Archived news and commentary: January 13 - 19, 2003

2003/03/24 - 2003/03/30
2003/03/17 - 2003/03/23
2003/03/10 - 2003/03/16
2003/03/03 - 2003/03/09
2003/02/24 - 2003/03/02
2003/02/17 - 2003/02/23
2003/02/10 - 2003/02/16
2003/02/03 - 2003/02/09
2003/01/27 - 2003/02/02
2003/01/20 - 2003/01/26
2003/01/13 - 2003/01/19
2003/01/06 - 2003/01/12
2002/12/30 - 2003/01/05

Sunday, January 19, 2003

News and commentary:

"Britain's New Clout - The Fruits of Anti-Anti-Americanism" (Andrew Sullivan, Sunday Times/Andrewsullivan.com, 2003/01/19)
"Just take a look at some of the "anti-war" demonstrations in the U.S. and Europe. "Bomb Texas. I Like Iraq," was a recent slogan. "Bush is the Real Terrorist" announces another. The imputation of evil motives to this White House among otherwise intelligent people is now simply routine. It is a given that the United States could not be sincere in its attempt to rid the world of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. It has to be a cloak for an oil-grab; or a Zionist conspiracy; or a corporate coup. Bush's cabinet, according to John Le Carre, is a "junta," - no different in legitimacy than the junta raping Burma or or the military dictator in Pyongyang. ...
It's designed to demonize the United States as a whole, to portray it as almost morally equivalent to the Islamist terrorism it is trying to hold back. In fact, this anti-Americanism - which embraces the far left and elements of the far-right as well - rarely proposes anything positive. And as it recites its mantras of anti-American contempt, and summons every American failing of the past fifty years without ever crediting America's successes, it marinates in its own resentment. It teeters on the edge of anti-Semitism and occasionally embraces it. In its hatred of the United States, it even finds itself close to finding excuses for the barbarity of Saddam Hussein, the cruelty of the Taliban or the malevolence of al Qaeda. There is something truly sickening in the sight of people who call themselves liberals finding more fault in America than in the brutal, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Semitic dictatorships who are now pitted against the West."

"Pentagon Warlord" (Mark Thompson and Michael Duffy, TIME, 2003/01/19)
A profile of Donald Rumsfeld: "At the heart of Rumsfeld's activism is a desire to re-establish civilian control over a military that ran circles around the Clinton Administration. ... Rumsfeld was among the first to grasp what others would take months to understand: that threats to America overseas were no longer deterred by tanks, bombers and aircraft carriers. However clean his logic, getting the generals to give up their gadgets was turning out to be much dirtier work. ... But one man was no match for the nation's four military services. Rumsfeld found he could not make a move without its being leaked to the newspapers, and pretty soon he knew he was beaten. Right after Labor Day in 2001, Rumsfeld declared "the Pentagon bureaucracy" a mortal enemy of the U.S. The next day, the Pentagon was attacked by terrorists."

"America's Ultra-Secret Weapon" (Mark Thompson, TIME, 2003/01/19)
"If there's a second Gulf War, get ready to meet the high-power microwave. HPMs are man-made lightning bolts crammed into cruise missiles. They could be key weapons for targeting Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons. HPMs fry the sophisticated computers and electronic gear necessary to produce, protect, store and deliver such agents. ... HPMs can unleash in a flash as much electrical power — 2 billion watts or more — as the Hoover Dam generates in 24 hours. Capacitors aboard the missile discharge an energy pulse — moving at the speed of light and impervious to bad weather — in front of the missile as it nears its target. That pulse can destroy any electronics within 1,000 ft. of the flash by short-circuiting internal electrical connections, thereby wrecking memory chips, ruining computer motherboards and generally screwing up electronic components not built to withstand such powerful surges. It's similar to what can happen to your computer or TV when lightning strikes nearby and a tidal wave of electricity rides in through the wiring."

"The Makeover" (Scott Anderson, The New York Times Magazine, 2003/01/19)
An article on Muammar el-Qaddafi and his recent "makeover": "He has even done an about-face with regard to Israel. The man who once called for pushing the ''Zionists'' into the sea now advocates the forming of one nation where Jews and Palestinians would live together in peace. ''It is no longer acceptable or reasonable to say that the Jews should be thrown into the sea,'' he explains. ''Even if you could do it, it's not acceptable. The solution is to join the two - Israelis and Palestinians - into one state, because once a state like this is established, then the interests of both sides are fulfilled.'' He pauses, gives a slight shrug. ''They can call it Israetine.'' ...
He was among the first Arab leaders to denounce the Sept. 11 attacks, and he lent tacit approval to the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. To the astonishment of other Arab leaders, he reportedly shared his intelligence files on Al Qaeda with the United States to aid in the hunt for its international operatives. ''It is strange,'' he muses, with an enigmatic smile, 'as far as Libya is concerned, that we find ourselves today in one trench fighting one common enemy with America.'''

"Hamlet of the Indus" (Ralph Peters, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/01/19)
"Today's Pakistan is a military pretending its sponsor is a functioning state. The government shows little sense of responsibility for the welfare of the man on the street or the woman in the field. Pakistani identity succumbs when tribal, family, ethnic or regional rivalries come into play. ... Perhaps the best for which we can hope is that Pakistan will continue to muddle through, never quite collapsing. Incremental progress against Pakistan-based terrorists may be the best level of cooperation we realistically can expect, given the indecisive nature of the Musharraf regime. Increasingly, Pakistan looks like a problem that can only be contained, not solved."

"Taliban who fought British troops is granted asylum here" (Susan Bisset and Chris Hastings, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/01/19)
This is astonishing, of course, but sadly not really surprising. Forty years ago this would have been simply unthinkable. Today it's rather quite natural. This shows the widening abyss between common sense and utopian liberalism. But they won't even notice it. They never do: "A Taliban soldier who fought British and American troops in Afghanistan has been granted asylum here because he fears persecution from the new Western-backed government in Kabul. Lawyers representing the 32-year-old fighter have disclosed that the Home Office has given him permission to stay after accepting that his life would be at risk if he returned to Afghanistan. It is the first known case of a Taliban soldier being granted asylum in this country. The disclosure last night sparked outrage and raised concerns that the successful application may open the doors to hundreds of other similar requests."

"The fall of the Baghdad wall" (Con Coughlin and Julian Coman, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/01/19)
"On the same morning that a team of inspectors had found the 12 artillery shells, another team of nuclear weapons experts had paid a surprise visit to the homes of two of Saddam's leading nuclear physicists who worked for Iraq's top secret for the Ministry of Military Industrialisation (MMI). ... Once inside they found what one Western official has described as a "highly significant" batch of documents which, on closer inspection, revealed that Saddam's scientists were continuing development work on producing an Iraqi nuclear weapon. ... The documents seized at the homes of the two scientists, however, confirm what Western intelligence has been arguing all along, that Saddam is continuing with his quest to develop the first Arab atom bomb."

Added in Author index:
Kenan Malik

Added in archive:
"Against Multiculturalism" (Kenan Malik, New Humanist, from the Summer 2002 issue)
"Which god has failed" (Paul Hollander, The New Criterion, from the February 2002 issue)
"The real value of diversity" (Kenan Malik, Connections, from the Winter 2001-2 issue)

Saturday, January 18, 2003

News and commentary:

"I Want You to Die for Israel..."
(Right-Thinking from the Left Coast, 2003/01/18)

"Marches in World Capitals Oppose Iraq War" (AP/ABC News, 2003/01/18)
The globalization of idiocy: "Activists in Tokyo carried toy guns filled with flowers, one banner at a Moscow rally read "Iraq isn't your ranch, Mr. Bush," and anti-war protesters in Paris shouted, "Stop Bush! Stop war!" ... President Bush also faced peace protests in several cities at home this weekend. In Washington, rally leaders were expecting tens of thousands of activists, some arriving in bus from far-away states such as Wisconsin. In Paris, the 6,000-strong march was the third nationwide demonstration since October. ... In Moscow, Russians chanted "U.S., hands off Iraq!" and "Yankee, Go Home!" at a march outside the U.S. Embassy. One banner read: "U.S.A. is international terrorist No. 1." ... In the Middle East, a march in Cairo, Egypt, drew 1,000 people, while some of the 4,000 protesters in Beirut, Lebanon, carried posters of Saddam Hussein. Not all protesters were pushing for peace: In the Syrian capital, Damascus, some people shouted, "Our beloved Saddam, strike Tel Aviv," a refrain from the 1991 Gulf War." (Note: Right-Thinking from the Left Coast reports from the "peace rally" in San Fransisco, with lots of photos. Here's some captions from signs: "the Führer - already in his bunker" [Photomontage of Dick Cheney as Nazi], "HISTORY REPEATED" [Photo of Hitler], "STOP THE BUSHITLER", "THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BUSH & SADDAM IS THAT SADDAM WAS ELECTED" and "I Want You to Die for Israel - ISRAEL SINGS!: ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS..." ("Live From Baghdad" (Right-Thinking from the Left Coast, 2003/01/18). InstaPundit is also covering the rallies with photos and links.)

"Writer's anger over Miss World deaths" (BBC News, 2003/01/18)
"The Nigerian journalist whose article about the Prophet Mohammed and Miss World contestants sparked deadly riots in Nigeria says she will probably spend the rest of her life in hiding. In an exclusive interview with the BBC, Isioma Daniel said her initial guilt soon turned to anger that fanatics would use a newspaper article as an excuse to kill. People used her article to "unleash their anger, their frustration with other aspects of their life". More than 200 people died in violence between Christians and Muslims last November, while the beauty pageant was moved to London. ...
"At first I did feel very guilty, but eventually I thought to myself, this is ridiculous, they're taking this thing overboard," she said. "There's no reason why someone should write something and you immediately think it gives you the right to go out and kill innocent people." ...
Now living in hiding, Daniel is coming to grips with not having any personal security, while being one of the most sought after people in the world." (See also themes: "Down with beauty" - News and commentary on the Miss World massacre in Nigeria.)

"A View From the Left" (Christopher Hitchens, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/01/18)
Hitchens has some "advice for my friends on the right". It's interesting to note that he seems unable to use his clear-sighted view of "Islamofascism" and Saddam Hussein when the topic is the Middle East. For a casual observer, these conflicts seem to be intrinsically connected - it's the same region, the same people, the same world view, the same enemies, the same methods, the same goals. Not so for Hitchens. In the section on "Palestine", Palestinian terrorism and tyranny are not even mentioned. No fanatics in the land of suicide bombers. Israel, on the other hand, has "clerical fanatics" aiming for "Messianic colonialism" and treats Palestinians as "half-slave and half-free".
His very first sentence is highly debatable: "One people lives, without its consent, under the rule of another." Without its consent? They could have had a Palestine decades ago, if they had consented. The problem is that they never have consented to actual offers and adhering to road maps. On the contrary, consenting to turn down the latest offer of a self-determined Palestine, they instead consented to the second Intifada and an ongoing avalanche of sucide bombings:
"Palestine. One people lives, without its consent, under the rule of another. This unjust and unwanted rule is guaranteed, militarily and economically, by a Pax Americana. And this was the case long before bin Ladenism became the latest excuse for it. A Pax Americana cannot long endure half-slave and half-free. Perhaps uncomfortable with the obvious negation, some conservatives now argue that an emancipated Palestine will attend upon an emancipated Iraq. This profession of faith had better be sincere; at all events it can be made more so by immediate measures to demonstrate a minimum of evenhandedness, and to ensure a cessation of opportunistic and Messianic colonialism. American taxpayers' money should not be used even indirectly to support an "establishment of religion" by clerical fanatics on the West Bank. At present, a self-determined Palestine is supported by a greater proportion of Israelis than of American conservatives (or, to be fair, of American Democrats). This is a matter of principle that doesn't admit of any evasion."

"Total Misrepresentation" (Heather Mac Donald, The Weekly Standard, from the 2003/01/27 issue)
Mac Donald defends Pentagon's data mining project Total Information Awareness: "The reaction to TIA is a textbook case of privacy hysteria. The Bush administration had better learn how to counter such outbreaks, for they will resurface with every new initiative to improve the country's intelligence capacity. They follow a predictable script:
- Barely mention the motivation for the initiative, if at all. Safire, like several of his followers, writes an entire column on TIA without once referring to terrorism or the 9/11 strikes.
- Never, ever suggest an alternative. Islamic terrorists wear no uniforms, carry no particular passport, and live inconspicuously among the target population for years. Many, sometimes all, of the steps leading up to an attack are legal; they become suspicious only when combined in a particular way in a particular context. TIA's critics adamantly oppose using data mining to detect suspicious patterns of activity in civilian populations, but they never propose an alternative method to find the terrorist enemy before he strikes.
Remember the outcry after 9/11 over the intelligence community's failure to "connect the dots"? TIA is nothing other than a connect-the-dots tool, with a global scope that individual analysts cannot hope to match. Do its detractors simply hope that as the next attack nears, the same intelligence analysts who failed us last time, using the same inadequate tools, will get it right this time? They do not say." (See also: "ACLU fears door open to Big Brother" (Ellen Sorokin, The Washington Times, 2003/01/16) and "You Are a Suspect" (William Saffire, The Washington Post, 2002/11/14))

"Eight million in life or death humanitarian crisis in N Korea" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2003/01/18)
"Up to eight million people are in a "life or death" situation in North Korea with a humanitarian crisis rapidly unfolding, a UN envoy just returned from the isloated state said Saturday. Maurice Strong, sent to the North by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said it was wrong to make these people victims of a political situation. "The humanitarian crisis is a real crisis, it's not just a potential crisis," he said in Beijing after returning from a four-day mission to North Korea."

Friday, January 17, 2003

News and commentary:

"Saudi Arabia, Negev"
(Traditional women's costume in muslim countries)

"The Tyranny of 'BUT'" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2003/01/17)
"The conjunction BUT, in discussions about the current war, has become endemic in the year since the victory in Afghanistan. So are its wishy-washy siblings of American conversation — the kindred "although, " "however," and "nevertheless." A few experts employ the more formal "on the one hand… on the other hand…." "One could argue" is another, though weaker, method of qualification. The current proliferation of these words reflects the popularity of equivocation, of covering all bets. Or maybe it is deeper — proof of an insidious relativism that now infects our thinking generally. There must be various explanations why so many of us cannot flat-out distinguish between right and wrong, smart and dumb, evil and good, or stasis and action — period. ... Language is the mirror of morality. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, BUT and its weasel-word clan were huddling in silence, afraid to come out when people of confidence and conviction had no use for their prevarication. But I'm afraid that now the worm tongues are making a comeback, and thus their BUT once more threatens to lord over us all."

"Full text: Saddam Hussein's speech" (The Guardian, 2003/01/17)
A transcript of Saddam Husseins "nationally televised speech delivered on Friday to coincide with the 12th anniversary of the outbreak of the Gulf War". Note that he actually blames Hulago Khans destruction of Baghdad 1258 on western "circles", supposedly conspiring to direct the Mongol horde on Baghdad. But then again, according to Saddam, "history is tantamount to doctrine": "History tells us that western peoples and circles had played, for their own reasons, a role in directing Hulago to the east, indeed to the Arab world in particular. The Jews and their supporters played a remarkably malicious role against Baghdad in the past and this conspiratorial, aggressive and wicked role is today reverting to them, to the Zionist Jews and to the Zionists who are not of Jewish origin, particularly those who are in the US administration and around who stood in opposite front of our nation and Iraq . ... Although some eyes and minds in our nation and humanity are still incapable of seeing or perceiving the pros and cons in the nation and humanity, the people and rulers of Baghdad have resolved to compel the Mongols of this age to commit suicide on its walls..." (See also: "Iraq Factfile: Introduction" (The Daily Telegraph): "The 13th century saw a bloody invasion of Baghdad by the Mongols led by Hulago Khan (the grandson of Genghis Khan). Hulago deliberately destroyed much of Baghdad's infrastructure and Iraq became a neglected frontier province ruled from the Mongol stronghold Tabriz in Iran.")

"Saudi Shopping, Saudi Arabia, Riyadh"
(Traditional women's costume in muslim countries)

"Objects and pariahs" (Diane West, The Washington Times, 2003/01/17)
West on the Saudi-American Exchange Program, including these comments by American participants visiting Saudi-Arabia. Yes, this is the same country where, less than a year ago, the religious police forced 15 girls to burn to death in a blazing school, "beating young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya." And of course you're "free from being looked at as a sexual object" when veiled - you're free from being looked at period. It could rather be argued that the "complete" veiling of women in itself is the perfect symbol of a culture viewing women as sexual objects in extremis: "'The portrayal in the Western media and culture is that Muslim women, especially in Saudi Arabia, are oppressed and subservient,' said one American participant. "Many Americans believed that women here were forced to wear the traditional abaya and veil. However, I have come to learn that the women here wear the veil by choice." While a Saudi censor couldn't have said it better, this quotation is attributed to Lorna Hadley, a student at Yale University School of Public Health. And — judging by the comments of fellow student Amelia Shaw — a fine choice wearing the veil is: "I thought women, by wearing the veil, would be silenced, and that symbolized not being allowed any verbal expression. However, when I did wear it, I felt free from being looked at as a sexual object." ...
It's one thing to learn about Muslim dress — which, despite all the "understanding" this program has managed to promote, is about as voluntary a choice for your average Saudi gal as her religion. It's quite another when presumably liberty-loving American women become apologists for a sartorial brand of servitude that, of course, is just one oppressive fact of life for women living under Islamic Sharia law as legal, professional and social nonentities. And another thing: A woman may not look like a "sex object" when she dresses up like a haystack, but she still looks like an object, period — one wholly devoid of a recognizable human shape." (See also: "Why Feminism Is AWOL on Islam" (Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal, from the Winter 2003 issue), "Saudi Women's Rights" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2003/01/12)and "Saudi police face deaths criticism" (Reuters/CNN.com, 2002/03/15))

"It's the Regime, Stupid!" (Angelo M. Codevilla, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/01/17)
"Terrorist attacks on America stem from the fact that many of today's Arabs, like Yesterday's Nazis and Communists, are influenced by regimes that are living, breathing, spawning expressions of hate and contempt for us. ... All the reasons, or excuses, commonly cited to explain Arab animosity against the West existed many decades ago. But terrorism became prevalent only after the empowerment of ruling classes that produce nothing, are ethically bankrupt, live as rent collectors, and fight through proxies. ...
Stridently, The controlled media of the entire Arab world incite hate and contempt for America, Israel, and the West. The terrorists strike clandestinely on behalf of causes that Arab diplomacy advances officially and from which the regimes draw their legitimacy – causes indistinguishable from Osama bin Laden's "war against Zionists and Crusaders," which violent ones have defined as the common causes of the Arab world. Correctly, Arab regimes view terrorism as one of the two handles (the other is oil) of their lever on the West. Inevitably, they accompany crocodile tears for terrorist acts with urgings that the West support theirs and the terrorists' favorite causes to avoid further terrorism." (See also: "War At Last?" (Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Review of Books, from the Winter 2002 issue) and "What War?" (Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Review of Books, from the Spring 2002 issue))

"Susan Sontag Nominee" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/01/17)
"Patrice Higgonet, professor of French history at Harvard University, quoted in the French paper, Liberation, January 3.": "But there exists today as well … a second America… a troubled and disturbing America, where pluralism is above all a mask for special interests, a Christian America (Ashcroft), bursting with revolvers (Cheney), arrogant (Rumsfeld), imperial (William Kristol), racist (Trent Lott), opportunist (Condi Rice), partisan (Karl Rove), the America of spying and denunciation (Poindexter), of conspiracy (Elliot Abrams) ... of a rotten Enron-style capitalism, of the unlimited death penalty — the America, in a word, of George W. Bush. This symbolically Texan and overweeningly aggressive America wants war, cheap oil, and, incidentally, the crushing and total humiliation of the Palestinians: in a word imperial domination in its purest form. A short-sighted nationalism and capitalism, which scorn the have-nots, are its raison d’être ... Europe, sooner or later, will have to separate itself from the new America."

"Korea Follies" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2003/01/17)
"The Bush position on North Korea is in total collapse. In less than a month we have gone from "tailored containment" to shoeless appeasement. It usually takes longer. ... On the contrary. When President Bush went out of his way - repeatedly, in fact - to promise that the United States would not invade, North Korea became decidedly, aggressively more bold and threatening. The North Korean leaders may be crazy but they are not stupid. They know we're not going to invade. So our public renunciation of force wasn't reassurance, it was a sign of weakness - not only to the North Koreans but, even more important, to our allies. ...
We should be talking about sanctions, not rewards. John McCain, calling (with other senators) for sanctions, warns against "fail[ing] to grasp the danger of rewarding threats with retreat and concession." The abject Korea cave-in is a threat to American credibility everywhere. Giving up ground every three days - sanctions threatened, then sanctions withdrawn; a pledge not to talk, then talks initiated; a pledge of no rewards, then rewards offered and then quadrupled - is disastrous. Better to say nothing than to keep moving backward."

Added in archive:
"Saudi Women's Rights" (Charles Johnson, Little Green Footballs, 2003/01/12)
"Fear Factor" (Emily Hall, The Stranger, from the 2003/01/01-08 issue)

Thursday, January 16, 2003

News and commentary:

"The Deliria of Anti-Israeli Hatred" (Claude Lanzmann, Le Monde/Watch, 2002/05/09 [2003/01/16])
Last spring, José Bové and Breyten Breytenbach, among others, were with an International Parliament of Writers' delegation to the occupied Palestinian territories. This is Claude Lanzmann's reaction to their stance, translated by Douglas. Perhaps it goes without saying, but there is something profoundly ugly about people who seem to be almost obsessed by the Holocaust and fiercely anti-Zionistic at the same time, seemingly unable to describe today's Israel without direct comparisons with "the Nazis", "Herrenvolk" or "Auschwitz" (See for example José Saramago and Gretta Duisenberg.). It's not only an outrage historically speaking, as it conflates road-blocks with the systematic, industrialized slaughter of millions of Jews and other "untermensch" by a totalitarian regime, but also a moral outrage, equivalating a functioning democracy under constant attack with what's arguably the worst regime in the history of mankind, equivalating survivors of the Holocaust with those who fanatically tried and almost succeded in killing them as well.
It's also counterproductive. Presumably, Breytenbach wants people to listen to him, but why should I listen seriously to anything he says, when it's based on such a preposterous worldview?: "Breytenbach isn't playing tricks. He prefers a frontal attack, an open letter to general Sharon, addressing the Israelis first off as "Herrenvolk," a term used by the Nazis to refer to themselves (literally "people of the lords," or "people of the masters"), adding a condition to the insult that only redoubles it: "I am sorry if my allusion to Israel as Herrenvolk offends because of echoes of a recent past in Europe when so many Jews were victims of the Final Solution." Why "so many Jews"? The number is known. ... Like José Bové, Breytenbach had never set foot in either Israel or Palestine: "I only briefly saw Israel, coming and going, after spending one night in the Intercontinental David hotel at Tel Aviv, luxurious but soberly deserted…" he writes without joking. Deserted because the "martyrs," wrapped in explosive belts discourage the gathering of tourists in palace lobbies. After two nights and four days, here then is the conclusion at which Mr. Breytenbach arrived: "We are submerged in the horror of what you do […] atrocities […] bloodbath […] massacre of innocents […] war crimes […] crime against humanity […] a land shamelessly stolen […]," nothing more than stammering of ordinary victimizing propaganda." (See also an answer by José Bové, Rony Brauman and Nahala Chahal: "The Deliria of Anti-Palestinian Contempt" (José Bové, Rony Brauman and Nahala Chahal, Le Monde/Watch, 2002/05/16) [2003/01/16]). Also Breytenbach's "open letter to Ariel Sharon": "You won't break them" (Breyten Breytenbach, The Guardian, 2002/01/13))

"The Suicide Bombers" (Avishai Margalit, The New York Review of Books, from the 2003/01/16 issue)
"But the Palestinian case is the only one in which civilians of one society regularly volunteer to become suicide bombers who target civilians of another society. They may be chosen by Hamas or Islamic Jihad to carry out a suicide bombing mission, but for the most part the volunteers have not been active members of these organizations. ...
It is often said that the bombers are driven by their own feelings of hopelessness and despair about the situation of the Palestinians; but this seems open to question. It is true that the Palestinian community is in a state of despair, but this does not mean that each and every person, in his or her personal life, is in despair - any more than the fact that the US is relatively rich makes each American rich. The despair in communities explains the support for the suicide bombers, but it does not explain each person's choice to commit suicide by means of a bomb. ...
In preparing the shuhada for their mission, the idea of winning an instant place in paradise used to have a major part. In a remarkable account, Nasra Hassan talked to a member of Hamas who described to her how people are given instructions on how to act as a shahid: "We focus his attention on Paradise, on being in the presence of Allah, on meeting the Prophet Muhammad, on interceding for his loved ones so that they, too, can be saved from the agonies of Hell, on the houris" - i.e., the heavenly virgins. When she talked to a volunteer who was ready to carry out his mission, but for some reason stopped, he told her about the sense of the immediacy of paradise: 'It is very, very near - right in front of our eyes. It lies beneath the thumb. On the other side of the detonator.'"

"A Terrorist at Duke" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2001/01/16)
"Laura Whitehorn will be a guest speaker at Duke University's African and African-American studies program on March 3. Who is Laura Whitehorn? Here's the bio on the department's Web page: "Laura Whitehorn is a revolutionary anti-imperialist who spent over 14 years in federal prison as a political prisoner. An out lesbian, she initiated and worked in HIV peer education and support projects in each of the three federal prisons in which she did time." ...
The claim that Whitehorn was a "political prisoner" led us to think there was something Duke wasn't telling its students; after all, America does not throw people in prison for political reasons. This page from ImageOut, a Rochester, N.Y.-based gay organization, fills in the blanks. It's an ad for a screening of "Out: The Making of a Revolutionary," a documentary about Whitehorn: 'Planting a bomb in the U.S. Capitol Building in 1983 was the culmination of a lifetime of radical protest for Laura Whitehorn, and 14 years in federal penitentiary have only solidified her stance as a committed American revolutionary. . . . More than simply a life and times story, OUT: The Making of a Revolutionary is a powerful indictment against the incarceration system, where still today over 100 political prisoners remain imprisoned for speaking out against the U.S. Government.'" (See also: "Special Events - March 3" (Duke University) and "OUT: The Making of a Revolutionary" (ImageOut))

"Chemical warheads seized in Iraq" (BBC News, 2003/01/16)
"United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq say they have found nearly a dozen empty chemical warheads while searching an ammunition storage depot. Eleven warheads which could be used to carry chemical warfare agents were found at the Ukhaider depot and are currently being examined by experts, a UN spokesman said. ... Iraq - which has insisted throughout the current crisis that it does not possess chemical weapons - dismissed the find as "old rockets" which had long been forgotten."

"The al-Qa'ida connection" (Jason Bennetto and Ian Herbert, Independent, 2001/01/16)
"The terror suspect who stabbed to death a police officer in Manchester is alleged to be a "key" al-Qa'ida member who was wanted by MI5 for plotting chemical attacks in Britain. This emerged as police announced today that a fourth Algerian man had been arrested in the city under anti–terrorist laws. Greater Manchester Police said that the arrest in north Manchester, where Detective Constable Stephen Oake, aged 40, was stabbed to death in a raid on Tuesday, was not directly linked to the discovery of ricin in a house in London last week."

"Normative Shift" (Coral Bell, National Interest, from the Winter 2002/03 Issue)
"In a mere ten years or so, starting from the late 1960s, all that changed (in Western societies) rather dramatically, giving us new norms that most Westerners now accept. Much of what once was "expected and required", like marriage, has become all but optional; some of what was "expected and required", concerning homosexual behavior in particular, has witnessed a virtual normative reversal. ...
Whether 300 or 1,300 years in incubation, the conflict between the West and Islam has changed dramatically in the past thirty or forty years. For most of its history, this conflict was about power, land, and religion thought of as a creed armed rather than as a basic moral. Muslims and Christians alike had no argument with the bedrock code of the Hebrew Bible when it came to family, sexual and other fundamental moral obligations and assumptions. But in the last three or four decades, it is the West that moved rapidly away from these fundaments. Having so moved, the West then turned around and, mostly by media and commercial-borne inadvertence, begun exporting these new norms to the world of Islam - where they have caused no little trouble and resentment. The critical normative gap between us and them has widened because we widened it. And yet this obvious fact is hardly ever noted in the West."

"The reign of terror, or the rule of British law?" (Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/01/16)
"We have reached the point where even the most open-minded people in Britain are saying something like this: "Why do people come here if they hate us? And if they hate us and want to kill us, why do we let them come?" Everyone can see that the asylum system, whatever the merits of the principle behind it, is not working. And if you have a system which, while not working, lets in 100,000 new entrants a year, you have a crisis of administration, political will and public opinion. ...
So, by an obscene inversion, a system designed to give freedom and safety to those who lack it in their own country becomes the chief instrument of destroying freedom and safety here in ours. ...
An individual country cannot unconditionally extend "rights" to the whole world. If people know that they have only to say the word "asylum" to gain these rights, that is what they will do. For the word to have meaning once again, we have to be able to decide for ourselves who does and who does not come in, and on what terms. It is astonishing that this most basic right of a country has been (undemocratically) taken away."

"The Destruction on the Temple Mount" (Stephen Plaut, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/01/16)
"Even worse, the PLO is devoted to systematically destroying any archeological evidence that might be at odds with its Islamist-fascist ideology and its proclamations that there were never any Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount. Since there were no Jewish Temples there, according to Arafat's Mein Kampf, Jesus never tried to purify anything up there either and the place has no Christian significance, which will come as news to the earth's Christians. ...
The Sharon government could have prevented the destruction simply be preventing heavy machinery being moved onto the Temple Mount by the savages. In exchange for a transient make-pretend avoidance of confrontation - during which the PLO is murdering hundreds of Jews per year anyway - the Sharon government is sitting back while some of the most important artifacts of Jewish history are systematically being destroyed. In two years no one will remember the "avoidance of confrontation" Sharon thinks he is buying. But in 5000 years Jews - and all of humanity - will still be mourning the systematic destruction of this priceless heritage by Likud cowardice." (See also: "Nightmare on Temple Mount" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2002/09/04), "Olmert: Government must act now to prevent collapse of southern wall on Temple Mount", (Nadav Shragai, Haaretz, 2002/08/28) and "The Destruction of the Temple Mount Antiquities" (Mark Ami-El, Jerusalem Letter/Viewpoints, 2002/08/01))

"Abu Hamza - The Lying Cleric" (Farrukh Dhondy, FrontPageMagazine, 2003/01/16)
Dhondy on the London-based Muslim cleric called Abu Hamza Al Masri and his links to terrorism: "Three years earlier, a squad of six British Muslims and their associates set out to kidnap, bomb and kill British citizens in Yemen. This was because they alleged that Britain was supporting the Yemeni government which was not sufficiently Islamic for them. The terrorists kidnapped a British woman tourist who died in the cross fire when the police closed in on them. The six men from Britain were subsequently picked up with armaments, bomb making equipment and plans to blow up the British embassy and the church where the British diplomatic families worshipped. Ironically, they and their families in Britain immediately applied to the British Foreign Office to intervene on their behalf as they remained British citizens. The hapless diplomats whom they had come to Yemen to kill together with their families, had to go and see them and proffer their assistance in jail. Imagine the interview. 'I shall do my bit to see they treat you well, dear boy…er... I say, you didn't really come here to kill me and my wife and kids, did you old chap?'" (See also: "London Moslem fanatic" (BBC Newsnight, 2002/12/18))

"Sequined Dissent - The Deep Thoughts of Sheryl Crow" (Andrew Sullivan, Salon.com/andrewsullivan.com, 2003/01/16)
Sullivan on Sheryl Crow's argument against war: "Mercifully, Ms Crow provides us with what she believes is an argument. Are you sitting down? Here it comes: "I think war is based in greed and there are huge karmic retributions that will follow. I think war is never the answer to solving any problems. The best way to solve problems is to not have enemies." ... Wow. Like, wow. Like, war. It's bad. Bad karma. But, ahem, what if you have no choice in the matter? What if an enemy decides, out of hatred or fanaticism or ideology, simply to attack you? I'm not sure where Ms Crow was on September 11, 2001. But the enemy made its point palpably clear. Does wishing that these crazed religious nuts were not our enemies solve any problems?"

"'Palestine' touches bottom" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2003/01/16)
"Conventional wisdom is famously idiotic, and never more so when it comes to the matter of "root causes." As in "poverty is the root cause of crime." Or, "fear of 'the other' is the root cause of war." Or, "despair is the root cause of terrorism." If all these were true, crime would have peaked during the Great Depression, Switzerland would be Bosnia, and sub-Saharan Africa, not the Middle East, would be the pivot of world evil. Yet the idea that Palestinian desperation gave birth to suicide bombers, or that swelling Palestinian frustrations explain their actions, persists. "The greatest threat to the world is not Saddam Hussein but the despair felt by frustrated people given no hope," goes a recent article caption in The Independent, in a line that more or less captures the current state of idiot-think."

Information Awareness Office
(See also their program:
"Total Information Awareness")

"ACLU fears door open to Big Brother" (Ellen Sorokin, The Washington Times, 2003/01/16)
"The United States is at risk of turning into a full-fledged surveillance society where "Big Brother is watching you," says a report released yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union. Sophisticated technology makes advanced surveillance simple, but the erosion of constitutional protections in the wake of September 11 threatens the legal safeguards protecting Americans from excessive government snooping, the report concludes. ...
One example, the report states, is the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program designed to collect a person's financial, medical, communication and travel records in a massive database in the hunt for terrorism. "Even if TIA never materializes in its current form, what this report shows is that the underlying trends are much bigger than any one program or any one controversial figure like John Poindexter," Mr. Steinhardt said, referring to the TIA director who as President Reagan's national security adviser was prosecuted during the Iran-Contra scandal." (See also the report: "Bigger Monster, Weaker Chains: The Growth of an American Surveillance Society" (Jay Stanley and Barry Steinhart, ACLU, 2003/01/15): "If we do not take steps to control and regulate surveillance to bring it into conformity with our values, we will find ourselves being tracked, analyzed, profiled, and flagged in our daily lives to a degree we can scarcely imagine today. ... The Fourth Amendment is in desperate need of a revival. The reasonable expectation of privacy cannot be defined by the power that technology affords the government to spy on us. Since that power is increasingly limitless, the “reasonable expectation” standard will leave our privacy dead indeed.")

"White House promises 'smoking gun intelligence'" (Toby Harnden, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/01/16)
"White House officials have reassured Republicans by signalling that America and Britain are prepared to release powerful intelligence evidence to cement the case for war against Iraq. Andy Card, the White House chief of staff, and Karl Rove, President George W Bush's chief political strategist, have each indicated privately that the administration has proof that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. ... Mr Rove is believed to have used similar language during private briefings to politicians in Washington. He strongly suggested that the Bush administration already possesses a piece of intelligence from the CIA or MI6 that would amount to the "smoking gun" critics are calling for."

Added in archive:
"London Moslem fanatic" (BBC Newsnight, 2002/12/18)

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

News and commentary:

"Why Feminism Is AWOL on Islam" (Kay S. Hymowitz, City Journal, from the Winter 2003 issue)
A brilliant essay on why feminism is so silent about the treatment of women under Islam. Extraordinarily informative, intelligent and devastating: "You didn't hear much from feminists as it emerged that honor killings by relatives, often either ignored or only lightly punished by authorities, are also commonplace in the Muslim world. ... The savagery of some of these murders is worth a moment’s pause. In 2000, two Punjabi sisters, 20 and 21 years old, had their throats slit by their brother and cousin because the girls were seen talking to two boys to whom they were not related. In one especially notorious case, an Egyptian woman named Nora Marzouk Ahmed fell in love and eloped. When she went to make amends with her father, he cut off her head and paraded it down the street. Several years back, according to the Washington Post, the husband of Zahida Perveen, a 32-year-old pregnant Pakistani, gouged out her eyes and sliced off her earlobe and nose because he suspected her of having an affair. ...
As you look at this inventory of brutality, the question bears repeating: Where are the demonstrations, the articles, the petitions, the resolutions, the vindications of the rights of Islamic women by American feminists? The weird fact is that, even after the excesses of the Taliban did more to forge an American consensus about women’s rights than 30 years of speeches by Gloria Steinem, feminists refused to touch this subject. They have averted their eyes from the harsh, blatant oppression of millions of women, even while they have continued to stare into the Western patriarchal abyss, indignant over female executives who cannot join an exclusive golf club and college women who do not have their own lacrosse teams."

"Death, terror in N. Korea gulag" (Robert Windrem, MSNBC, 2003/01/15)
"Soon Ok Lee, imprisoned for seven years at a camp near Kaechon in Pyungbuk province, described how the female relatives of male prisoners were treated. "I was in prison from 1987 till January 1993," she told NBC News in Seoul, where she now lives. "[The women] were forced to abort their children. They put salty water into the pregnant women’s womb with a large syringe, in order to kill the baby even when the woman was 8 months or 9 months pregnant. "And then, from time to time there a living infant is delivered. And then if someone delivers a live infant, then the guards kick the bloody baby and kill it. And I saw an infant who was crying with pain. I have to express this in words, that I witnessed such an inhumane hell." ... She tearfully described how in one instance about 50 inmates were taken to an auditorium and given a piece of boiled cabbage to eat. Within a half hour, they began vomiting blood and quickly died. 'I saw that in 20 or 30 minutes they died like this in that place. Looking at that scene, I lost my mind. Was this reality or a nightmare? And then I screamed and was sent out of the auditorium.'"

"Palestinian Schools Which Encouraged Terror Closed By IDF" (IDF, 2001/01/15)
"Last night, in a joint operation carried out by IDF ordnance units and companies from the 'Nahal' infantry brigade in Hebron, the entrances of three Palestinian colleges that openly encouraged terrorism were sealed closed. ... In the main office, situated on the first floor, soldiers were shocked to find a wide variety of incitement paraphernalia, including banners, posters, flags, CD's, tapes and even children's notebooks depicting the faces of suicide bomber "martyrs" on the cover. Some notebooks even depicted the "Martyrs tree", something which looks like an enormous family tree, but with the faces of all the "martyrs" on it.
Classrooms were filled to the brim with posters that praised suicide bombings and glorified the suicide bombers. "The Jihad is our path" proclaimed one poster, whilst another announced, "Sharon and Bush are pigs". Yet another poster declared "The glory of the Martyrs". These are but a few examples of incitement used to influence and abuse young Palestinian children." (See also pictures: "The incitement propagand materials found in the Palestinian colleges in Hebron" (IDF, 2001/01/15))

"Down with the Peace Movement" (Adam G. Mersereau, National Review, 2003/01/15)
"In the mind of the peace activist, America is not just the sole superpower, it is the center of gravity for all world events; and so every world event is simply an equal (and sometimes opposite) reaction to a prior American action. Peace activists believe that America's economy and culture are such dominant forces in the lives of people throughout the world that the actions and policies of other nations can be interpreted only as mere reactions to the actions and policies of the United States government. Therefore, they believe America has the unbounded ability to manipulate foreign governments through economic and cultural means. Peacenik foreign policy is really very simple: Without an action by the United States, there will be no reaction by others. If America does not start a war, there will be no war. ...
The peace activist then reaches the conclusion that the United States can make a unilateral decision for peace, simply by choosing to lay down its arms. If the United States would ignore open and notorious breaches of U.N. directives and treaties, and simply refuse to disturb the current state of peace, then peace would prevail by default."

"The United States of America has gone mad" (John le Carré, The Times, 2003/01/15)
The Lunatic Who Came in from the Cold. John le Carré tries to outdo Gore Vidal, Harold Pinter and Norman Mailer in apocalyptic anti-Americanism. That might seem an impossible task, considering the fierce competition, but he certainly is a main contender: "America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. ... But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election. ...
What is at stake is not an Axis of Evil — but oil, money and people's lives. Saddam's misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world. Bush wants it, and who helps him get it will receive a piece of the cake. And who doesn’t, won't. If Saddam didn't have the oil, he could torture his citizens to his heart’s content. Other leaders do it every day — think Saudi Arabia, think Pakistan, think Turkey, think Syria, think Egypt."

"To the Left, Ideological Purity Trumps All" (Mark Steyn, The National Post, 2003/01/15)
A jaw-dropping tale of moral relativism and - what's the extreme opposite of moral clarity? - moral opacity?: "Every so often you read something that stops you in your tracks. A week ago, The Boston Globe ran a 10,000-word profile of Ted Kennedy by Charles Pierce. For the first gazillion paragraphs or so, it chugged along in familiar Boston Globe snoozefest mode, and then: "If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age." That's terrific, isn't it? If he hadn't killed her, he'd have given her a grand old age - if 62 counts as "old age," which most women would surely dispute (unless the Globe's using actuarial tables based on female life expectancy of Kennedy acquaintances). ...
But among the orthodox left the Clymer/Pierce view is the standard line: You can't make an omelette without breaking chicks. This is subtly different from arguing that a man's personal failings are outweighed by his public successes. Rather, they're saying that a man's personal flaws are trumped by his ideological purity, regardless of whether or not it works." (See also: "Kennedy Unbound" (Charles P. Pierce, The Boston Globe, 2003/01/05))

"Winning the War on Terror" (John Lloyd, Financial Times/Front Page Magazine, 2003/01/15)
An interesting article on how neo-conservatives view the war on terror, including profiles of Radek Sikorski, William Kristol, Richard and Daniel Pipes: "Now the ideas and assumptions behind anti-communism are being revived to fight another ideology. Just as many believe communism was the biggest threat to western democracy in the last half of the 20th century, so many see radical Islam as the gravest threat today. The concept of an existential struggle between good and evil has been revived, in many cases by people who were near the front line of the anti-communist battle of the cold war. ... The scorn Daniel holds for his fellow intellectuals is still more hard-edged. Coming from a generation who went to university in the radical 1960s and 1970s, he views his peers with despair. 'We have a sense that what we have here in the west is unworthy. There is a lot of guilt and self-loathing. It leads to a constant relativism. Many scholars of the Middle East see radical Islam as modernising - even democratic. I would see these societies as terribly repressive.'"

"Iraqi Kurds Fight a War That Has Two Faces" (C.J. Chivers, The New York Times, 2003/01/15)
A report from northern Iraq on Halat Karim Agha, a Kurdish commander: "His soldiers, known as pesh merga, meaning "those who face death," sat quietly under the moon. Eighteen pesh merga live here, atop a peak rising more than a mile in the sky, in seven stone bunkers that would fit inside a circle 45 feet wide. It is one spot on a front descending from Shinerwe Mountain to the valley's floor, pitting the pesh merga against the Islamic fighters of Ansar al Islam, a group connected to Al Qaeda. ...
After seizing Shinerwe Mountain in 2001, Halat Karim Agha's pesh merga hauled dead Islamists down the trail to a mosque in Halabja — as custom and decency dictate — where local families claimed them for burial. In two days the remains of local militants were gone, but seven bodies remained unclaimed. They were foreigners, jihad fighters from somewhere else. "We didn't know who they were," he said. "They had big beards, and they were ugly and strange." The Kurds believe they were members of Al Qaeda or Taliban fugitives from Afghanistan, and blame them for encouraging the mutilations of pesh merga dead: the slicing off of ears, the chopping off of heads. He thinks the foreigners will never surrender. "Those who have their hands red in the blood of people cannot find a place in society," he said. 'They themselves would not choose it.'"

"Inquiry as terror raid officer killed" (BBC News, 2003/01/15)
"Father-of-three Stephen Oake, 40, died and three other officers were injured as police searched three men in a flat in Crumpsall, in the north of the city. The officers had already been with the men - aged 23, 27 and 29 - for an hour, and the suspects had not been handcuffed at any stage. ... "One of the individuals was being held by a police officer, a uniformed officer who was protected, and... managed to break free from the officer. "The two of them have then literally, in fighting, gone into the kitchen area, where the suspect has managed to grab hold of a knife. "The Special Branch officers, including Steve, very bravely went to assist their colleagues, and that's how he has been fatally stabbed." The raid early on Tuesday evening was linked to the discovery of the deadly poison ricin in London last week."

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

News and commentary:

"Bride killed on wedding day 'for choosing first love'" (Cahal Milmo, Independent, 2003/01/14)
"An Asian bride murdered on her wedding day was killed in a family feud after she rejected an arranged marriage to marry her "first real love", police said yesterday. Sahda Bibi, 21, dressed in a gold wedding gown and adorned with jewellery, was found dead moments after she had suffered 14 stab wounds to her neck and body at her family home in Birmingham. Relatives were making final preparations for the traditional Pakistani wedding as the bride waited in her bedroom for the ceremony. ...
Detectives yesterday named one of Ms Bibi's cousins, Rafaquat Hussain, aged 37, as the prime suspect for the murder, which took place at about 2.30pm on Saturday. West Midlands Police said that Mr Hussain, from Surrey, had boarded a flight to Pakistan only hours after Ms Bibi was found dead. Officers say Mr Hussain, aged 37, was unhappy about the marriage and, having travelled from his home town of Camberley, rowed with the bride before she was slain. ... 'Rafaquat had come into her room and asked if he could take a picture of her because she looked so wonderful. As soon as they were alone, that is when the screaming started.'"

"A squeamish namby-pamby European wimp joins the Washington war debate" (Ian Buruma, The Guardian, 2003/01/14)
Buruma on neo-conservative idealism versus traditional conservative realism: "I was invited to take part in a discussion at the American Enterprise Institute about Iraq after Saddam. The AEI is a neo-conservative outfit, whose members are imbued with a revolutionary mission to bring democracy to the world, backed by American force. ...
But on the merits of the war itself, there could be no question. That was settled. Scepticism on this score was met with the kind of eye-rolling impatience with which committed Marxists treat people who still fail to understand the laws of history. ... The assumption here is that one is a namby-pamby European wimp, too squeamish for the necessary task at hand. Sure, a few tens of thousands may die, but what is that compared to the glories of democratic revolution? This goes beyond anti-European prejudices. It is where the neo-conservative ideologues reveal the now distant, but still unmistakably Trotskyist antecedents of their dogmatism. ...
My point is that the neo-conservatives today, as far as Iraq is concerned, are the idealists, and if their revolutionary ideals have any chance of succeeding, they will have to prevail over the realists, the oil men and the country-club Republicans, who will surely stand in their way. The irony here is that what is left of the left, on the whole, shares the views of the old right. Few believe in a democratic revolution in the Middle East, and even fewer think it is up to America to enforce it."

"Europe vs. America" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2003/01/14)
"In Florence, Italy, writes Benny Irdi Nirenstein in National Review, "300,000 Europeans - many waving Palestinian flags and sporting T-shirt images of Che Guevara, Stalin and Mao Zedong - marched to denounce the possibility that the United States will liberate the Iraqi people." Palestinian flags and images of Stalin? What gives? One explanation for this hostility comes in an insightful article last week by the American analyst Ken Sanes in Hong Kong's "Asia Times Online." ... Sanes' originality lies in taking the Euro-American differences and presenting them not as two variants of one system, but as two distinct systems - not two dialects of one language, but two discrete languages. If this interpretation is correct, recent Euro-American tensions over such issues as irradiated food, the death penalty, the International Criminal Court, Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict are signs of a significant division, not just transient squabbles. The face-off between the Bush administration and, say, Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is deeper and darker than usually perceived." (See also: "Clash of the super-systems" (Ken Sanes, Asia Times, 2003/01/07))

"Suicide Bombers and Professors" (Edward Alexander, The Jerusalem Post/FrontPageMagazine, 2003/01/14)
History on repeat. In his brilliant study of useful idiocy, "Political Pilgrims - Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China and Cuba" (1981), Paul Hollander points out the morbid fact that the Western intellectual infatuation with various "revolutionary" regimes tends to strongest in their most repressive historical phases. Thus, the "Soviet Union enjoyed the greatest prestige among Western intellectuals at the time when it was most savagely repressive ... during the early and mid 1930s". Another example is the Mao cult, which was at its height during the lunatic terror of the Cultural Revolution, 1966-76. Even Pol Pot had a small fanclub. Conversely, when the worst phase of totalitarianism and terror is over, Western intellectuals tend to lose interest in the regimes:
"Of the variegated forms of murderous assault that the Palestinian Arabs have unleashed against Israel since they began the Al-Aqsa Intifada (the Oslo War) in September 2000 - pogroms, lynchings, roadside and drive-by shootings - none has proved so cruel or lethal (or so perfectly embodied evil absolute and entire) as suicide bombings; and none has exercised so hypnotic a spell upon the "learned classes." ...
Not long after 9/11 Honderich decided to shine the light of pure reason and moral philosophy upon that day's horrific massacres in a book called After the Terror. The essence of his argument was that there is no moral distinction between acts of omission and acts of commission. Since the West has failed to eliminate the poverty that its capitalist system brought to the world, it was collectively responsible for 9/11. ... The philosopher was far less cautious about the "moral right" of Palestinian Arabs to blow up Jews, a right he defended vigorously: 'Those Palestinians who have resorted to violence have been right...and those who have killed themselves in the cause of their people have indeed sanctified themselves.'" (See also: "A Philosopher in the Trenches: Interview with Ted Honderich" (Paul de Rooij, The Palestine Chronicle, 2002/12/04))

"The Left betrays the Iraqi people by opposing war" (Nick Cohen, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/01/14)
"Gemma Redgrave, Anita Roddick, Rosie Boycott and Bianca Jagger are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with rough train drivers from Aslef and Marxist-Leninists from the Socialist Workers Party. Everyone who is anyone from the soft-headed centre to the anti-democratic Left is there. All are welcome - except the people in whose name the party is being thrown: the Iraqis. ...
Yet not one of the 50 Iraqi dissident groups that met in the capital last month to organise the struggle for national liberation has been asked to join the coalition. Nor would they be thanked if they tried to gatecrash. ...
They confront the anti-war movement with the disconcerting thought that there are worse things in the world than George W Bush and American imperialism, and Saddam Hussein and his prison state are among them. To right-thinking, Left-leaning people, such thoughts are not merely disconcerting but unthinkable. Oppressed peoples are meant to confirm the prejudices of their (usually white) betters, not raise awkward dilemmas."

"America is still fighting against an evil empire" (Adam Nicolson, The Daily Telegraph, 2003/01/14)
Nicolson on the American Dream and the American Myth, remembering a discussion about geopolitics with Miss Teen at a party at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion West: "I remember that night as the apotheosis of the revealed American bosom, an endless, dreamlike display of New World fantasy, no airbrushing needed, no digital enhancement required, only an endlessly smiling parade of these marvellous and slightly distant figures culled and gathered from the housing projects and farmlands of a continent. ...
She described to me how Libyans had been responsible the previous April for blowing up a Berlin disco in which American soldiers had been killed. Letting loose the navy jets was simply retaliation, self-defence, looking after our own. Of course it was, I said. I would have done it myself. ...
America envelops both Americans and the sort of temporary, passing American that I had become in a warm and self-confirming blanket of its own vision of the world. That vision is shaped by some powerful myths and, as Niall Ferguson has written in his fascinating new history of the British empire, there is one idea that lies at the root of them all: "The struggle for liberty against an evil empire," Ferguson has written, 'is America's creation myth.'"

"Iraq Hunt To Extend To March, Blix Says" (Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus, The Washington Post, 2003/01/14)
"Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said yesterday that he is significantly expanding his inspection force in Iraq and plans to be working there at least until he presents a major report to the U.N. Security Council in March. Blix said his next presentation to the Security Council, due on Jan. 27, would be an interim update on the results of the first 60 days of inspections and mark 'the beginning of the inspection and monitoring process, not the end of it.'" (See also: "Inspectors want more time" (Joseph Curl, The Washington Times, 2003/01/14): "The International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors have been in Iraq since November, said the United Nations has provided timelines of "somewhere between six and 12 months" to complete inspections.")

"PM: 'Saddam should take the peaceful route and disarm'" (10 Downing Street, 2003/01/14)
A full transcript of Tony Blair's press conference: "And I tell you honestly what my fear is, my fear is that we wake up one day and we find either that one of these dictatorial states has used weapons of mass destruction - and Iraq has done so in the past - and we get sucked into a conflict, with all the devastation that would cause; or alternatively these weapons, which are being traded right round the world at the moment, fall into the hands of these terrorist groups, these fanatics who will stop at absolutely nothing to cause death and destruction on a mass scale."

Added in archive:
"Clash of the super-systems" (Ken Sanes, Asia Times, 2003/01/07)

Monday, January 13, 2003

News and commentary:

"Blair vows to disarm Iraq" (BBC News, 2003/01/13)
"British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he is committed to disarming Iraq through the United Nations. He said he was convinced that the UN Security Council would back military action against Iraq if it breached the UN resolution requiring it to give up weapons of mass destruction. ... Mr Blair said he had "no doubt" that Saddam Hussein was attempting to rebuild his alleged nuclear, biological and chemical weapons arsenal. But the Iraqi leader still had the opportunity to avoid war, the prime minister said. "Even now, Saddam should take the peaceful route and disarm," he told his monthly press conference. 'If he does not, however, he will be disarmed by force.'"

"Checking Kim" (Adam Garfinkle, National Review, 2003/01/13)
"The U.S. finds itself in an unenviable situation: one in which it has no military options, yet normal diplomacy is futile. Diplomacy of the sort being pressed upon the U.S. by South Korea amounts to paying North Koreans for acting temporarily less scary until the next occasion for extortion. ... Better late than never, however; we still need to rethink the Korea problem down to its roots. When we do, we immediately see our other option: Announce our intention to withdraw all U.S. military forces from Korea. Lots of South Koreans would be delighted. More important, such an announcement would force China and the other parties to the problem to face reality. ... If we profess an intention to leave, Beijing will then have to choose between a nuclear North Korea and Japan (and maybe South Korea, too) on its doorstep, or joining with the U.S. and others to manage the containment, and ultimately the withering away, of the North Korean state."

"'Bomb Texas' - The psychological roots of anti-Americanism" (Victor Davis Hanson, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/01/13)
A must-read essay, in which Hanson concentrates on the apparent paradox of elite Americans denouncing the flesh-pots they are gorging on: "Traveling abroad, the actress Jessica Lange pertly announced: "It makes me feel ashamed to come from the United States - it is humiliating." ...
Among some of our new aristocrats, the realization has dawned that their own good fortune is not shared world-wide, and must therefore exist at the expense of others, if not of the planet itself. This hurts terribly, at least in theory. ...
Try asking someone awash in a sea of materialism to match word with deed and actually disconnect from the opulence that is purportedly killing the world and its inhabitants. Celebrity critics of corporate capitalism neither redistribute their wealth nor separate themselves from their multinational recording companies, film studios, and publication houses - or even insist on lower fees so that the oppressed might enjoy cheaper tickets at the multiplex. Jessica Lange and Alec Baldwin so hate George W. Bush that they threaten to leave our shores - promises, promises."

"Blut für öl"
(Der Spiegel, 2003/01/13)

"Germany's Implosion" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2003/01/13)
"Meanwhile, German popular culture seems to be becoming more and more pathologically anti-American. Take a look at this week's cover of Der Spiegel. They even turn Old Glory into a version of the Hammer and Sickle. Truly repulsive." (See also the cover: "Blut für öl" (Der Spiegel, 2003/01/13))

"Can A Jew Be President?" (Moe Freedman, Occam's Razor, 2003/01/13)
Freedman points out a headline and an article in the Detroit Times, questioning Lieberman's possible run for presidency, because if it succeeds it could fuel anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic bigotry. Next: "Can An African-American Be President?", arguing that if Condi would be elected president it could create a backlash among racists: "The big headline of the "Outlook" section of my local paper (The Detroit News) reads "Can a Jew be President?" Um…what? I probably should be upset about this in some way, except that I think the answer is probably "no." Detroit area Palestinian-American Isa Hasan thinks Lieberman's religion is "a very touchy issue." 'Considering what we are facing in political turmoil in the Middle East and the Muslim world, you can't ask for a worse time for a Jewish person to be elected president.'" (See also: "Can a Jew be president?" (Deb Price, The Detroit News, 2003/01/12))

"IAEA: Year for Iraq inspections" (CNN.com, 2003/01/13)
"U.N. weapons inspections in Iraq could take about a year and will be "worth the wait," an International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman has told CNN. Mark Gwozdecky reiterated comments made by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei last spring, in which they made it clear the inspections could take 'in the vicinity of a year.'"

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

Copyright © Watch 2001-2006. Copyrights of quoted materials belong to their respective owners.

"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

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

› AOTW Archive



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)

Weekly archive

2006/12/04 - 2006/12/10
2006/11/27 - 2006/12/03
2006/11/20 - 2006/11/26
2006/11/13 - 2006/11/19
2006/11/06 - 2006/11/12
2006/10/30 - 2006/11/05

› From 2001/09/11 -



Monthly index

December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006

› From September 2001 -



Author index

› Ajami, Fouad - Johnson, Paul
› Kagan, Robert - Ye'or, Bat



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