Archived news and commentary: November 25 - December 1, 2002

2002/12/30 - 2003/01/05
2002/12/23 - 2002/12/29
2002/12/16 - 2002/12/22
2002/12/09 - 2002/12/15
2002/12/02 - 2002/12/08
2002/11/25 - 2002/12/01
2002/11/18 - 2002/11/24
2002/11/11 - 2002/11/17
2002/11/04 - 2002/11/10
2002/10/28 - 2002/11/03
2002/10/21 - 2002/10/27
2002/10/14 - 2002/10/20
2002/10/07 - 2002/10/13
2002/09/30 - 2002/10/06

Sunday, December 1, 2002

News and commentary:

"Australia ready to strike abroad" (BBC News, 2002/12/01)
"Australia's prime minister has said he is ready to launch pre-emptive action against terrorists in neighbouring Asian countries. John Howard's remarks caused outrage among governments in the region. He told Australian television that international law was no longer adequate to confront the threats to national security. Australia should now be allowed to strike first at terrorist targets, he said. ... Mr Howard's comments have sparked outrage from governments across Asia. Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marti Natalegawa said Australia did not have the right to launch military strikes in other countries. "States cannot flout international law and norms willy-nilly," he said. Thai Government spokesman Ratthakit Manathat said: "Nobody does anything like this. Each country has its own sovereignty that must be protected." And Philippine National Security Adviser Roilo Golez said Mr Howard's comments were "not wise", and did not 'follow ... the doctrine of peacekeeping and sovereignty.'"

"Charity and Terror" (Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, from the 2002/12/09 issue)
More on the Saudi Money Trail: "As FBI agents in Chicago pursued an investigation into alleged terrorist financing in 1998, they ran across a curious money trail that soon led them into a diplomatic swamp. A local chemical firm that was suspected of laundering money for Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, had received a $1.2 million cash infusion from the International Relief Organization, the U.S. branch of one of the world's biggest Islamic charities. Determined to "follow the money," they traced some of the charity's funding to a surprising and sensitive source: the Saudi Embassy in Washington. The money flow from the Saudis set off alarms in Washington. Investigators were told by top Justice officials to move carefully, according to sources familiar with the case. Some Justice higher-ups appeared worried that any inquiries into the operations of the Saudi Embassy could jeopardize U.S.-Saudi relations. "There was a concern about national security," said one investigator. The agents did as they were told. A court affidavit spelling out $400,000 in money transfers to the organization was carefully edited - to omit any reference to the Saudi cash. Instead, the document referred blandly to funds from an unidentified "embassy of a foreign government." The president of the chemical firm was later convicted of fraud. But charges were never filed against the Saudi-financed charity. Investigators complain they were actively discouraged by Justice Department brass from pursuing the group’s possible links to terrorism." (See also: "The Saudi Money Trail" (Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2002/12/02 issue))

"They'll have to think again about the Quiet American" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/12/01)
"I was in the Gulf six months ago, and I came to the conclusion that a majority of the people I met - somewhere between 55 and 70 per cent - were, to use the technical term, nuts. That's to say, they believed things that no rational person could believe. You'd be talking to an attractive, westernised, educated Bahraini lady doctor and she'd suddenly start babbling on about how there was no plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, all the footage had been faked by the government. "But I know someone who saw it from his office window," I said. "He just thinks he saw it," she replied. "The Americans know how to do these things." ...
Well, about halfway through this last week in Canada, I realized I was beginning to feel about my homeland exactly the way I'd felt in Araby: these guys are nuts. Quebec's biggest English-language radio station, CJAD, conducted a listener poll on the question "Is George W Bush a moron?" Every single person said yes, he's definitely a moron, except for two who thought he was merely an idiot. On the letters pages, it was the same, except for Art Peel of Hamilton, Ontario, who complained that calling Bush a moron 'does a disservice to the mentally challenged, most of whom are kind, gentle people.'" (Note: Steyn also has a brand new website, SteynOnline, with the humble description "The One-Man Global Content Provider".)

"Kenya's Muslims: Resentments Both Local and International" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2002/12/01)
A report from Mombasa: "While none of the city's Islamic leaders publicly praised the attacks on an Israeli-owned hotel and an Israeli-chartered airliner, many blamed both Israeli and United States policies, saying they made such acts inevitable. ... "Muslims here see what is happening in Palestine and Afghanistan," said Sheik Juma Ngao, a prayer leader in Mombasa. "They naturally blame this on Israel and its supporter, America." ... Last November, after a number of protests against American bombing in Afghanistan, a mob surrounded and stoned the Mombasa Pentecostal Church, shattering windows and the 30-foot-high glass cross imbedded in the church facade. In the same period, battles between predominantly Muslim and Christian tribes, ostensibly over land rights, led to dozens of deaths in the nearby Tanariva region. Relations have since improved, but Christian leaders here say the attacks on Thursday seemed to confirm their fears about the extremist views of some local Muslims."

"After Blast, Kenya Reviews Qaeda's Trail in East Africa" (Marc Lacey and Benjamin Weiser, The New York Times, 2002/12/01)
"As investigators struggled to determine who was behind the attacks on Israeli targets here on Thursday, they are re-examining evidence that East Africa has served as both a useful base and a target for Osama bin Laden's terror network for nearly a decade. ... Despite two major attacks in the past four years with possible ties to Al Qaeda, many Kenyans still find it difficult to believe that terrorists may be operating in their midst. "I don't think there is an Al Qaeda cell based here or that we have the kind of fanaticism that Al Qaeda relies on," said Nayib Ballala, a Muslim who served as mayor of Mombasa and is now a candidate for the city's parliamentary seat. 'These are people who have a mission and they came into Kenya - twice now - to carry out that mission.'"

"U.S. Is Preparing Base in Gulf State to Run Iraq War" (Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, 2002/12/01)
A report from Qatar: "The United States military is installing a new command center at a heavily guarded base in this small Persian Gulf state that would be ready to serve as the main headquarters for a war on Iraq. The official purpose of the work at the base, As Sayliyah, is to prepare for a major American military exercise in December called Internal Look. But it will be no ordinary exercise. American officials say that it will be the first time that a war game of its type has been conducted outside the United States and that the command and control procedures practiced would be the same used for a war with Iraq."

Saturday, November 30, 2002

News and commentary:

"Old And In The Way" (Karl Zinsmeister, The American Enterprise Magazine, from the December 2002 issue)
A must-read essay about the trans-Atlantic divide, including a description of a "large conference of European academics, government officials, and businessmen held in Warsaw, Poland": "There were barons and sirs and Danish executresses in microskirts and fey Frenchmen and Italian journalists sucking cigarettes as if a firing squad awaited - the whole panoply of Eurocharacters, set among the old buildings, gray skies, jammed streets, creaky plumbing, odd haircuts, high expenses, and cramped horizons that characterize so much of Europe today. ... The panel on which I spoke was chaired by Reiner Pommerin, a professor at the University of Dresden, colonel in the German air force reserves, and advisor to the German Ministry of Defense. ... Throughout the two days, Pommerin set the tone with an aggressively antagonistic attitude toward all things American. "Thank God we had the 11th of September," he declared - for this showed the U.S. how it feels to be humbled. Herr professor-colonel went on to suggest that Americans often feel nostalgic for the "good old days of slavery in the nineteenth century." ... Much of this would have made me laugh out loud, except that the vehemence and envy and certitude with which it was pronounced gave the proceedings an extremely ugly texture. Plus, these were European movers and shakers, not a bunch of pastry chefs. So it wasn't ignorance I was hearing. It was animus, jealousy, and willful spite." (Note: Found via "The case for trans-Atlantic conservatism" (Helle Dale, The Washington Times, 2002/11/27))

"Censored and bullied, scholars sanitize Islam" (David Frum, National Post, 2002/11/30)
"More than 200 people are dead, some two dozen churches and thousands of homes have been destroyed, and much of the Christian population of the Nigerian city of Kaduna driven into exile -- all because of a single joke by a Nigerian journalist. ... Horrific as this violence is, we can reassure ourselves that it happened in a backward and far-away country - that it has no implications for those of us who live in the free and democratic West. But it does, it does. Islamic law has for many years been stretching its reach into the West. The case of Salman Rushdie is the most notorious, but it is by no means unique. ... The West is not Nigeria. Yet even in the West, some radical Muslim groups are demanding the same power over speech and thought that their Nigerian counterparts now exercise. This newspaper has been one of their favorite targets. The fate of Isioma Daniel reminds us how urgent it is to reject these demands and reassert our continuing belief in our Western principles of liberty - and how dangerous it would be to begin to surrender them."

"My Sharia Amour" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/11/30)
Steyn reports from a new 'culturally sensitive' Miss World contest, back in Nigeria once again: "I took my usual seat with the celebrity judges, in between Baywatch hunk David Hasselhoff and Princess Michael of Kent. Lorraine Kelly said: "And now, ladies and gentlemen, let's give our panel a really big hand!" A really big hand landed on the table with a dull thud, courtesy of a Saudi prince in the Royal box. ...
"Who's the bloke next to you?"
"Oh, he's a judge."
I rolled my eyes. "Well, duh!"
"No, I mean, he's a real judge. He's some Fulani bigshot who's here to decide who gets stoned. ...
The small talk was somewhat stilted. "Have you ever been stoned?" asked the judge. Marsha tittered.
Princess Michael explained that the fellow on Marsha's left was Alhaji Abdutayo Ogunbati, the country's leading female circumcisionist, there to ensure every contestant was in full compliance, and next to him was Hans Blix, there to ensure every involuntary clitorectomy was in accordance with UN regulations.
I glanced at my watch. "For crying out loud, when are they going to raise the curtain?"
"They have raised the curtain," said David. "Those are the girls." I peered closer at the shapeless line of cloth, and he was right: there they all were, from Miss Afghanistan to Miss Zionist Entity.
I sighed. "How long till the swimsuit round?"
"This is the swimsuit round," said David."

"Mideast Peace? Let's Start With The Rule of Law" (Robert L. Pollock, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/11/30)
Pollock on the corruption and lawlessness in the Palestinian Authority and the primacy of the rule of law: "But those two maneuvers were finesse jobs compared to what happened to Mahmoud Hamdouni. Also hoping to cash in on the peace dividend, he bought 30 acres near Jericho, built a gas station, and planned a housing development. He was then charged with the capital crime of treason, and freed only after signing over his land to the PA. The Oasis Casino now sits on the property. "We got rid of the Israeli occupation," Mr. Hamdouni said in June 2000. "Now we are under Palestinian economic occupation." ... Arabs do not lack the desire for freedom - about 50% of adolescents polled say they'd like the to emigrate to the West according to the UNDP. They do not lack for talent, as the countless success stories of those who have already done so attest. And they do not lack an understanding of markets, as anyone who's ever visited an Arab souk would know. It's just that bureaucracy, corruption and uncertainty make it difficult to build a business bigger than a market stall. If accountable government and the rule of law could be brought to the region, fortunes could change very rapidly." (Note: The article is adapted from an essay in the "2003 Index of Economic Freedom" (The Heritage Foundation, 2002/11/12): "In the Middle East, Arbitrary Government Feeds Rage" (Robert L. Pollock, The Heritage Foundation, 2002/11/12))

"The Obsolescence of Deterrence" (Charles Krauthammer, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/12/09 issue)
"Why does the president feel, asks Zbigniew Brzezinski, that "deterrence doesn't work, when it worked with such murderous, dangerous tyrants as Stalin, as Mao Zedong. It worked during the Cuban missile crisis"? The first problem with this argument is its nostalgia for containment and nuclear deterrence. Like all nostalgia, especially Cold War nostalgia, it depends on a memory that is highly selective. And fuzzy. It presents the international relations of the second half of the 20th century as simple and stable. They were not. We came more than once to the brink of Armageddon. ...
WMD technology is spreading and coming within the reach of dozens of countries. Under such circumstances, the logic of deterrence argues perversely for increased proliferation - if everyone has nukes, everyone is deterred, and no one will use them. Safety through deterrence; universal safety through universal deterrence. There's no escaping this logic. Yet it is plainly a huge bet against everything we know about human nature. It is also a terrible tempting of statistics. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will certainly include increasingly unstable and unbalanced characters. It will mean that even such inherently undeterrable substate groups as al Qaeda will in time get these weapons. The result will inevitably be a deeply unstable international structure that promises to break down at myriad points in the future, even the near future. The case for deterrence, drawing on the bipolar Cold War, leads inexorably to a world of hyperproliferation. This is madness."

"The Princess and Her 'Charities'" (Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/12/09 issue)
More on the Saudi Money Trail: "Prince Bandar, like almost all members of the Saudi royal family, belongs to the Wahhabi sect of Islam, the extremist state religion of Saudi Arabia. ... Prince Bandar and Princess Haifa know that the Wahhabi religious hierarchy in Saudi Arabia preaches hatred and contempt for Christians, Jews, traditional Muslims, Shiites, Hindus, and Sikhs. They know that the same religious hierarchy has operated Islamic outreach and charitable institutions like the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, and the International Islamic Relief Organization (all with offices in the United States) that have served as cover for terrorism. They know that financial gifts or donations to these bodies or their hangers-on are likely to end up in the hands of the terrorists. ...
More important, September 11 was an outcome of the indoctrination of Saudi society in the Wahhabi mentality. The same is true of the money trail that now turns out to have soiled the princess's expensive shoes. The tracing of terrorist funds to the royal family cannot come as a surprise to anyone who understands the intimate relationship of the Saudi state to Wahhabi extremism. The Saudi royals are so embedded in Wahhabism they are conditioned to ignore the consequences of such 'charity.'"

"Turn East From Mecca" (Ralph Peters, The Washington Post Outlook, from the 2002/12/01 issue)
"But make no mistake: A struggle of immense proportions and immeasurable importance is underway for the soul of Islam. It is a mighty contest that pits a humane, tolerant and progressive faith against a hangman's vision of a punitive god and a humankind defined by prohibitions. And we have not even noticed. ... Our lack of involvement - indeed, our lack of interest - has abandoned the field to our mortal enemies. Over the past few decades, Middle Eastern oil wealth has been used by the most restrictive, oppressive states to export a regressive, ferociously intolerant and anti-Western form of Islam to mosques and madrassas abroad, from the immigrant quarters of London to the back-country of Indonesia. ... The extremist Muslim diaspora from the Middle East has one consistent message: Return to the past, for that is what God wants. Beware, no matter his faith, the man who presumes to tell you what God wants." (Note: The article is adapted from a must-read essay: "Rolling Back Radical Islam" (Ralph Peters, Parameters, from the Autumn 2002 issue))

"Kenya inquiry targets Somali militants" (BBC News, 2002/11/30)
"United States officials say they believe a Somali-based Islamic group may have carried out Thursday's twin attacks on Israeli targets in the Kenyan city of Mombasa. The officials say the group, Al-Ittihad al-Islamiya (AIAI), also known as the Islamic Union, is a prominent militant organisation in the Horn of Africa with links to Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. AIAI has around 2,000 members and is thought to be behind a series of bomb attacks in Ethiopia in the late 1990s, according to the US State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism report. ... It is thought to be behind bomb attacks in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in 1996 and 1997 and the kidnapping of relief workers in 1998."

"'No al Qaeda link' to Kenya 12" (CNN.com, 2002/11/30)
"None of the 12 people being held in Kenya in connection with this week's attacks are connected with al Qaeda, authorities say. Two of the detainees - U.S. and Spanish nationals - appear not to be connected to the attacks at all and will be released when a link has been completely ruled out, a Kenyan official said on Saturday. ... Among the 12 people being held in Kenya are six Pakistanis and four Somalis arrested after the attacks for illegally entering the country, officials said. The 10 were crew members on a boat that came to Kenya earlier this week from Zanzibar via Somalia. Some of them had documents which were described as invalid and which cast suspicion on them. The other two - an American woman and her husband - were detained as they checked out of the Le Soleil Beach Club about 90 minutes after the attacks. ... On Friday, police found two launchers and two unused surface-to-air missiles less than a quarter mile from the end of the runway where the Arkia Boeing 757 narrowly escaped being shot down as it took off."

"IDF strives to avoid harming civilians in Nablus" (Amos Harel, Haaretz, 2002/11/30)
An article about the use of children in the Intifada: "During 17 days of IDF activity in Jenin, just one Palestinian was killed - a top terror suspect, Iyad Swalha. Nablus, however, is a completely different story. Virtually from the operation's first hours, Paratroopers have faced stormy, violent demonstrations involving hundreds of young people. Often, these demonstrations are a springboard to gunfire incidents. Two Palestinian teenagers were killed by IDF fire during such skirmishes, and two days ago a boy (either 8 or 11 years old - there are two different versions of his age) was also killed in Nablus. For the first time in the West Bank, Nablus has displayed a phenomenon which had been seen only at Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Children are not content to stop at stone throwing; they also use Molotov cocktails, makeshift hand grenades and even small bombs. Children even climb atop IDF fortified vehicles and vandalize equipment which they carry, such as stretchers."

"Antwerp race riots militant charged" (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/11/30)
More on the Antwerp riots: "The Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, vowed to put a stop to the open lawlessness of Abou Jahjah's militant organisation, the Arab European League. "The league is trying to terrorise the city," he said. The authorities were shocked by the targeted nature of vandalism this week. Flemish pubs and black-owned businesses in the Borgerhout district were attacked, but shops displaying AEL stickers were spared. Belgium's liberal media agreed yesterday that the country's experiment with tolerant multiculturalism had totally broken down. The Flemish newspaper De Morgen said: "For a decade, the immigrant quarters of this country have turned into reservoirs of frustration, even hate. They have found a voice in Abou Jahjah." Abou Jahjah rejects assimilation, demanding segregated schools and self-governing, Arab-speaking ghettos." (See also: "Brussels nabs head of Arab group after two days of riots" (AP/The Straits Times, 2002/11/29))

Friday, November 29, 2002

News and commentary:

"Brussels nabs head of Arab group after two days of riots" (AP/The Straits Times, 2002/11/29)
And now over to the "vibrant multicultural scene" of Antwerp: "The authorities have detained the head of an Arab group blamed for instigating two days of riots which left a trail of destruction in an immigrant neighbourhood of Antwerp, a stronghold of Europe's far right. Following the detention of Dyab Abou Jahjah, the leader of the Arabic European League (AEL), police also moved in to search his home. It was not immediately clear what he was charged with. 'We live in a tolerant country, but what the AEL does has nothing to do with freedom of speech and everything to do with the incitement of violence,' said Mr Brice De Ruyver, security adviser to Premier Guy Verhofstadt. 'It cannot continue this way.' ...
Police detained 160 youths of North African descent after a second night of rioting on Wednesday and 29 remained under arrest. The AEL had been accused of fomenting violence during riots on Tuesday that followed the killing of a teacher of Moroccan origin by a 66-year-old Belgian man in an apparent squabble between neighbours. ... A major European harbour, Antwerp has a vibrant multicultural scene. About 10 per cent of its population of 450,000 are of North African descent." (See also: "Violence mars anti-war rally" (Sapa-AP/news24.com, 2002/11/10) and "Arabic: a language for Belgium?" (Andrew Osborn, The Guardian, 2002/08/27))

"Pope Speaks of 'Clash of Civilizations'" (AP/ProLog, 2002/11/29)
"Pope John Paul II lamented on Friday the terrorism and violence across the world, referring to a "clash of civilizations that at times seems inevitable." The pope, speaking at a pontifical university, urged students there to have "an open sensitivity to the values of various cultures in relation to the evangelical message." "Without renouncing the affirmation of the force of the evangelical message, it is an important work in the torn world of today that Christians be men of dialogue and work against that clash of civilizations that at times seems inevitable." The pontiff told the audience that these are not easy times. "Violence, terrorism and war only build new walls between people," he said."

"Al Qaeda's New Weapon" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2002/11/29)
"The world received a bitter Thanksgiving present from terrorists in Kenya yesterday - one suggesting that civilian jetliners may now be at greater risk around the globe. Western intelligence sources said there is a "very strong possibility" that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network was behind the car bomb attack that killed at least 12 people at an Israeli-owned hotel near Mombasa and the unsuccessful missile attack on an Israeli charter jet as it was taking off from Mombasa airport. Though the missile attack didn't succeed, it may represent the scariest news for global travelers. That's because the attack shows that terrorists now have the will - and the means - to destroy civilian airliners as they take off and land at poorly guarded airports. "If they can do it in Kenya, they can do it anywhere they can get access," noted one intelligence official. 'If you want to hit an American jet, why do it in the United States? You can try it other places, where it's easier.'"

"Beautiful girls" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/11/29)
Beauty and the beast XX: "'It is completely despicable that we have agreed to host this travesty,' British writer Muriel Gray said of the move. "These girls will be wearing swimwear dripping in blood." Added The Observer's Ros Coward: "It is almost impossible to retain the idea that an annual parade of female flesh is just an innocent quest for universal beauty acceptable to all reasonable people." Remarkable here isn't the view of Ms. Gray and her cohort. Rather, it's the coincidence of her views with those of Muslim fundamentalists who elsewhere in Nigeria condemn rape victims as "adulterers" and sentence them to death by stoning. "It's all about commercial sex trading," says Nigerian Muslim cleric Hussein Zakaria of the pageant, sounding a lot like Gloria Steinem (or is it Jerry Falwell?). "It's about nudity, it's about immorality, it's about exposing the youngsters to a sex hazard." As Muslim rioters went to town, many of them held aloft placards reading, "Down with Beauty," as if they, too, were readers of contemporary academic journals in post-feminist inquiry. ...
Now usually, when someone points out that your views are shared by, say, neo-Nazis, it means the time has come to rethink those views. Not so with our beauty-contest critics. Taking note of the "Down with Beauty" banners, Russell Smith of Canada's Globe and Mail writes that the slogan "makes a strange kind of sense, if you interpret it to mean 'Down with this sort of incongruous, disrespectful cultural invasion.'" (See also: "Down with beauty? Only when it's ugly" (Russell Smith, The Globe and Mail, 2002/11/27))

"Blaming the victim" (Andrew Sullivan, The Washington Times, 2002/11/29)
Beauty and the beast XIX: "After the horror of Nigeria, you'd think allowing a free beauty pageant to take place in a free city would be a no-brainer. But the loony-left's favorite London Mayor Ken Livingstone pronounced Miss World unwelcome. He said the notion of holding the contest now was "obscene." "After the violence and terrible loss of life in Nigeria, the staging of a Miss World event in this city is not welcome. It defies belief that after Miss World has brought tragedy and strife to Africa its organizers should think it appropriate to carry on with the razzamataz as if nothing had happened." This is exactly the wrong way round. Miss World did nothing to provoke such violence. Nor did the newspaper columnist who is now living under a Salman Rushdie-like fatwa. The people responsible are Islamic extremists who view freedom of speech and association anathema to their religious convictions. Mr. Livingstone should be proud to offer them refuge. Or does he believe that journalists deserve to be killed for their opinions and innocents murdered in their hundreds merely because of their religious faith?" (See also: "Livingstone says Miss World is not welcome" (Simon Jeffery, The Guardian, 2002/11/26))

"Bin Laden tape 'not genuine'" (BBC News, 2002/11/29)
"Researchers in Switzerland have questioned the authenticity of the recent audio recording attributed to Osama Bin Laden. A team from the Lausanne-based Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence, Idiap, said it was 95% certain the tape does not feature the voice of the al-Qaeda leader. ... The review of the tape was commissioned by France-2 television and its findings were presented by the institute's director, Professor Herve Bourlard. Mr Bourlard said the institute had compared the voice on the tape with some 20 earlier recordings allegedly made by Bin Laden."

"Victims of the terror they came to escape" (Jonathan Clayton and Daniel McGrory, The Times, 2002/11/29)
"Dvir and Noy Anter were enchanted by the African dancers in tribal dress who greeted them in the foyer of the Paradise Hotel. They began to join in the dance. For the brothers and their family, this was to be a relaxing break beside the Indian Ocean far from the dangers of the Ariel settlement on the West Bank, a frequent target of suicide bombers. Three weeks ago, the boys were on their way to school when a lone Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli soldiers as he detonated explosives strapped around his waist at Ariel’s petrol station. Three died and 20 of their neighbours were injured. Yesterday as Noy, who had celebrated his 12th birthday at the weekend, and Dvir, 13, sipped chilled drinks in the palm-fringed foyer, their mother, Ora, was close by with others from the Israeli tour party admiring the beauty and serenity of the hotel. Moments later their lives were torn apart by the terror that they had come to Kenya to escape. Both boys were among the 15 killed."

Added one new theme in Themes:
"Down with beauty" - News and commentary on the Miss World massacre in Nigeria.

Thursday, November 28, 2002

News and commentary:

"Israel vows revenge on Kenya attackers" (BBC News, 2002/11/28)
"Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz has vowed to hunt down the perpetrators of two attacks on Israeli citizens in Kenya.
At least 15 people - including one Israeli adult and two children - died in a suicide bombing at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa and two missiles narrowly missed an Israeli holiday jet that had taken off from the city's airport. "Our hand will reach them - if anyone doubted that the citizens of the state of Israel cannot stand up to the killers of children, this doubt will be removed," Mr Mofaz said of the attackers."

"Sharon Vows to Hunt Down Kenya Attack Planners" (Reuters/ABC News, 2002/11/28)
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged Friday to hunt down those behind a suicide bombing that killed three Israelis at a hotel in Kenya and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli airliner taking off nearby. "Our long arm will catch the attackers and those who dispatch them," Sharon said in a victory speech after his Likud party re-elected him as leader ahead of Israel's January 28 general election. "Israel will hunt down those who spilled the blood of its citizens. No one will emerge unscathed," he said."

"Relieved passengers back in Israel" (BBC News, 2002/11/28)
"Passengers on the Israeli aircraft targeted in a failed missile attack above Kenya have expressed their relief at landing safely in Tel Aviv. Israeli F-16 jets escorted the plane for the last section of the journey, checking the fuselage to ensure there was no damage that might affect the landing, passengers said. Passengers broke into spontaneous applause and started singing a popular Israeli song as the plane touched down at Ben Gurion airport. ... One Israeli, sitting near the back of the aircraft, said he saw a missile fly over the wing moments after take-off. "All the wheels were in the air and then we heard the explosion. It (the missile) went about one metre above the wing," 62-year-old Ezra Gozlan told Israeli radio. "The moment I heard the explosion I looked out of the window and saw the smoke. It was a missile or something like that." ... The captain came over the intercom to say that everything was OK and that there was nothing to worry about. There was "no panic", a woman passenger said. Another said her hands were shaking like a leaf, and that "until the last moment, we didn't believe everything was going to be fine". "Thank God we are here," said another passenger, vowing never to go abroad again."

"Carnage, Rubble in Israelis' Kenya Holiday Refuge" (David Mageria and James Macharia, Reuters/ABC News, 2002/11/28)
"The Mombasa Paradise hotel turned into a charred hell of shattered bodies and screaming, wounded children Thursday. The corpses of welcoming dancers lay buried in the wreckage of the lobby, cut down by suicide bombers who staged their own, murderous reception for newly arrived Israeli tourists seeking respite from Middle East turmoil. "There was blood all around. There was fire all around; children looking for their parents, parents looking for their children," said Yahud Saroni, Israeli owner of the hotel. "The bodies were burned beyond recognition," said Farie Abdul Kadir, director of disaster relief for the Kenya Red Cross. 'What I remember most as a human being when you see bodies of your fellow beings reduced to something that looks like meat and wood, it must affect you.'"

"A View from the Mombasa Beach" (Kelly Hartog, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/11/28)
An eyewitness account from the attacked hotel in Mombasa: "At the hotel, we were greeted by beautiful dancing girls. Our guide told us to go to the dining room for breakfast, as he went to the lobby to arrange check in. I went to the dining hall, some guests collected their keys and went to their rooms, a few milled about the lobby. Two minutes later, around 7:30, there was a massive explosion. The entire building shook. Thatched roofs were falling in. Black, black smoke billowed everywhere. I saw people covered with blood, including children. I saw a man with a massive gash across his back, bleeding profusely. Then the screaming began."

"Gunmen strike during Likud polls" (BBC News, 2002/11/28)
"Two gunmen attacked a bus station and the offices of Israel's governing Likud party in the northern town of Beit Shean on Thursday afternoon, killing six. The Likud offices were packed with party members voting in a leadership election that pits Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. ... The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a Palestinian group connected to Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, has claimed responsibility for the attack in statements released to foreign media. ... An eyewitness living near the Likud offices, Galit Cohen, told Israeli army radio that one of the gunmen laughed as he sprayed people with automatic fire. 'I opened the window and I simply saw the terrorist standing, smiling, laughing and shooting in all directions. He simply shot and shot and shot and he didn't stop. People were fleeing and falling.'"

"Bush and the Saudi princess" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/11/30 issue)
Steyn on the Saudi money trail between Princess Haifa and two of the hijackers: "As things stand, whether intentionally or not, there's a reasonable probability that funds from the ambassador's wife helped pay for the scheme that murdered thousands of Americans. And that the President knew this when he lunched with her at Crawford a few weeks ago. ... Clearly, the House of Saud has come to an arrangement with al-Qa'eda, and this arrangement involves, among other things, money. More interesting is why the administration insists on pretending otherwise. On 20 September, George W. Bush said, 'You're either with us or you're with the terrorists.' A couple of weeks later, a small number of us began pointing out the obvious: the Saudis are with the terrorists. But the US-Saudi relationship is now so unmoored from reality that it's all but impossible to foresee how it could be tethered to anything as humdrum as the facts. ... Meanwhile, Bandar, a humble ambassador from an economically moribund theocratic dictatorship, gets received like a head of state. Nothing quite explains the administration's willingness to assist the Saudis in making a mockery of America's war on terror. Even murkier rumours that the royal house has the goods on Bush and Cheney for some dark oil-biz shenanigans can't account for the scale of the administration's denial. We have a huge Saudi-financed pile of American corpses, the Saudis are openly unco-operative, and meanwhile back at the ranch it's ribs with Princess Haifa." (See also: "A Golden Couple Chasing Away a Black Cloud" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/11/27) and "The Saudi Money Trail" (Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2002/12/02 issue))

"Afghans and the Guardian" (Matthew Leeming, The Spectator, from the 2002/11/30 issue)
A must-read article, comparing the reality in Afghanistan with left-wing analysis and prophecying - for example an article by Jason Burke: "It was nothing more than a credulous regurgitation of Pakistani propaganda. The Taleban, it claimed, were a spontaneous law-and-order movement of theology students revolted by the widespread rapes perpetrated by the warlords. This is rubbish. ...
I read this article out to a class I took at Kabul University. I thought that they would find it quite funny, but halfway through I realised it wasn't getting any laughs. I stopped because the women were angry. The few of them who had received any education during the long night of Taleban rule had done so at secret schools. The mother of one had been beaten with electrical flex because a spy from the ministry for the prevention of vice and propagation of virtue had heard her shoes clicking on the pavement. 'Who is this man?' she demanded. I said that he was the Observer's chief reporter. 'How can he say such things?' 'Because he hates America,' I said. 'He also says that all the Taleban did was to make law out of what had always been the case in rural areas.' There was uproar. Even the men joined in. They thought that this was really impertinent and offensive. 'He also says,' I went on, 'that there is no need to ban television because there aren't any.' 'Who does he think we are. Of course we've got television.' And that's true. I've watched television all over the country, even in a Khirgiz yurt in the High Pamirs. The only perspective from which one can make sense of these vapourings (by Burke in the London Review of Books, March 2001) is an assumption that if the Taleban were anti-American, they must basically be OK. Presumably they think the same thing about Saddam Hussein." (See also: "Diary" (Jason Burke, London Review of Books, 2001/03/22))

"Miss World war" (Jennie Bristow, spiked, 2002/11/28)
Bristow on Western reactions to the Miss World massacre: "'Is there no end to the wilful, decadent tactlessness of the West?' asks Libby Purves, writing in The Times (London) about the Miss World debacle. Rod Liddle, in the Guardian, claims that '[f]or the predominantly Muslim population of northern Nigeria, the whole thing was, clearly, an affront'. Liddle continues: 'It would have appeared, to the imams and the fervently faithful, as a quintessential example of everything that is rancid and grotesque about the hated, godless Western culture. And although we might draw the line at killing people over it all, it is hard, from a theoretical point of view, to disagree with them about this.' Both these articles were published on the same day, have almost the same title (plays on 'Miss World' and 'ugliness'), and make pretty much the same point: that the dark underbelly of the Nigerian riots lies not in Nigeria, but in the Western-created Miss World. ... So obsessed are we becoming with the shortcomings of what we have made of consumer society that we forget about the massive industrial, technological, scientific and cultural advances that freed us up to be obsessed with sex and shopping. Two hundred years of history is presented as being as inconsequential as 50 years of Miss World - and beneath the discussion about protecting Nigeria from beauty pageants lies the prejudice that such countries should be protected from modernising influences, even those as naff as this." (See also: "Third World reveals Miss World ugliness" (Libby Purves, The Times, 2002/11/26) and "The ugly side of Miss World" (Rod Liddle, The Guardian, 2002/11/26))

"Israelis targeted in Kenya attacks" (BBC News, 2002/11/28)
"At least 14 people have died in a suicide bombing at an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, just as two missiles were fired at an Israeli holiday jet that had taken off from the city's airport. The missiles narrowly missed the Arkia airline plane - a Boeing 757 carrying 261 passengers - but a large part of the Paradise Hotel was reduced to rubble and the rest is a smouldering shell. Kenyan police said the 14 killed included three suicide bombers, six Kenyans and two Israelis. About 80 people were injured in the attack, most of them Kenyans. ... In Lebanon, a previously unknown group called the Army of Palestine has said it carried out the attacks. But Kenyan and Israeli officials speculated that Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network might have been behind the attacks. If it is confirmed as the work of al-Qaeda, this would be the first direct attack on Israelis by the group - despite the hostility towards Israel normally shown by Bin Laden in recordings of his speeches."

"America Rocks" (Ted Nugent, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/11/28)
"America isn't at a social or political crossroads as some will try to tell us. Those who believe that would have told you 500 years ago that the earth was flat. Thirty years ago they would have been stoned on LSD, drooling and dancing naked at a Grateful Dead concert. My advice is to avoid these people. They will always gravitate towards the negative. Take it from an old, cocky rock 'n' roll guitar player whose God-given senses remain finely tuned: America's best days are in front of us."

"Government questions UNRWA neutrality" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/11/28)
"Israeli officials are calling UNRWA's official neutrality into question following accusations that the IDF shot a British aid worker "in the back" and mistreated an UNRWA employee's spouse. The officials are accusing UNRWA of turning a blind eye to terrorism operating from the camps and acting as the Palestinians' defenders in its press releases and official reports. ... Tensions between Israel and UNRWA increased last week when British aid worker and UNRWA employee Iain Hook was killed by IDF fire in what Israel described as a firefight between the army and Palestinian gunmen. The IDF has expressed regret for Hook's death and Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in a phone conversation with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw pledged to conduct a full investigation. ... Terrorist infiltration into the refugee camps, which is prohibited by several Security Council resolutions and has never been acknowledged by UNRWA officials, has long been a source of contention between Israel and the UN. Last summer, Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted in his report on Jenin that terrorist groups set up shop in Palestinian refugee camps, which he condemned as a violation of international law." (See also:"U.N. Death Reopens Israeli Allegations" (Nicole Winfield, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/11/26))

"'No Christmas this year,' says Arafat" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/11/28)
"Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat on Wednesday ordered Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem canceled, to protest the IDF presence in the city. Speaking to reporters at his Ramallah office, Arafat called the army's decision to declare Bethlehem a closed military zone until the end of the year a "crime." "These [Israeli] measures mean that there is no Christmas this year," Arafat said. His announcement is seen as an attempt to pressure Israel to pull its forces out of Bethlehem, where he claimed that soldiers had prevented Christian worshipers from entering the Church of the Nativity for prayers last Sunday."

"New terror alerts threaten Asia" (CNN.com, 2002/11/28)
"A new round of terror alerts threatening attacks "within days" has led to the closure of embassies in the Philippines and to 24-hour patrols of Australian landmarks. Canada on Thursday joined Australia in closing its embassy in the Philippines until further notice, citing a specific threat of a terror attack. In Australia, guards were placed on round-the-clock watch near landmarks in Sydney, including the Harbor Bridge and Opera House, after Islamic extremists made threats on specific locations. The threats were time-specific suggesting attacks would happen in the next few days, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, said in Canberra on Thursday."

Wednesday, November 27, 2002

News and commentary:

"The Latest Kissinger Outrage" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2002/11/27)
There is a bizarro world in which Kissinger and Sharon are considered solely as "war criminals" and "murderers", rather than the opposite, namely as defenders - including mistakes and wrong-doings - of their democratic countries against conspicuously much worse murderers and war criminals: "By announcing that Henry Kissinger will be chairing the inquiry that it did not want, the president has now made the same point in a different way. But the cynicism of the decision and the gross insult to democracy and to the families of the victims that it represents has to be analyzed to be believed. ... There is a tendency, some of it paranoid and disreputable, for the citizens of other countries and cultures to regard President Bush's "war on terror" as opportunist and even as contrived. I myself don't take any stock in such propaganda. But can Congress and the media be expected to swallow the appointment of a proven coverup artist, a discredited historian, a busted liar, and a man who is wanted in many jurisdictions for the vilest of offenses? The shame of this, and the open contempt for the families of our victims, ought to be the cause of a storm of protest."

"Kissinger to lead attacks probe" (BBC News, 2002/11/27)
"President Bush has appointed the controversial veteran US diplomat Henry Kissinger to head a new independent commission to investigate the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington. The commission was initially opposed by the White House but has been set up following pressure from families of those who lost their lives in the attacks. ... Mr Bush signed the bill into law in front of legislators, survivors and members of victims' families. "This commission will help me and future presidents to understand the methods of America's enemies and the nature of the threat we face," Mr Bush said. The 10-member commission has been given 18 months to examine issues such as aviation security and border problems, along with intelligence. It has a broad mandate, building on the limited joint inquiry conducted by the House of Representatives and Senate intelligence committees. He called on Dr Kissinger as chairman of the commission to 'follow all the facts wherever they lead.'"

"Down with beauty? Only when it's ugly" (Russell Smith, The Globe and Mail, 2002/11/27)
Beauty and the beast XVIII. An extra-ordinary stupid anti-Western column, finding "a strange kind of sense" in the Miss World 2002 massacre. But thankfully Smith himself wouldn't "kill anyone over it": "A sign held up in the initial stages of the demonstrations in Kaduna, Nigeria, read "Down with beauty." ... Beauty itself is obviously not the issue here: It's a particularly Western kind of beauty, which many don't find beautiful at all. ... It's also not beautiful. Beauty must contain some element of the extraordinary, of the singular. It must be startling. Jean Anouilh said that real beauty had to be grave; Albert Camus said that beauty was unbearable; Lautreamont declared that beauty must be convulsive. Whatever they all meant, it is clear that none of those adjectives applies to the blow-dried suburban niceness of the Miss World pageant. And this is why the "Down with beauty" banner of the Nigerian protestors makes a strange kind of sense, if you interpret it to mean "Down with this sort of incongruous, disrespectful cultural invasion." It doesn't mean "Down with beauty." It means "Down with ugliness." (Of course, I wouldn't kill anyone over it.)" (Note: In a Guardian-article Rod Liddle also expresses sympathy with the sentiments of the rioters, although, he adds, "we might draw the line at killing people over it all" ("The ugly side of Miss World" (Rod Liddle, The Guardian, 2002/11/26)): "For the predominantly Muslim population of northern Nigeria, the whole thing was, clearly, an affront - and for reasons not a million miles removed from those that make most of us think it an affront, too. It would have appeared, to the imams and the fervently faithful, as a quintessential example of everything that is rancid and grotesque about the hated, godless western culture. And although we might draw the line at killing people over it all, it is hard, from a theoretical point of view, to disagree with them about this.")

"Aliyu Shinkafi's Fatwamania" (Wole Soyinka, Nigeriaworld, 2002/11/27)
Beauty and the beast XVII: Soyinka is a Nigerian author who won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature: "Deputy Governor Shinkafi's call for the death of a Nigerian citizen, under a so-called fatwa, makes him a common criminal who should be hauled up before the courts and charged with incitment to murder. If this man had any grain of piety in him, he should be on his knees twenty-four hours a day praying for the souls of innocents whose lives were needlessly and gruesomely curtailed. He should be on his stomach grovelling in contrition, pleading for the forgiveness of an over-patient, over tolerant nation whose civic dignity he continues to assail in the confidence of immunity. He should cover himself in sackcloth and ashes and urge his followers to do the same until the nation pronounces itself ready to forgive a rampage of murder, brutality and arson. Let this 'elected official' understand that very few people in the Nigerian nation consider him - or indeed his governor boss who is unquestionably implicated in this latest outrage - as being possessed of one drop of spirituality. These are cynical manipulators of religious sensibilities who, when all the facts are known, may yet come to trial for the many hate crimes that have been launched against the citizens of this nation. ...
Upstart politicians and presumptuous clerics should not be allowed to use their positions as base for the undermining of the constitution that binds us togeether. The age of intolerance, of bigotry, of rule by terror is being inaugurated before our eyes, and we pretend that all is normal within the nation." (See also: "'Death sentence' on Nigerian journalist" (BBC News, 2002/11/26))

"The Prospect of War" (Brian Urquhart, The New York Review of Books, from the 2002/12/19 issue)
A review of Kenneth M. Pollack's "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq": "As it is, Saddam Hussein is the industrialized world's worst nightmare, an aggressive, unpredictable, psychotic dictator in the midst of the world's most important oil-producing region, who, in addition to his chemical and biological arsenal, may before long acquire usable nuclear weapons as well. The current, much disputed question is whether to try to live with and contain this undeniably serious threat to peace and to the world economy, or to destroy it before it gets any larger. ...
In his concluding chapter, "Not Whether, but When?," Pollack castigates other nations in the United Nations for gravely weakening collective security, multilateral diplomacy, the UN Security Council, and international law by walking away from the problem of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. He believes that if the world passes up the opportunity to take action, it will not get another chance, and that the policies of containment and deterrence are dangerous traps, particularly after Saddam gets nuclear weapons. Invasion, with all its risks, is, he writes, the only way to ensure that Saddam Hussein will never again threaten the region or cause an international nuclear crisis. The risks of not invading - nuclear war or the destruction of the oil production of the Persian Gulf - are infinitely greater than even the worst projection of the costs of invasion."

"Beauties and the Beasts" (Andrew Sullivan, Salon.com/andrewsullivan.com, 2002/11/27)
"The act of putting on a beauty pageant or writing a column are now subject to the approval of radical religious fanatics. Those who do not please these fanatics will not be criticized or campaigned against or smeared or railed at. They will be killed. ... In the aftermath of horror, the Washington Post reported early on that "after plans to stage the show in Nigeria sparked Christian-Muslim riots that killed at least 175 people, the organizers moved it to Britain but flew into a storm of protest at home too." "Christian-Muslim riots"? Those are weasel words, obscuring the real responsibility for the murders. The organizers of the Miss World contest also managed to blur the issue. "A journalist made this problem and we hope journalists can put it right," said Julia Morley, Miss World's CEO. Excuse me? The journalist was doing her job. The "problem" - a rather glib description of the murder of hundreds - was caused by extreme Islam. And by singling out the journalist, Morley gives a patina of credibility to the disgusting fatwa now lodged against her. ...
Paleo-feminists also blamed the victim. ... Jill Nelson summed up this bizarre moral equivalence on MSNBC: "As far as I'm concerned it's equally disrespectful and abusive to have women prancing around a stage in bathing suits for cash or walking the streets shrouded in burkas in order to survive." I can't think of a more fatuous statement after a bloodbath, orchestrated by fanatics who won't allow women the slightest autonomy in their lives. ... This is what cultural relativism, p.c. journalism and decadent feminism amounts to: a failure to grasp that freedom is under attack." (See also: "Ugliness of a beauty contest" (Jill Nelson, MSNBC, 2002/11/25))

"A Funny Sort of Empire" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/11/27)
"It is popular now to talk of the American "empire." In Europe particularly there are comparisons of Mr. Bush to Caesar - and worse - and invocations all sorts of pretentious poli-sci jargon like "hegemon," "imperium," and "subject states," along with neologisms like "hyperpower" and "overdogs." But if we really are imperial, we rule over a very funny sort of empire. ... Athenians, Romans, Ottomans, and the British wanted land and treasure and grabbed all they could get when they could. The United States hasn't annexed anyone's soil since the Spanish-American War - a checkered period in American history that still makes us, not them, out as villains in our own history books. ...
Our bases dot the globe to keep the sea-lanes open, thugs and murderers under wraps, and terrorists away from European, Japanese, and American globalists who profit mightily by blanketing the world with everything from antibiotics and contact lenses to BMWs and Jennifer Lopez - in other words, to keep the world safe and prosperous enough for Michael Moore to rant on spec, for Noam Chomsky to garner a lot of money and tenure from a defense-contracting MIT, for Barbra Streisand to make millions, for Edward Said's endowed chair to withstand Wall Street downturns, for Jesse Jackson to take off safely on his jet-powered, tax-free junkets."

"A Golden Couple Chasing Away a Black Cloud" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/11/27)
"Prince Bandar is known as the Arab Gatsby. Rising from a murky past in a racist society, born in a Bedouin tent as the son of an African palace servant impregnated by a Saudi prince, to a glamorous present as dean of the Washington diplomatic corps. ... Flying off in his private Airbus to hunt birds in Spain with his friends George Bush Sr. and Norman Schwarzkopf, entertaining the current President Bush's sister, Doro, at his Virginia farm, and palling around on the D.C. social circuit with Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, George Tenet, Brent Scowcroft and Bob Woodward. Spinning a smoky web of intrigue with his cigars and C.I.A. operations, helping finance the contras. So if Bandar bin Sultan is Gatsby, his wife, Princess Haifa, must be like the careless Daisy, her voice full of money that could have ended up supporting two of the Saudi hijackers. And those 15 Saudi hijackers would be "the foul dust that floated in the wake" of the Arab Gatsby's dreams. ...
It would probably be far easier for America to reduce its dependence on Saudi oil than for the House of Saud and the House of Bush to untangle their decades-long symbiosis. ...
The Bush crowd was praying it wasn't a last-days-of-disco scene similar to the one when the shah of Iran was overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists, and the jet-setting Iranian diplomats had to pour all the liquor down the drain at their embassy. Will the Arab Gatsby end like the original - "borne back ceaselessly into the past"?" (See also: "The Saudi Money Trail" (Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2002/12/02 issue))

"Defusing the Holy Bomb" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/11/27)
"To: Leaders of the Muslim world
From: President George W. Bush
Dear Sirs,
As you approach the end of Ramadan and we approach our Thanksgiving, I thought it would be a good time for me to share with you some concerns. Let me be blunt: I am increasingly worried that we are heading toward a civilizational war. ...
You say all this is happening because we support Israel. I know we need to do more to bring peace, but I don't think that nurse was shot, or that Bali bomb was made "holy," because we support Israel. I think it has to do with the rise within your midst of a deeply intolerant strain of Islam that is not simply a reaction to Israel, but is a response to your failing states, squandered oil wealth, broken ideologies (Nasserism) and generations of autocracy and illiteracy. Armed and angry, this harsh fundamentalism now seems to totally intimidate Muslim moderates. ...
We've had our civil war against intolerance. Now I'm urging you to have yours. Don't tell me you can't. Look at those courageous Iranian students who are now taking on the extreme fundamentalists within their own society - risking their lives to fight those who want to take Islam, and Iran, back to the Dark Ages. God bless them. Friends, unless you have a war within your civilization, there is going to be a war between our civilizations. We're just one more 9/11 away from that. So let's dedicate this next year to fighting intolerance within so we can preserve our relations between.
Sincerely, G.W.B." (Note: For the reference to the "holy bomb", see also: "Main Bali Suspect Confesses Blast Role" (Heru Asprihanto, Reuters/ABC News, 2002/11/22))

"No More Fanaticism as Usual" (Salman Rushdie, The New York Times, 2002/11/27)
Rushdie on the fatwa against Isioma Daniel, the death sentence against Hashem Aghajari and the death threats against Ayaan Hirsi Ali: "It's been quite a week in the wonderful world of Islam. ... Is it unfair to bunch all these different uglinesses together? Perhaps. But they do have something in common. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was accused of being "the Dutch Salman Rushdie," Mr. Aghajari of being the Iranian version, Isioma Daniel of being the Nigerian incarnation of the same demon. ... Where, after all, is the Muslim outrage at these events? As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming? At least in Iran the students are demonstrating. But where else in the Muslim world can one hear the voices of the fair-minded, tolerant Muslim majority deploring what Nigerian, Egyptian, Arab and Dutch Muslims are doing? Muslims in the West, too, seem unnaturally silent on these topics. If you're yelling, we can't hear you. ...
The Islamic world today is being held prisoner, not by Western but by Islamic captors, who are fighting to keep closed a world that a badly outnumbered few are trying to open. As long as the majority remains silent, this will be a tough war to win. But in the end, or so we must hope, someone will kick down that prison door."

"CIA: Saudis still sending tens of millions to Al Qaida" (World Tribune.com, 2002/11/27)
"The CIA has traced transfers of tens of millions of dollars from the Saudis to Al Qaida over the last year, U.S. officials and congressional sources said. The key backers of Al Qaida are said to be 12 prominent Saudi businessmen - all of whom have extensive business and personal connections with the royal family. These include ties to such ministers as Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz and Riyad Governor Prince Salman. ... "The facts are not in dispute," a congressional source familiar with the CIA investigation said. 'The CIA has briefed key congressional committees on the Saudi violation of its promises to stop funding to Al Qaida. The argument between the administration and Congress concerns what do we do now.'"

"3000 trained for terror" (Martin Chulov, The Australian/news.com.au, 2002/11/27)
"Terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah and radical Muslim organisations across Indonesia and Malaysia formed links with al-Qaeda nine years ago, and have sent up to 3000 followers to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan since the late 1970s, a new report reveals. Many more radical Muslims than previously realised have been trained and then returned to Indonesia, Malaysia and The Philippines to set up sleeper terrorist cells and launch jihad operations against Western interests, the document says. The report written by US academic Zachary Abuza is considered by Australian Federal Police and intelligence agents as a template on al-Qaeda's links to southeast Asia. It claims ties between Indonesian groups and al-Qaeda are being discovered at an "alarming rate" and asserts that Osama bin Laden's network has identified the troubled archipelago as a vulnerable link in the region."

"Bali suspect 'admits al-Qaeda link'" (BBC News, 2002/11/27)
"Indonesian police say the man they arrested as the mastermind behind the Bali bombings has admitted links to Osama Bin Laden's alleged key lieutenant in South-East Asia. Officials say that Imam Samudra confirmed to them that he did know the man called Hambali - reputed to be the leader of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant Islamic group and a regional al-Qaeda leader. ... Correspondents say authorities hope Mr Samudra will be able to provide information on the whereabouts of Hambali - whose real name is Riduan Isamuddin. Hambali has been accused of involvement in previous bombings in Indonesia as well as giving logistical or other support for the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington and the earlier blast which killed 17 American sailors on the USS Cole."

"UN resumes Iraq inspections" (BBC News, 2002/11/27)
"Two separate teams set off from the UN's Baghdad offices at the former Canal Hotel at 0530GMT and drove to a military compound north of the capital. ... The BBC's Ben Brown in Baghdad says the UN teams drove off at high speed in white Land Cruisers, pursued by journalists and causing traffic chaos. The team our correspondent was following arrived at a complex of warehouses called al-Rashad. Journalists were first allowed inside the gates, but then were pushed out again amid scenes of confusion. ... As the inspections began, air raid sirens sounded over Baghdad. Iraqi officials say they were set off by Western planes flying over the city."

Added in archive:
"When a 'Terrorist' Is a 'Militant' and Why" (Steven Plaut, Newsday.com, 2002/11/13)

Note: I've added a link to the Miss World-article which set off the riots in Nigeria:
"Miss world 2002: The World at their Feet..." (Isioma Daniel, ThisDay/zem, 2002/11/16)

Tuesday, November 26, 2002

News and commentary:

"The Kabul-ki Dance" (Mark Bowden, The Atlantic, from the November 2002 issue)
Bowden's article about America's air war in Afghanistan is available online: "At the highest level, in orbit hundreds of miles up, were scores of satellites. Below them, at 40,000 feet or so, were the Buffs and B-1s, which dropped more than half the bombs used on Afghanistan. There were EA-6 Prowlers to jam enemy communications. There were A-10 Thunderbolts and AC-130s for close air support, and air-rescue teams in helicopters - Pave Lows (MH-53Js), Black Hawks (UH-60s), and Jolly Green Giants (HH-53s). Finally, there were the strikers - the F-15s, the F-16s, and the Navy and Marine Corps F-18 Hornets and F-14 Tomcats, which delivered laser-guided precision bombs. There were also the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), armed with cameras and missiles - drones like the Predator (RQ-1), which made a name for itself for the first time in this conflict. Add to these dozens of Extenders (KC-10s) and Stratotankers (KC-135s) - flying gas stations that enabled the armada to stay aloft for hours and hours. And last there were Boss Man and its British equivalent, Spartan, whose job it was to coordinate the whole Kabul-ki Dance."

"Author of 'blasphemous' Miss World article flees Nigeria" (ABC News, 2002/11/27)
Beauty and the beast XVI: "The author of an article on the Miss World pageant considered blasphemous by many Nigerian Muslims has fled the country after a violent backlash. A senior source at her former newspaper said: "I can confirm to you that she has left Nigeria." An article published by the daily This Day on November 16 angered Nigerian Muslims by suggesting that the Prophet Mohammed would have approved of the Miss World competition and might have married one of the contestants."

"'Death sentence' on Nigerian journalist" (BBC News, 2002/11/26)
Beauty and the beast XV: "The deputy governor of Zamfara state in northern Nigeria has urged Muslims to kill the woman who wrote an article which insulted the Prophet Mohammed, sparking religious riots last week. Fashion writer Isioma Daniel resigned after writing in the ThisDay newspaper that the Prophet Mohammed may have approved of the Miss World contest and possibly wished to marry one of the beauty queens. ... Zamfara's deputy governor Mamuda Aliyu Shinkafi told religious leaders in the state capital, Gusau: "Like Salman Rushdie, the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed." The speech was rebroadcast on local radio in Zamfara state, which was the first state in Nigeria to introduce Islamic law. 'It is binding on all Muslims wherever they are, to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty.'"

"Livingstone says Miss World is not welcome" (Simon Jeffery, The Guardian, 2002/11/26)
Beauty and the beast XIV. As a "Who Dun It?" riddle the Miss World 2002 massacre seems like a no-brainer. How about blaming the actual perpetrators and those Islamist preachers who gave them a warrant for mass murder?: "Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, today urged the London venue hosting the Miss World contest to "reconsider its decision" to stage the beauty pageant. ... Mr Livingstone said it was obscene that the organisers should now attempt to stage the contest at all. "After the violence and terrible loss of life in Nigeria, the staging of a Miss World event in this city is not welcome," he said. "It defies belief that after Miss World has brought tragedy and strife to Africa its organisers should think it appropriate to carry on with the razzamataz as if nothing had happened." ... Estimates suggest that besides the 215 people killed, 1,200 were hospitalised and 12,000 made homeless as a result of the riots. ... Announcing the change of venue, Miss World's organiser, Julia Morley, this morning said the contest bore no blame for the troubles. 'Miss World cannot be held responsible for the riots. They were down to one journalist who wrote something which inflamed the local people.'"

"Nigeria's leader blames riots on press" (BBC News, 2002/11/26)
Beauty and the beast XIII. "Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo says "irresponsible journalism" about the Miss World contest sparked mass communal bloodshed. President Obasanjo said he did not regret Nigeria's wish to host Miss World. He said fighting between Muslim and Christian communities in the northern city of Kaduna could have started at any time and blamed an article which was offensive to Muslims for provoking the violence. ... The Lagos-based paper which printed the story has retracted it and apologised, but President Obasanjo appeared not to be satisfied. "Irresponsible journalism in Nigeria bears responsibility," he said."

"The Hitchens-Pollitt Papers" (Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, 2002/11/26)
Christopher Hitchens writes a letter to columnist Katha Pollitt, explaining why he left The Nation: "Just watching the sluggish stream sliding by in the past few months, I have seen the editor of CounterPunch, one of our fellow columnists, reprint a vicious and paranoid and subliterate screed, explicitly associating Jew power with the destruction of the World Trade Center. I have read Gore Vidal's dark suggestion that September 11 was prearranged, and Norman Mailer's view that the dead of that day are no more significant than traffic accidents and Noam Chomsky's repeated assertion that Al Qaeda at its worst is no better than American foreign policy on a good day. I think I have just named some of the political and cultural centerpieces of the Nation worldview. ...
It may now seem trite to say that September 11 and other confrontations "changed everything." For me, it didn't so much change everything as reinforce something. I am against aggressive totalitarian states and I am resolutely opposed to religious fanaticism. I am also sickened by any attempt to call these hideous things by other names. Most especially in its horrible elicitation of readers' letters on the anniversary of September 11, The Nation joined the amoral side. It's the customers I want to demoralize, not just the poor editors. I say that they stand for neutralism where no such thing is possible or desirable, and I say the hell with it." (See also: "Letter to an Ex-Contrarian" (Katha Pollitt, The Nation, 2002/11/07). For more on The Hitchens-The Nation affair, see also: "The Reliable Source" (Lloyd Grove, The Washington Post, 2002/09/26))

"U.N. Death Reopens Israeli Allegations" (Nicole Winfield, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/11/26)
A report from the refugee camp in Jenin: "The gate to the U.N. girls school here is plastered with posters hailing suicide bombers, and the U.N. compound down the street has graffiti on its outer wall signed by the militant group Hamas warning that "When they kill a martyr, we will kill 100 Jews." Such wall art would be unthinkable on a U.N. building anywhere else in the world. ... But that intertwined U.N.-Palestinian relationship has fueled Israeli allegations of indirect U.N. complicity in Palestinian terror - charges that were aired again with the killing of a U.N. official by Israeli soldiers during a firefight in the Jenin refugee camp last week. The Israeli army said its soldiers fired on the walled U.N. compound inside the camp, killing British senior manager Iain Hook, because Palestinian gunmen were firing at them from inside - a charge the United Nations vigorously denied. Rene Aquarone, a spokeswoman for the U.N. agency, said Tuesday in Geneva that Hook was shot in the back while he was trying to arrange for the evacuation of U.N. staff, and that the Israelis prevented an ambulance from reaching him for some time. Paul McCann, another U.N. spokesman, said allegations that Palestinian gunmen were inside the compound were "incredible." The compound is sealed by an 8-foot cement block wall topped with another 6 feet of fencing, and closed to anyone without U.N. permission." (See also: "UN worker phoned IDF officer minutes before he was killed" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2002/11/26): "But in a voice mail received by Capt. Peter Lerner, the military's liaison with international groups, a person identifying himself as "Iain" says that Palestinian youths "have knocked a hole in the wall, which I'm not happy about at all. I'm trying to keep them out." ... Lerner's voice mail service automatically dated the call at 12:53 p.m. on Friday, less than an hour before Hook was shot and killed. The caller said, 'Hi Peter, it's Iain here. I'm just making a progress report, really. We're pinned down in the compound. The shabab have knocked a hole in the wall, which I'm not happy about at all. I'm trying to keep them out, and I will just keep my people pinned down in the corner until I hear from you. OK? Over.'")

"Euro-MPs urge inquiry into EU aid to Palestinians" (Reuters, 2002/11/26)
"A group of European lawmakers called on Tuesday for an investigation into how European Union aid to the Palestinian Authority has been spent, but the executive Commission said a probe was unnecessary. ... EU Commissioner for External Affairs Chris Patten dismissed the call for a probe, saying it would undermine moderates in the Palestinian Authority, and thus scupper any hopes of halting the cycle of violence in the Middle East. "An inquiry would make it enormously difficult to continue providing aid (to the Palestinian Authority)," Patten told a meeting of the Parliament's foreign affairs committee."

"France Arrests Seven in Shoe Bomb Probe" (Elaine Ganley, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/11/26)
"French police on Tuesday detained seven suspected Islamic militants with possible ties to the so-called "shoe bomber" — the third anti-terrorism sweep in France in four days. Police have arrested 18 people since Saturday, including an Islamic militant who escaped from a Dutch jail. The interior minister described the arrest of another suspect as "very important" for the fight against terrorism. ... Among those detained was an imam at a mosque north of Paris. A seventh suspect who used to run a Paris prayer hall was picked up on Reunion island, a French territory in the Indian Ocean. All seven are suspected of ties to Richard Reid, the Briton who pleaded guilty to trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight last year using explosives hidden in his sneakers."

"Mr. Blix Goes to Baghdad" (Gary Milhollin, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/11/26)
"There is a reason why Iraq's friends preferred Mr. Blix. He already had an unsurpassed record of failure in dealing with Saddam Hussein. From 1981 to 1997, Mr. Blix headed the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. body responsible for inspecting nuclear sites around the world--including Iraq's--to make sure they are not cranking out atomic bombs. As late as 1990, the same year Iraq invaded Kuwait, Mr. Blix's inspectors rated Iraq's cooperation as "exemplary." But all the while Saddam was running a vast A-bomb program under their very noses. Iraq produced both plutonium and enriched uranium for nuclear weapons in clear violation of the IAEA's rules. Some of the work went on at the same places that were being inspected, and was hidden with the help of an Iraqi official who was himself a former IAEA inspector. ... If the inspectors continue as they have begun, Saddam will never be forced to give up his mass destruction arsenal - which every Western intelligence service believes he has - because Mr. Blix will never uncover what is hidden. The world should demand that Mr. Blix confront Saddam now with the best evidence the West can muster, and insist on explanations. Unless he does so, Mr. Blix will have the distinction of missing the Iraqi bomb before the Gulf War, missing it afterward, and now missing it once again." (See also: "Sending in a dupe to disarm Saddam" (Per Ahlmark, The Washington Times, 2002/11/01))

"The End of the West?" (Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/11/26)
A symposium with Charles Kupchan, Angelo Codevilla, Radek Sikorski and Joel Mowbray discussing Kupchan's "The End of the West", in which he "argues that the next clash of civilizations will not be between the West and the rest, but between the United States and Europe.": "Codevilla: There is certainly a clash between the civilization of the elites who govern Europe and that of most Americans. On the other hand, a milder version of the same clash exists between the kinds of Americans who set the tone foe university towns, the media and entertainment business, the public employee unions, etc. and the rest of Americans. Clash of civilizations is not too strong a term. As always, civilization is defined chiefly by religion. In Europe, worship of God is dead - but not much more so than among certain American elites. These in turn are much more aggressive against religion than their European counterparts. By the same token, like-minded elites in Europe and America share another characteristic: the inability to generate military power. Note that in America, these elites take no part in military affairs. During my ten years at Stanford for example, only about 15 graduates out of 15000 entered military service. The ratio is higher in Paris' 16th arrondissement. ... Europe threatens America only by its weakness. The silver lining to that cloud is that Europeans are so innocuous that they would be of no use against us were they to be dominated by a power hostile to us. Hence one of the basic premises of American geopolitics - keep Europe out of hostile hands because its potential for good or harm is great - no longer holds." (See also: "The End of the West" (Charles A. Kupchan, The Atlantic, from the November 2002 issue))

"Understand Nigeria and you understand the Islamic threat" (Dennis Prager, Jewish World Review, 2002/11/26)
"To understand the threat the non-Muslim world faces, you need to understand the way in which Western news agencies report Islamic violence. Blame is almost never placed on the Muslim rioters. Rather, the passive voice, "violence broke out," is regularly used, and Muslims and Christians are simply reported to be killing each other in "sectarian violence." The Voice of America news report actually identified with the Muslim rioters: "The riots were sparked after a newspaper published an article mocking the Islamic leaders' protest." It is crucial to identify this each-side-is-at-fault reporting. It characterizes world news organizations' descriptions of Arab-Israeli violence as well. ... Muslims kill non-Muslims and the victims (i.e., the editors of the newspaper whose offices were razed) are told to apologize - just as after 9-11, America has been repeatedly told to apologize to the Muslim world, and just as Israel, while enduring massacre after massacre at the hands of Muslim terrorists, is told to apologize for defending itself. Nigerian Muslim leaders do not say a word against their murderous co-religionists but they do declare one innocuous sentence by a young woman writer to be an "abomination." The woman who wrote the sentence has been fired. The editor of ThisDay has been arrested and not been heard from since. One fears for his life. And ours."

"The End of an Alliance" (Alex Alexiev, National Review, from the 2002/10/28 issue)
Alexiev's article on Saudi Arabia is available online: "But the Bush administration has to face up to the fact that Riyadh has been - and remains - the main ideological and financial sponsor of Islamic extremism worldwide, and is not at all interested in helping us combat it. Until the administration confronts this reality in a decisive manner, lasting progress in the war on terrorism is unlikely. ...
What accounts for the Saudis' blatant unwillingness to cooperate, even as they continue to insist that they are our ally? The answer is very simple: Any genuine help by Riyadh in untangling the complex web financing extremism will inevitably implicate both the Saudi government and countless prominent Saudis. Saudi charities are no more private than were yesterday's Soviet-sponsored "peace-loving" organizations. In a dictatorship of a totalitarian bent like Saudi Arabia's, "private charities" exist for the explicit purpose of carrying out the policy of the state, and that policy will change only if the state is forced to change it. And this will not happen if Washington continues to speak softly and carry no stick. ...
While exact figures on this spending are hard to come by, it is clear from what we do know that this is the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted. ... As a result of these efforts, many Muslim religious establishments and institutions worldwide have fallen under the influence of radical Islamist doctrines and jihadist groups. It would be an exaggeration to argue that extremism has become the dominant idiom in Islam, but there is no question that Saudi money has been able to buy a significant foothold for extremist views and fanaticism unrepresentative of mainstream Islam."

"My Heart on the Line" (Frank Schaeffer, The Washington Post, 2002/11/26)
"Before my son became a Marine, I never thought much about who was defending me. Now when I read of the war on terrorism or the coming conflict in Iraq, it cuts to my heart. When I see a picture of a member of our military who has been killed, I read his or her name very carefully. Sometimes I cry. ...
My son has connected me to my country in a way that I was too selfish and insular to experience before. I feel closer to the waitress at our local diner than to some of my oldest friends. She has two sons in the Corps. They are facing the same dangers as my boy. When the guy who fixes my car asks me how John is doing, I know he means it. His younger brother is in the Navy. ..
Have we wealthy and educated Americans all become pacifists? Is the world a safe place? Or have we just gotten used to having somebody else defend us? What is the future of our democracy when the sons and daughters of the janitors at our elite universities are far more likely to be put in harm's way than are any of the students whose dorms their parents clean? I feel shame because it took my son's joining the Marine Corps to make me take notice of who is defending me. I feel hope because perhaps my son is part of a future "greatest generation." As the storm clouds of war gather, at least I know that I can look the men and women in uniform in the eye. My son is one of them. He is the best I have to offer. He is my heart."

"Susan Sontag Award" (The Daily Dish, 2002/11/26)
Beauty and the beast XII: "'As far as I'm concerned it's equally disrespectful and abusive to have women prancing around a stage in bathing suits for cash or walking the streets shrouded in burkas in order to survive.' - Jill Nelson, MSNBC." (See also: "Ugliness of a beauty contest" (Jill Nelson, MSNBC, 2002/11/25))

"Self-loathing in the West (ctd)" (Andrew Stuttaford, National Review/The Corner, 2002/11/26)
Beauty and the beast XI: "There's a bizarre piece on the Miss World saga in, naturally, Monday's Guardian. The key extract is as follows: "As contestants flee to London, and Nigeria counts its dead, it is almost impossible to retain the idea that an annual parade of female flesh is just an innocent quest for universal beauty acceptable to all reasonable people." Eh? This doesn't make much sense unless one believes that the murderous rioters in Nigeria were in some way "reasonable people". Well, here's an update: they weren't." (See also: "The beauty myth" (Ros Coward, The Guardian, 2002/11/26))

"Saudis Face U.S. Demand On Terrorism" (Douglas Farah, The Washington Post, 2002/11/26)
"A National Security Council task force is recommending an action plan to President Bush that is designed to force Saudi Arabia to crack down on terrorist financiers within 90 days or face unilateral U.S. action to bring the suspects to justice, senior U.S. officials said yesterday. The interagency plan, devised before the recent furor over allegations of Saudi involvement in terror financing, comes amid growing concern among some congressional leaders and U.S. allies that the administration has been unwilling to press Saudi Arabia for action for fear of alienating a key Arab ally as possible war with Iraq looms." (See also: "US urges Saudi action against terror" (BBC News, 2002/11/26): "The United States has urged Saudi Arabia to do more to help President George W Bush's campaign against terrorism. "Saudi Arabia is a good partner in the war against terrorism but can do more," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Mr Fleischer said a working-group of officials was looking at how to improve Saudi Arabia's ability to take action against militant groups.")

Monday, November 25, 2002

News and commentary:

"Bush signs homeland security bill" (CNN.com, 2002/11/25)
"Citing "the dangers of a new era," President Bush signed into law legislation Monday creating a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security - a move that sets into motion the largest reorganization of the federal government in mo