Archived news and commentary: April 11 - 17, 2005

2005/04/11 - 2005/04/17
2005/04/04 - 2005/04/10
2005/03/28 - 2005/04/03
2005/03/21 - 2005/03/27
2005/03/14 - 2005/03/20
2005/03/07 - 2005/03/13

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, April 17, 2005

News and commentary:

"It’s not the end in Iraq but it is the end of the beginning" (Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times, 2005/04/17)
"Saddam is gone and finished. So is Saddamism. We forget now the appalling squalor and brutality he inflicted on his country. But in the Kurdish north, where he had been banished for more than a decade, you can see the stirrings of what ordinary Iraqis call a “normal country”.
The same in the marshlands of the south, where a fraction of the priceless environment is beginning to revive and there is no more fear of Saddam’s weaponry and ruthlessness.
Yes, his former apparatchiks continue to intimidate and murder. But they appear to be weakening under steady assault from coalition forces and better intelligence from local Iraqis now convinced they have a democratic future. Attacks on allied forces are at new lows; and the hideous and often incompetent murders of Iraqi civilians — close to 30 dead in a couple of days last week — are becoming more insights into the nihilism of the insurgency than their brandishing of potential victory. ...
A fairy tale of easy liberation became a short story of war and then a rambling novel of endless conflict but diminishing violence. I’ve stopped hoping for a happy ending but I see no reason to expect a tragic one either. Just a long, hard, qualified and still not inevitable success."

"We're Rich, You're Not. End of Story" (Bruce Bawer, The New York Times, 2005/04/17)
"OSLO — THE received wisdom about economic life in the Nordic countries is easily summed up: people here are incomparably affluent, with all their needs met by an efficient welfare state. They believe it themselves. Yet the reality - as this Oslo-dwelling American can attest, and as some recent studies confirm - is not quite what it appears.":
"All this was illuminated last year in a study by a Swedish research organization, Timbro, which compared the gross domestic products of the 15 European Union members (before the 2004 expansion) with those of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia. (Norway, not being a member of the union, was not included.)
After adjusting the figures for the different purchasing powers of the dollar and euro, the only European country whose economic output per person was greater than the United States average was the tiny tax haven of Luxembourg, which ranked third, just behind Delaware and slightly ahead of Connecticut.
The next European country on the list was Ireland, down at 41st place out of 66; Sweden was 14th from the bottom (after Alabama), followed by Oklahoma, and then Britain, France, Finland, Germany and Italy. The bottom three spots on the list went to Spain, Portugal and Greece.
Alternatively, the study found, if the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom, topping only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi. In short, while Scandinavians are constantly told how much better they have it than Americans, Timbro's statistics suggest otherwise."

"Suicide by Secularism?" (George F. Will, The Washington Post, 2005/04/17)
"Europe itself is withering. On the day of John Paul II's funeral, the European Union's statistics agency reported that the decline of birthrates means that within five years deaths will exceed births in the European Union. By 2013 Italy's population will begin to decline; the next year Germany's will begin to drop. After 2010 Europe's population growth will be entirely from immigration. By 2025 not even immigration will prevent declining fertility from accelerating what one historian calls the largest "sustained reduction in European population since the Black Death of the 14th century."
In his new book "The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God," George Weigel, biographer of John Paul II, argues that Europe's "demographic suicide" will cause its welfare states to buckle and is creating a "vacuum into which Islamic immigrants are flowing." Since 1970 the 20 million legal Islamic immigrants equal the combined populations of Ireland, Denmark and Belgium.
"What," Weigel asks, 'is happening when an entire continent, wealthier and healthier than ever before, declines to create the human future in the most elemental sense, by creating a next generation?'" (See also: "Europe's Apocalypse" (Daniel Johnson, The New York Sun, 2005/04/11))

"A New Power Rises Across Mideast" (Scott Wilson and Daniel Williams, The Washington Post, 2005/04/17)
"The photogenic protests [in Beirut] were the result of the rising power of a network of political reform movements in the Arab world, organized by young, Westernized and technology-savvy activists who had been attacking the rigid underpinnings of their closed societies for years without much success. Now, Francis and his group were seeing results. The Martyrs' Square protests helped trigger the fall of the Lebanese government and force Syria to pull its army and intelligence agents out of Lebanon, a stunning retreat.
"No one will be able to deny that the people have finally forced an Arab government to leave," said Wael Abou Faour, a young Druze Muslim political leader who helped draft the media strategy. "Syria is out, the security regime is collapsing and reconciliation is a part of every Lebanese mind."
The prospect of sectarian violence still shadows Lebanon; crackdowns against dissent threaten reform movements in Egypt; and Saudi Arabia and other autocratic strongholds in the Middle East are taking only the most cautious steps toward democracy.
But across the region, political reformers are benefiting from the unifying forces of technology and mass media. Digital channels outside the control of states are carrying anything from a Kuwaiti woman's call for voting rights in her country to a Lebanese Christian's demands to drive Syrian troops out from his. The foot soldiers are Islamic political activists in some cases, Bob Dylan disciples, communists or Arab secular nationalists in others. Many are united only in their common desire for fair elections, free speech and political rights."

"500,000 illegal migrants, says Home Office" (David Leppard and Robert Winnett, The Times, 2005/04/17)
"The government has secretly calculated there are about 500,000 illegal immigrants in Britain despite repeated claims by ministers that they do not know the scale of the problem.
The figure has been compiled by Home Office officials. Yet one of its ministers told MPs in February there was “no official estimate”.
The research was ordered by Tony Blair more than a year ago “as a matter of urgency” following a Downing Street summit on immigration, a confidential Whitehall memo reveals.
However, in the face of a political controversy over lax controls at Britain’s borders, experts involved were told not to reveal the figure. It includes not only migrants who have illegally entered Britain to work in the black market but also failed asylum seekers who should have been deported.
The estimate — equivalent to the population of Sheffield — is far higher than previous figures from campaigners such as Migration Watch UK and is likely to intensify the row over immigration."

"Ricin terror gang 'planned to unleash terror on the Heathrow Express'" (David Bamber, The Sunday Telegraph, 2005/04/17)
"A poison attack planned by al-Qa'eda-trained operatives was aimed at the busy Heathrow Express rail link and would have been "our September 11", the Metropolitan Police has revealed.
A plot to bring death and terror to the country was disclosed last week after Kamel Bourgass, 32, an Islamic extremist from Algeria, was convicted at the Old Bailey and jailed for 17 years.
Senior Whitehall officials have told The Telegraph that Bourgass and some of his associates intended to target the busy rail link between central London and Heathrow Airport. The plan was to place ricin, a fast-acting and potentially lethal home-made poison, on hand rails and in lavatories on the trains. ...
A senior officer at Scotland Yard said: 'This was going to be our September 11, our Madrid. There is no doubt about it, if this had come off this would have been one of al-Qa'eda's biggest strikes.'"

"Sunni Militants Take 100 Shiites Hostage" (Alexandra Zavis, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/04/17)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi security forces surrounded a central Iraqi village Sunday after Sunni militants took as many as 100 Shiite Muslims hostage and threatened to kill the captives if other Shiites did not leave town. The explosive sectarian standoff played out, as 17 people — including an American soldier — were killed in insurgent attacks elsewhere in Iraq. ...
Husseini said about 100 masked militants drove through Madain, capturing Shiite youngsters and old men. He and government officials said between 35 to 100 people were taken hostage.
A resident reached by telephone said the militants had returned early Saturday, shouting through loudspeakers that all Shiites must leave or the hostages would be killed. Later, the resident said, the town appeared calm and there was no sign of insurgents. Other residents said no hostages had been taken. The conflicting accounts could not be reconciled."

Saturday, April 16, 2005

News and commentary:

"The Ward Churchill Notoriety Tour" (Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard, from the 2005/04/25 issue)
Labash meets Ward Churchill and his fans: "INSIDE THE WOMEN'S BUILDING AUDITORIUM, I take my seat in the media balcony, "media" being used loosely to describe the people who point their cameras Churchill's way, then applaud everything he says. Below us is a mass of the usual suspects: the masked banditos, the grown men wearing chicken heads in homage to Churchill's book title, the tie-dyed frizz-balls who look like spokesmodels for Cherry Garcia ice cream, all emitting the dank human musk that is common in rooms full of people who are so concerned about the military-industrial complex that they don't have time to concern themselves with doing laundry. ...
Churchill, it seems, likes to play at being dangerous, then gets miffed when people take him at his word. Whether he regards the overthrow of a totalitarian maniac like Saddam Hussein as the above-mentioned "usurpation of rights" warranting a call to arms isn't entirely clear, though I doubt it. But what is, as I look down on the rhapsodic crowd, is that the row of guys in chicken heads are all clucking in unison while Churchill affects his revolutionary pose. It's enough to recall the words of Austrian satirist Karl Kraus, who said, 'The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience, so they believe they are as clever as he.'"

"Pro-Syrian Legislator Is Named Lebanon's Next Prime Minister" (Hassan M. Fattah, The New York Times, 2005/04/16)
"President Émile Lahoud of Lebanon on Friday appointed a pro-Syrian businessman and member of Parliament as prime minister-designate, breaking weeks of deadlock over the formation of a Lebanese government and paving the way for parliamentary elections to be held on schedule in late May or June.
The new prime minister, Najib Mikati, has strong ties to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, but he still won broad support from Lebanon's opposition movement in consultations between the government and Parliament over the choice. That cleared the way for Mr. Lahoud to appoint Mr. Mikati, edging out the departing defense minister, Abdelrahim Mrad. ...
Several opposition members told reporters that Mr. Mikati had won them over by promising to refrain from running for election, to hold elections on time and, most importantly, to shake up Lebanon's Syrian-controlled security services. But the opposition said it would take no position in the interim government.
Mr. Samaha noted that even Syria may have supported Mr. Mikati after his opponent, Mr. Mrad, seemed to have become a troubling choice. "He's their friend - he's Bashar's friend," Mr. Samaha said of Mr. Mikati. 'If the Syrians are leaving and know that Mikati is head of the government, they may think it limits their losses.'"

Friday, April 15, 2005

News and commentary:

"Our Not-So-Wise Experts" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2005/04/15)
"Brent Scowcroft predicted on the eve of the Iraqi elections that voting there would increase the risk of civil war. Indeed, he foresaw “a great potential for deepening the conflict.” He also once assured us that Iraq “could become a Vietnam in a way that the Vietnam war never did.” Did he mean perhaps worse than ten years of war and over 50,000 American dead, with the Cambodian holocaust next door?
Zbigniew Brzezinski feared that we could not do what we are in fact presently doing in Iraq: “I do not think we can stay in Iraq in the fashion we’re in now…If it cannot be changed drastically, it should be terminated.” He added ominously that it would take 500,000 troops, $500 billion, and resumption of the military draft to achieve security in Iraq. Did he mean Iraq needed more American troops than did the defense of Europe in the Cold War? ...
September 11 was the wage of decades of American appeasement and neglect — a pathological Middle East left alone to blame others for its own self-induced mess, kept "in its box" by American money, a few missiles, and soft talk — like a spoiled child allowed to act up because it was incapable of serious mature behavior and because the ensuing tantrums were not worth the messy efforts at remediation.
We’ve seen some very strange things since this war started on September 11. But nothing is quite as odd as the past architects of failure weighing in on the dangers of “neoWilsonianism,” “neoconservative ideologues,” and veiled references to Israeli machinations, as the Bush administration finally sets right three decades these people’s flawed policies and tries to promote a new Americanism based on our own universal values and aspirations."

"Bush vs. Democracy" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/04/15)
"The thing is, both the US and Israel are largely responsible for the current political realities in the PA – where not only are all major political parties also terrorist organizations, but the relative popularity of each party is directly proportional to the volume of terror attacks it has carried out. It was the Bush Administration that first lumped the January 9 elections for PA chairman together with the January 30 general elections in Iraq for a transitional constitutional assembly, as well as with last month's anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon as evidence of a wave of democratization in the Middle East.
This conflation of these events has made it difficult for the general public to understand just how different the situation in the PA is from that of Iraq and Lebanon. As events in the latter two advance the goals of the global war on terrorism, the events in the PA work to its detriment. ...
Whereas in both Iraq and Lebanon, terrorists such as Hizbullah, and terrorist-supporting regimes like Jordan and Syria and Iran, are seen as part of the problem, among the Palestinians the opposite is the case. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians believes that it was terrorism that forced Sharon to move to withdraw Israeli forces from Gaza and northern Samaria, expel all Jewish residents and declare a cessation of offensive operations against terrorists throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The terrorists themselves have been promised protection from the PA regime, which has put out the red carpet and the gravy train to make them feel welcome in the "newly reformed" PA militias, rather than keeping its word to Israel and the US by casting them out of its ranks and imprisoning them for murder."

"Going . . . Going . . . Gone?" (Olivier Guitta, The Weekly Standard, 2005/04/15)
"Will Syria really pull out of Lebanon? Two new reports suggest that the answer may be, 'Not really.'":
"TWO RECENT REPORTS in the Lebanese press suggest that there may be less to Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon than meets the eye. First, the daily Al Seyassah (a Kuwaiti paper which carries a Lebanese edition) reported that, according to sources close to the Lebanese Ministry of Interior, tens of thousands of Syrians have recently been naturalized. And among them are 5,000 Syrian Secret Service personnel. So, technically these officers are now Lebanese citizens with no reason to leave their "own country." Second, according to An-Nahar, one of the leading and oldest Lebanese dailies, dating from 1933, Lebanese police in Beirut arrested a Lebanese Army car occupied by two Syrian military officers. Meaning that Syrians can also infiltrate the Lebanese Army and pose as legitimate Lebanese."

"The ricin fall-out" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2005/04/15)
"In the Times, Simon Jenkins amply fulfils my prophecy of yesterday, that the collapse of the ricin trials would prove a field day for the anti-war mob. Jenkins lets rip:

'[WE ARE GOING steadily mad.] No, there were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no 9/11 style threat, no ricin, no bombs or explosives, just some old photostats and a psychotic individual with undoubtedly evil intent...There is not the faintest convergence between the Bourgass case as revealed in the Old Bailey this week and the crazed media and political coverage of it. The BBC’s 6pm news on Wednesday night was a disgrace, worse than anything during the Gilligan affair. But because it served Downing Street’s purpose it will doubtless avoid censure. Nor was the press any better. Mention the word terrorist and sanity flies the coop.'

So everyone who thinks that Bourgass was part of an al Qaeda plot is insane, and party to Blair's lies over Iraq. Bourgass was nothing but a lone nut. Perhaps Jenkins should read his own paper. For a few pages previously, a report by Sean O'Neill paints a very different picture. O'Neill provides details of the belief by police and security sources that the conviction of Bourgass marks the final smashing of a major Algerian terror cell linked to al Qaeda headed by abu Doha, who is currently held in Belmarsh prison awaiting extradition to the US. Bourgass was a member of this cell." (See also: "The ricin plot" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2005/04/14). Also: "A sledgehammer for a nut" (Simon Jenkins, The Times, 2005/04/15) and "Was ricin the last act of terror cell?" (Sean O’Neill, The Times, 2005/04/15))

"Can Bush and Rice really be turning Washington all warm and fuzzy?" (Gerard Baker, The Times, 2005/04/15)
"The second Bush term will place a much higher premium on the value of international support, and work much harder to get it.
Two big developments lie behind this change of approach. The first is the remarkable ascendancy of Dr Rice. She did not distinguish herself much as National Security Adviser in the first Bush term. Seeing her job as one of interpreting events and mediating disputes for the President, she did not play the part of a foreign policymaking principal.
Now she is, in truth, in charge of foreign policy. Donald Rumsfeld is still around but he is a diminished figure, assumed to be on his way out within a year or so. Dick Cheney is still there, but his influence over the President has waned as the Secretary of State’s has waxed. The fact is that Dr Rice now enjoys the closest relationship a secretary of state has had with a president since Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon more than 30 years ago.
Although her own world view is still a little cloudy, it is very clear that it is not the robust, UN-despising, Europe-denigrating one in vogue at the Pentagon and in the Vice-President’s office. She won a clear victory on the first big foreign-policy question of the new term — whether to back Europe’s diplomacy on Iran; and she has won a host of other, smaller arguments.
But there is an even bigger reason why change is now in the air in Washington. There is a growing confidence across the Bush Administration that the hard and unpopular choices made in the first term have begun to bear fruit. Iraq is rapidly becoming the success the Left has feared. There is talk at the Pentagon that the first withdrawal of US troops could take place next year. There is evident excitement and optimism about the broader Middle East; democratic change from a free and peaceful Palestine to Afghanistan is no longer a neocon fantasy."

"Left on the wrong side of history" (Michael Costello, The Australian, 2005/04/15)
"How has it happened that the Left of politics across the world has ended up opposing a foreign policy philosophy of spreading democracy in favour of supporting the traditional conservative agenda of stability, sovereignty and the status quo? Because that is what the Left is doing in its hostile reaction to George W. Bush's second inaugural address. ...
A foreign policy without principle will fail because it is fundamentally sterile. That is why unadorned so-called "realism" in foreign policy, with its emphasis on stability and the status quo, can sound clever and sophisticated but in the end implodes under its own emptiness. But principle must be pursued with pragmatism and with patience if it is not to end in recklessness and aggression.
The key thing for those on the Left to understand is that intense dislike of Bush and echoes of Vietnam do not make a foreign policy. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Bolton - they too will pass. What will go on is the great human desire to be free, which should be at the core of our foreign policy. The great danger for the Left is that its Vietnam and Bush obsessions may mean that it will end up on the wrong side of history."

"Iraqis Find Graves Thought to Hold Hussein's Victims" (Robert F. Worth, The New York Times, 2005/04/15)
"Investigators have discovered several mass graves in southern Iraq that are believed to contain the bodies of people killed by Saddam Hussein's government, including one estimated to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say.
The graves, discovered over the past three months, have not yet been dug up because of the risks posed by the continuing insurgency and the lack of qualified forensic workers, said Bakhtiar Amin, Iraq's interim human rights minister. But initial excavations have substantiated the accounts of witnesses to a number of massacres. If the estimated body counts prove correct, the new graves would be among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings that have gradually come to light since the fall of Mr. Hussein's government two years ago. At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of some 300,000 people have been found since the American invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say."

Thursday, April 14, 2005

News and commentary:

"Religious extremists an insult to our values" (Pamela Bone, The Age, 2005/04/14)
"'Every minute in the world a woman is raped, and she has no one to blame but herself, for she has displayed her beauty to the whole world,' Sheikh Feiz Muhammad told a packed public meeting in the Bankstown Town Hall last month. "Strapless, backless, sleeveless - they are nothing but satanical. Mini-skirts, tight jeans - all this to tease men and to appeal to (their) carnal nature."
There was pressure on Muslim women to unveil, the sheikh said, and this was because "they want you to be available for their gross, disgusting, filthy abomination! They want you to be a sex symbol!" The woman who wore the hijab was hiding her beauty from the eyes of "lustful, hungry wolves", he said.
Sheikh Feiz Muhammad teaches at the Global Islamic Youth Centre in Liverpool, NSW. His long, ranting speech, damning and ridiculing Western culture (if you allow your wife to watch the "devil" of daytime television, he advised men, you will come home from work and find she is being "negative" towards you) was greeted with frequent applause.
Somewhat more moderately, Dr Amirudin Ahamed wrote in last week's Sunday Age (10/4) that a woman who wears a short skirt and gets drunk 'would definitely be at higher risk of sexual violation than, say, a sober Muslim woman at home.'" (Hat tip: Tim Blair.)

"The Bolton brouhaha" (Saul Singer, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/04/14)
"If a vote were taken today in the State Department or the CIA on which the staff agreed with more, Bush's ringing second inaugural or its blistering critique by former State official Richard Haass ("Freedom is not a Doctrine"), it is obvious which would win overwhelmingly.
The real Democratic objection to Bolton, of course, has nothing to do with bureaucratic style but with what the New York Times calls his "withering disdain" for the UN. With Bolton, this clearly is a case of familiarity breeding contempt, as he was previously in charge of international organizations at the State Department.
Bolton has said, colorfully, that 10 stories could be lopped off the UN's headquarters without the world being worse off, and that the UN "doesn't exist." The latter may sound bizarre, but is not only accurate, but important to remember in the sense he argued, namely that the UN has no existence independent of the will of its members. I always thought it strange, for example, that the UN was a "member" of the Quartet, when the UN is not sovereign and cannot have a view of its own. ...
But even the UN is not the real issue; or in any event, what distresses me most about this episode. After all, the Democrats only embarrass themselves by sticking up for the UN, which even Kofi Annan says is going through the most serious crisis in its history and must be thoroughly reformed. Of greater concern is the deepening foreign policy polarization this fracas reflects."

"The ricin plot" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2005/04/14)
Bourgass III: "The police and Labour politicians have tried to present the outcome as some kind of triumph, proving that there was indeed a terrorist threat to the nation. On the contrary – this case was a presentational catastrophe. For apart from the murder of DC Oake, the prosecution went belly-up. Of nine defendants in related trials, only one has been convicted. The others have walked free, acquitted of conspiracy.
The result is that the anti-war left is having a field day. For activists such as radical solicitor Gareth Peirce, the maverick intelligence analyst Duncan Campbell and the anti-war media including a bunch of ‘security’ websites, the acquittals mean that Bourgass was a loner, there was never any al Qaeda plot and this threat was simply cooked up by Tony Blair to justify the Iraq war by creating a climate of fear.
This would mean that British intelligence and the British police were all lying too about Bourgass’s connections to al Qaeda, that he was ‘handpicked to be trained in the art of making and dispensing poisons’, as the Daily Mail reported.
It would mean a number of extraordinary coincidences. For this ‘loner’ just happened to be associating with a number of people who just happened to be veterans of the Al Qaida training camps in Afghanistan, where he himself just happened to have been trained, and who all in turn just happened to be engaged in activities which bore a remarkable similarity. ...
All we do know is that politicians are making hay with this, that the police have been shown to be utterly incompetent and that a vitally important series of trials has ended in a judicial debacle. In the absence of any credible sources producing credible information, the outcome is going to be yet more cynicism, more confusion and more outright disbelief about the terrorist threat.
Guess who is laughing all the way to the bomb factory."

"The chaos that allows a failed asylum seeker to stay and kill" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/04/14)
Bourgass II: "There is no more incendiary issue in the election campaign than what to do about immigration and asylum. When Michael Howard suggested on Sunday that Britain's security was at risk because terrorists had used the asylum system to enter the country, he was accused by Labour of using "scurrilous, Right-wing, ugly tactics" to scare voters.
Yet the news yesterday that an Algerian asylum seeker, whose case was turned down by the authorities, was able to remain in the country to join a terrorist plot and, ultimately, to kill a police officer illustrates far more graphically than hours of party political posturing how badly the procedures have broken down. The killer, who went under a variety of names, including Kamel Bourgass, even used the envelope that contained his rejection letter from the Immigration Service to store recipes for ricin and other deadly chemicals that were intended to be used in a terror attack.
Bourgass is one of an estimated quarter of a million people who have come to Britain in recent years claiming asylum and who stayed on despite being turned down, even after exhausting all avenues of appeal."

"Asylum chaos left al-Qa'eda man free to plot ricin terror in Britain" (John Steele and Nigel Bunyan, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/04/14)
Bourgass I: "An illegal immigrant trained by al-Qa'eda to be one of its top poisoners was jailed for 17 years yesterday for leading a plot to terrorise Britain with ricin and cyanide.
As he was sentenced at the Old Bailey, it was disclosed that Kamel Bourgass, an Islamic extremist from Algeria, had been convicted last year of murdering Special Branch officer Stephen Oake.
The conviction of Bourgass, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of Dc Oake during an anti-terrorist operation in Manchester two years ago - reignited controversy over the shambolic asylum system.
Bourgass entered Britain as an asylum seeker in January 2000, claiming falsely to be fleeing persecution.
When his application failed in August 2001, he became an "illegal absconder". But he was never identified or detained, despite a conviction for shoplifting in 2002 which led to a night in cells."

"Hamas militant adds ballot box to armoury" (Stephen Farrell, The Times, 2005/04/14)
"Hamas, the militant Islamic group, will not only challenge Mahmoud Abbas’s moderate Fatah movement in the elections in July, but also seek to topple it from leadership of the Palestinian parliament.
Mahmoud Zahar, Hamas’s senior leader in Gaza, disclosed the full extent of the group’s ambitions in a rare interview. ...
Speaking at a secret location in the Gaza Strip, Dr Zahar, 60, told The Times: “Very simply, nobody can deny that if Israel is going to leave the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank, that was because of the intifada, because of the armed struggle, because of the big sacrifices of Hamas for this goal. It was not because of negotiations, or the goodwill of Israel, or the Americans or Europeans.” ...
Dr Zahar said that polls underestimated Hamas’s support when it won seven of the nine municipal elections it contested this year. “It may be 25 per cent, it may be 50 per cent, it may be more than that,” he said. 'Nobody can tell, because this is the first time we are going to participate in political elections.
We have three options: either to be the majority and to ask others to participate according to our programme; second, to be a minority and participate in government; or to be a strong political opponent in the parliament. If we are a majority, we are going to establish the government, or will form the Cabinet.'"

"U.S. Man Held in Iraq Begs For Life" (Ellen Knickmeyer, The Washington Post, 2005/04/14)
"BAGHDAD, April 13 -- A distraught American hostage appeared on a television videotape with automatic weapons trained on his head Wednesday, a day that recalled the darker periods of Iraq's insurgency as bombs killed at least 14 people and U.S. Marines clashed with insurgents near the Syrian border.
As insurgent attacks have diminished since national elections on Jan. 30, Iraqi and U.S. officials have focused largely on shaping the country's political future and have expressed hope that the insurgency was winding down. But a taped broadcast on al-Jazeera television showed a scene more typical of last summer and fall: a foreigner pleading for his life as gunmen pointed automatic weapons at his head.
Jeffrey J. Ake, 47, of LaPorte, Ind., apparently reading from a statement on a wooden desktop in front of him, asked the United States to start a dialogue with Iraqi insurgents, to start withdrawing its forces from Iraq and to save his life, according to al-Jazeera. In one hand, he held open what appeared to be a U.S. passport, and in the other, an ID card."

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

News and commentary:

"Report clears U.S. in friendly fire incident" (Jim Miklaszewski, MSNBC, 2005/04/13)
"BAGHDAD - The friendly fire shooting at a U.S. military checkpoint last month in Baghdad wounded Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena and killed intelligence agent Nicola Calipari.
Now, NBC News has learned that a preliminary report from a joint U.S.-Italian investigation has cleared the American soldiers of any wrongdoing and provides new details into the shooting. ...
The investigation found the car was about 130 yards from the checkpoint when the soldiers flashed their lights as a warning to stop. But the car kept coming and, at 90 yards, warning shots were fired. At 65 yards, when the car failed to stop, the soldiers used lethal force — a machine gun burst that killed Calipari and wounded Sgrena and the driver.
Senior U.S. military officials say it took only about four seconds from the first warning to the fatal shots, but insist the soldiers acted properly under the current rules of engagement."

"Four Cheers for John Bolton!" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2005/04/13)
The New York Times wanted to postpone the Iraqi election, so who could possibly doubt their wise councel in matters of foreign policy?:
"Has he been confirmed yet? Has he been confirmed yet? Sorry, but we're really excited about John Bolton being U.N. ambassador. Just look how crabby Gail Collins and crew are over at the New York Times:

. . . outrageous . . . withering disdain . . . just as disturbing . . . Mr. Bush's rewarding loyalty rather than holding officials accountable for mistakes . . . added reasons for denying the job to Mr. Bolton . . . false claims about a weapons program in another nation . . . a detailed indictment of his views . . . long public record of attacking the United Nations . . . Mr. Bolton's lamentation . . . Mr. Bolton's contempt for that process . . . misrepresenting intelligence on Cuba . . . That sounds scary, but it was not true. . . . Mr. Bolton became enraged . . . attempts to dodge accountability . . . almost comical . . . not remotely believable . . . nifty theme music . . . flatly contradicted Mr. Bolton's claim . . . the way the administration vilified another intelligence officer . . . a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" . . . intimidation had had a lasting effect . . . the "no harm, no foul" ploy, saying his misbehavior shouldn't count . . . With America's credibility as low as it is . . .

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank gives the game away, though:

Most Republicans skipped the hearing, leaving Democrats largely unchallenged as they assailed Bolton's knack for making enemies and disparaging the very organization he would serve.

That would be the U.N. -- but of course the American ambassador to the U.N. is supposed to serve America, not the U.N." (See also: "Questioning Mr. Bolton" (The New York Times, 2005/04/13) and "Nominee Reacts Mildly to Democrats' Barbs" (Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, 2005/04/12))

"In Mosul, a Battle 'Beyond Ruthless'" (Steve Fainaru, The Washington Post, 2005/04/13)
"MOSUL, Iraq -- From inside a vacant building, Sgt. 1st Class Domingo Ruiz watched through a rifle scope as three cars stopped on the other side of the road. A man carrying a machine gun got out and began to transfer weapons into the trunk of one of the cars.
"Take him down," Ruiz told a sniper.
The sniper fired his powerful M-14 rifle and the man's head exploded, several American soldiers recalled. As he fell, more soldiers opened fire, killing at least one other insurgent. After the ambush, the Americans scooped up a piece of skull and took it back to their base as evidence of the successful mission.
The March 12 attack -- swift and brutally violent -- bore the hallmarks of operations that have made Ruiz, 39, a former Brooklyn gang member, renowned among U.S. troops in Mosul and, in many ways, a symbol of the optimism that has pervaded the military since Iraq's Jan. 30 elections.
Insurgent attacks in this northern Iraqi city, which numbered more than 100 a week in mid-November, have declined by almost half, according to the military. Indirect attacks -- generally involving mortars or rockets -- on U.S. bases fell from more than 200 a month in December to fewer than 10 in March."

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

News and commentary:

"The Muslim media's culture of death" (Shoaib Choudhury, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/04/12)
Choudhury II: "Children of prominent Bangladeshis now attend the madrassas, where they learn Bangla (our vernacular), Arabic, Urdu, English and, in some places, French, as well as other advertised subjects. But they also learn the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare. Old hates are taught as faith, and they learn to revere Bin Laden, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein and the shahids. Innocent Muslim children are lured toward "jihad," taught to hate Christians and Jews and encouraged to kill them and destroy their property as a religious duty.
It so distresses me that we are allowing these children, the future leaders of Bangladesh, to be brainwashed with hatred and extremism. These institutions are surely breeding thousands of Bin Ladens and Arafats for the future.
I have listened to this filth since childhood. When I grew up, I turned my eyes to the Bible and many other books, had Christian and Jewish friends, and now am convinced that what the mullahs taught was not merely false, but also evil. That is clear not only to me but to many others in my country.
For there to be any chance of lasting peace, this must change. How can we have peace when most Muslims still believe Israel was behind the September 11 attacks on the US? How can we have peace when Muslims see their own leaders refusing even to recognize Israel's right to exist? How can we have peace when we neither hear nor read anything to the contrary?
We can't. Quite simply, there will be no meaningful Muslim presence in any peace dialogue without an effective media in the Muslim world to combat the false images that today build a culture of death." (See also: www.freechoudhury.com and www.penusa.org.)

"An ambassador's lies" (Richard L. Benkin, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/04/12)
Choudhury I: "Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is a journalist imprisoned in Bangladesh for the "crime" of advocating interfaith dialogue and an end to the blind hatred of Israel in his country. ... Shoaib Choudhury is a Muslim who had the courage to condemn radical Islam's growing power in Bangladesh. The newspaper he published and edited, The Weekly Blitz, gave his people their first unbiased news about the Middle East before police grabbed him in 2003 as he prepared to address the Hebrew Writers' Conference in Tel Aviv on "The Role of Media in Creating a Culture of Peace" (see excerpt on this page).
Shortly after his arrest, police raided his home and business, seizing computers, files and other material. A mob then sacked the premises with impunity. His family was threatened, even attacked. His brother twice fled the capital. Mobs gathered in front of their home, and police blamed it all on the Choudhurys' "alliance with the Jews."
The government said Choudhury was "spying for the interests of Israel against the interests of Bangladesh," then orchestrated a vilification campaign. They called Choudhury's undelivered speech their strongest evidence of his perfidy and said he broke Bangladeshi law by trying to visit Israel.
Choudhury remains behind bars in deteriorating health, without due process, and facing a capital offense. Blackballed from employment, his family is on the verge of financial ruin."

"Conservative Professors, an Endangered Species" (Daniel Pipes, New York Sun/danielpipes.org, 2005/04/12)
Pipes on the newly released study on liberal bias among college faculty:
"Conservative complaints about "liberal homogeneity in academia deserve to be taken seriously," the authors conclude. They also state that their findings "suggest strongly that a leftward shift has occurred on college campuses in recent years, to the extent that political conservatives have become an endangered species in some departments."
Endangered species? In the more pungent observation by David Horowitz, "Universities are a left wing monolith these days. A conservative professor, or a Republican or evangelical Christian professor, is as rare as a unicorn." A Harvard Crimson article acknowledges that the Rothman study implies that "Kremlin on the Charles [River]" might in fact be accurate when applied to Harvard.
The Rothman team's work is not likely to receive much of a hearing on campus. The executive director of the Modern Language Association, Rosemary G. Feal, responded to its findings with predictable outrage: "It boggles my mind the degree to which this is rubbish."
Assuming that Ms. Feal's reaction will be the predominant one, the job of creating political balance at Columbia and other universities will require more than nicely asking professors to hire conservatives. It will take a concentrated and protracted effort by stakeholders – alumni, students, parents of students, legislators - to reclaim an institution that has become a fortress for the left." (See also the report [PDF]: "Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty" (Stanley Rothman et al., The Forum/CMPA, Volume 3, Issue 1 2005) Also: "Liberal bias in the ivory tower" (Cathy Young, The Boston Globe, 2005/04/11))

"Seeking Saudi Safe Haven" (Amir Taheri, New York Post, 2005/04/12)
"When the Taliban fell, two visions emerged within the Islamist terror movement.
One vision, identified with Osama bin Laden, wants the movement to continue targeting the West, especially the United States. The other, advocated by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2, wants the "holy war" concentrated in Muslim countries, especially Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. ...
Nevertheless, it is clear that majority opinion within the terror movement favors the al-Zawahiri strategy — which aims to seize control of at least one Muslim country to provide the safe haven that the Islamists enjoyed in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. This is why the past two years have witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of attacks in the four targeted countries.
But even there, things are not going well for the movement. ...
To win in Afghanistan and Iraq, the terror movement would have to defeat not only the local national forces but also the United States and its Coalition allies. To win in Pakistan, al-Zawahiri must crush the Pakistani army, one of the strongest in the world.
All this means that Saudi Arabia is increasingly seen by al-Zawahiri as the softest target for a terrorist take-over.
This is why the terror campaign in the kingdom appears to have moved beyond its initial stage of "propaganda through action" and into a new phase that looks like a military-style effort designed to seize and hold territory which could then be transformed into bases and safe havens."

"Woman walking with fiance murdered" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/04/12)
"Hamas has begun operating a "vice and virtue commando" in the Gaza Strip to safeguard Islamic values, Palestinian security officials and residents told The Jerusalem Post.
The new force, called the Anti-Corruption Unit, is believed to be behind the gruesome murder over the weekend of Yusra al-Azzami, a 22-year-old university student from the northern Gaza Strip.
Her "crime" was that she was seen in public with her fiance. ...
Hamas's "morality" patrolmen first spotted the young couple strolling along the beach in Gaza City, together with Azzami's younger sister. After enjoying the spectacular sunset over the sea, they got into the future husband's car and started driving towards Azzami's home.
According to eyewitness accounts, five masked gunmen who were in another car gave chase, opening fire at Azzami, who was sitting in the front seat next to her fiance. She died instantly.
The fiance and sister were later brutally beaten and moderately injured by the attackers.
The incident took place at a busy intersection in Gaza City.
What happened immediately afterwards left many passersby traumatized.
The assailants dragged the young woman's body out of the car, pouncing upon it mercilessly with clubs and iron bars.
"It was the most horrific crime I've seen in my life," said a university student who witnessed the attack. 'What they did to the body while it was lying on the ground was barbaric. This does not represent Islam.'"

"Iraq Insurgents Fail to Brew Chemical Arms" (Charles J. Haney, AP/My Way, 2005/04/12)
"One scenario in Iraq goes like this: Insurgents finally succeed in concocting chemical weapons and use them against U.S. troops. Not only could it happen, it nearly did, American arms investigators say.
They say Iraqi resistance groups have tried to manufacture "CW," and one might have managed it if the Americans hadn't swooped down on them. The danger has even spilled over into Jordan, where authorities say a plot hatched in Iraq aimed to kill thousands with "poison clouds." The threat demands "sustained attention," says the chief U.S. arms investigator.
The insurgents' work on chemical arms was disclosed in the final report of Charles A. Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group, the account of its fruitless 18-month hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
In a little-noted annex of the 350,000-word document, the joint CIA-Pentagon teams tell of having broken up an insurgent group last June that for six months tried to make weapons agents.
The group had recruited a Baghdad chemist and obtained chemicals from farmers who looted state companies and from shops in Baghdad's chemicals market, the report said. They first tried to make tabun, a nerve agent, but couldn't get the ingredients. Then the chemist, who had no weapons-making experience, was unable to manufacture the blistering agent mustard, although he had the right chemicals, the report said.
The insurgents hired another chemist, who succeeded in making ricin base, a poisonous plant extract, from castor beans, but at that point a U.S. raid on the laboratory, at Baghdad's al-Abud trading complex, disrupted the network."

"The U.N., Preying on the Weak" (Peter Dennis, The Washington Post, 2005/04/12)
"Anyone who was shocked by the most recent revelations of sexual misconduct by United Nations staff has never set foot in a U.N.-sponsored refugee camp. Sex crimes are only one especially disturbing symptom of a culture of abuse that exists in the United Nations precisely because the United Nations and its staff lack accountability.
This lack of accountability is the central blemish on today's United Nations, and it lies behind most of the recent headlines. Whether taking advantage of a malnourished refugee or of a lucrative oil-for-food contract, the temptation is there, the act is easy and the risk of punishment is nil.
I arrived in Sierra Leone as a legal aid worker in the summer of 2003, one year after the release of a damaging report on sexual abuse in U.N. refugee camps in West Africa. Although the report's description of widespread sexual abuse had prompted Secretary General Kofi Annan to issue a strongly worded "zero tolerance" policy, I found abuse of a sexual nature almost every day -- zero compliance with zero tolerance, as one investigator was to write. U.N. leaders had simply not expended any effort beyond lip service to carry out this zero tolerance policy.
In fact, abuse at these camps went beyond sexual violations: Injustices of one sort or another were perpetrated by U.N. missions or their affiliated nongovernmental organizations every day in the camps I visited. Corruption was the norm, in particular the embezzlement of food and funds by NGO officials, which often left camp resources dangerously inadequate. Utterly arbitrary judicial systems in the camps subjected refugees to violent physical punishment or months in prison for trivial offenses -- all at the whim of officials and in the absence of any sort of hearing."

"Issue for Cardinals: Islam as Rival or Partner in Talks" (Ian Fisher, The New York Times, 2005/04/12)
"By coincidence or not, many cardinals mentioned as candidates to be the next pope have strongly expressed positions on Islam, and on whether the Roman Catholic Church's relations with Muslims should be conciliatory or a notch more confrontational. ...
To some degree, the central figure in the debate is one of the most influential cardinals, Joseph Ratzinger.
Cardinal Ratzinger, 77, the German who headed the department dealing with church doctrine under John Paul II, is one of the most conservative voices in the church - a possible pope, but certainly someone whose views will be heard in the conclave that selects the new pope starting next Monday. He represents a skeptical faction, one that sees the relationship between Christianity and Islam more in competition.
Last year, he said he personally opposed Turkey's inclusion into the European Union. "Turkey has always represented a different continent, always in contrast with Europe," he said in an interview with the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. ...
"The rebirth of Islam is due in part to the new material richness acquired by Muslim countries, but mainly to the knowledge that it is able to offer a valid spiritual foundation for the life of its people, a foundation that seems to have escaped from the hands of old Europe," he wrote in an essay called "Europe" in a book, "Without Roots" (Mondadori: 2004). By contrast, he wrote, Europe "appears to be at the start of its decline and fall."
And so he calls for Europe to renew its Christian roots 'if it truly wants to survive.'"

Monday, April 11, 2005

News and commentary:

"Palestinian Authority Still Pushing Anti-Semitism in Textbooks, Israeli Minister Says" (Julie Stahl, CNS News, 2005/04/11)
"In his meeting Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, President Bush will hear that the Palestinian Authority is still promoting anti-Semitic canards in its textbooks.
Natan Sharansky, Israel's minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs, sent Sharon an urgent message on Sunday, telling him about a new PA high school textbook that says the Jewish people are trying to dominate the world. ...
In the latest revelation, the CMIP said that a newly published textbook for 10th graders promotes fiction as fact.
The "Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated booklet from the early twentieth century, describes an alleged plot by Jewish leaders to take over the world. Historians have debunked it as a political forgery written by Russian Czar Nicholas II's secret police in an attempt to make the Jewish people a scapegoat for the country's problems.
According to the Palestinian textbook, however, the Protocols were among the resolutions adopted by the first Zionist Congress, which convened in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, with the aim of promoting the establishment of a Jewish homeland.
"There is a group of confidential resolutions adopted by the Congress and known by the name 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' the goal of which was world domination. They were brought to light by Sergey Nilos and translated into Arabic by Muhammad Khalifah Al-Tunisi," CMIP quoted the textbook as saying."

"Sy Hersh Says It’s Okay to Lie (Just Not in Print)" (Chris Suellentrop, The New York Magazine, from the 2005/04/18 issue)
"Since the Abu Ghraib story broke eleven months ago, The New Yorker’s national-security correspondent, Seymour Hersh, has followed it up with a series of spectacular scoops. Videotape of young boys being raped at Abu Ghraib. Evidence that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may be a “composite figure” and a propaganda creation of either Iraq’s Baathist insurgency or the U.S. government. The active involvement of Karl Rove and the president in “prisoner-interrogation issues.” The mysterious disappearance of $1 billion, in cash, in Iraq. A threat by the administration to a TV network to cut off access to briefings in retaliation for asking Laura Bush “a very tough question about abortion.” The Iraqi insurgency’s access to short-range FROG missiles that “can do grievous damage to American troops.” The murder, by an American platoon, of 36 Iraqi guards.
Not one of these exclusives appeared in the pages of The New Yorker, however. Instead, Hersh delivered them in speeches on college campuses and in front of organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and on public-radio shows like “Democracy Now!” In most cases, Hersh attaches a caveat—such as “I’m just talking now, I’m not writing”—before unloading one of his blockbusters, which can send bloggers and reporters scurrying for confirmation. ...
On the podium, Sy is willing to tell a story that’s not quite right, in order to convey a Larger Truth. “Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people,” Hersh told me. 'I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say.'" (Hat tip: The Weekly Standard.)

"Jewish MP pelted with eggs at war memorial" (Richard Alleyne, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/04/11)
"The campaign for what promises to be one of the most bitterly contested parliamentary seats got off to an explosive start yesterday when the MP Oona King was pelted with eggs and vegetables as she attended a memorial to Jewish war dead.
Miss King, 37, the black Jewish Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, was attacked as she joined mourners to commemorate 60 years since the Hughes Mansions Disaster, when 134 people, almost all Jewish, were killed by the last V2 missile to land on London.
The eggs missed her, but one hit a war veteran, Louis Lewis, 89, in the chest and an onion struck Richard Brett, a bugler from the Jewish Lads and Girls Brigade who sounded the Last Post at the ceremony. ...
The incident demonstrated how high feelings are running in the east London constituency, which has 55,000 Bangladeshi Muslims, more than half its electorate, most of whom bitterly opposed the war in Iraq. ...
Yesterday's display of hatred proved he may be on to something. Even a police van called in to make sure the ceremony remained peaceful was pelted with eggs. ...
But many of the Muslims, especially the young men, now living in Hughes Mansions resented her presence.
Ibn Alkhattab, 21, said: "It will be all about the war. There is enormous anger. No one will vote for her."
His friend added: "She represented these people and then voted for the war. We all hate her. She comes here with her Jewish friends who are killing our people and then they come to our back yards.
'It is out of order. What do they expect?'" (Hat tip: "Multicultural Britain" (Melanie Phillips, melaniephillips.com, 2005/04/11): "'What do they expect?' What else indeed, but the violent hatred born of the most vile prejudice and paranoia that dishonours the Jewish war dead and attacks a member of Parliament for supporting a war that has liberated Muslims from tyranny.")

"Europe's Apocalypse" (Daniel Johnson, The New York Sun, 2005/04/11)
A review of George Weigel's "The Cube and the Cathedral: Europe, America, and Politics Without God":
"The "cube" and "cathedral" of the title refer to two great public buildings in Paris. The cube is the late Francois Mitterrand's La Grand Arche, built to commemorate the bicentenary of the French Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Inside this colossal marble and glass box, the great cathedral of Notre Dame would fit - and disappear. ...
He calls it "the crisis of civilizational morale." "What is happening," he asks, "when an entire continent, wealthier and healthier than ever before, declines to create the human future in the most elemental sense, by creating a next generation?" This question is, he argues, closely related to another: "Why did Europe have the twentieth century it did?" ...
Non-Christians who sympathize with Mr. Weigel's diagnosis may have difficulty in accepting this prescription. But nobody can deny the gravity of the crisis, particularly now that Europe's collapse of morale has taken the form of demographic suicide. ...
Mr. Weigel suggests four possible scenarios: Europe reinvents itself as a godless paradise on earth; Europe muddles through; Europe reconverts to Christianity; or (the nightmare scenario) Islam inherits the hollowed-out shell of a civilization, reversing the historic defeat of the Turks at the gates of Vienna in 1683."

"Liberal bias in the ivory tower" (Cathy Young, The Boston Globe, 2005/04/11)
"Yet another study has come out documenting what most conservatives consider to be blindingly obvious: the leftward tilt of the American professoriate. The latest report, by political scientist Stanley Rothman of Smith College, communications professor S. Robert Lichter of George Mason University, and Canadian polling expert Neil Nevitte, published in the online journal Forum, paints a stark picture of a politically skewed academy. Nearly three quarters of the professors in a 1999 survey of college faculty identified themselves as left/liberal, only 15 percent as right/conservative; 50 percent were Democrats and 11 percent Republicans. ...
On a subtler level, there is on many campuses a climate in which a ''normal" person is presumed to be liberal. A young woman who is a graduate student at a Midwestern university and a liberal Democrat told me in a recent e-mail exchange that after the 2004 election, the unanimous opinion among the professors was that Americans who voted for Bush were ''either too stupid to know they 'should' vote for Kerry, or a bunch of right-wing bigots." She was open-minded enough to read some pro-Bush Internet sites and find a lot of Bush voters who bore no resemblance to this caricature. But she is convinced that if she were to share her observations with anyone in her department, the consequence would be social and professional ostracism." (See also the report [PDF]: "Politics and Professional Advancement Among College Faculty" (Stanley Rothman et al., The Forum/CMPA, Volume 3, Issue 1 2005))

"Afghan Women Prepare to Take Wheel" (N.C. Aizenman, The Washington Post, 2005/04/11)
"Now, for the first time in memory, shops in Herat are hiring women to sell their wares. Women's fitness clubs are popping up along the city's leafy avenues. And ever more women are trading their burqas, the head-to-toe garment worn in public, for an Iranian-style shawl, or chador, which covers the hair and body but not the face.":
"HERAT, Afghanistan -- Sima Kazemi smiled proudly as she considered whether she would pass the first driver's license exam to be offered to women in this western city. There was, she said, no doubt.
But the confidence drained from the 20-year-old college student's voice as she acknowledged the harassment that she would probably face as a female driver in Afghanistan.
"Actually, I've decided to wait at least one year before driving," she said with a resigned sigh. "Maybe by then things will be better. But the atmosphere is just not ready right now." ...
Shaghe Karimi, 29, a law student, said she had driven by herself for the first time a few weeks ago after begging her brother-in-law to lend her his car on a family picnic.
"You feel like you're not dependent on anyone," she said enthusiastically. "Like you can go anywhere!"
But her elation was cut short on a second, similar outing, she said, when she ventured out of her family's sight and passed a group of men washing their car by a stream.
"When did you get your license?" they jeered, she said, and started to give chase.
Burning with humiliation, she raced back to her family and rejoined the picnic without a word about what had happened."

"U.S. Commanders See Possible Cut in Troops in Iraq" (Eric Schmitt, The New York Times, 2005/04/11)
"Two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the American-led military campaign in Iraq is making enough progress in fighting insurgents and training Iraqi security forces to allow the Pentagon to plan for significant troop reductions by early next year, senior commanders and Pentagon officials say.
Senior American officers are wary of declaring success too soon against an insurgency they say still has perhaps 12,000 to 20,000 hard-core fighters, plentiful financing and the ability to change tactics quickly to carry out deadly attacks. But there is a consensus emerging among these top officers and other senior defense officials about several positive developing trends, although each carries a cautionary note.
Attacks on allied forces have dropped to 30 to 40 a day, down from an average daily peak of 140 in the prelude to the Jan. 30 elections but still roughly at the levels of a year ago. Only about half the attacks cause casualties or damage, but on average one or more Americans die in Iraq every day, often from roadside bombs. Thirty-six American troops died there in March, the lowest monthly death toll since 21 died in February 2004.
Attacks now are aimed more at killing Iraqi civilians and security forces, and have been planned with sinister care and timing to take place outside schools, clinics and police stations when large daytime crowds have gathered."

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

 

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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)

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

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

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

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

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

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