Archived
news and commentary: August 30 - September 5, 2004
2004/09/27 - 2004/10/03
2004/09/20 - 2004/09/26
2004/09/13 - 2004/09/19
2004/09/06 - 2004/09/12
2004/08/30 - 2004/09/05
2004/08/23 - 2004/08/29
2004/08/16 - 2004/08/22
2004/08/09 - 2004/08/15
2004/08/02 - 2004/08/08
2004/07/26 - 2004/08/01
2004/07/19 - 2004/07/25
2004/07/12 - 2004/07/18
2004/07/05 - 2004/07/11
2004/06/28 - 2004/07/04
Sunday,
September 5, 2004
News and commentary:
"Local residents walk through debris..."
(Sergei Karpukhin, Reuters, 2004/09/05)
"Local residents walk through debris of the gymnasium at a school, which was seized by heavily armed masked men and women, in the town of Beslan in the province of North Ossetia near Chechnya , September 5, 2004. The sound of weeping mothers who lost their children in the bloody end to Russia's school siege drifted out of the houses of Beslan on Sunday as relatives prepared to bury the first of 333 people killed.""Boy who begged for water was bayoneted" (Peter Conradi, The Sunday Times/Free Republic, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XXIV: "After more than 24 hours in the sweltering heat of the school gymnasium in Beslan, one of the boys trapped inside could not take it any longer, writes Peter Conradi.
Summoning up his courage, he approached a hostage taker with a bayonet fixed to his assault rifle and asked him for a drink. It was probably the worst error that he could have made.
“Instead of giving him water, he drove his bayonet through the boy’s body,” said Stanislav Tsarakhov, 10, another captive standing nearby. “I don’t know if he died.”
Details of the incident emerged as children who escaped the siege described how their captors had deliberately deprived them of food and water, repeatedly firing guns into the ceiling to try to silence them. “The hostage takers would hold their machineguns to your temple and said that if there was a lot of noise, they would shoot everyone,” said a girl, who gave her name only as Zalina.
Diana Gadzhinova, 14, who also survived the siege, said that one of the greatest hardships had been the lack of food and drink.
“When we were let out to go to the lavatory, some children would run into a room where there were plants in pots and they would eat them,” she said.
“Others would hide the plants in their underwear and share them with their friends. But the hunger was not as bad as the thirst. Some children couldn’t take it and would urinate into their hand and drink.”
At another point, Gadzhinova said, they were all ordered to lie down. There were so many people packed into the gym that they had to lie on top of each other. “The gunmen warned that if there was an arm or a leg in their way, they would shoot at it without warning,” she said.
For Arsen Khasigov, 11, trapped with his mother, the worst thing was the sleep deprivation. “They kept us awake all the time,” he said. 'They would pour our urine on our heads.'"
"Middle School No. 1..."
(Yuri Tutov, AFP, 2004/09/05)
"Middle School No. 1 was opened Sunday to the people of Beslan, who found themselves drawn toward it by an almost gravitational pull.""Russians Begin Burying Victims of Attack" (Burt Herman, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XXIII: "Mothers wailed over the coffins of their children Sunday and dozens of townsmen dug graves in a football field-sized piece of scrubland next to the cemetery. Funeral processions snaked through the streets of this grief-stricken town as Russians began to bury victims of the terror attack on a school that left more than 350 people dead.
Frantic relatives also were still searching for 180 people still unaccounted for — many of them children — two days after the bloody climax of the hostage crisis that left few families untouched in this tight-knit, mostly industrial town of 30,000.
Weeping mourners placed flowers and wreaths at the graves, including one where two sisters Alina, 12 and Ira Tetova, 13 — were laid to rest together. Relatives walked toward the cemetery bearing portraits of the dark-haired girls and simple wooden planks — temporary grave markers — bearing their names and the dates framing their short lives.""Beheading video for sale in Baghdad" (Michael Georgy, Reuters, 2004/09/05)
"The hottest selling item at Baghdad's video CD market is not a movie or a music video.
It's an ordinary Egyptian whose beheading was filmed by his Muslim militant captors and distributed as a gruesome message to anyone who cooperates with U.S. troops in Iraq. ...
The video shows a terrified Mohammed Abdel Aal kneeling in front of masked militants with AK-47 assault rifles as he confesses to planting electronic devices in houses that guided bombs dropped from U.S. warplanes.
One of the militants pulls out a knife, knocks down Abdel Aal, then severs his head and places it on his body over a pool of blood. ...
The video has already generated conspiracy theories in a country where people kept quiet for decades to avoid the iron first of toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"A Muslim could not do something so barbaric. This was the work of Israeli intelligence trying to give Muslims a bad image in the world," said video shop owner Abu Safwat.
'Besides Islam does not permit beheadings from the side of the neck like in the video. It must be done from the back of the neck.'""Iraqi government says top Saddam aide captured" (Waleed Ibrahim and Tom Perry, Reuters, 2004/09/05)
"Iraqi and U.S. forces have arrested a man believed to be the most wanted Saddam Hussein aide still on the run in a bloody raid in which 70 of his supporters were killed and 80 were captured, Iraqi officials say.
Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, who was sixth on a U.S. list of the 55 most wanted members of Saddam's administration and had a $10 million (5.6 million pound) price on his head, was captured in Tikrit, Saddam's former powerbase north of Baghdad, the Defence Ministry said on Sunday.
Officials said DNA tests were under way to confirm his identity.
The U.S. military said Ibrahim was not in its custody, and it had no information on whether he was being held by Iraqis.
Iraqi Minister of State Wael Abdul al-Latif said it was "75 to 90 percent certain" the man was Ibrahim. Seventy of the man's supporters were killed and 80 were captured when they tried to prevent him being seized, said Latif." (But see also: "Saddam top aide's capture denied" (BBC News, 2004/09/05): "Initial announcements by the Iraqi authorities suggested he had been arrested on Saturday while receiving treatment at a clinic near Tikrit. But the US military have made it clear he is not in their custody, and the Iraqi national guard later denied involvement in any operation.")"Blaming Israel for Beslan" (Backspin, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XXII: "What took so long? From China Post:Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain who follows the ultraconservative Salafi stream of Islam, condemned the school attack as "un-Islamic," but insisted Muslims weren't behind it. "I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya," said Abdullah, reviving an old conspiracy theory altered to fit any situation.
(See also: "School siege prompts horror, self-criticism in Arab world" (AP/The China Post, 2004/09/05))
"View to a kill" (David Aaronovitch, The Observer, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XXI: "Yesterday, in the wake of the Beslan school horror, the historian Corelli Barnett more or less blamed the crisis on the war against terror itself. His thesis was that, since September 11th, the actions of the West (and particularly the Americans) had made things far, far worse.
The problem with this is the simple one that the war with terror was declared by terror itself. Declared in Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi in 1998, declared in New York on 11 September. It wasn't until 11 September, however, that we began to appreciate the scale of what was already happening. The idea that, had we negotiated with the Taliban, left Saddam in place and put more pressure on Sharon to settle, kids would now be safe in North Ossetia, is just wishful thinking.""Cleric supports targeting children" (Rajeev Syal, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XX: "Omar Bakri Mohammed, the spiritual leader of the extremist sect al-Muhajiroun, said that holding women and children hostage would be a reasonable course of action for a Muslim who has suffered under British rule.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Mohammed said: "If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq.
As long as the Iraqi did not deliberately kill women and children, and they were killed in the crossfire, that would be okay." ...
"The Mujahideen [Chechen rebels] would not have wanted to kill those people, because it is strictly forbidden as a Muslim to deliberately kill women and children. It is the fault of the Russians," he said.""'Innocent religion is now a message of hate'" (Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XIX. An article which was published in yesterday's edition of the pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat under the title "The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!":
"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.
The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims. Those involved in rape and murder in Darfur, Sudan, are Muslims, with other Muslims chosen to be their victims.
Those responsible for the attacks on residential towers in Riyadh and Khobar were Muslims. The two women who crashed two airliners last week were also Muslims.
Bin Laden is a Muslim. The majority of those who manned the suicide bombings against buses, vehicles, schools, houses and buildings, all over the world, were Muslim.
What a pathetic record. What an abominable "achievement". Does all this tell us anything about ourselves, our societies and our culture?
These images, when put together, or taken separately, are shameful and degrading. But let us start with putting an end to a history of denial. Let us acknowledge their reality, instead of denying them and seeking to justify them with sound and fury signifying nothing." (See also: "Siege prompts self-criticism in Arab media" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/04))"When hell came calling at Beslan's School No 1" (Paton Walsh and Peter Beaumont, The Observer, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XVIII: "But the worst was to come - what lay inside the still burning gym. It was revealed as the Russian troops continued to fight the last of the gunmen who had taken the school. At one stage, a tank was called up to clear a basement room.
They are scenes that will never be forgotten by those who fought there that day, some of whom are still struggling to understand what happened and whether they contributed to the high death toll.
Among them is a Spetznaz soldier called Vitali, who told the Kommersant newspaper: 'There was no command to storm and we did not return fire until we knew it was the end. The Vitez Spetznaz unit went in first. We saw a terrible fire in the gym.' Another Spetznaz trooper said: 'There were a lot of children on the floor; it was full of them'.
Even the most battle-hardened struggled to cope with what greeted their eyes. Lt Col Andrei Galageyev told Gazeta : 'When we entered the gym, I saw a 2 litre plastic bottle filled with plastic explosive and metals balls. I have been at war since 1994, but I have never seen anything like that. There were dozens of mangled bodies, some of them still burning.'""They knifed babies, they raped girls" (Euan Stretch, The Sunday Mirror, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XVII: "While despairing soldiers and rescue workers moved among the growing pile of body bags, it was revealed that an 18-month-old baby had been repeatedly stabbed by a black-clad terrorist who had run out of ammunition.
Other survivors told how screaming teenage girls were dragged into rooms adjoining the gymnasium where they were being held and raped by their Chechen captors who chillingly made a video film of their appalling exploits
They said children were forced to drink their own urine and eat the petals off the flowers they had brought their teachers after nearly three days without food or water in the stifling hot gym. ...
"The famished children had to eat rose petals from bouquets which they specially bought for their teachers to mark the first day of term. Parents who were also captured had to feed their kids with all the window plants.
'After they ate all the petals, my daughter said that she started to nibble the rose plants.
She told me that several 15-year-old girls were raped by terrorists. She heard their terrible cries and screams when those monsters took them away.'""One little boy was shouting: 'Mama.' She couldn't hear him. She was dead" (Olga Craig, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XVI: "Tanya, 14, was slapped across the face when she tried to drink from a tap in the lavatories.
"The man went crazy, he hit me and tugged the top off the tap so I couldn't drink any more. All around me, people were taking off clothes, peeing on them and trying to suck off the urine. Little children were tearing off the leaves of plants and eating them - they were so hungry.
"One little boy, about seven, stood naked with urine running down his leg. He was stuffing rose petals into his bleeding mouth from one of the bouquets the children had brought for the teachers. He was shouting, 'Mama!' She couldn't hear him. She was dead."
One 15-year-old boy spoke of how the older boys and men were separated and given "chores". "We had to gather the bodies of those who had died when they took the school and throw them out of the windows. Then they wanted us to board them up.
"I carried the body of a little girl and threw it out of the window," he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. As he threw her, he decided to try to escape, and jumped out of the window, too. "I knew it might be my one chance." ...
'Some people said that the older girls who were dragged into another room were being raped. We could hear cries, but then, so many were screaming and crying, that it was impossible to know.'""Hostages Were Helpless in Face of Chaos" (Peter Finn and Peter Baker, The Washington Post, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XV: "Conditions deteriorated by the hour. Gurieva was allowed to drink in the bathroom when she accompanied young children there, but many others were not even allowed to go. They were forced to soil themselves.
By the second day, people began to urinate in plastic bottles and then drink from them. "They gave us bottles like this," said Galastyan, pointing to a plastic soda bottle, "and the children had to piss in them and drink from them."
"People exchanged bottles of urine and poured urine on the children to keep them cool," said another woman, Alla, 24, who was with her 6-year-old son, one of the first graders, who lay injured in the hospital. "They didn't allow people to get up."
The guerrillas spoke to the hostages mostly to taunt them. "Do you know why I cut my beard?" said the man the other guerrillas addressed as Colonel, according to Gurieva. "So I can pass your blockades."
"No one cares about you," said the man, who was wearing a traditional Chechen cap over military fatigues, and who Gurieva estimated was about 40. "Not your President. Not your government. You are not needed."
One of the guerrillas carried a video camera and "constantly filmed us," said Gurieva.""52 Hours of Horror and Death for Captives at Russian School" (C.J. Chivers, The New York Times, 2004/09/05)
Russian School Siege XIV: "The day began with an assembly in the schoolyard, with children streaming in with parents and brothers and sisters to open the school year. It was like years past, until the moment when the newly arriving first graders were to be introduced. It had always been a tender moment in years past. This year, people heard shouts, and saw something alarming: a line of masked gunmen advancing through the yard.
"The terrorists ran in yelling, 'Allahu Akhbar,' " said Asamaz Bekoyev, 11, who escaped with his mother and brother and lay in his bed on Saturday at his grandmother's house, being treated for cuts and minor burns. ...
Azamat and Emma said that a woman offered the hostage takers all of the town's money, but one of their captors said: 'We don't need money. We have come here to die.'"
Saturday,
September 4, 2004
News and commentary:
"People look for their relatives among the dead bodies..."
(Viktor Drachev, AFP, 2004/09/04)
"People look for their relatives among the dead bodies (not pictured) of the Beslan hostage-taking drama victims at the morgue in Vladikavkz, North Ossetia.""When the killers come for the kids" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2004/09/04)
Russian School Siege XIII: "A final thought: Did any of those protesters who came to Manhattan to denounce our liberation of 50 million Muslims stay an extra day to protest the massacre in Russia? Of course not.
The protesters no more care for dead Russian children than they care for dead Kurds or for the hundreds of thousands of Arabs that Saddam Hussein executed. Or for the ongoing Arab-Muslim slaughter of blacks in Sudan. Nothing's a crime to those protesters unless the deed was committed by America.
The butchery in Russia was a crime against humanity. In every respect. Was any war ever more necessary or just than the War on Terror?
And what will terror's apologists say when the killers come for their own children?"
"HIJAB IS BASIC HUMAN RIGHT OF MUSLIM WOMEN"
(Faisal Mahmood, Reuters, 2004/09/04)
"Pakistani activists of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six hardline Islamic parties, protest against the ban on headscarves in French schools during a demonstration in Islamabad, September 4, 2004.""Siege prompts self-criticism in Arab media" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/04)
Russian School Siege XII: "Images of terrified young survivors being carried from the scene aired repeatedly on Arab TV stations. Pictures of dead and wounded children ran on front pages of Arab newspapers Saturday. "Holy warriors" from the Middle East long have supported fellow Muslims fighting in Chechnya, and Russian officials said nine or 10 Arabs were among militants killed.
"Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture," Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television wrote in his daily column published in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. It ran under the headline, "The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!"
Al-Rashed ran through a list of recent attacks by Islamic extremist groups - in Russia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen - many of which are influenced by the ideology of Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of al-Qaida terror network.
"Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims," he wrote. Muslims will be unable to cleanse their image unless "we admit the scandalous facts," rather than offer condemnations or justifications.
"The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us," al-Rashed wrote.""Captors' cruelty terrified hostages" (Mike Eckel, AP/Seattle Times, 2004/09/04)
Russian School Siege XI: "Holding up the corpse of a man just shot dead in front of hundreds of hostages at a Russian school, the hostage-taker — his pockets stuffed with ammunition and grenades — warned: "If a child utters even a sound, we'll kill another one." ...
Gadieyeva said children whimpered in fear, and all around there was screaming and crying. The hostages were forced to crouch, their hands folded over their heads. ...
When children started to faint from thirst, the adults urged them to urinate. It was so they could drink their own urine, Gadieyeva said.
Some children said the guerrillas terrorized them, but did not hurt them physically. When some of the children cried too loudly, the guerrillas fired their weapons into the air or out a window to silence them. "They intimidated us," fourth-grader Sosik Parastayev said. "They pointed their guns at us. But they didn't beat us."
Another child said the students were victimized, too.
One boy, 10-year-old Stanislav Tsarakhov, said another child was so thirsty he approached one of the hostage-takers who was holding an assault rifle with a bayonet attached. When the boy asked for water, Stanislav said, the hostage-taker attacked him with the bayonet. 'I don't know if he died.'""An Agonizing Vigil Leads to Reunion or Despair" (C.J. Shivers, The New York Times, 2004/09/04)
Russian School Siege X: "And the sense of hope that accompanied the sight of each survivor was tempered by the horrors among even the lucky. One speeding ambulance contained a girl who appeared to be about 5, blood rolling down her short and matted black hair. She stood in the back of the crowded ambulance, palms pressed against the glass, wild-eyed and screaming in a black floral print dress.
Because of the sirens and the gunfire and the roar of the overworked engine, her screams seemed soundless, drowned out by everything else. Then she was gone from sight. ...
The morgue had reached capacity. Children and dead Russian fighters were arranged in rows on the grass.
One row contained 13 dead and bloodied children, aged roughly 4 to 16. The youngest, a boy, shirtless and with his hands folded neatly on his stomach, was unclaimed. A few were covered with sheets or towels, which mothers passing by lifted, to see if they hid the faces of their missing children. One girl, a young teenager in a dress, appeared to have been executed, having been shot through the eye.
The covered remains of one woman, carried out of the hospital and set in the hospital yard, told of a terrible end. Her bare feet protruded, showing soles of feet that were covered with fresh nicks and cuts, as if before she died, she had run and run and run.""Bloodbath: up to 200 die as siege ends in mayhem" (Nick Paton Walsh, The Guardian, 2004/09/04)
Russian School Siege IX: "All that was left were the ashes. On the floor of the gym at Middle School No 1 yesterday lay the mangled, black detritus from Russia's worst hostage crisis. Corrugated iron roofing, loft insulation material, soggy wood and an endless black, unidentifiable mulch, still smoking.
It was a skeletal scene. Rescuers tore out the shredded window frames, ducking gunfire and grenade blasts, and firefighters drenched the beams that stood where a roof once was. A curtain fluttered in the wind. Children's drawings from their art classes could still be seen taped across windows. But there was no one left to walk out of the ruins.
It is hard to believe that hundreds of women and children had been held in the gym.
An intricate series of wires, in which mines were strung between the gym's two basketball hoops and along its outer walls, had malfunctioned. When the militants fulfilled their unspeakable threat to blow themselves and their schoolchild hostages up if Russian troops stormed the school, only two mines went off.
Yet the damage was still immense in its scale and inhumanity, killing at least 150 hostages. Interfax news agency later put the toll at 200, quoting regional health ministry sources.""I Can't Believe I Watched the Whole Thing: Gavel-to-gavel with C-SPAN" (Andrew Ferguson, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/09/13 issue)
Off topic of the day. Ferguson watched the entire Republican convention on C-SPAN and is nevertheless sharper and more devastating than any liberal commentator:
"10:15: ... But McCain is followed by Rudy Giuliani, and though Giuliani's themes are the same as McCain's his speech doesn't seem written at all, but improvised, a randomly integrated collection of rhetorical modules. This isn't a surprise, either. Since leaving the mayor's office, Giuliani has become a motivational speaker and itinerant celebrity-for-hire. He can make as much as $100,000 for a one-hour speech -- which comes to about $20 per spoken word, if I reckon right. ...
What self-regard the man has, what a titanic presumption of his own charm! It was difficult to gauge the crowd reaction through C-SPAN, but seeing him deliver the speech on screen -- 15, 20, 25 minutes -- was like watching a solo love-in. In one of the speech's many climaxes, he imitated a construction worker giving a bear hug to President Bush. Giuliani wrapped his arms around himself. He swayed to and fro. And he held on just a moment or two too long. I started to think that maybe everybody should just tip-toe out of the convention hall and leave the former mayor alone with the man he loves." (Also: "10:00: I think someone finally killed the drama coach, and I think it was Zell Miller. Introduced to the crowd, he emerges from the wings and marches to the podium. He stops. He stands straight as an I-beam. His arms are frozen at his sides. None of this waving around for him. He looks like a man who just killed somebody: beetled brow, ferocious eyes, yes, he knows it was wrong and he shouldna done it but by God I done it and I ain't ashamed." See also: "Text of speech by Sen. Zell Miller" (Newsday.com, 2004/09/01))
Friday,
September 3, 2004
News and commentary:
"A woman grieves over the body of her child..."
(Sergei Karpukhin, Reuters, 2004/09/03)
"A woman grieves over the body of her child killed when Russian troops stormed a school seized by gunmen in the town of Beslan, in the province of North Ossetia near Chechnya, September 3, 2004.""Eyewitness: Hostage terror" (BBC News, 2004/09/03)
Russian School Siege VIII: "Rita Gadzhinova, a physics teacher, was freed by the gang on Thursday along with her three-year-old daughter, Madina, but was not allowed to take out her other two daughters, aged 11 and 14.
In an interview for Russia's Izvestiya newspaper, she described how the gang had seized the school in a matter of minutes, taking hostage about 1,500 people, according to her calculations.
The attackers herded their captives into the gym where they planted two big bombs in the two basketball baskets and laid cables leading to other, smaller charges across the floor, said Ms Gadzhinova. ...
Fellow hostage Zalina Dzandarova, 27, said two women suicide bombers had blown themselves up in a corridor of the school on the first day of the siege, killing some male hostages.
"The men terrorists told us afterwards that their sisters had conquered," she said."
"An injured schoolgirl..."
(Musa Sadulayev, AP, 2004/09/03)
"An injured schoolgirl who escaped from the seized Russian school holds a cross in her hand in a hospital in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia Friday, Sept. 3, 2004.""Russian School Siege Takes Bloody Turn" (Daryl Strickland, Los Angeles Times, 2004/09/03)
Russian School Siege VII: "The Russian government said today that 20 armed attackers were killed in the battle so far, including 10 Arabs, said Valery Andreyev, who is the top Federal Security Service official in the region. Those with an Arab background might support Putin's assertion that Al Qaida terrorists were involved in the Chechen conflict.
Despite the violence, more hostages apparently still were being held among the dead at the school. In a gymnasium, more than 1,000 people were stuffed in stifling heat with no water and little food, an escaped victim said. Interfax also quoted a Russian presidential aide who estimated the victim's death toll could rise to 150. Although some may have perished when part of the roof collapsed, it remained unclear how the victims died."
"These children were among hostages freed..."
(Sergei Dolzhenko, EPA, 2004/09/03)
"These children were among hostages freed after special forces entered the school in Beslan, North Ossetia.""Panic and Pain Mark End of Russia School Siege" (Oliver Bullough and Richard Ayton, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/03)
Russian School Siege VI: "Half-naked and bloodied children ran terrified through the street, thirstily grabbing water bottles from medics as gunfire cracked, ambulance sirens sounded, and mothers and children wailed.
Russia's school siege ended in scenes of chaos and pandemonium Friday, with an unknown number of dead and injured among the up to 1,500 children and adults held at gunpoint by Chechen separatists for more than two days.
Bodies were found in the school and 400 were injured, according to Russian officials quoted by Itar-Tass news agency.
A reporter for British ITV television said its cameraman saw up to 100 bodies inside the school gym where most hostages were held. ...
Dazed girls were still wearing decorative white hair bands and ribbons in their hair, now streaked with dirt -- their first day of school now a nightmarish memory.""Forces Storm Russia School With Hostages" (Mike Eckel, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/03)
Russian School Siege V: "Commandos seized control of a school in southern Russia where militants held hundreds of hostages Friday, Russian news agencies reported. The assault came after explosions boomed from the area and dozens of hostages, including naked children, fled.
The ITAR-Tass news agency said 160 children had been hurt in the raid and five militants were killed. Several of the militants who had captured the building Wednesday were seen running away and firing indiscriminately, and ITAR-Tass said five militants were killed.
The assault came after about 30 women and children hostages fled the building. Some children were covered in blood, some of them carried on stretchers. Many were only partly clothed because of the stifling heat in the gymnasium where they had been held since the militants took the building, and drank eagerly from bottles of water given to them once they reached safety.""Killers Set Terms, a Mother Chooses" (Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, 2004/09/03)
Russian School Siege IV: "Zalina Dzandarova cradles her son Alan as he sleeps with his small face buried against her stomach. He is the child Dzandarova was able to save. The child she chose to save, really.
It is the other one, little Alana, her 6-year-old daughter, whose image torments her: Alana clutching her hand, Alana crying and calling after her. Alana's sobs disappearing into the distance as Dzandarova walked out of Middle School No. 1 here Thursday, clutching 2-year-old Alan in her arms.
Guerrillas armed with automatic rifles and explosive belts who are holding hundreds of hostages at the small provincial school in southern Russia allowed 26 women and children to leave. About a dozen mothers, like Dzandarova, were allowed to take only one child, forced to leave another behind. ...
"Alana was clinging to me and holding my hand firmly. But they separated us, and said: 'You go with the boy. Your sister can stay here with her.' I cried. I begged them. Alana cried. The women around us wept. One of the Chechens said: 'If you don't go now, you don't go at all. You stay here with your children … and we will shoot all of you.'"
She couldn't save both of them. She could only die with both of them — or save one of them and herself.
"I didn't have time to think what I was doing," she said. 'I pressed Alan even stronger to myself, and I went out, and I heard all the time how my daughter was crying and calling for me behind my back. I thought my heart would break into pieces there and then.'""Europe's Iran Fantasy: Europeans are from Venus, Mullahs are from Mars" (Leon de Winter, The Weekly Standard, from the 2004/09/06 issue)
"Since Auschwitz — the benchmark of ideological and political developments in Europe — the miracle of European prosperity and freedom has not led to the conviction that this prosperity and freedom must be defended, if necessary by force; on the contrary, the miracle has given birth to an attitude of cultural relativism and pacifism. It is as if modern Europe had divested itself of its idealistic and historical context, as if many Europeans saw the miracle of a prosperous and free Europe as an ahistorical, natural, and permanent state of affairs — as if Auschwitz had been wiped from their memory.
But anyone who is ignorant of, or ignores, the fact that tens of millions of Europeans died in the twentieth century in the struggle between good and evil — and it seems most Europeans have simply forgotten this — will fail to appreciate that the continued existence of Europe's system of liberal moral and ethical values is the result of conscious choices by courageous Europeans (and many others).
It may be something worse than amnesia: Today's Europeans may see the history of the twentieth century as scarred only by an abstract process known by the ancient Germanic word "war," a concept that for them represents some monstrous destructive force beyond good and evil that blindly spews out victims, like a flood or a hurricane. Most Europeans no longer regard Auschwitz as the disastrous result of evil ideas and the evil decisions of human beings. Instead, they see it as the consequence of something more like a natural disaster.""Terrorists hand over French hostages" (Colin Randall, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/09/03)
"Two French journalists held hostage in Iraq were handed over to intermediaries last night, raising hopes that they would soon be freed.
Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot were transferred by their captors, the so-called Islamic Army in Iraq, to a rebel Iraqi Sunni group, according to Jean le Belot, the editor of Le Figaro, for which Mr Malbrunot works. The group was said to favour releasing the men. ...
The kidnappers had demanded that France lift its ban on Muslim girls wearing headscarves. However, the crisis helped to ensure a largely trouble-free return to school yesterday by 12 million pupils.
Widespread defiance of the legislation, which once seemed inevitable, failed to materialise although there were isolated exceptions.
In the suburban schools of Paris and other big cities with high concentrations of Muslim residents, mediators were ready to advise children refusing to observe the rules. But officials reported overwhelming compliance."
Thursday,
September 2, 2004
News and commentary:
"An Ossetian woman waits for news in Beslan..."
(Musa Sadulayev, AP, 2004/09/02)
"An Ossetian woman waits for news in Beslan, Northern Ossetia, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2004. Heavily armed militants, many strapped with explosives, held more than 350 hostages including children for a second day Thursday inside a provincial Russian school as negotiators scrambled to find a way out of the tense stand-off.""Full Text of President Bush's Remarks" (The New York Times, 2004/09/02)
"Following is a transcript of President Bush's speech accepting the Republican nomination last night in New York, as recorded by The New York Times":
"The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear. And they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march. I believe in the transformational power of liberty: The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom.
As the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq seize the moment, their example will send a message of hope throughout a vital region. Palestinians will hear the message that democracy and reform are within their reach, and so is peace with our good friend Israel. Young women across the Middle East will hear the message that their day of equality and justice is coming. Young men will hear the message that national progress and dignity are found in liberty, not tyranny and terror. Reformers and political prisoners and exiles will hear the message that their dream of freedom cannot be denied forever. And as freedom advances, heart by heart and nation by nation, America will be more secure and the world more peaceful.
America has done this kind of work before, and there have always been doubters. In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to allied forces, a journalist in The New York Times wrote this: "Germany is a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. European capitals are frightened. In every military headquarters, one meets alarmed officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy that they admit has failed." End quote. Maybe that same person is still around, writing editorials.""Putin Pledges to Do All to Save School Hostages" (Richard Ayton, Reuters, 2004/09/02)
Russian School Siege III: "Soldiers in camouflage carried terrified infants to safety on Thursday from a school seized by armed militants in southern Russia, but hundreds of captives faced a second night with little or no food or water.
President Vladimir Putin, tackling the latest in a series of deadly attacks linked to separatist unrest in Chechnya, vowed he would do all he could to save hundreds of children, parents and teachers herded into the school gym in stifling heat.
The gunmen, who threatened to blow up the school in North Ossetia in the turbulent Caucasus region, freed 26 children and women from among at least 350 hostages.""Cleric Says It's Right to Fight U.S. Civilians in Iraq" (Reuters, 2004/09/02)
"An Egyptian cleric based in Qatar and often described as a moderate has ruled that it is a religious duty for Muslims to fight Americans in Iraq, including U.S. civilians, his office director said Thursday.
But Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi said that two French journalists kidnapped in Iraq should be freed immediately.
Qaradawi gave his opinion at a meeting Tuesday evening at the Egyptian journalists' syndicate in Cairo.
"All of them (U.S. military personnel and civilians) are invaders who came from their country to invade our country and fighting them is a duty," said his office director Essam Talima, quoting a fatwa or ruling on religious law by Qaradawi.
Qaradawi is revered in much of the Muslim world for his intellectual rigor and ability to adapt the fundamental tenets of Islam to the modern world.""Feminists Compare Bush's 2000 Election Victory to 'Savage Rape'" (Marc Morano, CNSNews.com, 2004/09/02)
"A featured performer at a National Organization for Women rally accused President Bush of having "savagely raped" women "over and over" by allegedly stealing the 2000 presidential election.
Poet Molly Birnbaum read aloud to a crowd of feminists gathered in New York's Central Park on Wednesday night, as part of a NOW event dubbed "Code Red: Stop the Bush Agenda Rally."
"Imagine a way to erase that night four years ago when you (President Bush) savagely raped every pandemic woman over and over with each vote you got, a thrust with each state you stole," Birnbaum said from the podium. (If something is pandemic, it affects many people or a number of countries.) ...
Birnbaum's reading was followed by a performance by Gina Young, described as a singer of "feminist folk punk." Young's song included the following verse about Bush:
"I got better grades than you, you stupid boy W. Your dad was a killer, too, and you know that nobody voted for you," Young sang as the crowd erupted in applause.""Terrorspeaker invited with taxfunding" (Ingvar Hedlund, Expressen, 2004/09/02)
Partial translation of an article in Swedish. I've always found it particulary pathetic when revolutionary groups fund their activities with taxmoney. Talk about biting (prospectively at least) the hand that feeds you. Other than that, it's of course yet another example of the growing alliance between the far left and militant Islamism:
"A hijacker and former terrorist leader is invited as the main speaker at a Palestine conference which starts in Västra Frölunda [a suburb of Gothenburg] next week.
The governmental agency Sida has contributed over 200 000 SEK [appr. 27 000 $] of the taxpayers money as aid to the organizers.
The "Palestinian solidarity conference" is organized by Revolutionär kommunistisk ungdom (RKU) [Revolutionary Communist Youth] and the sports club Proletären [The Proletarian] — both established from the mother party KPML(r) (Kommunistiska partiet marxist-leninisterna, revolutionärerna.) [Communist Party Marxist-Leninists, Revolutionarists]
According to the programme, the organizers want to scrap EU:s list of terrorist organisations and bids for "resistance struggle against the American occupation" in Iraq.
The main attraction at the conference is Leila Khaled, former leader of the terrorist listed organisation PFLP (Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine). Leila Khaled, who has taken part in two international hijackings, advocates suicide bombings and attacks against civilian Jews. ...
The member of the Parliament Cecilia Wikström, fp [The Liberals], says to Expressen:
'It's an unbelievable scandal that taxmoney is used in this way. It's upsetting, incomprehensible and morally offensive. It clashes with people's sense of justice. I will question the Minister for International Development Cooperation Carin Jämtin in order to hear her view on this.'" (Hat tip: Torbjörn Elensky.)"British Council official sacked over anti-Islam articles" (Hugh Muir, The Guardian, 2004/09/02)
Via Robert Spencer, who notes: "What facts exactly did Cummins ignore? Why is it "hate speech" to point out that certain tenets of Islam are giving rise to terrorism? ... To speak of "the black heart of Islam" is to speak about Islam's need for reform; it is not synonymous with 'the black heart of Muslims.'"
Ironically, this reaction to Cummins four anti-Islamic articles only proves him right:
"A British Council official who assumed a pseudonym to write Sunday Telegraph articles attacking "the black heart of Islam" has been sacked.
The government-funded body, which recently commissioned a handbook on Islam "to prevent ignorant comments about Muslims being made in [the] national press", said yesterday it had dismissed Harry Cummins, a senior press officer, after an internal investigation.
The author's identity was unknown to all but the Sunday Telegraph's executives until it was revealed by the Guardian's diarist, Marina Hyde, four weeks ago, prompting a flood of complaints to the council from Muslim groups.
In his four articles, bylined Will Cummins, he compared Muslims to Nazis and argued that Muslim voters have a "global jihadi agenda".
One of his articles stated: "All Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics." Another argued: 'It is the black heart of Islam, not its black face, to which millions object.'" (See also: "UK: Will Cummins fired for articles on Islam" (Robert Spencer, Dhimmi Watch, 2004/09/03))See also:
"Muslims are a threat to our way of life" (Will Cummins, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/25)
"The Tories must confront Islam instead of kowtowing to it" (Will Cummins, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/18)
"We must be allowed to criticise Islam" (Will Cummins, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/11)
"Dr Williams, beware of false prophets" (Will Cummins, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/07/04)"Brace Yourself — The months ahead will be momentous" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2004/09/02)
"Finally, this election promises to be a turning point in American political history, but not in terms of the usual pundits’ reckoning of a red/blue standoff and the specter of a divided country’s future once more decided by the courts. The voting won’t come to that, but may well lead to a lopsided new division. The close presidential polls we see now mask a larger trend that has been nearly unceasing the last 20 years: the growing popularity of conservative thinking, which has been far more successful than the boutique liberal ideology in capturing the aspirations of working Americans. ...
If Bush wins in November, and I think he will, then there will be recriminations and fury of the like we have not seen since the Right imploded after 1964. For many of us lifelong Democrats, the very sight of Michael Moore perched next to Jimmy Carter at the convention in Boston says it all — the sorry coming together of conspiratorial anti-Americanism and self-righteous appeasement.
We are not at the end of history, but rather at its new beginning. All the old truths — conventional warfare, the Atlantic alliance, petroleum-based affluence, conventional political debate, etiquette, principled disagreement, and the old populist Democratic party are coming under question. And the only thing that is clear from what will follow is that it will all be loud, messy, full of surprises — and occasionally quite scary.""Syria May Face U.N. Resolution" (Colum Lynch, The Washington Post, 2004/09/02)
"The United States and France introduced a Security Council resolution Wednesday demanding that 20,000 Syrian troops "withdraw without delay" from Lebanon and that Syria stop meddling in the country's November elections. It threatens to consider unspecified "additional measures" against Syria to ensure compliance.
The resolution reflects mounting frustration by Washington and Paris that Syria is seeking to rewrite Lebanon's constitution to guarantee that the country's pro-Syrian leader, President Emile Lahoud, can remain in power after his six-year term ends on Nov. 24.""'Exchange us for our children. What are they guilty of?'" (Nick Paton Walsh and Zurab Timchenko, The Guardian, 2004/09/02)
Russian School Siege II: "On a bright, festive opening day of school, the first sign of the brutality to come was a solitary balloon drifting skyward.
Diana Kubalova, 14, felt the first trickle of fear when the smaller children in the front row of the school parade let go of their party balloons out of shock.
"At this moment I saw people in masks," she said. "At first I thought it was all part of the celebrations and that these people were a special surprise. Then they began to fire shots in the air. The teachers and parents shouted 'run, run' and we did." ...
She hid in the boiler room with 14 others, a teacher and a parent who had been attending the ceremony.
"We managed to peek through the crack in the door," she said. "The gunmen were armed with machine guns and my teacher noticed one girl among them wearing a mask. Someone said they were speaking in Chechen."
Amid the disinfectant of newly scrubbed floors and the gleam of whitewashed walls, the attackers filed through the school corridors.
Moments later, Diana heard an Ossetian voice outside the room. 'We whispered to him, 'help us get out'. He did, yet as we ran from the boiler room, the [militants] noticed us. Some of us were grabbed by them and were taken off to the sports hall. Now I am here, outside, and they are there.'"
Wednesday,
September 1, 2004
News and commentary:
"A TV grab taken from the Russian NTV channel..."
(AFP/NTV, 2004/09/01)
"A TV grab taken from the Russian NTV channel shows Russian special police troops evacuating a little girl and her mother from a school in North Ossetian village of Beslan.""Hundreds Held in Russian School; 8 Killed" (Musa Sadulayev, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/09/01)
Russian School Siege I: "More than a dozen militants wearing suicide-bomb belts seized a southern Russian school in a region bordering Chechnya on Wednesday, taking hostage about 400 people — half of them children — and threatening to blow up the building if police storm it. As many as eight people have been reported killed, one of them a school parent.
Hours into the desperate standoff, security officials said they had made brief contact with the hostage-takers. Russian special forces wearing camouflage and carrying heavy-caliber machine guns surrounded Middle School No. 1. About 1,000 people, mostly parents, were massed the three-story building in the town of Belsen, demanding information and accusing the government of failing to protect their children.
Kazbek Dzantiyev, head of the North Ossetia region's Interior Ministry, said that the hostages have threatened "for every destroyed fighter, they will kill 50 children and for every injured fighter — 20 (children)," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.""Master of moral relativism" (Yaacov Lozowick, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/09/01)
"The Nazi, Soviet, Khmer Rouge, and Hutu genocidists never allowed the passivity of their victims to slow them down, not for a minute. When Gandhi's grandson, Arun Gandhi, recently visited Yad Vashem, it would have been fair-minded of him to reflect upon this distinction. Instead he took the opportunity to lecture the Jews on their mistakes: "We got rid of Hitler but not the philosophy of hate that still threatens and strikes," he admonished.
It's hard to know where to begin when someone implies that Zionism resembles Nazism as an ideology of hate. When someone stands at Yad Vashem and says that the practice of Zionism is akin to the persecution Jews suffered in Europe, he has opened an unbridgeable chasm between his version of events and the historical truth.
When Arun Gandhi says that the barrier Israel is building in the West Bank is worse than Palestinian suicide bombings, his listener can only reflect morosely on the devastation of moral thinking that is so common in our generation." (See also: "IHT and the Terror Strategy" (HonestReporting, 2004/08/31))
"S. Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) speaks to the delegation..."
(Robert Galbraith, Reuters, 2004/09/01)
"S. Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) speaks to the delegation during the third night of the 2004 Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City, September 1, 2004. U.S." (See also C-SPAN's video clip [Real Player]: "Sen. Zell Miller (D-GA) Speech at Republican Convention" (C-SPAN, 2004/09/01))"Text of speech by Sen. Zell Miller" (Newsday.com, 2004/09/01)
"Text of speech by Democratic Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia as prepared for delivery Wednesday at the Republican National Convention": ...
"And, no pair has been more wrong, more loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.
Together, Kennedy/Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that won the Cold War and that is now winning the War on Terror.
Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national security but Americans need to know the facts.
The B-1 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, dropped 40 percent of the bombs in the first six months of Operation Enduring Freedom.
The B-2 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein's command post in Iraq.
The F-14A Tomcats, that Senator Kerry opposed, shot down Khadifi's Libyan MIGs over the Gulf of Sidra. The modernized F-14D, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora.
The Apache helicopter, that Senator Kerry opposed, took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War. The F-15 Eagles, that Senator Kerry opposed, flew cover over our Nation's Capital and this very city after 9/11.
I could go on and on and on: against the Patriot Missile that shot down Saddam Hussein's scud missiles over Israel; against the Aegis air-defense cruiser; against the Strategic Defense Initiative; against the Trident missile; against, against, against.
This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief of our U.S. Armed Forces?
U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs?" (UPDATE: See also "The Miller Moment" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2004/09/02) and "Go Well, Go Zell" (Tim Blair, Reason, 2004/09/02))"Open message to the 'Iraqi resistance'" (zeyad, Healing Iraq, 2004/09/01)
"Mohammed Bashar Al-Faidhy, spokesman of the Association of Muslim Scholars, addressed the 'Iraqi resistance' in an open message at a press conference broadcast by the Arab satellite channels yesterday. ..."To our brothers in the Islamic Army of Iraq. We wish to inform you that we totally understand the extreme rage that is boiling in your hearts regarding the French decision to ban the Hijab in their schools, and we share you your dissapointment. We officially condemned the French decision at the time... However, killing the two hostages without considering the grave consequences of such an act would be harmful to our cause and would isolate us from our international support... Our goal is to besiege the Americans politically in every spot of the world and this act is not serving that goal... You can see how the agents of the occupation are already using this incident against us... It is our duty as scholars to point out to our brothers what is wrong and what is right... France as an anti-occupation country has been helpful to our cause... You might say that the French stance is not an altruistic one and that they have their own political interests that caused them to disagree with the Americans, and I am not going to say that is not true but it is also our goal to turn them against each other to serve our cause so France has a strategic importance for us... Killing the two hostages is also not helpful to the 6 million Muslims in France... I beseech you to reconsider this and to release the two hostages and to promise us not to commit any act that would harm our cause in the future..." ...
Basically, he is saying: My dear children, it is true that they are infidels, but we should turn the infidels against each other whenever we have the opportunity. Do not kill these two infidels, maybe another time when no one is looking."
"But… C'est Injuste! Don't They Realize that the Hostages Are French Friends!?" (Erik, ¡No Pasarán!, 2004/09/01)
An revealing overview of French reactions to the kidnapped and threatened journalists: "Let's see, what have we got here?…The Kidnappers of French Journalists Renew Their Blackmail…
Paris Tries to Isolate the Terrorists…Wow. "Odious blackmail"! "Terrorists"! Quite different from the bland and straightforward headlines when Americans and other nationalities are kidnapped, huh?
No rightfully angered locals here, no members of the "Iraqi rebellion", no "insurgents", no justification, no "executions", no "Ils l'ont bien mérité" (they deserved it, they had it coming)… Au contraire! Au contraire, as it turns out…
Take a look at Paris Tries to Isolate the Terrorists By Orchestrating Arab Disapproval:"Maybe [Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot] were kidnapped by mistake [wonders Malbrunot's editor.] Maybe the kidnappers didn't know they were journalists and French citizens."
Is this supposed to mean that it is, perhaps not normal, but to be expected that Americans and other nationalities should be kidnapped (and beheaded)? No mistakes, in those cases? They asked for it, they deserved it? D'accorrrdd…" (See also: "Kidnappers Extend Deadline for French Hostages" (Heba Kandil, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/08/30))
"A Palestinian boy holds a toy gun..."
(Suhaib Salem, Reuters, 2004/09/01)
"A Palestinian boy holds a toy gun and Muslim holy book Koran as Hamas supporters celebrate the twin suicide bombing that killed 16 Israeli in Beersheba, in Gaza city August 31,2004.""Palestinians Are Trapped by Their Own Culture" (Irshad Manji, Los Angeles Times, 2004/09/01)
"But in the spirit of honesty, liberals like me need to deal with a second occupation — the ideological occupation of the Palestinian people by their own leadership, their own culture. Over the last six decades, several offers for an independent state of Palestine have been floated by the British, the Israelis, the Americans and the U.N. — Palestinian leaders have rejected every proposal. Worse, they have never consulted the Palestinian people before saying no.
Which brings me to the bigger problem of Palestinian culture — a popular culture of incitement that doesn't exist in Israel. Already I can hear the cries of "racism!" As a Muslim woman, however, I don't feel the need to toe any tribal line. ...
I'm not implying that Israeli government policies are blameless. Far from it. For example, the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon refuses to arrest the criminals who set up illegal outposts in the West Bank. Such willful negligence will only feed extremism on both sides.
But let's not lose sight of the larger reality. After the Aqaba peace summit in June 2003, both the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers encountered protests. Hard-line Israelis resorted to demonstrating and jeering. Hard-line Palestinians resorted to blowing up buses and the people in them. That's a life-and-death difference in choices." (Hat tip: Marc Simon.)"In the 1960s, we marched for a reason" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/09/01)
"I watched Michael Moore's buffoon-ish reaction when he was attacked by John McCain at the Republican convention, over and over again yesterday. ... And as I watched this puerile performance from a man who is regarded as the spiritual leader of American, and now British, conscientious protest, I thought "Has it come to this?" Is this how it ends, the great modern tradition of American dissidence launched by my generation of students in the 1960s? ...
But the biggest difference between then and now, of course, is that we marched against our government when it supported dictators, not when it removed them. ...
Whatever the political or legal, or even tactical, arguments against the invasion of Iraq might have been, how can anyone in his right mind equate what America intended there with its shameless support for Third World gangster regimes half a century ago? Even the scandals of the Iraqi occupation - such as Abu Graib prison - are footling by comparison to the dropping of napalm on civilians as routinely happened in Vietnam. How has the logic of protest become so inverted, and the language of condemnation so debased?"Added in archive:
"Arab-Islamic World Is a Hostage of Its Own Delusions" (Leon de Winter, The Wall Street Journal/American Outlook, 2004/08/17)
"Sudan: Israel supporting Darfur rebels" (UPI/The Washington Times, 2004/08/08)
Tuesday,
August 31, 2004
News and commentary:
"Suicide bombers blew up two buses..."
(Iian Zagdon, Reuters, 2004/08/31)
"Suicide bombers blew up two buses on Tuesday in Beersheba in southern Israel, killing at least 16 people and injuring more than 100 others. The militant Palestinian group Hamas claimed responsibility, calling the blasts retaliation for the assassinations of two of its leaders.""16 killed, 100 wounded in twin bus bombings in Be'er Sheva" (Arieh O'Sullivan and Margot Dudkevitch, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/08/31)
"Two suicide bombers exploded almost simultaneously on two buses in central Be'er Sheva on Tuesday, killing 16 people and wounding dozens. The explosions took place on buses numbers 12 and 7, traveling opposite the municipality building at 2:55 p.m. ...
Twelve people died at the scene and four others died later while being treated, including a three-year-old. About 100 people were wounded and taken to Soroka Medical Center not far from the site of the attack. A few are still listed in critical condition and are struggling for their lives; 12 are listed as serious, and the rest of the wounded are listed in light-to moderate condition. ...
Hamas distributed a leaflet in Hebron saying the attacks were "a natural response to Israeli crimes" and revenge for Israel's assassinations last spring of its spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and his successor Abdel Aziz Rantisi.""'Suicide blast' hits Moscow station" (BBC News, 2004/08/31)
"At least eight people have been killed in an explosion in a car outside an underground railway station in Moscow.
At least 10 others were hurt in what may have been two blasts outside the Rizhskaya station in the north of the city, reports say.
Russian security officials are blaming the attack on a female suicide bomber.
Television pictures from the scene show a car on fire and wounded people on the ground as ambulances and rescue services rush to the scene.
More than a dozen bodies could be seen scattered on the pavement and grass surrounded by pools of blood.""Iraq Militants Claim to Kill 12 Hostages" (Ravi Nessman, AP/The Guardian, 2004/08/31)
"Militants in Iraq claimed to kill 12 Nepalese contract workers in a gruesome video showing one of them beheaded and the 11 others shot in a methodical series of execution-style slayings that was discovered on an Islamic Web site Tuesday. ...
The 12 Nepalese hostages, who had been sent by a Jordanian firm to perform construction work in Iraq, disappeared Aug. 19, soon after crossing into the country from Jordan in two cars. ...
The video discovered Tuesday showed a masked man in desert camouflage apparently slitting the throat of a blindfolded man lying on the ground. The blindfolded man moaned and a shrill wheeze was heard. The masked man then showed the severed head to the camera before throwing it in the dirt and later resting it on the victim's chest.
Other footage showed a militant with an assault rifle executing the other 11 men, who were lying face down on the ground, with a series of shots aimed at their heads and backs. Blood seeped from their bodies onto the sand.
"America today has used all its force, as well as the help of others, to fight Islam under the so-called war on terror, which is nothing but a vicious crusade against Muslims," a statement on the Web site signed "Ansar al-Sunna Army" said." (See also: "Iraq Militants Kill 12 Nepali Hostages - Website" (Reuters, 2004/08/31): "'We have carried out the sentence of God against 12 Nepalis who came from their country to fight the Muslims and to serve the Jews and the Christians...believing in Buddha as their God,' said the statement by the military committee of the Army of Ansar al-Sunna.")"A European Conversation" (Maggie Gallagher, uExpress/Yahoo! News, 2004/08/31)
"'People hate you. Everyone hates you. The whole world hates you.' The pretty middle-aged woman, a Swiss mother and scholar, at the dinner table in Geneva earnestly wants to make that perfectly clear.
She isn't angry with me. She thinks the American people are totally ignorant, misled by the media and a criminal president. She also thinks the United States invaded Afghanistan in order to grab an oil pipeline.
This is my test of whether conversation is possible. I can understand how Europeans can believe the war in Iraq was about oil. After all, European nations like France and Russia had been benefiting from sweetheart oil deals in Iraq for years. But Afghanistan?
That small, rocky, undeveloped, desperately poor nation dominated by tribal warlords? Yeah, sure the war on terror is just an excuse. We've been lusting to take over Afghanistan for years. As if America needs a warm-water port. ...
"What right have you to go into Iraq?" she asks. "Where does the U.N. get that right?" I counter.
For me it is a serious question. The United Nations has its uses, but how can the majority vote of bureaucrats representing dictatorships make a war right or wrong?
But we can't get into a conversation about whether the Iraqi war is a just one, because for her my question is in itself a moral atrocity: "The U.N. is peace!" she bursts out peremptorily, passionately. Doing what the U.N. says is right. Acting without U.N. permission makes you wrong. She trusts the U.N. to keep her safe. I trust the government of the United States of America." (Hat tip: Erik.)"IHT and the Terror Strategy" (HonestReporting, 2004/08/31)
"Reporter Jonathan Cook endorses terrorism as 'the surest way' to promote Palestinian goals.": "Yesterday (Aug. 30) in the International Herald Tribune, Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook responded to the visit of Mahatma Gandhi's grandson, who urged Palestinians — in the spirit of his grandfather — to adopt peaceful paths to promote their cause.
Cook actually rejects Gandhi's suggestion as impractical for Palestinians, claiming that 'nonviolence is unlikely to be effective as a strategy,' and that Palestiniansnow understand that violence is the surest way to get their struggle noticed. Bombing buses is immoral, but it makes the front pages, reminding the world that there is a conflict.
In other words, Cook understands and appreciates a 'need' for Palestinians to conduct suicide bombings like the ones that shattered Be'er Sheva on Tuesday. By endorsing terror in this manner, Cook gives hope to terrorists the world over that promotion of their cause will be in direct proportion to the magnitude of their attack." (See also: "Nonviolent protest offers little hope for Palestinians" (Jonathan Cook, International Herald Tribune, 2004/08/30))
"New Report Analyses European Aid to Palestinians - Finds Evidence of Foul Play" (EUFunding.org, 2004/08/31)
"The Funding for Peace Coalition (FPC) has released a new report detailing the diversion of unprecedented sums of financial aid from the Palestinian people towards corruption and violence.
The FPC report is entitled “Managing European Taxpayers’ Money: Supporting The Palestinian Arabs – A Study In Transparency”. It publishes evidence, which substantiates a compelling connection between European funding and ongoing Palestinian corruption and terrorism. It also highlights the utter failure of European organisations to monitor where these funds have been directed. The details of theft, nepotism, and embezzlement on the part of the PA are supported by incompetence and apathy on the part of European agencies.
As FPC has continuously stressed that the PA has soaked up huge sums of donor aid. Since 1993, the European Union alone has contributed over €2 billion directly and indirectly to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Member states have donated a further €2 billion in the same period." (See also the report [PDF]: "Managing European Taxpayers' Money: Supporting The Palestinian Arabs - A Study In Transparency" (EUFunding.org, 2004/08/31))
"That naked body"
(Expatica, 2004/08/31)
"'That naked body' from Submission © Theo van Gogh""Unmasking Islamic domestic violence" (Cormac Mac Ruairi, Expatica, 2004/08/31)
Submission II: "The central message claimed in the 10-minute film "Submission, part 1", is that the Koran preaches Muslim women should submit to Allah in all things — and that their men should beat them when they are judged to have stepped out of line.":
"A woman in dark robes places a prayer mat on the floor and she begins to pray to Allah. She is surrendering to her God and Allah's wishes as expressed in the holy Koran.
When the camera moves closer, we see all is not as it first appears: her garments are transparent and her breasts are clearly visible. The Koran forbids all Muslims — men and women — to show themselves naked in public.
And though it is probably not strictly banned, we can only imagine the quotes from the Koran written in calligraphy on her body must also breach the spirit of Islamic religious law. The depicted texts from the Koran deal with the perscribed punishments for women who "misbehave".
As the film continues, we hear four tragic stories of women being forced into arranged marriages, being whipped, beaten and raped. We see images of backs marked by a whip and a woman's face reduced to a bloody pulp by her man's fists.""Refugee who became Dutch MP defies Islam with film about Koran" (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/08/31)
Submission I: "After describing the Prophet Mohammed as a pervert, Ayaan Hirsi Ali already needs round-the-clock protection from the Dutch security services.
Now the Muslim apostate and rising star of Dutch politics has pushed her luck even further with a film exhibiting verses of the Koran across the chest, stomach and thighs of an almost naked girl.
Mrs Hirsi Ali, who has risen from Somali asylum seeker to Dutch MP in 12 years, produced the film broadcast on Dutch television on Sunday night to highlight the continued oppression of Muslim women in Europe. ...
One battered victim in a torn dress, exposes her shoulders and arms covered with lash wounds and the text of Verse 34, Chapter 4, The Women.
"Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made them excel and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient. Those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping-places and beat them," it says." (See also: "Somali refugee follows in Fortuyn's footsteps with attack on imams" (The Daily Telegraph, 2003/01/11), "No More Fanaticism as Usual" (Salman Rushdie, The New York Times, 2002/11/27), "Behind the Veil: A Muslim Woman Speaks Out" (Marlise Simons, The New York Times, 2002/11/09) and "Woman in hiding after she lambasts Islam" (Andrew Osborn, The Observer, 2002/10/06))"Bush: 'You cannot show weakness in this world'" (NBC Today, 2004/08/31)
Bush on the war on terror in an interview with 'Today' host Matt Lauer: "President Bush: 'I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world –- let's put it that way. I have a two pronged strategy. On the one hand is to find them before they hurt us, and that's necessary. I’m telling you it's necessary. The country must never yield, must never show weakness [and] must continue to lead. To find al-Qaida affiliates who are hiding around the world and … harm us and bring ‘em to justice –- we're doing a good job of it. I mean we are dismantling the al-Qaidaas we knew it. The long-term strategy is to spread freedom and liberty, and that's really kind of an interesting debate. You know there's some who say well, ‘You know certain people can't self govern and accept, you know, a former democracy.’ I just strongly disagree with that. I believe that democracy can take hold in parts of the world that are now non-democratic and I think it's necessary in order to defeat the ideologies of hate. History has shown that it can work, that spreading liberty does work. After all, Japan is our close ally and my dad fought against the Japanese. Prime Minister Koizumi, is one of the closest collaborators I have in working to make the world a more peaceful place.'" (See also: "Bush Recants, Says Terror War Will Be Won" (Scott Lindlaw, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/08/31): "President Bush said repeatedly on Tuesday that the United States will win its war against terrorism, trying to contain political damage from the doubt he expressed a day earlier. "We may never sit down at a peace table, but make no mistake about it, we are winning and we will win," Bush told 6,500 veterans at an American Legion convention.")Note: Thanks to Martin Lindeskog for picking Watch as the "Best International" blog in his nominations for washingtonpost.com's 2004 Readers' Choice Awards.
Monday,
August 30, 2004
News and commentary:
"War against America" (Barry Rubin, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/08/30)
Iran II: "Something remarkable has happened, even by the Middle East's usual standards. For the first time in history states in the region are conducting a systematic, covert war against the United States.
The question is, what can America do about it? Not much.
The war is being conducted in Iraq, mainly by Iran, but also by Syria. In both cases, evidence indicates that:
Groups are being encouraged to attack and kill Americans in Iraq. ...
Imagine if it had been revealed five or 10 years ago that Iran was urging, ordering, organizing, and paying hundreds or even thousands of people to kill Americans on a daily basis. Now this situation is being taken for granted. ...
Arguably, any gain in the "fear factor" brought about by the US overthrow of Saddam is being eroded. Those who argue, in the words of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini two decades ago, that the US cannot do a "damn thing" are having that feeling reinforced today.
The Iraq war's outcome has undermined the credibility of US power no matter how long American forces remain in Iraq. Indeed, one could argue that the longer they remain, the worse the problem will become.""Taking Iran at its word" (Steven Stalinsky, The Jerusalem Post, 2004/08/30)
Iran I: "There are growing indications that Iran may be planning an attack on American soil. These indicators are not secret – they appear in speeches, newspaper articles, TV programs, and sermons in Iran by figures linked to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other government officials. All discuss potential Iranian attacks on the US, which will subsequently lead to its destruction. ...
Abbassi's speech further detailed that "[Iran's] missiles are now ready to strike at their civilization, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Leader [Ali Khamenei], we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations."
In fact, over the past few months Khamenei has been vocal about the impending "destruction of the US." In May he was quoted in the Iranian paper Jomhouri-Ye Eslami as stating that "the world will witness the annihilation of this arrogant regime." ...
An editorial in the July 6 edition of the Iranian daily Kayhan, the conservative paper affiliated with Khamenei, issued another warning for the future:
'the White House's 80 years of exclusive rule are likely to become 80 seconds of Hell that will burn to ashes That very day, those who resist [Iran] will be struck from directions they never expected. The heartbeat of the crisis is undoubtedly [dictated by] the hand of Iran.'" (See also: "Iran's Revolutionary Guards Official Threatens Suicide Operations: 'Our Missiles Are Ready to Strike at Anglo-Saxon Culture... There Are 29 Sensitive Sites in the U.S. and the West...'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 723, 2004/05/28))"Kidnappers Extend Deadline for French Hostages" (Heba Kandil, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2004/08/30)
"Militants holding two French journalists hostage in Iraq gave France another 24 hours on Monday to revoke its ban on Muslim headscarves in schools, Al Jazeera reported.
The Arabic TV station showed a tape of the journalists urging the French people to hold protests to persuade their government to retract the headscarf law, saying that otherwise they might be killed.
The French government said earlier there was no question of the ban being revoked. ...
France has scrambled to save Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, both of whom spoke on the video tape.
"I call on President (Jacques) Chirac to... retract the veil ban immediately and I call on French people to protest the veil ban. It is a wrong and unjust law and we may die at any time," Chesnot said, according to Al Jazeera's translation into Arabic.
Chesnot and Malbrunot appeared calm in the video, seemed to have been shot in a room flooded with daylight.""Al-Sadr Calls on Militia to Stop Fighting" (Todd Pitman, AP/Yahoo! News, 2004/08/30)
"Rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for his followers across Iraq to end fighting against U.S. and Iraqi forces and is planning to join the political process in the coming days, an al-Sadr aide said Monday. ...
Al-Sadr also called for U.S. and Iraqi forces to withdraw from the center of Iraqi cities, Sheik Ali Smeisim told The Associated Press. However, that did not appear to be a condition for the unilateral ceasefire.
"I call on the interim Iraqi government to have patience ... and to pull back the American and Iraqi forces from the center of Iraqi cities," Smeisim said, speaking on behalf of al-Sadr. "At the same time I call on the forces of the Mahdi Army (militia) to ... stop firing until the announcement of the political program adopted by the Sadrist movement."
When asked if the cease fire would take effect immediately, he said: 'I hope so.'""Jewish conspiracies in the Pentagon?" (David Frum, National Review, 2004/08/30)
"Somebody sold CBS News, NBC, and the Washington Post a grand conspiracy theory of sinister Zionist influence in the Pentagon based on … well on what really? The theory alleges that
a) Two years ago, some Pentagon planners wrote a draft memo suggesting that the US adopt a tougher policy toward Iran;
b) One of those planners then supposedly informed a friend at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee about the memo – who in turn informed the Israeli embassy.
Can we pause to consider what an amazing non-story all of this is?
The memo in question - a draft of a proposed presidential policy directive for Iran - was essentially rejected. The Bush administration has opted since 2001 for a policy of engagement and attempted compromise with Iran. For all practical purposes, the memo was an expression of something close to a purely personal opinion.
And even if the memo had been adopted, it involved no spycraft, no technical secrets. It simply offered a vision of what US policy toward Iran ought to be: a series of policy options.
Discussing policy options with knowledgeable people – and even with allied governments – is not “espionage.” ...
But by cleverly shopping it to journalists who were eager to strike a blow at the Bush administration, a fizzle of a story was (at least temporarily) transformed into a one-day wonder." (See also: "FBI uncovers 'Israeli mole' in the Pentagon" (Julian Coman, The Sunday Telegraph, 2004/08/29))"Cheney hails Bush as ‘the leader we need'" (Ken Fireman and J. Jioni Palmer, Newsday.com, 2004/08/30)
"Bush, in the midst of a seven-day swing through several battleground states, acknowledged in an interview with Time magazine that U.S. forces invading Iraq last year were unprepared for the rapid collapse of Saddam Hussein's regular army and the stubborn insurgency that followed.
"Had we had to do it over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success - being so successful so fast that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in escaped and lived to fight another day," Bush told the magazine." (See also: "'I've Gained Strength'" (Nancy Gibbs and John F. Dickerson, TIME, 2004/08/29))"Paris panic after journalists kidnapped in Iraq" (Colin Randall, The Daily Telegraph, 2004/08/30)
"President Jacques Chirac sent his foreign minister to the Middle East last night to try to resolve a hostage crisis in Iraq that has thrown his government into panic.
He made his decision after the Iraqi kidnappers of