If we’re going to trust pilots with the lives of hundreds of people, as we do every day, we have to stop second-guessing them. This is just stupid.

And the Secret Service agent! Here’s a guy who has a sacred duty to protect the life of the President, a guy who should put national security ahead of everything else (especially now!), a guy who’s in a SERVICE that’s supposed to be SECRET, for God’s sake—and he calls in the lawyers and CAIR for something like this? It’s outrageous.

Shame on George W. Bush for going for the cheap political hit, instead of disciplining this agent as he deserves.

moussaoui wants TV

Here we go again. Zacarias Moussaoui wants his trial televised.

I don’t really need to bring up O. J. Simpson, do I?

I just wonder why Moussaoui wasn’t brought before a military tribunal, instead of being given the opportunity to turn this into a world-wide circus.

the saudi threat

A great piece at OpinionJournal by Ralph Peters: The Saudi Threat. The poor, put-upon House of Saud thinks the (Zionist-controlled) US media is being too hard on them. This essay isn’t going to make them feel any better.

Since Sept. 11, the Saudis have mounted a well-funded campaign to convince Americans that they bear no blame for anything. But they're worried. It long has been a Saudi assumption that they could buy whatever influence they needed in America, and they have, indeed, had many an influential American on their payroll, from lawyers and lobbyists to businessmen and out-of-work politicians. They joke about us as they would about prostitutes, and regard us as no better, if more enduringly useful. Their strategy worked as long as the rest of America slept. But the Saudis learned, after the attacks on New York and Washington, that the American people as a whole cannot be bought. Not even with cheap oil.

god and mammon

A new essay by Daniel Pipes shatters many of the myths about the “root causes” of terrorism: God and Mammon: Does Poverty Cause Militant Islam?

The events of September 11 have intensified a long-standing debate: What causes Muslims to turn to militant Islam? Some analysts have noted the poverty of Afghanistan and concluded that herein lay the problem. Jessica Stern of Harvard University wrote that the United States "can no longer afford to allow states to fail." If it does not devote a much higher priority to health, education and economic development abroad, she writes, "new Osamas will continue to arise." Susan Sachs of the New York Times observes: "Predictably, the disappointed youth of Egypt and Saudi Arabia turn to religion for comfort." More colorfully, others have advocated bombarding Afghanistan with foodstuffs not along with but instead of explosives.

Behind these analyses lies an assumption that socioeconomic distress drives Muslims to extremism. The evidence, however, does not support this expectation. Militant Islam (or Islamism) is not a response to poverty or impoverishment; not only are Bangladesh and Iraq not hotbeds of militant Islam, but militant Islam has often surged in countries experiencing rapid economic growth. The factors that cause militant Islam to decline or flourish appear to have more to do with issues of identity than with economics.

khaled abou el fadl

A couple of days ago I linked to an LA Times article about Khaled Abou El Fadl, a UCLA law professor who is one of the few Muslim scholars speaking out for moderation and tolerance. In a short interview on the radio this morning, El Fadl was asked why more Muslim scholars and clerics have not spoken out against extremism; his answer was simply, “They’re afraid.”

Immediately after 9/11, El Fadl said, he had hoped for a resurgence of sanity as Muslims were revolted by what had been done in the name of their religion. But unfortunately, the moderate voices that did speak out quickly fell silent.

And he expressed pessimism about the prevalence of Wahhabism and other “puritan” movements in the Muslim world, saying that the fundamentalists’ power is rising, not declining, and that Islamic society seems to be in an era of irresponsibility and resentment.

reorientation

The AP reports that US mediator Anthony Zinni will focus mainly on pressuring Yasser Arafat to continue dismantling Palestinian terror groups, in a short visit.

U.S. mediator Anthony Zinni will concentrate on trying to persuade Yasser Arafat to dismantle terrorist cells on the West Bank and in Gaza in his new Mideast mission.

"That's the way to promote a continued reduction in the violence," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday in announcing that Zinni's second trip to the area would be a brief one.

A striking difference from his last open-ended visit with such big goals.

the saudi connection

An article at Ha'aretz has more information about the Hamas plot to build long-range rockets with Saudi financing.

weapons intercepted

Israeli air force and navy units boarded a Palestinian freighter in the Red Sea yesterday and discovered 50 tons of offensive weapons headed for the Palestinian Authority. The weapons were packaged in waterproof containers, to be dropped overboard and picked up by smaller craft.

thursday, january 03, 2002

profiling or precaution?

When Wallid Shatter, an Arab American Secret Service agent, was ordered off the plane by the captain of American Airlines Flight 363, CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) wasted no time lodging a complaint with the airline, accusing AA of racist profiling and demanding an apology. But there’s much more to this story, as this piece by Christopher Caldwell shows: The Secret Service Agent and the Airline.

In a nutshell: armed Secret Service agents are, of course, required to notify the airlines when they fly on passenger planes. This guy first handed in an illegible copy of the paperwork, so they asked for another copy. He filled out the paperwork again; it had problems and inaccuracies. He did it again, and again it was filled out incorrectly. Then the guy got belligerent.

Think about this. It’s Christmas day. Richard Reid is all over the news; he just tried to blow an American Airlines plane out of the sky. Here’s an Arab American claiming to be a Secret Service agent, but he apparently doesn’t even know how to fill out the forms correctly, even after three tries. On top of that, he’s getting loud. How can the pilot be accused of bigotry? What if Wallid Shatter really had been a terrorist with forged credentials? The same people would now be accusing the (dead) pilot of missing obvious signs.

(And there’s even more—he tried to get back on the plane to retrieve his jacket. If you’ve ever tried to get back on a plane against the flow of departing passengers, because you forgot something, you already know that airline personnel are not crazy about the idea. I’ve left my guitar in the overhead rack several times and gotten off the plane, dazed by lack of sleep, and I speak from personal experience. You become a problem. And they don’t like you.)

This incident is an example of political correctness taken to the point of dangerous absurdity, unashamedly exploited by the Arab lobby.

And I have to ask, what is up with this Secret Service nutjob? He’s an agent of the federal government. He flies all the time. He knows the regulations. He knows how to fill out the paperwork. How can he screw it up three times? And how dare he think it’s appropriate to call in the lawyers and CAIR and scream “PROFILING!” at a time like this? Someone ought to slap him down.

If they’re not too afraid of CAIR, that is.

sullivan redesigns

What a joy to be able to easily link to individual entries on Andrew Sullivan’s newly redesigned site. Much better.

rafsanjani’s nuclear threats

Former Iranian “president” Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in a sermon at Tehran University on December 14, said that if the Islamic world ever obtains nuclear weapons Israel will cease to exist. This has been reported elsewhere, but MEMRI has more extensive translations of Rafsanjani’s disgustingly anti-Semitic sermon.

Rafsanjani stated that the establishment of Israel has inflicted hundreds of billions of dollars in damage on states in the region. However, since the essence of the phenomenon of Israel is colonialist - colonialism benefits from this fabricated government. Rafsanjani added that following the end of the official colonialist [era], the perpetrators of colonialism set out to replace it, examined various means, and [found that] the most important means was to create states that were connected by the umbilicus to colonialism in sensitive areas.

The formation of the Zionist state in the land of Palestine was a multi-faceted base for colonialism. By this means, the West rid itself of Zionism, while establishing it in Palestine. Meanwhile, the colonialists affiliated themselves with Zionism and the state of Israel so as to keep them like a tool in their service, even though, for its own survival, colonialism is itself dependent on Zionism.

Rafsanjani added that with the formation of Israel, colonialists created insecurity in the region, exposing states to threats so as to bring them under the dominion of colonialism. The survival of Israel depends on the interests of global arrogance and colonialism, and as long as this base is beneficial to them, they will preserve it.

Rafsanjani said that Muslims must surround colonialism and force them [the colonialists] to see whether Israel is beneficial to them or not. If one day, he said, the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel's possession [meaning nuclear weapons] - on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This, he said, is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

a most lovely rant

A well-crafted Lileks rant is a thing of sheer beauty.

There are some people whose hackles prick up and twitch if you say the West is culturally superior to the Arab world. This usually brings one of two responses:

1. “Well, that’s what you say, you live here.” As if freedom of religion, freedom of property, freedom of artistic expression, astonishing technological innovation, gender equality and democracy are somehow subjectively defined in this context. In this country, women can not only drive, but be National Security Advisor. I mean, the United States put a robot on a Martian moon, and Saudi Arabia chopped off the heads of three guys last week for being gay. I think we have the slight edge in the cultural development department, but that’s just me.

2. “You know, in the Middle Ages, the Arab world was much more advanced.” So? In the age of Augustus, the Italians had more stable government than the Brits. Obviously, things change. That’s my point: cultures rise and fall, and often do so because of attributes that elevate one over the other. It could be that a wave of Reformation will sweep the Arab world, and they’ll kick the West’s ass in 150 years; history happens, to paraphrase the bumpersticker.

musharraf as good as gone

Simon Henderson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says General Musharraf is as good as gone.

Confronting India to liberate the Muslims of the divided state of Kashmir is a basic ethos of the Pakistani army. Before Sept. 11, supporting the Taliban had ensured that Pakistani rather than Indian influence was dominant in Afghanistan. Since Musharraf is now tainted with failure, his brother officers are almost certainly already selecting his replacement from among their ranks.

If Musharraf’s status is as shaky as this author suggests, and the army as fanatically opposed to conciliation in Kashmir, a Pakistani preemptive strike becomes a frightening possibility.

Unless Pakistan's current thinking can be changed, the next leader has a single card to play and only a short window of opportunity in which to play it. As the U.S. government knows but is careful not to say, Pakistan's small arsenal of atomic bombs is superior in design and efficiency to India's. Pakistan's Hiroshima-size bombs will work while India's might perform disappointingly, as did the bomb it tested in 1998. Furthermore, Pakistan's missiles work better than the Indian equivalents.

saudis fund hamas rockets

The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel’s Shin Bet security agency has thwarted a plot by Hamas to produce modified Katyusha rockets, an adaptation of a North Korean design. The rockets can carry 22 pounds of TNT, and travel for about 6 miles; potentially a very devastating weapon.

The plot was uncovered when alert Israeli security agents arrested a Hamas operative on his way to arrange funding for the project in ... drum roll, please ... Saudi Arabia.

zinni the yoyo

Zinni is headed back to Israel. Let’s hope his presence doesn’t set off another wave of suicide bombings, or an attempt on his life.

A U.S.-drafted truce deal calls for Israel to stay out of Palestinian-controlled areas and lift travel restrictions on Palestinians.

A truce? Who is going to sign this truce? What can it possibly mean, when Hamas and Islamic Jihad have made it clear they have no intention of ever stopping their attacks against Israelis? When their true goal, stated outright for all the world to see, is to drive the Jews into the sea?

This AP article states:

...no Israeli has been killed by Palestinians in the past three weeks - the longest such stretch since the fighting began.

Which is true. But not for lack of trying; Israeli police and military forces have thwarted or narrowly averted several attacks, and probably stopped others by rounding up so many militant leaders.

It’s hard to feel optimistic, in spite of the predictable burst of media pieces trumpeting “new hope for peace.”

wednesday, january 02, 2002

mandela does an about face

Wow. I don’t know what to say about this; Nelson Mandela has repudiated his condemnation of Osama Bin Laden in a surprising about-face, possibly in response to Muslim pressure. How disappointing.

fighting big oil

Have you noticed that gasoline is getting cheap? Well, so has OPEC, and while the world was looking the other way, they decided last week to cut oil production in order to drive prices back up. Rich Lowry writes about a hard-headed pragmatic reason for toppling Saddam Hussein: Fighting Big Oil.

OPEC's threat is not, as is widely thought, that it might cut off oil to the West. As the Cato Institute's Jerry Taylor tirelessly argues, this is essentially impossible. Although OPEC may be able to sell oil that would have been sold to the U.S. to someone else, there's nothing stopping that third party from reselling it to the U.S., which is what happened during the 1973 embargo.

The problem with OPEC is that it enriches what are to varying degrees nasty, undemocratic, and anti-American regimes, from Iran to Venezuela, from Libya to the mother of all contemptible oil states, Saudi Arabia.

escape for jihad’s sake

In a book described as his “last will,” Osama Bin Laden’s right hand freak Ayman al Zawahiri tells Al Qaeda fighters to escape for jihad’s sake.

The treatise, filling 100 pages, is perhaps the most clear window yet into the thinking of al Qaeda's leaders as they faced U.S. bombs and Afghan fighters this fall. They appear to have done just what Zawahiri urged, leaving some of their followers to die in caves and forests while others -- possibly including bin Laden and Zawahiri -- fled over the mountains into Pakistan.

coincidence?

Ringo Starr	Yasser Arafat
Separated at birth?

more found

On New Year’s Day, more than three months after we were attacked, 13 more bodies were found as recovery workers get close to a lobby area where many people were trapped on the morning of September 11.

I hope their families can now have some peace.

And I hope we never forget.

battling the puritans

Mary Setterholm wrote to alert us about a good piece in the LA Times (for a change) about a UCLA law professor who grew up as a fanatic Muslim in Kuwait, and now battles the intolerant puritans of Islam.

UCLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl remembers beating up other kids, condemning his parents as unbelievers and destroying his sister's Rod Stewart tape, "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?"

"I found it remarkably empowering to spew my hatred with the banner of God in my hand," he says.

But challenged by his father to take up true religious scholarship, Abou El Fadl began a journey of Islamic learning that would transform him into a nemesis of the extremists he once endorsed. Today, at 38, he is a leading warrior in the intellectual struggle that exploded into America's consciousness Sept. 11: Who speaks for Islam? Who defines it?

He scares the hate-filled victocrats of Muslim fundamentalism, because his knowledge of the Koran and Islamic history is encyclopedic. So of course, in the last refuge of the incompetent, they threaten his life. Frequently.

Fajrul Din, a student in Saudi Arabia who belongs to the international student group that opposes Abou El Fadl, ticks off the scholar's sins: defending infidels against Muslims in court; befriending Shiite, Jews and Bahais; embracing music; owning devilish black dogs; and sheltering wives fleeing from the "discipline" of husbands.

What makes Abou El Fadl such a master of pandering to Western liberal sensitivities, Din wrote in an e-mail, is that "with each of these heretical views, he weaves sweet words like a serpent, and misleads the naive and simple. His sin is greater than any other. He studied and saw the light, but chose to turn away from it. We will not dirty our hands by touching him, but let him perish like a dog among the heathens he loves so much."

I often wonder what it feels like to inhabit a mind like this student’s—closed like a fist, omni-resentful, misogynistic, ready to kill people for their beliefs. Hey man, like ... what a bummer.

The article focuses on Abou El Fadl’s love of dogs—highly symbolic in a culture that even hates our species’ better half. (Is there anything fun that they don’t hate? Besides rocking on their knees on a concrete floor chanting the Koran for hours, I mean?)

Abou El Fadl loves to use dogs to illustrate what he regards as the puritans' willful ignorance of Islamic tradition and an oppressive emphasis on law over morality.

In much of the Muslim world, dogs are decidedly not man's best friend. Abou El Fadl says he was taught that they were impure and that black dogs in particular were evil.

Religious traditions hold that if a dog--or woman--passes in front of you as you prepare to pray, it pollutes your purity and negates your prayer. Dogs are permissible as watchdogs or for other utilitarian purposes, but not simply for companionship. Abou El Fadl says this zealous adherence to doctrine led one religious authority to advise a Muslim that his pet dog was evil and should be driven away by cutting off its food and water.

for the record

I just heard that Norm Mineta soundbite from 60 Minutes on the Larry Elder show. For the record (both mine and Mark’s), Mineta was asked about a “70-year old white woman from Vero Beach, Florida” and a “young Muslim from Jersey City,” or a “group of Middle Eastern men talking among themselves, praying...”

a ruff interview

A friend of Jonah Goldberg interviews Pakistani President-For-Life Pervez Musharraf.

best of the post

A splendid photographic slideshow at the Washington Post showcases some of their best images from 2001.

saudi justice

Lest we forget where the Taliban got their, er, peculiar concept of justice, yesterday our bloodthirsty Wahhabi “allies” the Saudis used swords to hack off the heads of three men for the capital crime of homosexuality.

enron stockholders

Joshua Micah Marshall has made a list of all the Bush administration appointees who owned stock in Enron, commenting:

Now it's important to keep in mind that most of these folks listed below just owned stock in the company, which probably only means they got suckered and cleaned out by the company brass like a lot of other people.

But then if some of them cashed in their stock a few months ago (which next year's disclosures will tell us) based on inside information ... well, that would be another matter entirely.

changes

I’ve been cleaning things up a bit around here and adding some great new weblogs to the list, like: Muslim Pundit, The Edge Of England's Sword, Andrea Harris, Kathy Kinsley, and William Quick.

interview with the dead

Last week the Christian Science Monitor published an interview with Qari Ahmadullah, the now-deceased Taliban leader, in which he claimed he was going to be in charge of “new guerilla operations.” Guess again, Taliboy.

the coffee issue

James Lileks started it, with a rant about some nimrod who ground his hazelnut-flavored coffee in the “Unflavored Only” grinder. Then Big Boss Jeff Jarvis laid down the law about flavored coffee in the workplace.

Well, thanks to the wondrous Internet, I’ve discovered a suitable punishment for hazelnut abusers.

Of course, such drastic measures wouldn’t be necessary if James and Jeff did what I do.

how unlikely is it?

Steven says he’s becoming convinced that Al Qaeda doesn’t have anything else like 9/11 waiting in the wings, since nothing happened in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

While I share his relief at that, I can’t share his belief that Al Qaeda blew their whole arsenal on 9/11. And I suspect that Western celebrations like the one in Times Square are less attractive to these freaks than we’d like to think; they’ve shown a propensity to lie in wait for long periods, launching big attacks at unexpected moments, and numerous reports suggest there are still a lot of active terror cells in North America and Europe. By some estimates, as many as 70,000 people may have gone through Al Qaeda training camps in the past decade.

Not all of those people will be as scary as Mohammed Atta. But they won’t all be as stupid as Richard Reid either—and there probably are a few Attas lurking about. Al Qaeda may be down, but they’re not out.

(Update: Jeff Jarvis and I are drinking the same unflavored coffee this morning.)

got one

Taliban militia intelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah has been confirmed killed in the bombing, along with several associates. Great news. Every time we get one of these guys, the message is reinforced: attack the US, and you’re going to die.

threat against the taj mahal

If there’s one thing the Islamists are good at, it’s destroying beautiful things. Now the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba is threatening to blow up the Taj Mahal.

indo-pak nuclear conflict unlikely

The Times of India has a piece arguing that nuclear war between India and Pakistan is unlikely. I’d like to feel reassured, but Pakistan’s intelligence agency (ISI) really worries me; it’s basically a fifth column Islamist organization within the Pakistani government, and a dangerously destabilizing force.

friedman: let’s roll

Thomas Friedman wants Dubya to apply the leadership and resolve he’s shown in the war to the domestic front, and wean the US away from the Middle Eastern oil teat: Let’s Roll.

I don't want to be dependent on Mideast oil anymore. Countries in that region haven't had a good century in 700 years — and they're not going to soon. Oil is their curse, as well as ours. It's corrupted their rulers, enabled them to keep their women backward and out of the work force, and prevented them from developing innovative economies that make things instead of just take things from the ground. They have a lot of homework to do before they will be stable allies.

We will all benefit if they succeed, but for now we have to look after ourselves. So, Mr. Bush, "Let's roll." Ultimately, presidential greatness is measured by what you do at home. If this war on terrorism ends with nation-building only in Afghanistan and not in America, it will be no victory at all.

I think he has a point. Developing sustainable energy technologies is going to be the great challenge of the 21st century.

moussaoui has no plea

Zacarias Moussaoui, the Algerian suspected of being part of the 9/11 conspiracy, has pleaded innocent...sort of.

"In the name of Allah, I do not have anything to plead. I enter no plea. Thank you very much," Moussaoui told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema after walking to the courtroom lectern.

Brinkema said she took that to mean he was pleading innocent to the charges. Moussaoui remained silent, but one of his lawyers, Frank Dunham, answered, "Yes." The judge entered the innocent plea into the court record.

The case won’t go to trial until October 14. But I think this little exchange gives us an idea what to expect.

tuesday, january 01, 2002

intelligence gathering

US Marines have completed a search of a massive walled compound in the Helmand province, believed to have been used by Mullah Omar. (They were not, as the press reported, on a mission to capture Omar.)

Expect to hear more revelations of Al Qaeda depravity soon.

unholy alliance

Saying they were “greatly concerned” at the latest LGF Poll results, Geraldo Rivera and Jacques Chirac are seen here after signing an historic mutual defense agreement.

pakistan wants evidence

Sounding very much like the Taliban did when they responded to US demands to turn over Bin Laden, Pakistan wants evidence before arresting the 20 Islamist militants India says were behind the attack on its parliament.

evil is alive

Is Dubya really exaggerating when he calls Bin Laden and his followers “evildoers?” He sure gets mocked enough for it.

But is there a better word for this? (Sunday Times, free registration required.)

The video begins innocently enough: a wildlife documentary presented by Sir David Attenborough shows him raving about rare insects and exotic plants against the backdrop of an active volcano. There is no sign of Al-Qaeda’s evil here, nor at the end of the tape, which features Princess Diana and Prince Charles at the start of a visit to Kuwait more than a decade ago, writes Mark Franchetti.

Sandwiched incongruously between them, however, is a macabre insight into the gruesome world of Osama Bin Laden’s disciples: a group of Arab soldiers, somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan, are tossing a severed head around for the camera. They taunt the bloody skull, shaking it by the hair, lift an eyelid to simulate blinking, and throw stones at it, while chanting a chorus in praise of Allah.

The film is just one among a surreal video library collected from the caves of Tora Bora, Bin Laden’s underground redoubt in the White Mountains of eastern Afghanistan, and from Al-Qaeda safe houses nearby. The innocuous beginning and end appear to have been added to fool anyone who might have stumbled across the tapes. ...

Other tapes feature news reports from recent conflicts involving Muslims, including Bosnia, Algeria, Israel, Chechnya, Lebanon and Afghanistan. Religious music has been taped over the original commentaries.

The grisly highlights include the beheading with a knife of a hostage in Chechnya and a prisoner being tortured with a sizzling piece of metal. Another close-up shows a victim’s tongue being cut out. ...

“As soon as the Arabs left all hell broke loose,” said one trader. “In Jalalabad, neighbours went through the safe houses and took whatever they could, and in Tora Bora it was the same. I took four tapes but had to destroy two because my father is a very religious man and became terribly angry. I have no idea what was on the tapes I burnt. Who knows, maybe Bin Laden himself.”

ahmed rashid

Who says Ted Rall is worthless? Reading one of his columns is like smashing your finger repeatedly with a hammer—it feels so good when you stop—but buried in his latest is a reference to Ahmed Rashid, whose book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia I have not read. I’m going to start looking up Rall’s “sources” more often, though, because a Google search turned up this excerpt from Rashid’s book, and it turns out to be a quite interesting summary of the recent political history of Afghanistan, especially in regard to US and Saudi Arabian involvement. (And by the way, Rall seems to have considerably distorted Rashid’s point—surprise!)

terror watch, 1944

At the Washington Post, Tom Wheeler writes about the V2 bombardment of London in 1944, and Churchill’s response: Terror Watch, 1944.

Bringing his unquenchable desire for action to the matter, yet confronted by something outside his experience, Churchill flew off in multiple directions, some of which did not reflect his normal solid judgment. Questioning the resolve of his countrymen, Churchill wrote to the secretary of state for air, "Why were the 30-40 tons of bombs dropped 'by the Robot' doing so much damage [to morale] when two or three thousand tons were dropped on Berlin or Munich and the German people seemed to get away with it alright?"

Such ranting escalated into rage. "I want a cold-blooded calculation made as to how it would pay us to use poison gas," Churchill wrote. "I should be prepared to do ANYTHING that would hit the enemy in a murderous place. . . . We could drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany in such a way that most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention. I do not see why we should have all the disadvantages of being gentlemen while they have the advantages of being the cad."

2002

Happy Palindromic New Year!

Ugh. I probably shouldn’t have had that last glass of wine. Some freshly ground Trader Joe’s Bay Blend to the rescue!

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Karzai Seeks Extended U.S. Security Deal (washingtonpost.com)

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 frank says:

DENSE, PUTRID VAPORS from a SMOKE GUN (we rent it) -- From another Zappa graphic, this time a poster advertising a concert: "Therapeutic Abortion with the Mothers..."