Archived news and commentary: December 30 - January 5, 2002-2003

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, January 5, 2003

News and commentary:

"23 dead, 100 hurt in double suicide bombing in Tel Aviv" (Haim Shadmi and Jonathan Lis, Haaretz, 2003/01/05)
"At least 23 people were killed and 100 others were wounded - seven critically - in a double suicide bombing at around 6:30 P.M. Sunday evening at the Old Central Bus Station in south Tel Aviv. The two suicide bombers blew themselves up within less than a minute of one another, at the corner of G'dud Ha'ivri and Neve She'anan streets in south Tel Aviv. ... The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, took responsibility for the attack. In a statement claiming that it was behind the bombings, the group identified the two bombers as Nablus residents Burak Hilsa and Samar A-Nuri. "The two martyrs managed to cross all the Zionist army roadblocks and reached the heart of Tel Aviv. One blew his pure body up at the old central bus station, and the other blew himself up in another nearby street," the message said."

"Reports: 56 killed in bloody weekend of attacks in Algeria" (Aomar Ouali, AP/Yahoo! News, 2003/01/05)
"Islamic militants lying in wait with bombs ambushed a military convoy in northeast Algeria and attacked families near the capital, in a bloody weekend of killings that claimed at least 56 lives, Algerian media reported Sunday. The ambush Saturday night reportedly killed 43 soldiers and seriously wounded 19 others, the deadliest assault suffered by the Algerian military in at least five years. In the other attack, Islamic militants killed 13 people from two families overnight Saturday in Zabana, 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the capital, Algiers, the official news agency APS reported, citing security services. It attributed the attack to the Armed Islamic Group, the north African country's most radical insurgent group. ... More than 120,000 people have been killed in more than a decade of civil strife in Algeria, where Islamic militants have been staging massacres ever since they were shut of out parliamentary elections in 1992."

"U.S. disaster plans include cloned icons" (Douglas Feiden, Daily News, 2003/01/05)
Found via Lake Effect: "Imagine New York Harbor without the Statue of Liberty. Or Washington without the U.S. Capitol. Or the heartland of America absent Mount Rushmore. Unthinkable? In truth, federal officials have spent a lot of time thinking about such nightmarish scenarios since the cataclysmic events of Sept. 11, 2001. ... Deploying high-powered, laser-scanning technology to record the landmarks from every angle, the feds have been creating three-dimensional digital models of their complex exterior features. They also have scanned part of the ornate interior of the Capitol. By converting the monuments' unique architecture into geometric maps, they are producing digital archives and computerized databases that can be used to manufacture or rebuild those physical objects."

"Women, Wine and Weapons" (Evan Thomas, Newsweek, from the 2003/01/13 issue)
A profile of Kim Jong Il: "In 1998, a Mercedes-Benz representative was taken aback when Kim ordered 200 Class S Mercedeses at $100,000 apiece; the $20 million price tag was one fifth of the aid promised to North Korea that year by the United Nations. An avid womanizer, Kim has been married at least four times, once to a dancer, and is said to favor leggy Scandinavian blondes. As a young man, he created "pleasure teams" to service him and his father. One defector described a party at which women band members gyrated in tank tops and microminis while the guests cheered them on with toasts of a fiery rice liquor called Eternal Youth. A visitor to Kim’s seven-story pleasure palace in Pyongyang (complete with karaoke machine) watched him riding about his pool on a raft propelled by an automatic wave maker, as a female doctor and a pretty nurse swam alongside."

"The Burden" (Michael Ignatieff, The New York Times Magazine/mtholyoke.edu, 2003/01/05)
"The core beliefs of our time are the creations of the anticolonial revolt against empire: the idea that all human beings are equal and that each human group has a right to rule itself free of foreign interference. It is at least ironic that American believers in these ideas have ended up supporting the creation of a new form of temporary colonial tutelage for Bosnians, Kosovars and Afghans - and could for Iraqis. The reason is simply that, however right these principles may be, the political form in which they are realized - the nationalist nation-building project - so often delivers liberated colonies straight to tyranny, as in the case of Baath Party rule in Iraq, or straight to chaos, as in Bosnia or Afghanistan. For every nationalist struggle that succeeds in giving its people self-determination and dignity, there are more that deliver their people only up to slaughter or terror or both. For every Vietnam brought about by nationalist struggle, there is a Palestinian struggle trapped in a downward spiral of terror and military oppression. ...
Those who want America to remain a republic rather than become an empire imagine rightly, but they have not factored in what tyranny or chaos can do to vital American interests. The case for empire is that it has become, in a place like Iraq, the last hope for democracy and stability alike."

"Call It by Any Other Name, It Still Adds Up to a Crusade" (Dennis Mullin, The Washington Post Outlook, 2003/01/05)
"The al Qaeda leader, in the "Letter to the American People" published last November and attributed to him, spoke from that "different area," spelling out our nation's faults, from alcohol consumption to sexual permissiveness (even mentioning President Bill Clinton's peccadilloes) to our disregard for the world environment. The letter makes very clear that bin Laden's ultimate goal is to undermine Western civilization in its totality, which strongly implies that even if Israel didn't exist, he would still be pursuing what is really, as reluctant as we are to say it, a religious crusade in the true historical sense. ...
Muslim extremist cells are operating in scores of countries, and their cross-border cooperation in training and financing gives credence to the assumption that the driving force is not strictly localized grievances (witness Kenya, Bali) as much as a clarion call to a worldwide transnational Islamic revival. ...
If Saddam Hussein poses a major threat to the world by backing this emerging Muslim militancy, he becomes every bit as dispensable, as part of the unavoidable collateral damage of war, as were the people in the World Trade Center. America's transgressions and Palestine's future aside, bin Laden speaks for a growing militancy that stems largely from the failure of Islamic leadership to adapt to a changing world. It is not likely to subside any time soon, and to face that reality and be prepared for it is not a sign of reverse bigotry or racial profiling, and certainly not an overreaction in light of the continuing aggressive attacks by Islamic groups against a vast array of national and theological targets." (See also: "Osama issues new call to arms" (Jason Burke, The Observer, 2002/11/24))

"Iraq's 'Bosnians'" (Melik Kaylan, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/01/05)
"The recent theater of amity among Iraq's opposition factions at a London conference should not beguile anyone. Iraq's interethnic rivalry smolders daily hotter, especially in the northern areas around the strategic oil towns of Kirkuk and Mosul. That area is facing a potential Balkan-style upheaval of pent-up forces, with the most moderate secular Muslim group, the Iraqi Turkomans, cast in the role of the local Bosnians. The Iraqi Turkomans complain that their share of the population is being deliberately underrepresented. They and their neighbors the Christian Assyrians are angry that their urban districts - still under Saddam Hussein's control - are being pre-emptively gerrymandered by the Kurdish factions to carve out a greater Iraqi Kurdistan in a future grab for oil terrain."

"Saudis gave Al Qaida $500 million and never stopped giving" (World Tribune.com, 2003/01/05)
"Saudi Arabia has transferred $500 million to Al Qaida over the past decade, according to a report prepared for the United Nations. The report asserts that the Saudi funds represent the most important source of financing for Al Qaida and that Riyad, pressured by leading officials, has failed to stop the flow of money to Al Qaida in wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 suicide attacks on New York and Washington."

"Seven million Koreans facing starvation" (Jasper Becker, Independent, 2003/01/05)
"The United Nations food agency warned yesterday that supplies for some seven million people, a third of North Korea's population, will run out early next month without furtheraid. The news could worsen the crisis over North Korea's nuclear threats. "We only have firm commitments for 35,000 tons. This will be finished in early February, and then we might have to close shop," said Gerald Bourke, the spokesman for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Beijing. South Korea stopped food deliveries two months ago, after Pyongyang admitted running a secret nuclear weapons programme. Japan suspended aid after North Korea admitted kidnapping Japanese citizens."

"Report: Egypt arrests 43 suspected Islamic Jihad militants" (Reuters/Haaretz, 2003/01/05)
Egyptian security forces have arrested 43 suspected members of the Islamic Jihad group who were planning attacks against foreign and other targets in Egypt, a newspaper reported on Sunday. The semi-official Al Ahram newspaper did not say when the arrests were made but said they had taken place in several parts of the country. "They planned to implement terrorist operations against foreign interests in Cairo and target several major personalities and vital installations," the report said, citing "informed sources". The report named the alleged ringleader as Ehab Ismail, saying he had formed three cells. It said the suspects used the Internet to contact Jihad members abroad and also 'rented a headquarters to be a factory to be used to make explosives.'"

Added in archive:
"Bomb Saddam?" (Joshua Micah Marshall, The Washington Monthly, from the June 2002 issue)
"Kipling Knew What the U.S. May Now Learn" (Edward Rothstein, The New York Times, 2002/01/26)

Saturday, January 4, 2003

News and commentary:

"Kaddoumi: No difference between PLO and Hamas" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/01/04)
"The Palestinians will not ask Hamas to stop suicide attacks against Israel before the Palestinians make political gains, the head of the PLO's political department, Farouk Kaddoumi, said over the weekend. ... "We're not an army and we can't prevent the suicide attacks. The US asked us, through the Saudis, to talk to other Palestinian groups to try to convince them to halt these attacks, but we have said that we want political achievements before we persuade them." In an interview with the Nazareth-based weekly Kul al-Arab, Kaddoumi branded the Oslo Accords a failure, saying Palestinians have the right to continue their armed "resistance" both in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in Israel. ... Asked if there was any difference between his positions and those of Hamas, which calls for the elimination of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state in all of Palestine, the veteran PLO official said: 'We were never different from Hamas. Hamas is a national movement. Strategically, there is no difference between us.'"

"Exploiting the Palestinians" (Max Boot, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/01/13 issue)
"More than 1.1 million Palestinians are jammed into 59 refugee camps whose support comes mainly from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and other international bodies. As former U.S. ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg points out, all the Arab states combined donate less than $7 million to UNRWA, just 2.4 percent of its $290 million budget. (Kuwait, Egypt, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates collectively contribute a grand total of zero.) By contrast, the Great Satan forks over $110 million, or 38 percent of UNRWA's budget. The Arabs prefer to spend their money to support Palestinian suicide bombers. ... Much the same calculus seems to govern Yasser Arafat's thinking. He is, you might say, the chief exploiter of the Palestinians, followed closely by his senior goons. They reap the adulation of useful idiots abroad who celebrate them as "freedom fighters," but senior PA officials aren't the ones strapping dynamite to their chests and blowing up Israeli buses."

"The Spy Who Came in From the Mosque" (Jake Tapper, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/01/13 issue)
An interview with Reda Hassaine, "an Algerian Muslim who has spied on militant Islamist groups for the Algerian Secret Service, the French, Scotland Yard's Special Branch, and MI5, the British intelligence agency.": "'How can I explain this to Westerners?' Hassaine asks. "These kind of people, they had been brainwashed in Afghanistan. When I left Algeria, people wanted to kill me. My closest friend, 35 of my colleagues, had been killed by Islamists in the GIA. They were taking babies and putting them in the ovens." Human rights organizations estimate that up to 100,000 Algerians have been killed in the civil war that began in 1992. ...
In 1999, the Special Branch asked Hassaine to infiltrate London's now-notorious Finsbury Park mosque, whose imam Abu Hamza preached jihad to the likes of shoebomber Richard Reid. Hassaine was already familiar with Hamza and his ally Abu Qatada - both of them among the top GIA supporters in London. He held them responsible, in no small way, for what had happened in Algeria. ... He saw a lot - from the inside. Abu Qatada recruited shoe-bomber Richard Reid and "20th hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui, Hassaine says. 'I saw them. Abu Qatada is the best brainwasher there is.'"

"@History" (Brendan Miniter, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/12/04)
"Sept. 11 was, perhaps, the first major historical event to be experienced digitally. So a group of historians at George Mason University and the City University of New York Graduate Center are working to preserve electronic documents tied to that day. The project, the September 11 Digital Archive, has collected hundreds of e-mails, photos and other digital documents - and more come in every day, some of which are available online at http://911digitalarchive.org." (See also: The September 11 Digital Archive.)

"French 'rape victim' faces jail for adultery" (Jon Henley, The Guardian, 2003/01/04)
More on the outrageous gang rape-case in Dubai, including this cowardly stance: "The French foreign ministry confirmed yesterday that Touria Tiouli, a Moroccan-born marketing executive who grew up in Limoges and holds full French nationality, had been freed from prison on bail paid by the French consulate but was due to face trial within the next few weeks. "We have managed to find her a lawyer and she will at least be properly defended," a ministry spokesman said. 'It is a very delicate situation. We are doing what we can, but we cannot make too much noise for fear of upsetting religious sensibilities over there.'" (See also: "'Gang rape' victim faces jail on adultery charges" (Philip Delves Broughton, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/01/03))

"Florida Arrest Renews Debate Over Muslim Charities" (Manuel Roig-Franzia, The Washington Post, 2003/01/04)
"Most of the donations at the heart of the Maali case were made between the mid-1990s and 2000, when a strong current of peer pressure stoked large donations by the elite in Arab American communities across the United States, according to Walid Phares, a terrorism and Middle East expert at Florida Atlantic University. "Sometimes it may have been just a businessman showing off," Phares said. "They were not even paying attention to how the money was being used." Extremists took note of the free-wheeling climate, Phares said, and moved into Arab American communities, ostensibly to solicit donations for new schools and medical supplies, competing alongside legitimate charities. Maali gave big. He turned over about $1,000 a year to Holy Land, but he saved his biggest checks for the Society of In'ash el-Usra, donating about $45,000 a year from the late 1980s onward, according to Taleb Salhab, one of his top business aides. El-Usra deposited one of Maali's checks in the Al Aqsa Islamic Bank, which prosecutors said has ties to the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas."

"Bush Tells Troops: Prepare For War" (Mike Allen, The Washington Post, 2003/01/04)
"President Bush somberly warned 4,000 young soldiers today to prepare for war with Iraq, promising to unleash the full force of the U.S. military if Saddam Hussein does not seize a final chance to disarm. ... Units are shipping out of U.S. bases almost daily. Pentagon officials said 60,000 troops are in the Persian Gulf region, a number that could double in coming weeks. Today, the Marine Corps said troops and aircraft from California had been ordered to the region this week. ... "If force becomes necessary to secure our country and to keep the peace," Bush told the troops, "America will act deliberately, America will act decisively, and America will prevail because we've got the finest military in the world." The soldiers, a sea of flag-waving camouflage fatigues that melted into the camouflage-covered walls, responded with an approving "Hooah!" ... "America seeks more than the defeat of terror: We seek the advance of human freedom in a world at peace," he said. 'That is the charge history has given us, and that is the charge we will keep.'" (See also: "President Rallies Troops at Fort Hood" (The White House, 2003/01/03))

Friday, January 3, 2003

News and commentary:

"'Israel like Nazi Germany' - row spreads" (Jamie Lyons, icWales, 2003/01/03)
"A Welsh politician was today accused of gross anti-Semitism after comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. Labour councillor Ray Davies condemned Israel's "apartheid regime" and likened it to Hitler's occupation of Europe. The councillor, from Caerphilly, south Wales, said: "Hitler's Nazi regime occupied Europe for four years only. Palestine and the West Bank have been occupied for 40 years." His comments provoked outrage from the Israeli community. Jean Evans, the director of the Israel information centre for Wales and the west of England, said: "This is a gross insult to Jews. "It is anti-Semitic to compare Israel to Nazi Germany. There is no genocide in Israel. Experiments are not carried out on women and twins. Palestinians' fat is not turned into soap or their skin into lampshades. 'His comments reveal his high level of ignorance and they are very, very insulting.'"

"Crisis in Korea: Why China won't help" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2003/01/03)
"Will China prove its friendship for the Bush administration by helping to defuse the North Korean nuclear crisis? As any character in "The Sopranos" would say, "Fuggedabahdit" - "Forget about it." China is North Korea's godfather. ... For as long as North Korea has the power to threaten South Korea and Japan with its weapon of mass destruction, the Chinese calculate Seoul and Tokyo will have to look to them as the one power that can effectively restrain Pyongyang, some of the East Asian sources said. North Korea has also over the past decade served as an invaluable ally to China by spreading weapons of mass destruction technology to nations that China wants to see supplied with it. This is certainly the case with Iran and Pakistan, both of whom have received missile technology know-how from Pyongyang. And even nuclear cooperation between these nations appears likely. China has a played a huge role in Pakistan's missile and nuclear programs, Indian intelligence analysts believe." (See also: "Three-Ring Circus" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2003/01/02), "Crisis in Korea: Seoul stays with sunshine" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2003/01/01), "Crisis in Korea: America's dilemma" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/12/31) and "Crisis in Korea: View from Pyongyang" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/12/30))

"Stupidity Watch" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2003/01/03)
"Writing in the Roanoke (Va.) Times, one Glen Martin, a professor at Radford University, finds ominous parallels: 'In Nazi Germany at this time of year, people freely shopped in large department stores for gifts for family and friends. The streets were full of traffic. It was "business as usual" for most of the citizens. While in the colonial states conquered by the Nazis, and in the concentrations camps for Jews, gays and communists, life was a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations. In the United States today, people freely shop in large department stores for gifts, and the streets are full of traffic. While in our most recent victim states of Afghanistan, Iraq under murderous sanctions, Argentina after engineering its economic collapse, and Colombia under U.S. military aid for repression, life is a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations.'" (See also: "Totalitarianism nears - Without protest, Americans are giving up freedom" (Glen T. Martin, roanoke.com, 2003/01/02))

"It's Not the Money, Stupid!" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/01/03)
Hanson on the Patty Murrays of the West: "Sadly, prosperous Westerners never seem to learn of the folly of honoring appeasement and naiveté - the awarding of Nobel Peace Prizes to the likes of a Le Duc Tho and Yasser Arafat, as if global praise might make them statesmen rather than murderers, to a Kim Dae Jung as if his demonstrable kindness would pacify rather than embolden North Korea, or to ex-President Carter as if his well-meaning parleys with tyrants could bring peace. As chief executive emeritus, his saintliness now plays well; but we forget in the rough and tumble of his presidency that Mr. Carter's brag that he had no "inordinate fear of Communism" was followed by the brutal Russian invasion of Afghanistan, that sending Ramsay Clark to apologize to the Iranians did not win the release of the American hostages in 1980, and that U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young's praise of Cuban troops in Africa and his clenched-fist, black-power salutes to African leaders did not stop Communist intervention and bloodletting abroad.
The United States cannot lose the struggle on the battlefield, as we did not lose the Vietnam conflict in the strict military sense either. But we most surely can fail in this war if our citizens and leaders reach for their checkbooks as the fundamentalists reach for their guns - or convince themselves that our enemies fight because of something we, rather than they, did." (See also: "The Osama bin Laden Day-Care Center" (James Taranto, "The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/12/20))

"East, West Radicals Find Unsettling Bond" (Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times, 2003/01/03)
"They are unlikely allies, but right-wing extremists and Islamic militants share a hatred for Israel and the United States that has drawn the attention of German authorities. Since 2001, when Islamic extremists and neo-Nazis cheered the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., the two camps have echoed one another's abhorrence of what they view as a world controlled by Jews and enforced by Washington's military power. ... "The common ground they share is deep on two issues," said one Western diplomat. 'They cannot tolerate the existence of Israel, and they share a conspiracy theory that the U.S. wants to control the Middle East and the world's energy supply. It's a very paranoid world view, but they share it deeply.'"

"Somali woman heads for Dutch parliament" (BBC News, 2003/01/03)
"A Somali refugee and former Muslim is a sure bet to become a Netherlands MP for a conservative party in the 22 January general elections. Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently came out of a seclusion prompted by death threats made against her after she campaigned against what she called the oppression of women under Islam. Her role in the election campaign will be a prominent one, highlighting some fundamental differences between western and Islamic culture. ... "Millions of Muslim women all around the world are oppressed in the name [of] Islam. And as a woman who was brought up with the tradition of Islam, I think it's not just my right but also my obligation to call these things by name." ...
Her outspokenness sparked heated reactions from all sides of society, but she says it has gained her the respect of some members of the Muslim community. "Well, among some Muslims who are not willing to come to [the] foreground because they do not want to face the same dangers, I am welcome," she said. 'But there is also a small group who are so enraged that they're willing to do something terrible to me. And I think that is also another horrible side of Islam - the fact that there is absolutely no toleration.'" (Note: As James Taranto points out, BBC also "gives us this example of fair and impartial reporting" in the article: "Tolerance was a key issue for the Netherlands in 2002. The murdered populist politician Pim Fortuyn, who was killed nine days before elections in May, also called Islam a backward religion. He did not want to tolerate immigrants. His self-confessed assassin, an animal rights activist, could not stand his intolerance." See also: "Behind the Veil: A Muslim Woman Speaks Out" (Marlise Simons, The New York Times, 2002/11/09))

"Why the West?" (Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, from the January 2003 issue)
A review of "The West and the Rest" by Roger Scruton: "Like Huntington, Scruton cautions against the effort to universalize the Western ideals of freedom and citizenship. Not only does that ideal "lack credibility" in most Islamic societies, but, even more troubling, the attempt to inculcate it breeds resentment, which breeds hatred, which ultimately breeds terrorism: precisely the evils that exporting "the West" was meant to cure. Perhaps. It is here, I believe, that Scruton's analysis becomes like the curate's egg: good in part. Globalization is the West's primary economic and cultural ambassador; it is the motor of modernization. Is it therefore, as Scruton suggests, the unwitting ally of terrorism? He is right that Western nations need to reexamine their immigration policies and their pusillanimous commitment to so-called "multiculturalism" (really reflexive anti-Westernism). But to conclude that we need to repudiate our commitment to free trade and dispense with our "devotion to prosperity and habits of consumption" seems to me less a response than a capitulation to the forces that nourish terrorism. Western ideals of freedom and citizenship were born out of a particular social-political tradition. They are, as Scruton says, "an achievement." But to deny that this achievement is sharable is to consign portions of humanity to the status of permanent barbarism. Which would mean that terrorism could never be defeated, only quarantined." (See also: "The West and the Rest" (Roger Scruton, National Review, 2002/09/23), "The Personal State" (Roger Scruton, National Review, 2002/09/24), "Transnational Government" (Roger Scruton, National Review, 2002/09/25) and "The New Imperium" (Roger Scruton, National Review, 2002/09/26))

"A New Marcos" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/01/03)
"Paul Krugman just gave an interview to Der Spiegel. It's a festival of German-pleasing anti-Americanism and Bush-bashing. Here are a couple of choice quotes, worthy of Michael Moore: "No one expects the President to be a saint. ... But it is pretty amazing the distance that this administration will go in trying to fool the public. Sometimes I have the feeling that I no longer live in one of the world's oldest democracies, but in the Philippines under a new Marcos." Useful to know that a columnist at the New York Times believes that president Bush is indistinguishable from an unelected tyrant. Then there's this piece of naked pandering to European prejudice against America: "Instead [of writing a column about the New Economy], I now find myself once again as the lonely voice of truth in a sea of corruption. Sometimes I think that one of these days I'll end up in one of those cages on Guantanamo Bay (laughs). But I can still seek asylum in Germany. I hope you'd accept me in an emergency. The poor beleaguered martyr for truth." So persecuted by the government he gets to write twice weekly for the New York Times and have the media establishment gush constantly about him. So pure you'd never know he once served on Enron's Advisory Board and still hasn't returned his $50,000 sinecure. Asylum? Lonely voice of truth? The vanity is almost as gob-smacking as the self-righteousness." (See also: "'Koalition der Eliten'" (Der Spiegel, from the 1/2003 issue))

"'Gang rape' victim faces jail on adultery charges" (Philip Delves Broughton, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/01/03)
"A businesswoman who accused three men of gang rape has been arrested in Dubai and faces trial on charges of adultery. Touria Tiouli, 39, from Limoges, in France, has had her passport confiscated and cannot leave Dubai after being charged under the emirate's Sharia law. This declares any sexual relationship outside marriage to be illegal. Mme Tiouli was on a business trip last October when, she alleges, she was raped by three men who offered her a lift home from a nightclub. She reported the attack immediately to the Dubai police, who after investigating her claim arrested her rather than those she accused. One of the men admitted to having "consensual sex" with Mme Tiouli, which made her, in the eyes of Dubai's judiciary, guilty of both adultery and making a false rape accusation. She could face up to 18 months in prison. None of the men has been charged."

"Fatah terrorists kill man in Jordan Valley" (Jonathan Lis et al., Haaretz, 2003/01/03)
"Police and security forces discovered yesterday afternoon the scorched body of a 70-year-old Israeli man who had been missing since Wednesday. The body of Massoud Mahlouf Allon, a resident of Moshav Menahemya, was found in a burned-out car in the northern Jordan Valley following a widescale police search. Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for killing Allon, saying the murder was in revenge for the killing of one of its members by IDF soldiers several months ago in the West Bank village of Tamoun. Allon left his home Wednesday morning in his van, heading for the Arab villages in the Jordan Valley. Members of his family told police that he used to collect used clothing and blankets and give them to Bedouin and Palestinians there. ... The searchers, who immediately headed for the site on foot, found the body, which had been badly mutilated. Allon's skull had been crushed and his body had been set alight."

Thursday, January 2, 2003

News and commentary:

"Questions about Saudi crackdown" (Lisa Myers, NBC News, 2003/01/02)
"It's called the Empty Quarter, hundreds of miles of desert along the Saudi border with Yemen that’s now patrolled almost around the clock by CIA drones searching for al-Qaida members. U.S. government officials tell NBC News that scores of al-Qaida operatives are now cycling back and forth between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and that 30 to 50 al-Qaida members are believed to be in Saudi Arabia at any one time. The claim raises new questions about Saudi cooperation in the war on terror."

"The Washington Post yesterday reported..." (Josh Kraushaar, All About Josh, 2003/01/02)
"The Washington Post yesterday reported on a local Islamic cleric, Mohammad Asi, who formerly ran the Islamic Education Center right off Montrose Road in Potomac, MD. The Alavi Foundation, which funds the school and other local mosques, is controlled by the Iranian government and funds terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas. The school itself is a bastion of anti-American hate. ... The school, which looks like an innocent, opulent educational outpost in affluent Potomac appears to be, a front to brainwash Muslim children into hating America. Khomeini's picture is adorned throughout the school. A large banner displayed in the school says "those who struggle against the U.S. will be rewarded by God." The school regularly extends invitations to Ahmed Huber, a Swiss Muslim who is a Holocaust revisionist and complains about "Jewish bankers." ...
Instead of bending over backwards, as the Sephardic Jews did in France to gain the acceptance of their Christian peers, it seems that Islamic groups are making every attempt to avoid being a part of America. It's not a matter of assimilation, which some view as abandoning religious practices and becoming entirely secular. It's about integration - about not promising students with divine providence if they "struggle against the U.S." Is that so hard to ask?" (See also: "U.S. Keeps Close Tabs on Muslim Cleric" (John Mintz, Washington Post, 2003/01/01) and "Muslim Students Weigh Questions Of Allegiance" (Marc Fisher, The Washington Post, 2001/10/16))

"Palestinians condemn use of children at Fatah 'military parade'" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/01/02)
"Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday attacked the Palestinian Authority for allowing heavily armed Fatah activists to march in the streets during celebrations marking the 38th anniversary of the founding of the movement. Several hundred Fatah gunmen participated in the main rally held in Gaza City on Tuesday, firing shots into the air from rifles and pistols. Palestinians said it was the biggest show of force ever to be held by Fatah in the Gaza Strip, estimating the number of people who attended the rally at more than 70,000. ... Many Palestinians said they were especially disturbed by the fact that several hundred children brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles were allowed to participate in the Fatah celebrations. Some of the children, according to witnesses, were carrying old and unsafe Carl Gustav rifles. Others had their bodies wrapped with fake explosive belts and dressed in a white uniform in glorification of Palestinian suicide bombers." (See also: "Death Cult Photo Album" (Little Green Footballs, 2003/01/01), for three Reuters-photos from the march.)

"The academic boycott of Israel: Back to 1933?" (Edward Alexander, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/01/02)
"As the boycott campaign intensified, its guiding lights were plagued by problems of definition bearing a ghoulish resemblance to those that once beset the Nazis in deciding just which people were to be considered fitting victims of discrimination, oppression, and (eventually) murder. ...
The most paradoxical example of the boycott's effect was Oren Yiftachel, a political geographer from Ben-Gurion University, described by Haaretz as "hold[ing] extreme leftist political views." Yiftachel had co-authored a paper with an Arab Israeli political scientist from Haifa University named As'ad Ghanem, dealing with the attitude of Israeli authorities to Arabs within Israel proper and the disputed territories. They submitted it to the English periodical Political Geography, whose editor, David Slater, returned it with a note saying it had been rejected because its authors were Israelis. ...
Poor Slater, apparently unable to amputate the Jewish part of the article from the Arab part and (to quote him) "not sure to what extent [the authors] had been critical of Israel," rejected the submission in its entirety. Or so it seemed - for after half a year of wrangling, it emerged that Slater might accept the paper if only its authors would insert some more paragraphs likening Israel to apartheid South Africa. In other words, the Englishman might relax his boycotting principles if his ideological prejudices could be satisfied." (See also: "Watch who you call Nazis" (Rod Liddle, The Guardian, 2002/07/17))

"Three-Ring Circus" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2003/01/02)
"What seemed like such a winner to Colin Powell and his Senate acolytes last summer - to delay allied action until the U.N. Security Council reluctantly gave us its blessing to stop Saddam's secret buildup - now seems not such a great idea. The unequivocal blessing for united action is unlikely to come any time soon. As a result, the nuclear blackmailers in North Korea have taken advantage of this extended period of phony war to recycle their own nuclear challenge. ... Instead of merely going to the U.N. for bold finger-wagging, President Bush should order a drawdown of U.S. troops in South Korea, where they are now reviled and serve only as hostages to the North. Let Koreans pursue bold dialogues with each other. He should then lay it on the line to China's new leader: Beijing cannot escape responsibility for tolerating North Korea's decision to build long-range missiles with nuclear warheads, to be used for blackmailing the U.S. or for sale to terrorist nations or groups. China's silence is assent."

Added in archive:
"Muslim Students Weigh Questions Of Allegiance" (Marc Fisher, The Washington Post, 2001/10/16)

Wednesday, January 1, 2003

News and commentary:

"Israel blamed for massacre at the Olympics" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/01/01)
The British government has released 30-year-old classified documents on the Black September massacre, which show outrageous apologetics from some senior diplomats: "Senior diplomats mounted a vigorous defence of the Palestinian cause after the Black September terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics in which 11 Israeli athletes died. ...
There was international outrage but, with the exception of King Hussein of Jordan, a muted response in the Arab world. Seeking to explain it, Gayford Woodrow, the consul general in Jerusalem, sent a dispatch to the Foreign Office on Sept 12, six days after the attack, saying: "Before we reproach the Arabs too much, perhaps we might try to put ourselves in their shoes. "They are, after all, human beings with normal human failings. The Palestinians in particular have seen their land taken away from them by a group of mainly European invaders equipped with superior armed force and modern technology. 'Whatever one's moral criticism, it must be agreed that the Munich operation was well planned and that the Arabs there carried it out to the bitter end. It is said that lives were really lost because of Israel and West German bungling incompetence.'"

"A taboo breached loses its power" (Les Murray, The Australian, 2003/01/01)
"For more than a century since the days of the European anarchists, we have lived on and off in the aura of the Militant, a figure who moves within a tribe of a culture or an ideology and demands support and shelter from it, often on pain of death if he is refused. We're all aware of Green and Orange examples, as well as others. The Militant may be the worst enemy democracy has. An ethnically complex but culturally non-separatist democracy may give him difficult waters to swim in. He has been a deeply romantic figure in the West, as in postcolonial countries. His less violent derivative is the Activist. Now, though, the Militant has morphed suddenly into a holy warrior whose criticism of exploitative Western decadence many Westerners may yearn to share – but in his eyes they are too greedy infidel modernists whom he is sworn to slaughter. Support of him gains them no reprieve, and our radicals may now see themselves in a bottomless dark mirror." (Note: Found via Tim Blair.)

"Crisis in Korea: Seoul stays with sunshine" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2003/01/01)
"North Korea has South Korea's capital city and largest urban center Seoul within range of up to 13,000 artillery guns and launching tubes just north of the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ. They are certainly armed with many chemical warheads, and the North has even been researching biological weapons for 35 years - far longer than Iraq has. Anthony Cordesman of Washington's Center for Strategic International Studies even warned in a new report, "It is possible that North Korea has smallpox cultures and it seems likely that it now has dry biological agents, highly lethal micropowders, non-destructive dissemination mechanisms and modern missile warheads." Despite these appalling threats, and the proven ruthlessness and unpredictability of the North's reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, South Korean leaders believe they know how to win his trust to a cautious degree. Ironically, it is not the unpredictability of the mysterious hidden tyrant in Pyongyang that most concerns them but the unpredictability of the Bush administration in Washington. (See also: "Crisis in Korea: America's dilemma" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/12/31) and "Crisis in Korea: View from Pyongyang" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/12/30))

"Hollywood thinking" (Sherri Mandell, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/01/01)
"Eve Ensler, Hollywood's latest Jewish crusader for justice, claims she came here to "listen and learn," but wasted no time last week in condemning Israel for the occupation. Ensler, writer of the popular play The Vagina Monologues, brought along Jane Fonda, thus ensuring maximum publicity. ...
In Ensler's hypothesis, the Israelis are the powerful ones and the Palestinians are the weak ones. Surely Israelis like my son Koby, stoned to death at the age of 13 by terrorists, cannot be considered powerful. "Israelis have the power, and the suffering of the powerful is different than the suffering of the weak," she says. I wonder how she would rate Koby's suffering. Or my own. ...
But one cannot afford to be generous to evil. And that is why I question Ensler's actions here. I believe that when sincere people like her refuse to unconditionally fight terror and instead try to understand Palestinian pain as the rationale for terror, they do more harm than good. Terror is not about Palestinian pain; it is about Palestinian hate." (See also: "Terrorists murder teens near Tekoa" (Margot Dudkevitch et al., The Jerusalem Post, 2001/05/10))

"Pakistan police burn 'obscene' material" (BBC News, 2003/01/01)
"Police in Pakistan's North-west Frontier Province have burnt thousands of items considered to be pornographic as part of a drive against obscenity. A public bonfire was organised in Peshawar's Jinnah Park to destroy the material which included Indian and English films, posters, "sex tonics", or aphrodisiacs and medicines. ... Peshawar police had made special arrangements on New Year's eve not to allow revellers on the streets. No arrests were made as most of the people spent the night indoors. No music shows or parties were allowed."

"Father given 6 months for stabbing daughter 25 times" (Rana Husseini, The Jordan Times, 2003/01/01)
Culture of Dishonor II: "A 65-year-old father walked out of Criminal Court a free man on Tuesday after receiving six months in prison for killing his teenage daughter in Hiteen refugee camp in April 2002. ... The defendant began questioning his daughter about her disappearance, preaching to her to be a good girl, the record continued, but she replied: "It is my life. I am free to do what I want." The defendant told the court the victim pushed him so he became aggressive, "which caused me to lose control and become enraged because of her actions." The court said Ahmad drew a knife he carried due to the nature of his job as the employee of a junkyard, stabbed his daughter all over her body, and then went out and told his family he had killed her. ...
In its Tuesday ruling, the tribunal said the defendant benefited from a penalty reduction because of the victim's "dangerous and unlawful actions." ... "Her bad conduct and challenge of her father caused the defendant to become enraged. His anger was obvious because of the number of stabs [25] he inflicted upon his daughter," it added." (Note: Found via Little Green Footballs.)

"U.S. Keeps Close Tabs on Muslim Cleric" (John Mintz, Washington Post, 2003/01/01)
A profile of the Muslim cleric Mohammad Asi: "Seven weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Islamic cleric Mohammad Asi made a speech at the National Press Club, calling them "a grand strike against New York and Washington" launched by "Israeli Zionist Jews" who had warned the 5,000 Jews at the World Trade Center to skip work. He warned America that if it continued to offend Islam, "the day of reckoning is approaching." A small man with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard who lives in Silver Spring, Asi, 51, may sound to some like an al Qaeda spokesman. He is actually a U.S. citizen, an Air Force veteran and a fixture in the local Islamic community. He also belongs to a little-known group of Muslim activists that many U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials believe is closely aligned with the government of Iran."

Note: Happy New Year! And a special thanks to those who have supported Watch during 2002 with tips and suggestions - it's very much appreciated.

Tuesday, December 31, 2002

News and commentary:

"Crisis in Korea: America's dilemma" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/12/31)
"The neo-conservative superhawks who shape policy towards Iraq in the Pentagon and in key positions in the State Department and the National Security Council have made no secret of their conviction that militarily toppling Saddam is essential as an object lesson to deter other rogue states in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world from developing their own weapons of mass destruction. But North Korea's bold, even contemptuous public defiance of the Bush administration over the Yongbyon reactor appears to be standing that conservative conventional wisdom on its head. Precisely because the United States now appears committed to focusing its military forces in the Middle East to take down Saddam, Pyongyang's leaders appear to have judged this a propitious moment to announce their own nuclear defiance of Washington. And so far at least, their bold gamble appears to be paying off." ...
As Cordesman of CSIS warned in his paper, "North Korea is a symptom of a much broader and ongoing global crisis in proliferation. ... The fact is that many nations are acting to offset the U.S. advantage in conventional weapons thorough proliferation (of weapons of mass destruction)." This nightmare - of a Third World rogue state armed with catastrophic nuclear or biological "bee-sting" weapons - has now become a reality. None of the old solutions appears to work anymore. And there are no new ones in sight, either. That is the dilemma that now confronts Washington's policy-makers, blocking their dreams of continued unipolar global domination. And it is not going to go away soon." (See also: "Is There a Crisis in U.S. and North Korean Relations? Yes, There Are Two!" (Anthony H. Cordesman, CSIS, 2002/12/30) and "Crisis in Korea: View from Pyongyang" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/12/30))

"Israeli Arab Porn Video Inflames Community Passions" (Reuters/News, 2002/12/31)
Culture of Dishonor I: "Were it not for the hardcore sex that comes next, it might have passed for another Israeli high school video on language education. Instead, the bilingual film billed as "the first Israeli-Arab porno" has inflamed the Jewish state's Muslim minority, drawing charges of sacrilege and a vigilante death sentence on "Fatima" issued by her own hometown and family. Amal Kashua, a 38-year-old mother of eight, was set upon by a mob last week in Tira, a prosperous Arab community in central Israel. "Yussuf," a Palestinian known only as Amir, was beaten too. They went to hospital under police guard, then into hiding. Shamed by association, Kashua's relatives disowned her. ... "The whole town is satisfied and dissatisfied at once," said local man Fathi Sultan. "Satisfied at what happened, because we tried to protect our honor, but on the other hand dissatisfied because she (Kashua) didn't die, nor her husband." From her hospital bed in Kfar Saba, a mainly Jewish city nearby, Kashua pleaded hunger as the cause of her "heresy." "I didn't want to insult Islam. I just wanted to make some money," she told reporters, her face cut and arm set in a fresh cast. 'I was addicted to drugs and needed cash to feed my kids.'"

"N Korea threatens to ditch treaty" (BBC News, 2002/12/31)
"A senior North Korean envoy has said his country is unable to meet its obligations under a key nuclear non-proliferation pact because of threats from the United States. Pak Ui Chun, Pyongyang's ambassador to Moscow, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying the US had followed moves to cut off fuel oil supplies by "threatening us with a preventative nuclear strike". "In these circumstances, we also cannot fulfil the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the basic clause of which is the obligation of nuclear states not to use the nuclear weapon against states which do not possess it." ... North Korea's fresh threats came as the last United Nations nuclear inspectors left the country after being expelled by Pyongyang."

"Times hits year-end false notes" (Andrea Levin, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/12/31)
"The New York Times finished off 2002 with a bang in its coverage of Israel. On December 28th a page-four story ("Dreaming of Palestine, Teenager Writes a Novel") and a large smiling photo of Randa Ghazi brought readers a breezy profile of the Egyptian-Italian teenage authoress of a virulent anti-Israel novel. Times writer Frank Bruni found Ghazi "something of a riddle," saying her book for young readers "mounts a fiery case against the Israelis' treatment of Palestinians" and "drips blood and outrage." But he never once made explicit that her "fiery case" and "outrage" rely on fantastic lies, and that it is these hate-filled lies that have alarmed Jewish groups. In fact, Bruni omits quoting the most inflammatory passages, focusing primarily on quirks of Ghazi's adolescent insouciance. The Jerusalem Post (December 9) did quote directly from the novel, making clear why popularizing the work has aroused concern. Ghazi wrote: '... Jihad and Riham's parents and their four-month-old twins were exterminated. One day [Israeli] tanks had entered the village and the soldiers had fired on everyone around, women, old people, children. They entered all the houses, they set some alight with the families still inside, in others they raped the women, stole the money, and destroyed everything...'" (See also: "Dreaming of Palestine, Teenager Writes a Novel" (Frank Bruni, The New York Times, 2002/12/28) and "Isn't She Cute?" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2002/12/28))

"U.S. suspects Iraq hides scientists" (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2002/12/31)
"Iraq is hiding at least two weapons scientists in Saddam Hussein's presidential palaces, U.S. intelligence officials have told The Washington Times. The intelligence officials also said there are signs that Iraq's military forces recently moved chemical and biological weapons materials to underground storage areas unknown to arms inspectors from the United Nations. ... The Iraqis are hiding the scientists apparently to prevent the arms inspectors from questioning them, the officials said.
The two scientists were not identified by name. The officials said one is believed to be involved in Iraq's covert nuclear arms program and that the second is a specialist in chemical and biological weapons."

Monday, December 30, 2002

News and commentary:

"The Daughter of an Arab Warrior Tells Her Tale" (Nonie Darwish, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/12/30)
"I remember going to a Palestinian preschool and kindergarten and the word "Jew" instilled terror and dread into the core of my very being. A Jewish person was portrayed like less than human, a dog, an evil alien from outer space who was about to destroy the world. Jews, they said, had no home because they were cursed by God and the main mission of Islam was to get rid of Jews. As a small child I remember once, at a Palestinian school, asking "why?" The response was that I was a traitor for asking this question and would go to hell, and for the rest of the day the girls in the school did not talk to me. ...
The culture that does not have enough value for life will not have value for people to get together to advance their economic and social condition. That is why most Middle East and Moslem countries are economic basket cases. Thank God a country called the USA opened its arms to people from all across the world, and I was honored to immigrate to the US over 23 years ago and become a part of this great nation. I could not adjust to a Middle East culture that doesn't value children's life enough, a culture that orphans its own children and is so obsessed with hatred of Jews that it's ready to sacrifice the morals and health of its family structure over a few miles of land and the city of Jerusalem, which is the holy land of Jews and Christians. Unfortunately, the current Islamic culture is in the process of committing moral suicide."

"Man of the year: George W. Bush" (Financial Times, 2002/12/30)
"George W. Bush entered the well of the United Nations general assembly on September 12 at the end of the most fractious month of his presidency. ... It was a defining moment of the year, when the leader of the last remaining great power bowed to international opinion not out of obligation but out of choice. At the UN, Mr Bush displayed the combination of power and restraint that has elevated his presidency in 2002. Under his leadership, the US has acted more multilaterally, more cautiously and more wisely than many had feared after the provocation of September 11 2001. The Financial Times has chosen George W. Bush as man of the year because of the manner in which he has accumulated and exercised authority, reshaping the domestic political landscape, setting his stamp on the international agenda and pursuing US interests around the world with America's allies, rather than despite them."

"Crisis in Korea: View from Pyongyang" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/12/30)
"This grim situation obviously marks the failure of President Bill Clinton's much touted 1994 agreement with Pyongyang. But it also now underscores the failure of supposedly far tougher policies and rhetoric pursued by the current Bush administration over the past two years. What can be concluded is that North Korea's leaders have now made the calculation that only the fear that they already possess nuclear weapons will deter Bush from taking major military action against them at some point soon. Therefore, while Bush's policies and his "axis of evil" rhetoric and determination to take down Saddam did not motivate Pyongyang to push ahead with its nuclear program, it simply confirmed in the minds of Kim Jong Il and his colleagues the wisdom of sticking with it. They appear to have concluded that only the possession of a nuclear deterrent - and the certain knowledge among their potential enemies that they already possess it - would be sufficient to keep Bush off their backs. Given the significant softening of U.S. policy on the dispute signaled by Secretary of State Powell Sunday, Kim Jong Il may well be reading the Bush administration better than Bush and his officials so far have read him."

"Is There a Crisis in U.S. and North Korean Relations? Yes, There Are Two!" (Anthony H. Cordesman, CSIS, 2002/12/30)
"We are so focused on North Korea and Iraq that we tend to miss the point that North Korea has demonstrated that it can develop nuclear weapons in spite of multilateral agreements and the NNPT, and in spite of IAEA inspection. We are forgetting that biological weapons have the same lethality as nuclear weapons and intelligence experts have been saying for years that North Korea has biological weapons. Like Iraq, North Korea is a clear demonstration that covert proliferation is a major global problem. Moreover, it is easy to forget that North Korea is a major supplier of missiles or missile technology to Syria, Iran, and Pakistan, and that Pakistan may be the source of North Korea’s covert nuclear weapons-grade material technology. ...
The fact is that many nations already are acting to offset the US advantage in conventional weapons through proliferation, although most are arming against their neighbors and not the US. The fact is, however, that North Korea is a symptom of a much broader disease which existing arms control efforts are doing little to cure, and there really is a second crisis that goes far beyond the bounds of Korea."

"U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup" (Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post, 2002/12/30)
"Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions. ...
A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague."

"US missionaries murdered in Yemen" (BBC News, 2002/12/30)
"A lone gunman has shot and killed three Americans in a Christian missionary hospital in Yemen. A fourth American was badly injured in the attack in the southern town of Jibla. The gunman was arrested and said he carried out the attack for his religion. Officials say they believe he is a member of a local Yemeni group, Islamic Jihad. ...
The gunman was said to be cradling his Kalashnikov rifle inside a jacket like a child and posing as a patient or relative as he entered the hospital in Jibla, about 170 kilometres (105 miles) south of the capital, Sanaa. He went into a room where staff were holding a morning meeting and opened fire. Hospital administrator William Koehn, purchasing agent Kathleen Gariety and doctor Martha Myers were killed by shots to the head. The attacker then went to the hospital pharmacy and shot pharmacist Donald Caswell. Surgeons removed bullets from Mr Caswell's stomach and reports say he is expected to recover. Officials identified the arrested gunman as Ali Abdulrazzak al-Kamel, from Damar province. Mr Kamel told police that he had carried out the attack to "cleanse his religion and get closer to Allah", unnamed Yemeni officials told the Reuters news agency.""

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

 

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"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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