Archived news and commentary: May 16 - 22, 2005

2005/05/16 - 2005/05/22
2005/05/09 - 2005/05/15
2005/05/02 - 2005/05/08
2005/04/25 - 2005/05/01
2005/04/18 - 2005/04/24
2005/04/11 - 2005/04/17

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, May 22, 2005

News and commentary:

"U.S. first lady Laura Bush rushes back to her car..."
(Emilio Morenatti, AP, 2005/05/22)
"U.S. first lady Laura Bush rushes back to her car after visiting the Western Wall and the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City Sunday May 22, 2005. Anti-U.S. protesters heckled Laura Bush at a major Islamic holy shrine on Sunday, during a Mideast tour meant to defuse growing anti-American sentiment in the region."

"Leaving the left" (Keith Thompson, San Fransisco Chronicle, 2005/05/22)
"Nightfall, Jan. 30. Eight-million Iraqi voters have finished risking their lives to endorse freedom and defy fascism. Three things happen in rapid succession. The right cheers. The left demurs. I walk away from a long-term intimate relationship. I'm separating not from a person but a cause: the political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.
I'm leaving the left -- more precisely, the American cultural left and what it has become during our time together.
I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq's democratic experiment might yet implode.
My estrangement hasn't happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see. Now it's all too obvious. Leading voices in America's "peace" movement are actually cheering against self-determination for a long-suffering Third World country because they hate George W. Bush more than they love freedom."

"The Qur'an Question" (Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, from the 2005/05/30 issue)
"In fewer than a dozen log entries from the 31,000 documents reviewed so far, said Di Rita, there is a mention of detainees' complaining that guards or interrogators mishandled their Qur'ans. In one case, a female guard allegedly knocked a Qur'an from its pouch onto the detainee's bed. In another alleged case, said Di Rita, detainees became upset after two MPs, looking for contraband, felt the pouch containing a prisoner's Qur'an. While questioning a detainee, an interrogator allegedly put a Qur'an on top of a TV set, took it off when the detainee complained, then put it back on. In another alleged instance, guards somehow sprayed water on a detainee's Qur'an. This handful of alleged cases came out of thousands of daily interactions between guards and prisoners, said Di Rita. None has been substantiated yet, he said.
In December 2002, a guard inadvertently knocked a Qur'an from its pouch onto the floor of a detainee's cell, Di Rita said. A number of detainees protested. That January, partly in response to the incident and partly to provide precise guidelines for new guards and interrogators, the Guantanamo commanders issued precise rules to respect the "cultural dignity of the Koran thereby reducing the friction over the searching of the Korans." Only chaplains or Muslim interpreters were allowed to inspect detainees' Qur'ans. "Two hands will be used at all times when handling Korans in a manner signaling respect and reverence," the rules state. 'Ensure that the Koran is not placed in offensive areas such as the floor, near the toilet or sink, near the feet, or dirty/wet areas...'"

"Europe Closing Shop?" (Investor's Business Daily, 2005/05/23)
"Europe is changing. The birthrate, now at 1.5 live births per female, is well below the 2.1 required just to replace its population. Birthrates of immigrant Muslim populations there are three times the average. Upshot: By 2020 or so, the European population will fall by more than 4% while the Muslim population will double.
By 2050, just to keep the current worker-to-retiree ratio intact, Europe will have to bring in an estimated 13.5 million immigrants each year. That's 608 million immigrants — the equivalent of 10 Germanys — over 45 years. Anything less will consign the Continent to unavoidable economic decline.
And where will all these newcomers come from? The same places they've come from in the past — Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Pakistan — all Muslim. Europe's new nursery.
This has ramifications for America as well. We assume that the Europe we'll be dealing with tomorrow will be much the same as Europe today — one that understands and shares our cultural values. The fact is, as Europe slowly becomes more Muslim and less European, it is at risk of dying — not as a place, but as a culture." (Hat tip: Real Clear Politics.)

Terror International Meets in Damascus
(Bassem Tellawi, AP, 2005/05/22)
"From right, Nayef Hawatmeh, the leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ramadan Shalah, the head of the Islamic Jihad, Khaled Mashaal, the head of the Hamas militant group, Farouk Kaddoumi, the head of the Fatah movement, and Khaled al-Fahoum, the former head of the Palestine National Council, during a rare meeting held in Damascus Sunday, May. 22, 2005, to discuss inter-Palestinian issues and the latest developments in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands. Syria once allowed Palestinian militants to run media offices from Damascus, but those were closed after a visit by then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in May 2003." (Hat tip: Rochi Ebner.)

"IDF nabs teen wearing bomb belt" (Margot Dudkevitch, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/05/22)
"A 14-year-old Palestinian youth wearing a bomb belt with two pipe bombs was arrested by soldiers at the Hawara checkpoint outside of Nablus on Sunday afternoon.
According to a Central Command officer, the youth's behavior aroused soldiers' suspicions, and one of the officers demanded that the youth lift his shirt, which revealed the bombs ready for use.
The officer said the boy also had a cigarette lighter and that he had planned to blow up near soldiers at the checkpoint. Since the beginning of the year, 50 Palestinian minors wearing explosives or attempting to smuggle weapons through checkpoints have been arrested by security forces."

"Al-Qaeda gains Palestine foothold" (Annette Young, Scotland on Sunday, 2005/05/22)
"Al-Qaeda has established a foothold in Palestine with a new militant group based in Gaza formed by extremists who have become disillusioned with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Amid the biggest flare-up of violence in Gaza since a ceasefire was declared three months ago by Palestinians and Israelis, the Jerusalem Post has quoted unnamed Palestinian Authority security officials as saying that a new group called Jundallah or 'Allah's Brigade' had links to the terrorist organisation headed by Osama bin Laden.
The new terror group consists mainly of former Hamas and Islamic Jihad members who believe these two militant groups have become too moderate. It has close ties to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. ...
Abu Abdullah al-Khattab, who identified himself as the spokesman for Jundallah in Gaza, denied his group was linked to al-Qaeda but hinted that as well as Israeli targets, the group was planning to target US interests in the region.
"Our people will not remain idle in the face of American crimes in Muslim countries," he said. "Soon everyone will see operations [against the US] that will make all the Muslims delighted." He also said Jundallah would not honour any unofficial truce with Israel." (See also: "PA: Al-Qaida-linked terrorists active in Gaza" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/05/20))

"Calls for Israel's destruction in London" (Yaakov Lappin, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/05/22)
"A central London rally organized by the British Palestine Solidarity Campaign on Saturday heard Respect Party MP George Galloway advocate a general boycott of Israel, as well as other speeches calling for Israel's destruction. ...
Andrew Birgin, of the Stop the War Coalition, urged the destruction of the State of Israel. "Israel is a racist state! It is an apartheid state! With its Apache helicopters and its F-16 fighter jets! The South African apartheid state never inflicted the sort of repression that Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians," he said to loud applause. "When there is real democracy, there will be no more Israel!" concluded Birgin. "Allahu Akbar!" yelled several men repeatedly in response. ...
Former Labor MP Tony Benn said that "the apartheid wall should be removed," referring to the security fence built by Israel to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from reaching Israeli cities.
Calling American president George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon the "two most dangerous men in the world," Benn condemned America's military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Israel's anti-terrorism measures." (Hat tip: Rochi Ebner.)

"Suicide bomber CDs woo martyrs to Iraq" (Hala Jaber and Tony Allen-Mills, The Sunday Times, 2005/05/22)
"They look like ordinary discs, familiar to any computer user, music lover or film buff. Yet the unmarked CDs circulating among Islamic militants across the Arab world make grim viewing. They show suicide bombers preparing for their missions and carrying them out.
“Give away the martyr to his second home in heaven, give away the martyr with his wounds, blood and clothes,” sings a group of masked men in one CD obtained by The Sunday Times.
Moments later a smiling young suicide bomber waves goodbye to his friends and drives off to explode a car bomb next to a US convoy in Mosul, northern Iraq. ...
In another disc circulated recently two unnamed suicide bombers are seen smiling and chatting to their masked friends amid animated discussion of “martyrdom”. Their “heavenly rewards” include the attention of Houri el-Ein, a celestial virgin.
“Give away the martyr to the Houri in heaven,” the men sing as they hug and pat the bombers on the back. The bombers then climb into an explosives-laden vehicle and wave as they drive away. The last shots show the lorry blowing itself into a huge orange fireball close to another US convoy."

"Sunnis Step Off Political Sidelines" (Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri, The Washington Post, 2005/05/22)
"BAGHDAD, May 21 -- More than 1,000 Sunni Arab clerics, political leaders and tribal heads ended their two-year boycott of politics in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq on Saturday, uniting in a Sunni bloc that they said would help draft the country's new constitution and compete in elections.
Formation of the group comes during escalating violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that has raised the threat of sectarian war. The bloc represents moderate and hard-line members of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party and other main groups of the disgruntled Sunni minority toppled from dominance when U.S.-led troops routed Hussein in April 2003. ...
"The country needs Sunnis to join politics," Adnand Dulaimi, a government-appointed overseer of Sunni religious sites and a leader of the drive to draw Sunnis into the rebuilding of Iraq, declared at the conference Saturday where the bloc was assembled. "The Sunnis are now ready to participate."
"The last elections brought a major turnaround in the political representation of Sunnis,'' Dulaimi said. 'We think it's time to take steps to save Iraq's identity, and its unity and independence. . . . Iraq is for all, and Iraq is not sectarian.'"

Saturday, May 21, 2005

News and commentary:

"Unmitigated Galloway" (Christopher Hitchens, The Weekly Standard, from the 2005/05/30 issue)
"It was said during the time of sanctions on that long-suffering country that the embargo was killing, or had killed, as many as a million people, many of them infants. Give credit to the accusers here. Some of the gravamen of the charge must be true. Add the parasitic regime to the sanctions, over 12 years, and it is clear that the suffering of average Iraqis must have been inordinate.
There are only two ways this suffering could have been relieved. Either the sanctions could have been lifted, as Galloway and others demanded, or the regime could have been removed. The first policy, if followed without conditions, would have untied the hands of Saddam. The second policy would have had the dual effect of ending sanctions and terminating a hideous and lawless one-man rule. But when the second policy was proposed, the streets filled with people who absolutely opposed it. Saying farewell to the regime was, evidently, too high a price to pay for relief from sanctions.
Let me phrase this another way: Those who had alleged that a million civilians were dying from sanctions were willing, nay eager, to keep those same murderous sanctions if it meant preserving Saddam! This is repellent enough in itself. If the Saddam regime was cheating its terrified people of food and medicine in order to finance its own propaganda, that would perhaps be in character. But if it were to be discovered that any third parties had profited from the persistence of "sanctions plus regime," prolonging the agony and misery thanks to personal connections, then one would have to become quite judgmental."

"Saddam's Business Partners" (Stephen F. Hayes, The Weekly Standard, from the 2005/05/30 issue)
"No one is surprised to learn that Saddam Hussein cheats, that politicians take bribes, and that the competence level of the U.N. bureaucracy is, well, suboptimal.
Nevertheless, the details of the Oil-for-Food scandal -- who participated, and what they apparently did -- are jaw-dropping. Vladimir Putin's chief of staff, Alexander Voloshin, appears to have accepted millions of dollars in oil-soaked bribes from Saddam Hussein. The same appears to be true of the former interior minister of France, Charles Pasqua, a close friend of President Jacques Chirac. And the same appears to be true of three high-ranking U.N. executives including Benon Sevan, handpicked by Kofi Annan to administer the Oil-for-Food program. Oil-for-Food money even went to terrorist organizations supported by the Iraqi regime and, according to U.S. investigators, might be funding the insurgency today."

"Hezbollah and Hariri" (Michael Young, Hit & Run, 2005/05/21)
"Kuwait's Al-Siyassa is reporting an interesting piece of news that could have dramatic consequences for the UN investigation into the death of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The report is in Arabic, but here are the first two paragraphs:

Senior American and European sources at UN headquarters in New York have revealed to Secretary-General Kofi Annan "highly dangerous and sensitive information that confirms that an important Lebanese political grouping was implicated in the ... Hariri assassination."
The sources indicated that this information, confirmed by personal testimonies, has embarrassed the international circles involved in Lebanese affairs and in the repercussions of the Hariri assassination, because the mere implication of this group will provoke great political tumult in Lebanon and will represent a new factor that will dovetail with the clauses in Resolution 1559 that have not yet been implemented.

Security Council Resolution 1559, which was what the international community used to force the Syrians out of Lebanon, also calls for the disarmament of militias in the country, primarily Hezbollah. While the newspaper did not come out and say it, what it clearly was referring to as "the grouping" was Hezbollah. It went on to suggest that the group played a role in Hariri's assassination at the operational level, presumably in preparing and triggering the bomb, on behalf of the Syrians."

"Qaeda Letters Are Said to Show Pre-9/11 Anthrax Plans" (Eric Lipton, The New York Times, 2005/05/21)
"Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan began to assemble the equipment necessary to build a rudimentary biological weapons laboratory before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, letters released by the Defense Department show.
The operatives were not immediately able to obtain a sample of the deadly anthrax strain that they wanted to reproduce in their laboratory, according to the letters.
The letters are among the documents recovered in late 2001 after the invasion of Afghanistan that United States intelligence officials have frequently cited as evidence that Al Qaeda was working to develop biological weapons.
The letters, recently made public as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request, detail a visit by an unnamed Qaeda scientist to a laboratory at an unspecified location where he was shown "a special confidential room" with thousands of samples of biological substances.
The scientist tried to buy anthrax vaccines, which would be necessary to protect any Qaeda members working with the material. He also bought a sterilizer, a respirator and an air-contamination detector, one letter said.
"The conference was found to be highly beneficial for our future work," the letter said. 'I finalized all the accessories required for the smooth running of our bioreactor.'"

"Iran Said to Be Smuggling Nuclear Matter" (George Jahn, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/05/21)
"VIENNA, Austria - Iran is circumventing international export bans on sensitive dual-use materials by smuggling graphite and a graphite compound that can be used to make conventional and nuclear weapons, an Iranian dissident and a senior diplomat said Friday.
Graphite has many peaceful uses, including steel manufacture, but also can be used as a casing for molten weapons-grade uranium to fit it to nuclear warheads or to shield the cones of conventional missiles from heat.
With most countries adhering to international agreements banning the sale of such "dual-use" materials to Tehran, Iran has been forced to buy it on the black market, Iranian exile Alireza Jafarzadeh told The Associated Press — allegations confirmed by a senior diplomat familiar with Iran's covert nuclear activities.
"It is not clear how much governments are involved," Jafarzadeh said later in an interview with Associated Press Television News, adding that he believes Iran is 'using front companies to deceive other companies, other entities in foreign countries, and they wouldn't know what the destination would be.'"

Friday, May 20, 2005

News and commentary:

"Muslims take part in a demonstration..."
(Dylan Martinez, Reuters, 2005/05/20)
"Muslims take part in a demonstration outside the U.S. Embassy in central London May 20, 2005."

"Protesters chant 'bomb New York'" (The Evening Standard, 2005/05/20)
"A crowd of hardline Islamic protesters chanted the name of Osama bin Laden outside the US Embassy in London today.
The protesters included many men whose faces were covered by their headscarves and at least a number of women.
Their demonstration "against the desecration of the Koran" was being held yards from the steps of the Embassy in Grosvenor Square, which was guarded by a small detail of police.
The crowd, led by a man on a megaphone, chanted "USA watch your back, Osama is coming back" and "Kill, kill USA, kill, kill George Bush".
They also chanted "Bomb, bomb New York" and "George Bush, you will pay, with your blood, with your head".
Angry demonstrators waved placards which included the message: 'Desecrate today and see another 9/11 tomorrow.'"

"The Bitter Search for Truth in the Desert Sand" (Sassan Niasseri, Der Spiegel, 2005/05/20)
"More than 300 mass graves have been excavated in Iraq so far. The most recent discovery was made by American investigators in early May when they found a grave with 1,500 Kurdish people. Recovery and identification of Saddam's victims, however, is an arduous process.":
"The Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights estimates that up to one million people have gone missing since Saddam Hussein's Baath-Party came into power in 1968, although no exact statistics were kept of the crimes. "Every Iraqi family mourns members that have been murdered," says Amin, who lost family members as well. The Kurdish politician stepped down as Iraqi Minister of Human Rights a few days ago, citing personal reasons. His successor has not yet been determined.
Already some 300 mass graves have been excavated since the end of Saddam's reign of terror. Although exact figures on the number of victims vary depending on who is counting, the Iraqis estimate that at least 500,000 bodies lie in the mass graves. The evidence collected in the pits is not only important to give relatives peace of mind, but also to assemble evidence against Saddam Hussein when he stands trial."

"Israel's immigration idiocy" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/05/20)
"Almost every day, a report surfaces of some new instance of often violent intolerance committed by Muslim minorities in Europe against their fellow citizens.":
"It turns out that Holland – the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriages – has become a dangerous place for gays. The Amsterdam Tourist Board felt constrained to issue a warning to gay and lesbian tourists to be careful when they visit the city in light of the rash of anti-homosexual violence perpetrated regularly by gangs of Muslim immigrant youth.
In Sweden today, Pentecostal preacher Runar Søgaard is now under police protection after receiving death threats from Muslims angry that he referred to Muhammad as a "confused pedophile" during a sermon. Members of the Kurdish terrorist group Ansar el-Islam reportedly received a religious edict to kill him for his remarks. ...
Reports from country after country in recent years have referred to entire neighborhoods where ambulances and fire trucks refuse to enter for fear of being attacked by Islamic immigrant gangs. Quite simply, the European response to this violence has been to pretend that it isn't happening as states exercise their sovereignty over decreasing areas of their territory. ...
[Bat] Ye'or, who came to Israel this week to launch her book, is convinced that Europe is already too far along in its cultural decline and acceptance of its dhimmitude to save itself from ultimate destruction. She explains that she wrote her book in English and published it in the US because her target audience is 'the Americans, who are the only society still capable of fighting the global jihad.'" (See also: "Leaving No French Islamist Behind" (Olivier Guitta, The Weekly Standard/FrontPageMagazine, 2005/05/20), "It may be Europe's most liberal city - but if you are gay, you had best beware" (Anthony Browne, The Times, 2005/05/14) and "Norwegian preacher kindles religious strife" (Jonathan Tisdall, Aftenposten, 2005/04/22))

"Leaving No French Islamist Behind" (Olivier Guitta, The Weekly Standard/FrontPageMagazine, 2005/05/20)
"An official report dealing with religious expression in French schools has become a must read for anyone interested in the Islamization of France. Written under the auspices of the top national education official, Jean-Pierre Obin, the report was not initially released by the Ministry of Education. But it was leaked on the Internet in March and now can be found in its entirety at www.proche-orient.info and other websites.":
"The biggest social change entailed by this Islamization, Obin reports, is a deterioration in the position of females. Teenage girls are forbidden to play sports and are constantly watched by an informal religious police made up of young men, sometimes their own younger brothers. Makeup, skirts, and form-fitting dresses are forbidden; dark, loose trousers are the strongly recommended attire. To go to the blackboard in front of a class, some Muslim girls put on long coats. Often, they are forced to wear the headscarf, or hijab, and forbidden to frequent coed movie theaters, community centers, and gyms, or even to go out at all on weekends. Lots of young women were afraid to tell the Obin team what punishments are in store for them if they disobey. Not only female students but also female teachers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, are frequently subjected to sexist remarks by male teenagers. ...
As for history, Muslim students object to its Judeo-Christian bias and blatant falsehood. They loudly protest the Crusades, and commonly deny the Holocaust. Under the circumstances, many teachers censor their own material, often skipping entire topics, like the history of Israel or of Christianity. The report cites one teacher who keeps a Koran on his desk for reference whenever a thorny issue arises. It cites Muslim students who refuse to use the plus sign in mathematics because it looks like a cross. Field trips, especially to churches, cathedrals, and monasteries, are boycotted."

"Why Are We in Uzbekistan?" (Fred Kaplan, Slate, 2005/05/20)
"Let's just get out of Uzbekistan.
President Bill Clinton struck up a relationship with Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov to stave off the common threat from Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban. After Sept. 11, President Bush tightened the alliance. Karimov supplied the CIA and the Pentagon with an air base, which served as the staging area for the invasion of neighboring Afghanistan. During that war, he also allowed the United States to set up listening posts and to launch Predator drones from Uzbek territory.
All this was justifiable, in the interests of national security, despite Karimov's dreadful human rights record. Now the cost-benefit balance has shifted. ...
President Bush has declared repeatedly that U.S. policy toward foreign governments will be shaped, above all else, by their fealty to freedom and democracy. If he continues to treat the Uzbek government — which wantonly shoots its own people — as a special American ally when U.S. interests no longer require such favor, then his declarations will be increasingly seen as insincere, and other nasty regimes, which he may try to pressure into reform, will learn not to take his words seriously.
That is the global danger of continuing to coddle Karimov. (And it is a danger; whether Bush means what he says or not, some of the world's autocrats — most notably in Egypt and Syria — are now taking his pressure quite seriously.)" (See also: "Some 1,000 killed in Uzbekistan unrest in 'summary executions': rights group" (AFP/ReliefWeb, 2005/05/19))

"Our Two-Front Struggle" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2005/05/20)
Newsweek III: "So we do not dare remind the world that we have nothing to apologize for, given that we have expended lives and treasure in Afghanistan to improve a country that once helped to butcher us. Most of those rioting and killing idolize bin Laden. The problem is not that they are confused, but that they express exactly what they feel — and that is a deep hatred for Western liberalism, manifested on their now sacred day of September 11. We don't say such rude things, not only because it would be stupid politics, but because we don't quite believe them ourselves anymore. ...
America was once a country that demolished Hitler and Tojo combined in less than four years and broke the nuclear Soviet Union — and now frets and whines that a few thousand deranged fascists want an apology.
Abroad, we battle Islamic fascists who hate us for our success and want to kill us with the tools of the modern world they despise. But at home, we are also at odds with our own privileged guilt-ridden aristocracy, whose very munificence has made them misunderstand why they are hated.
The Islamists insist, "We kill you for being soft." Westerners in response feel, "We are killed because we are not being soft enough."
And so they riot and kill in Afghanistan over a stupid rumor, and we seek to apologize that it somehow spread.
How truly sad."

"The Best P.R.: Straight Talk" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2005/05/20)
Newsweek II: "The fact that the White House spokesman Scott McClellan spent part of his briefing on Tuesday excoriating Newsweek - and telling its editors that they had a responsibility to "help repair the damage" to America's standing in the Arab-Muslim world - while not offering a single word of condemnation for those who went out and killed 16 people in Afghanistan in riots linked to a Newsweek report, pretty much explains why we're struggling to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world today. We are spending way too much time debating with ourselves, or playing defense, and way too little time actually looking Arab Muslims in the eye and telling them the truth as we see it. ...
The greatest respect we can show to Arabs and Muslims - and the best way to help Muslim progressives win the war of ideas - is to take them seriously and stop gazing at our own navels. That means demanding that they answer for their lies, hypocrisy and profane behavior, just as much as we must answer for ours."

"Hypocrisy Most Holy" (Ali Al-Ahmed, The Wall Street Journal, 2005/05/20)
Newsweek I: "As a Muslim, I am able to purchase copies of the Quran in any bookstore in any American city, and study its contents in countless American universities. American museums spend millions to exhibit and celebrate Muslim arts and heritage. On the other hand, my Christian and other non-Muslim brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia -- where I come from -- are not even allowed to own a copy of their holy books. Indeed, the Saudi government desecrates and burns Bibles that its security forces confiscate at immigration points into the kingdom or during raids on Christian expatriates worshiping privately.
Soon after Newsweek published an account, later retracted, of an American soldier flushing a copy of the Quran down the toilet, the Saudi government voiced its strenuous disapproval. More specifically, the Saudi Embassy in Washington expressed "great concern" and urged the U.S. to "conduct a quick investigation."
Although considered as holy in Islam and mentioned in the Quran dozens of times, the Bible is banned in Saudi Arabia. This would seem curious to most people because of the fact that to most Muslims, the Bible is a holy book. But when it comes to Saudi Arabia we are not talking about most Muslims, but a tiny minority of hard-liners who constitute the Wahhabi Sect.
The Bible in Saudi Arabia may get a person killed, arrested, or deported. In September 1993, Sadeq Mallallah, 23, was beheaded in Qateef on a charge of apostasy for owning a Bible."

"Excuse my nausea at the cowardly rant of not-so-gorgeous George" (Gerard Baker, The Times, 2005/05/20)
Baker on George Galloway's testimony before the Senate:
"Yet as he railed against the senators, I couldn’t get out of my head that spectacle of the same man smiling as he lauded Saddam Hussein. As he exploited the fustiness of the surroundings and the plodding lawyerliness of his interlocutors, I couldn’t help but remember how, in the face of a different sort of power, he had saluted its indefatigability and promised to march on to Jerusalem.
I also wondered what his and our life might have been like if he had deployed some of his little-man courage before Saddam; standing up for some of those other hundreds of thousands of other good Muslims — Iraqis, who could have done with a persuasive advocate there and then.
Perhaps in the end, if you’re a cynic you may find Mr Galloway’s asymmetrical approach to authority — a lapdog in the hands of the one who likes to watch as his victims are tortured; a lion in the face of those who threaten with questions and subpoenas — simply the familiar mark of the coward. If you’re an optimist, you might find it oddly comforting [that?] The Mother of Parliaments clasps him to her bosom. The world’s greatest deliberative body sits in embarrassed silence as he lectures it on its shortcomings. Nothing surely illustrates better the absolute superiority of the West’s system and what underpins it that we tolerate and even reward such lèse-majesté. We know what Saddam did to those who were brave enough to utter much more cogent critiques of his rule." (See also: "British Lawmaker Denies Oil-For-Food Claim" (Ken Guggenheim, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/05/17))

"THE TYRANT'S IN HIS PANTS"
(The Sun/Drudge Report, 2005/05/20)
See also: "Tyrant's in his pants" (Tom Newton Dunn, The Sun, 2005/05/20)

"The woman killed for pop music" (Catherine Philp, The Times, 2005/05/20)
"SHAIMA REZAYEE was the face of a new generation of young Afghan women: she discarded her shalwar kameez and burkha for Western clothes and a glamorous job as a television presenter on Kabul’s answer to MTV.
But two months ago her bosses were forced to dismiss Ms Rezayee, 24, under pressure from conservative mullahs who were disgusted by the “unIslamic values” of her music show.
This week she paid for her unconventional choices with her life: she was shot dead in her home by an unknown assailant.
Police said that they believed the killing was linked to her former job as a “veejay” — video journalist — on Hop, which was broadcast by Tolo TV, one of a number of private stations set up since the fall of the Taleban.
Ms Rezayee was the only female presenter on the show, which won as many young urban fans as it did enemies among the mullahs. Her murder raises the stakes in the battle for the soul of Afghanistan’s young people." (See also: "Afghan woman TV presenter shot dead" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2005/05/19))

"PA: Al-Qaida-linked terrorists active in Gaza" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/05/20)
This should prove quite a dilemma for Mr. Hitchens, who rails against Al Qaida, but at the same time defends Palestinian "insurgents":
"A new Muslim terrorist group linked to al-Qaida has started operating in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Authority security officials told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
Jundallah, or "Allah's Brigades," consists mostly of scores of former Hamas and Islamic Jihad members, the officials disclosed. They said Jundallah gunmen launched their first attack on IDF soldiers near Rafah earlier this week.
The IDF said four soldiers were lightly wounded in the attack.
Jundallah is a radical Muslim group that has close ties with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, said one official. "We know for sure that the group is especially active in the southern Gaza Strip," he added."

"Clerics strip fugitive Taliban leader of power" (Tom Coghlan, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/05/20)
"A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai.
The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US-backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country's first parliamentary elections, due in September.
Symbolically, the ulema shura, or council of clerics, was held at the Blue Mosque in the southern city of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban movement.
At the same venue in 1996 the Taliban leader held up a cloak said to belong to the Prophet Mohammed, which is kept in a shrine in the mosque. He was proclaimed Amir ul-Mumineen or Leader of Muslims by the same clerical body, one of the few occasions the title has been granted anywhere in the Islamic world in the modern era."

"In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths" (Tim Golden, The New York Times, 2005/05/20)
"The story of Mr. Dilawar's brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army's criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.
In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.
In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning."

Added in archive:
"It may be Europe's most liberal city - but if you are gay, you had best beware" (Anthony Browne, The Times, 2005/05/14)

Thursday, May 19, 2005

News and commentary:

"Shaima Rezayee, an Afghan television presenter..."
(Reuters, 2005/05/19)
"Shaima Rezayee, an Afghan television presenter, is seen in this image taken from television footage shown on February 17, 2005. A gunman shot and killed Rezayee on May 18, 2005, two months after she was fired from her job on a pop music programme after complaints from religious conservatives. Rezayee, 24, was killed in her home in Kabul, police said."

"Afghan woman TV presenter shot dead" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2005/05/19)
"KABUL (Reuters) - A gunman shot and killed an Afghan woman television presenter on Wednesday, two months after she was fired from her job on a pop music programme after complaints from religious conservatives.
The woman, Shaima Rezayee, 24, was killed in her home in Kabul, police said.
"We don't know who did it or whether it was related to her work or not," said city police official Adbul Khaliq. Police were investigating.
Private television and radio stations have mushroomed in Afghanistan since the ouster of the hardline Taliban in 2001.
Rezayee worked for a new channel called Tolo TV, which has won many young urban fans with its Western programmes and trendy presenters but also drawn criticism from clerics.
She presented a music programme called Hop before she was dismissed in March."

"Some 1,000 killed in Uzbekistan unrest in 'summary executions': rights group" (AFP/ReliefWeb, 2005/05/19)
"Uzbek security forces may have gunned down some 1,000 civilians in the unrest in the Central Asian republic, an international and an Uzbek rights group charged Thursday, accusing authorities of carrying out "summary executions."
"Uzbek police and security forces may have killed as many as 1,000 unarmed civilians in Andijan and Pakhtaabad, using machine guns, other automatic weapons and helicopters, according to independent journalists and local human rights organizations," the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights said in a statement.
The federation, which groups 44 non-governmental rights groups, said another 2,000 people were injured in the clampdown and others were being harassed by the authorities.
"The attacks on demonstrators have been followed in some cases by summary executions of the wounded, and by arbitrary arrests and detentions," it added.
The head of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, Talik Yabukov, said 745 died in Andijan, around 200 in Pahktaabad and some 100 in Kara-Suu near the border with Kyrgyzstan, and predicted a revolt against the regime of President Islam Karimov.
"There will be an uprising in Uzbekistan, this is my intuition," he told journalists at a press conference in Vienna." (Hat tip: Gateway Pundit.)

"Kim Beazley's Friend" (Tim Blair, timblair.net, 2005/05/19)
This must be one of the battiest columns ever written. And the world's by far smallest violin as well:
"Bob Ellis feels sorry for Saddam:

Saddam Hussein can’t watch television, read newspapers, telephone his wife or consult his lawyers. He can read novels, though, write poetry, tend a small rock garden. No television interviewer can go near him, no friendly or hostile biographer, no prosecutor from the ICC. Unlike everyone else in the democracies, he cannot ask for bail, or asylum, or (something John Paul might have given him) asylum in the Vatican.

The reasons aren’t too hard to guess. Under international law, Saddam is still President of Iraq, the war that overthrew him having been illegal, unsurrendered and unconcluded, and he, a lawyer, knows this. He might say so to an interviewer and might moreover mildly ask why Americans bombed and burnt his property and murdered his sons and fourteen-year-old grandson. Why, in particular, they burned his yacht. What good did that do? Are the Americans crazy?

Poor Saddam, all yachtless and missing his dead rapist sons. Ellis feels his pain. Hit the link above and you’ll discover that this sad-man-for-Saddam isn’t a fringe identity howling from the margins; last week he was in Kim Beazley’s office helping craft the opposition leader’s budget reply speech." (See also [PDF]: "The strange bright era of American impotence" (Bob Ellis, Echo, 2005/05/17))

"Meanwhile, In France..." (John Cole, Baloon Juice, 2005/05/19)
"It is a tough job defending the media, when some can't help themselves and just keep stepping in it:

"Journalists, by the way, are not just being targeted verbally or …ah, or… ah, politically. They are also being targeted for real, um…in places like Iraq. What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there's not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq." "They target and kill journalists…uh, from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al-, like Arab news services like Al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity…"

The video of Linda Foley, International President of the Newspaper Guild, making these claims without any evidence, can be viewed here." (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

"Jordan Says Iraq Refused to Hand over Al-Zarqawi" (The Scotsman, 2005/05/19)
"The regime of Saddam Hussein rejected repeated requests from Jordan to hand over Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who now heads al Qaida in Iraq, the Jordanian king said in an interview published today.
King Abdullah II told the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat that Jordan exerted “big efforts” with Saddam’s government to extradite al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian sentenced to death at home for terrorist activities.
“But our demands that the former regime hand him over were in vain,” Abdullah said.
“We had information that he entered Iraq from a neighbouring country, where he lived and what he was doing. We informed the Iraqi authorities about all this detailed information we had, but they didn’t respond,” the king said."

"Iraq Calls on Neighbors to Stop Insurgency" (Patrick Quinn, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/05/19)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called on neighboring countries Thursday to help prevent foreign terrorists from crossing into Iraq as a series of attacks killed more than a dozen Iraqis and two American soldiers.
Al-Jaafari's appeal came a day after a top U.S. military official said the leaders of Iraq's most notorious terrorist group recently held a secret meeting in neighboring Syria, where they plotted the recent wave of insurgent violence that has killed hundreds of people.
"There are infiltrations of non-Iraqis through the border to carry out sabotage activities," al-Jaafari said of the meeting that may have been attended by most-wanted militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi himself. "It's up to our geographical neighbors. We are keen to preserve relations between us and neighboring countries, and these relations should be good." ...
The Syrian meeting has led to one of the bloodiest periods since the U.S.-led invasion two years ago. More than 520 people have been killed — including an oil ministry employee gunned down in front of his house Thursday — since the country's new Shiite-dominated government was announced April 28."

"Anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, anti-capitalism" (Wolfgang Munchau, The Spectator, from the 2005/05/21 issue)
"When I returned to Germany in the 1990s, what surprised me most was not the poor performance of the economy — this I expected. I was most shocked by the extraordinary loss of self-confidence among the political and business elites, combined with a poisonous cocktail of the three big As: anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism.":
"Franz Müntefering, the chairman of Mr Schröder’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), has managed to combine the three big As in a single campaign for the forthcoming state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s largest state. He compared foreign financial investors to ‘locusts’ — the kind of language that the Nazis used to describe Jews. This was no slip of the tongue. He repeated it. Even worse, he drew up a list, the ‘locust list’, of financiers of mostly Jewish–American origin, whom he accused of making exorbitant profits by asset-stripping German companies. Publishing lists of Jewish names was a hallmark of Nazism. ...
A cartoon in the latest issue of the house journal of I.G. Metall, the German engineering union, depicts what appear to be American-Jewish investors as insects with long noses sucking the lifeblood out of the German economy. It is quite shocking to see how the present generation of centre-left leaders uses symbols of racism with such carelessness, considering that their predecessors — political leaders like Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl — have spent decades dispelling the ghosts of the past and helping to create the image of a mature and normal democracy." (Note: For more on the latest issue of I.G. Metall, including pictures, see also: "Goebbels Would Have Loved This!" (Davids Medienkritik, 2005/05/04))

"Nightmare in Dhaka" (Shoaib Choudhury, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/05/19)
"We expect people to be punished for crimes, and that immorality will have its consequences. We do not expect people to be arrested, tortured and imprisoned for favoring global peace, interfaith dialogue and ending religious hatred. But that is precisely what happened to me.
What was my "crime"? Being a living contradiction: a Zionist and a devout Muslim living in Bangladesh, the world's second-largest Muslim country.
As a journalist, I counteracted the biased "news" that promoted hatred of Israel and Jews; condemned terrorism, promoted the free exchange of ideas and urged Bangladesh to recognize Israel. My colleague, Dr. Richard Benkin, and I worked together and saw the start of real debate. We were ecstatic and hopeful.
But on November 29, 2003, police grabbed me as I was about to board a plane for Tel Aviv, at the invitation of Dr. Ada Aharoni, to address the Hebrew Writers Association on the media's role in creating cultures of peace." (See also: "The Muslim media's culture of death" (Shoaib Choudhury, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/04/12) and "An ambassador's lies" (Richard L. Benkin, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/04/12))

"Mubarak, Let Your People Go" (Max Boot, Los Angeles Times, 2005/05/19)
"The U.S. should cut or eliminate its annual $2-billion subsidy to Egypt until Mubarak gets serious about liberal reform.
Even the mere threat of an aid cutoff would cause a tizzy throughout the Arab world. After I made that very proposal on this page in February, Jihad Khazen, former editor in chief of the influential London-based, Saudi-owned daily Al Hayat, published a lengthy column of vitriol directed at ye olde columnist. I was labeled a "Likudist Goebbels … who is overfilled with hatred towards the Arabs and Muslims."
According to Khazen, Mubarak isn't really a dictator because he has "led his country about a quarter of a century without getting involved in wars or regional disputes" — a novel definition of "dictator" that would rule out Kim Jong Il and Robert Mugabe too. He suggests that instead of pressuring Egypt, the U.S. should fight "Israeli terrorism as it fights [Al Qaeda's] terrorism." (Should the U.S. try to kill Ariel Sharon?)
This sort of claptrap, reminiscent of Nazi or communist doublespeak, has been standard fare throughout the Middle East for decades. Anti-American and anti-Semitic hate-mongering has been stoked by ostensibly pro-American regimes in Riyadh, Cairo and elsewhere that have found it convenient to direct their people's frustration outward.
But lately the dictators' survival strategy has been breaking down. Free elections have been held by Afghanistan, Iraq and, arguably, the Palestinian Authority. Syrian occupiers have been run out of Lebanon by popular pressure. The latest sign of democratic ferment sweeping the region is Kuwait's decision to grant political rights to women.
The tyrants are terrified. Like Europe's ancien regimes facing the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, they are doing whatever they can to contain this unrest before it sweeps them out of their palaces. The land of Washington and Lincoln should stand with the people against their oppressors. Keep the pressure on Mubarak."

"Why Islam is disrespected" (Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe, 2005/05/19)
Newsweek II: "But what ''Muslims in America and throughout the world" most need to hear is not pandering sweet-talk. What they need is a blunt reminder that the real desecration of Islam is not what some interrogator in Guantanamo might have done to the Koran. It is what totalitarian Muslim zealots have been doing to innocent human beings in the name of Islam. It is 9/11 and Beslan and Bali and Daniel Pearl and the USS Cole. It is trains in Madrid and schoolbuses in Israel and an ''insurgency" in Iraq that slaughters Muslims as they pray and vote and line up for work. It is Hamas and Al Qaeda and sermons filled with infidel-hatred and exhortations to ''martyrdom."
But what disgraces Islam above all is the vast majority of the planet's Muslims saying nothing and doing nothing about the jihadist cancer eating away at their religion. It is Free Muslims Against Terrorism, a pro-democracy organization, calling on Muslims and Middle Easterners to ''converge on our nation's capital for a rally against terrorism" -- and having only 50 people show up.
Yes, Islam is disrespected. That will only change when throngs of passionate Muslims show up for rallies against terrorism, and when rabble-rousers trying to gin up a riot over a defiled Koran can't get the time of day."

"Bashing Newsweek" (David Brooks, The New York Times, 2005/05/19)
Newsweek I: "Countless conservatives say the folks at Newsweek were quick to believe the atrocity tales because they share the left-wing, post-Vietnam mentality. On his influential blog, Austin Bay writes that the coastal media "presume the worst about the U.S. military - always make that presumption."
Excuse me, guys, but this is craziness. I used to write for Newsweek. I know Mike Isikoff and the editors. And I know about liberals in the media. The people who run Newsweek are not a bunch of Noam Chomskys with laptops. Not even close. Whatever might have been the cause of their mistakes, liberalism had nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, the left side of the blogosphere has erupted with fury over the possibility that American interrogators might not have flushed a Koran down the toilet. The Nation and leftish Web sites are in a frenzy to prove that the story is probably true even if Newsweek is retracting it.
This, too, is unhinged. Would it be illegal for more people on the left to actually be happy that a story slurring Americans may turn out to be unproven? Could there be a few more liberals willing to admit that prisoners routinely lie about their treatment? (Do we expect them to say their time in captivity wasn't so bad?)
Then I click my mouse over to the transcripts of administration statements and I can't believe what I'm seeing. We're in the middle of an ideological war against people who want to destroy us, and what have the most powerful people on earth become? Whining media bashers. They're attacking Newsweek while bending over backward to show sensitivity to the Afghans who just went on a murderous rampage.
Talk about the bigotry of low expectations."

"Official: Al-Zarqawi Ordered Iraq Attacks" (Paul Garwood, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/05/19)
"Iraq's top al-Qaida terrorist, angered by a postelection lull in violence, ordered insurgents a month ago to intensify attacks and his lieutenants began plotting their deadly mission during a secret meeting in Syria, a top U.S. military official said Wednesday.
The Syrian meeting, possibly attended by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi himself, has led to one of the bloodiest periods since the U.S.-led invasion two years ago. Nearly 500 people have been killed — including an Iraqi general mowed down in a driveby shooting Wednesday — since the country's new Shiite-dominated government was announced April 28.
Several Shiite and Sunni Muslim clerics were among the victims, raising fears that sectarian tensions could ignite a civil war.
A chilling, rambling Internet audiotape purportedly by al-Zarqawi denounced Iraq's Shiites as U.S. collaborators and said killing them is justified.
"God ordered us to attack the infidels by all means ... even if armed infidels and unintended victims — women and children — are killed together," said the speaker purported to be al-Zarqawi."

Added in archive:
"'The Whore Lived Like a German'" (Jody K. Biehl, Der Spiegel, 2005/03/22)

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

News and commentary:

"Suicidal Tendencies in the West" (Bruce Thornton, VDH's Private Papers, 2005/05/18)
"In short, like the hand wringing of the administration over an obvious lie only the irrational and ignorant would believe, this willingness to demonize the culture that created you and to extol as superior the culture that wants to destroy you can only be described as suicidal.":
"Increasingly we Westerners resemble the Eloi of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, beautiful, gentle, highly civilized hedonists whose fate is to be devoured raw by the brutal Morlocks. We are the beneficiaries of a culture created by those before us who forged European civilization in the fires of resistance to Islamic jihad: in Spain, in Sicily, in Eastern Europe, in Greece — the plunder, rape, slaughter, massacres, sacks, kidnapping, and enslavement perpetrated by the armies of Allah were for centuries fought by those whose names now most Westerners have forgotten or would be embarrassed to claim as their own. Don John, Charles Martel, Leo the Isaurian, Prince Eugene, Montecuccoli, Andrea Doria, El Cid, Sobieski, Charlemagne, Suvorov, Boucicaut,, Hunyadi, Fernando II of Castile, Alfonso I of Aragon, Guiscard, Harold Hardrada — who among us knows anything about the men who fought and killed so that Europe, and Europe's offspring America, today looks like Europe and America instead of looking like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, or Syria?
Because of the brutal violence of those warriors against jihad, we in the West today enjoy the luxury of cynicism, cheap irony, effete tolerance, and hedonism. We moral dwarves stand on the shoulders of those giants and spit on their heads, thinking our ingratitude is really an intellectual sophistication superior to the primitive superstitions and naïve ideals that have made our lives of freedom and prosperity possible. Meanwhile jihad by other means — demography, immigration, terrorism, the oil weapon — continues apace, at least until the time when a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon falls into the hands of a modern jihadist and we are returned to the sort of slaughter our ancestors suffered for centuries. Maybe then we'll wake up." (Hat tip: Melanie Phillips.)

"CAIR's Hate Crimes Nonsense" (Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, FrontPageMagazine/danielpipes.org, 2005/05/18)
"Should you read Unequal Protection: The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States 2005, an annual report issued last week by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), you'll learn how the Muslim experience in America is worsening. Specifically, the number of "anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States" has gone up dramatically: from 42 cases in 2002, to 93 cases in 2003, to 141 in 2004.
This news prompted headlines in the mainstream media. "Muslims Report 50% Increase in Bias Crimes," announced the New York Times; "Crimes, Complaints Involving Muslims Rise," broadcast the Washington Post; and "Muslims Cite a Rise in Hate Crimes," echoed the Los Angeles Times. That these leading newspapers treated the CAIR study as a serious piece of research served as an important endorsement. ...
Of twenty "anti-Muslim hate crimes" in 2004 that CAIR describes, at least six are invalid – and further research could likely find problems with the other fourteen instances.
Nor is this the first unreliable CAIR report; earlier ones were just as bad. Speaking about the 1996 CAIR report, terrorism expert Steven Emerson noted in congressional testimony that "a large proportion of the complaints have been found to be fabricated, manufactured, distorted or outside standard definitions of hate crimes." The 1996 report included the arrest of Musa Abu Marzouk, a Hamas leader, and the trial of Omar Abdul-Rahman, the blind sheikh and ringleader of the foiled "Day of Terror" plot to blow up New York City landmarks.
Even more absurdly, CAIR classified as an American hate crime the shooting of Ahmed Hamida in Jerusalem on February 26, 1996, as he fled after driving his car into a crowd of Israeli civilians, killing one and injuring twenty-three others."

"Seeking sanity in the asylum" (Kathleen Parker, Chicago Tribune, 2005/05/18)
Newsweek IV: "Reaction to an inaccurate Newsweek report that led recently to rioting and death in Afghanistan suggests that hysteria is, indeed, contagious. ...
What we need here is a little perspective.
First, we all can agree that flushing a Koran down a toilet, if physically possible, would be both insensitive and rude, though Westerners generally have a higher tolerance threshold for such offenses. Put it this way: You could flush a Bible down the toilet in front of Goober in Kabul, and it's unlikely that Mayberry suddenly would be awash in blood.
Without disrespecting true believers of Islam, one also could debate the relative miseries of seeing our favorite scripture disappear into the plumbing versus, say, watching airplanes fly into buildings, killing thousands of innocents. Remember, these are terrorist suspects captured after 9/11, not kidnapped members of an Afghan boys choir.
The apparent Newsweek mistake was regrettable, but we should beware of allowing ourselves to mirror the emotional reactions of people who were by no measure justified in their response -- even if the story had been proven true.
The same people foaming over a reported act of blasphemy didn't flinch while executing women for stepping outside sans burqa. I'm afraid my moral outrage in favor of the morally outrageous is tapped out."

"The Real Lesson of Newsweekgate" (Robert Spencer, FrontPageMagazine, 2005/05/18)
Newsweek III: "There is no excusing Newsweek’s irresponsibility in this. But this is not really a story about media bias or carelessness at all. There is a much larger story that is getting hardly any attention at all. The gorilla in the living room that no one wants to notice, is that flushing a Qur’an down the toilet should not be grounds to commit murder.
This aspect of the story is being ignored by spokesmen on both the Left and the Right. After the initial reports of rioting, Juan Cole sputtered, “Whatever goddam military genius came up with the bright idea of flushing the Koran down the toilet at Guantanamo should be court-martialed, and Bush had better get out there apologizing before this thing spirals further out of control.” On the other side of the political spectrum, Paul Marshall wrung his hands in National Review: “Even if Newsweek publishes a full retraction, the damage is done. Much of the Muslim world will regard it merely as a cover-up and feel reconfirmed in the view that America is at war with Islam.”
Neither Cole nor Marshall, however, made any moral judgment about the rioters. ...
Neither one says anything whatsoever about a culture that condones — celebrates — wanton murder of innocent people, mayhem, and destruction in response to the alleged and unproven destruction of a book."

"Our Insular Media" (Claudia Rosett, The Wall Street Journal, 2005/05/18)
Newsweek II: "What produced these particular riots was the intersection of Islamic-world furies and that brand of U.S. self-absorption in which no subject is more fascinating to the American media than any possible misdeeds of the U.S. itself. ...
The tragedy in all this is that while the entire world is by now acquainted with tales -- true and false -- about Abu Ghraib and Guantanomo Bay, the information pretty much ends there. When it comes to the Islamic world's most despotic states, almost no one outside their borders can reel off the names of the prisons they run, let alone tales of what happens within. Afghanistan is still recovering from the Taliban blackout of the human soul--which at the time received almost no coverage. Saudi Arabia--whence the Arab News, in its disquisition on Newsweek's story, denounces the U.S. as "ignorant and insensitive"--provides no accounting to the world of its dungeons. Can anyone name a prison in Yemen? ...
But to whatever extent the press is engaged in the business of trying to report the truth, or contribute to the making of a better world, it would be a service not only to U.S. journalism, but to the wider world--including Muslims--to spend less effort dredging Guantanomo Bay, and more time wielding the huge resources at our disposal to report on the prisons of the Islamic world. It is in such places that the recent riots had their true origins."

"Outrage and Silence" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2005/05/18)
Newsweek I: "It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side during the past week. One is the story about the violent protests in the Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay desecrated a Koran by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been linked to that report. I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect, because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way.
That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.
Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.
The Muslim world's silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq - as well as the only workable strategy going forward."

"Syria Heralds Reforms, But Many Have Doubts" (Anthony Shadid, The Washington Post, 2005/05/18)
"Beset by U.S. attempts to isolate his country and facing popular expectations of change, Syrian President Bashar Assad will move to begin legalizing political parties, purge the ruling Baath Party, sponsor free municipal elections in 2007 and formally endorse a market economy, according to officials, diplomats and analysts.
Assad's five-year-old government is heralding the reforms as a turning point in a long-promised campaign of liberalizing a state that, while far less dictatorial than Iraq under Saddam Hussein, remains one of the region's most repressive. His officials see the moves, however tentative and drawn out, as the start of a transitional period that will lead to a more liberal, democratic Syria.
Emboldened opposition leaders, many of whom openly support pressure by the United States even if they mistrust its intentions, said the measures were the last gasp of a government staggering after its hasty and embarrassing troop withdrawal last month from neighboring Lebanon.
The debate over the changes comes during a remarkable surge in what constitutes dissent in this country of 18 million. For the first time in years, opposition figures and even government allies are openly speculating on the fate of a party that, in some fashion, has ruled Syria since 1963 in the name of Arab nationalism, and today faces perhaps its greatest crisis."

Added in archive:
"Anti-Semitic incitement in the Arab world: Spreading The Protocols of the Elders of Zion through an official Internet website of the Palestinian Authority" (intelligence.org.il, 2005/05/04)

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

News and commentary:

"British Lawmaker Denies Oil-For-Food Claim" (Ken Guggenheim, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/05/17)
"British lawmaker George Galloway vehemently rejected a Senate subcommittee's claim that Saddam Hussein awarded him lucrative allocations under the U.N. oil-for-food program and accused its chairman of maligning his good name.
The subcommittee, chaired by Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman, claimed that Galloway allegedly funneled allocations through a fund he established in 1998 to help a 4-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukemia and received allocations worth 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003.
"I am not now nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf," Galloway testified Tuesday. "I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas."
Coleman later questioned Galloway's testimony. "If in fact he lied to this committee, there will have to be consequences," Coleman said at a news conference after the hearing.
Asked whether Galloway violated his oath to tell the truth before the committee, Coleman said: 'I don't know. We'll have to look over the record. I just don't think he was a credible witness.'"

"Hitchens' hypocrisy" (BackSpin, 2005/05/17)
"Using a recent James Bennet article as a case-in-point, Christopher Hitchens critiques the NY Times' use of the term 'insurgents' in Iraq... ... But when it comes to Israel and its jihadist demons, Hitchens sings a very different tune:

The Palestinian people have a much more justifiable grievance against Israel than even the most alienated Sunni slum-dweller has against the Coalition in Iraq. The Arab citizens of former mandate Palestine live, at best, as second-class citizens in Israel. At worst, they live in vile refugee camps in other states. In the middle, in Jerusalem and Gaza and the West Bank, they experience occupation and colonization and annexation. More than that, they have been told that their very presence is an inconvenience, since the land was awarded by God to the Jews."

(See also: "History and Mystery: Why does the New York Times insist on calling jihadists 'insurgents'?" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2005/05/16)

"ADL Calls for "Protocols" to be Stricken from Official Palestinian Authority Website" (ADL, 2005/05/17)
"The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today called on Palestinian authorities to immediately remove an Arabic translation of the entire "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" from their official State Information Service Web site.
ADL's Israel Office issued the following statement:

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is the classic in racist and paranoid literature and has been heralded by anti-Semites around the world as proof that the Jews are plotting to take over the world. While The Protocols have been thoroughly discredited the document is still being used to stir up anti-Semitic hatred especially throughout the Arab world.
It is simply unacceptable particularly at this time of confidence building toward a better future between Israelis and Palestinians for the official Palestinian Authority Web site to display this hoax, which continues to poison and frighten minds. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas should immediately have this document stricken from the Web site for which he is ultimately responsible and devote space to explaining the origins of this dastardly and dangerous piece."

(See also: "Anti-Semitic incitement in the Arab world: Spreading The Protocols of the Elders of Zion through an official Internet website of the Palestinian Authority" (intelligence.org.il, 2005/05/04))

"Andrew Sullivan seems to think..." (Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, 2005/05/17)
Newsweek V. Reynolds takes on Sullivan: "I do confess that I think that winning the war is much more important than Abu Ghraib, and that viewing the entire war -- and the entire American military -- through the prism of Abu Ghraib is as unfair as judging all Muslims by the acts of terrorists. Andrew has chosen the role of emoter-in-chief on these subjects, and he's welcome to it, though he would be more convincing in that part if he didn't count wrapping people in the Israeli flag as torture.
But while I think that what happened at Abu Ghraib was bad, and that it should be punished, and that Koran-flushing (if it had happened) would have been bad, though not torturous, I don't think it's terribly important compared to the war as a whole, and I think that it takes a peculiar perspective to make it emblematic of the war, and of the American military, which seems to be where Andrew is going these days, at least to judge -- as he invites us to -- by the volume of posts. Every war has its Abu Ghraibs -- and, usually, its Dresdens and its Atlantas, which this war has lacked, not because America didn't have the ability, but because it possessed a decency and restraint that gets small credit. When Andrew was a champion of the war on terror, writing about martial spirit and fifth columns composed of the "decadent left," did he believe that nothing like Abu Ghraib would happen, when such things (and much worse) happen in prisons across America (and everywhere else) on a daily basis? If so, he was writing out of an appalling ignorance."

"The Smug Delusion of Base Expectations" (Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 2005/05/17)
Newsweek IV. A welcome contrast to Andrew Sullivan, who focuses on other alleged cases of "mistreatment of the book" and thinks that the media should "Run long, detailed stories debriefing released Gitmo detainees and try to confirm or debunk their allegations of abuse.":
"Here's an actual newsflash — and one, yet again, that should be news to no one: The reason for the carnage here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more.
Newsweek merely gave the crazies their excuse du jour. But they didn't need a report of Koran desecration to fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers, to blow up embassies, or to behead hostages taken for the great sin of being Americans or Jews. They didn't need a report of Koran desecration to take to the streets and blame the United States while enthusiastically taking innocent lives. This is what they do. ...
What are we saying here? That the problem lies in the falsity of Newsweek's reporting? What if the report had been true? And, if you're being honest with yourself, you cannot say — based on common sense and even ignoring what we know happened at Abu Ghraib — that you didn't think it was conceivably possible the report could have been true. Flushing the Koran down a toilet (assuming for argument's sake that our environmentally correct, 3.6-liters-per-flush toilets are capable of such a feat) is a bad thing. But rioting? Seventeen people killed? That's a rational response? ...
Our cognate sense of the Islamic world has become the smug delusion of base expectations.
Someone alleges a Koran flushing and what do we do? We expect, accept, and silently tolerate militant Muslim savagery — lots of it. We become the hangin' judge for the imbeciles whose negligence "triggered" the violence, but offer no judgment about the societal dysfunction that allows this grade of offense to trigger so cataclysmic a reaction."

"Business as Usual in the Palestinian Authority" (Daniel Pipes, New York Sun/danielpipes.org, 2005/05/17)
"How do things look a half year after Arafat’s death? About as awful as anyone might have expected. Specifically, Abbas is unambiguously leading the Palestinians to war after the Israeli retreat from Gaza in August 2005. Consider some recent developments.
• Hiring terrorists as soldiers: Rather than arrest terrorists, as required by the informal February 2005 cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians, Abbas has instituted a unique employment program for them, incorporating them into his security forces. The Associated Press explains the charming point system to determine who gets what rank: “A high school diploma … is worth eight points, while a year in an Israeli prison or on the run counts for two points each. Gunmen don’t get credit for time served in Palestinian lockups, but they win extra points if they were wounded by Israeli army fire or had their homes demolished.” The Israeli authorities have accepted that even convicted Palestinian killers carry weapons. ...
• Inciting the population: As Palestinian Media Watch, the Center for Special Studies, and Michael Widlanski have exhaustively detailed, the political speeches, media content, mosque sermons, school textbooks, and wall posters remain as rabidly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic as during the worst days of Arafat’s rule. For example, Ahmad Qureia, the PA’s so-called prime minister, has threatened “an explosion” over Israel’s handling of Al-Aqsa Mosque." (See also: "Palestinians unleash anti-Israeli & anti-US messages on eve of Israeli Independence Day and Abbas visit to US" (Michael Widlanski, IMRA, 2005/05/13) and "Palestinian Friday Sermon by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris: Muslims Will Rule America and Britain, Jews Are a Virus Resembling AIDS" (MEMRI TV, 2005/05/13))

"Danger woman" (Alexander Linklater, The Guardian, 2005/05/17)
An article on and interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali:
"In many ways, the Netherlands is a crucible case within Europe, because the issues surrounding immigration are so stark. For example, the economic argument deployed by both leftwing multiculturalists and free-market conservatives - that immigration revives aging populations, provides new labour resources, and generates entrepreneurial activity - simply does not apply in the Netherlands. There has been no overall economic benefit to population change since unskilled guest workers were invited to the Netherlands in the early 1970s. According to Paul Scheffer, a leading critic of multiculturalism and professor of urban sociology at Amsterdam university, up to 60% of first-generation Turkish and Moroccan populations are unemployed. "It's a huge failure," he says, "everyone can see that."
Within a generation, the Netherlands has swung from blithe open-door immigration to anxious protectionism. During the 1990s, there was quite literary no immigration policy in the country, and a laissez-faire, multicultural orthodoxy reigned. Numbers of asylum seekers escalated annually from 3,500 in 1985 to over 43,000 in 2000 - pro rata among the highest in the EU. By 2001, 46% of the population of Amsterdam consisted of first- or second-generation immigrants. It is in the Netherlands that European multiculturalism, with its tendency to produce segregation, most dramatically flourished and died." (See also: "'We Must Declare War on Islamist Propaganda'" (Der Spiegel, 2005/05/14) and "Daughter of the Enlightenment" (Christopher Caldwell, The New York Times Magazine, 2005/04/03))

"Do Riots Save Islam's Honor?" (Irshad Manji, Los Angeles Times, 2005/05/17)
Newsweek III: "Still, at least one more question needs to be asked: Even if the Koran was mistreated, are violent riots justified? ...
By urging my fellow Muslims to consider these questions, I'm showing faith in their capacity to be thoughtful and humane. I'm appealing to their heads rather than only their hearts. Ultimately, I'm fighting not Islam but the routinely low expectations of those who practice it.
Contrast that with the strategy of Imran Khan, the Pakistani cricketer-turned-politician who rallied his countrymen to express rage based on one paragraph in Newsweek. A fierce rival of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Khan objects to cooperating with the U.S. on security matters. He knew his comments about Newsweek would feed the most reflexive of Muslim impulses: to treat the Koran with uncritical veneration. ...
As I write, Muslims worldwide are scheduling demonstrations for the end of this month against those who insult Islam. They'll peacefully protest not just the possibility of the Koran's desecration at Guantanamo but the proven torture at Abu Ghraib as well as civil rights violations suffered by ordinary Muslims in the United States. They have every right to condemn these injuries.
Will they also speak out against the bloody, fiery riots that, in the name of honoring Islam, are killing an increasing number of Muslims and non-Muslims?
It's a question worth asking."

"Journalists and the Military" (The Wall Street Journal, 2005/05/17)
Newsweek II: "The more consequential question here, it seems to us, is why Newsweek was so ready to believe the story was true. The allegation after all repudiated explicit U.S. and Army policy to treat Muslim detainees with religious respect, including time to pray, honoring dietary preferences and access to the Koran. Yet the magazine readily printed a story suggesting that what our enemies claim about Guantanamo is essentially true. Why?
Our own answer is that this is part of a basic media mistrust of the military that goes back to Vietnam and has shown itself with a vengeance during the Iraq conflict and the war on terror. ...
We aren't saying that reporters shouldn't be skeptical, and they certainly have a duty to report when a war is going badly. Where the press corps goes wrong is in always assuming the worst about military and government motives. Thus U.S. intelligence wasn't merely wrong about Saddam Hussein's WMD, it intentionally "lied" about it to sell an illegitimate war. Thus, too, an antiwar partisan named Joe Wilson with a basically unimportant story about uranium and Niger is hailed as a truth-telling whistle-blower. And reports from Seymour Hersh in late 2001 that the U.S was losing in Afghanistan set off a "quagmire" theme only days before the fall of the Taliban. The readiness of Newsweek to believe a thinly sourced allegation about the Koran at Guantanamo is part of the same mindset."

"Newsweek Says It Is Retracting Koran Report" (Katharine Q. Seelye and Neil A. Lewis, The New York Times, 2005/05/17)
Newsweek I: "Still, damage-control experts said that Newsweek's handling of the story had created a public relations disaster.
"They tap-danced," said Robert K. Passikoff, president of Brand Keys Inc., a consumer loyalty firm based in New York. "They should have immediately bit the bullet and admitted they were wrong. There was no middle ground here.'"
Dr. Passikoff said that the retraction "seems like too little, too late" because of the nature of the error. "It had such far-reaching effects," he said. "People died because of this story."
Analysts said Newsweek was also damaged by the timing of this event, coming after a spate of high-profile journalistic scandals involving fabrications and plagiarism by reporters at other news organizations, including The New York Times.
"I think that this has the potential to be one of those so-called tipping points," said David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a senior aide to four presidents. Mr. Gergen also works for U.S. News & World Report, a competitor to Newsweek.
"There is a lot of anger, both here and abroad," Mr. Gergen added. "The Muslim world is going to continue to believe that this actually happened and that Newsweek is only issuing a retraction because of the reaction."
He said the magazine was smart to issue the retraction, but that it would not quell the outrage. "If anything, it is mushrooming and becoming uglier by the hour," he said."

Added in archive:
"'Free Muslims Against Terrorism' march draws few in Washington" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2005/05/14)
"Palestinian Friday Sermon by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris: Muslims Will Rule America and Britain, Jews Are a Virus Resembling AIDS" (MEMRI TV, 2005/05/13)
"Palestinians unleash anti-Israeli & anti-US messages on eve of Israeli Independence Day and Abbas visit to US" (Michael Widlanski, IMRA, 2005/05/13)

Monday, May 16, 2005

News and commentary:

"Bush Country" (Fouad Ajami, The Wall Street Journal/FDD, 2005/05/16)
"To venture into the Arab world, as I did recently over four weeks in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq, is to travel into Bush Country. I was to encounter people from practically all Arab lands, to listen in on a great debate about the possibility of freedom and liberty. I met Lebanese giddy with the Cedar Revolution that liberated their country from the Syrian prison that had seemed an unalterable curse. They were under no illusions about the change that had come their way. They knew that this new history was the gift of an American president who had put the Syrian rulers on notice. The speed with which Syria quit Lebanon was astonishing, a race to the border to forestall an American strike that the regime could not discount. I met Syrians in the know who admitted that the fear of American power, and the example of American forces flushing Saddam Hussein out of his spiderhole, now drive Syrian policy. They hang on George Bush's words in Damascus, I was told: the rulers wondering if Iraq was a crystal ball in which they could glimpse their future. ...
Mr. Bush may not be given to excessive philosophical sophistication, but his break with "the soft bigotry of low expectations" in the Arab-Islamic world has found eager converts among Muslims and Arabs keen to repair their world, to wean it from a culture of scapegoating and self-pity. Pick up the Arabic papers today: They are curiously, and suddenly, readable. They describe the objective world; they give voice to recognition that the world has bypassed the Arabs. The doors have been thrown wide open, and the truth of that world laid bare. Grant Mr. Bush his due: The revolutionary message he brought forth was the simple belief that there was no Arab and Muslim "exceptionalism" to the appeal of liberty. For a people mired in historical pessimism, the message of this outsider was a powerful antidote to the culture of tyranny." (Hat tip: Heretical Librarian.)

"Hamas victorious" (Barry Rubin, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/05/16)
"Let's not mince words: The Hamas landslide victory in the recent Palestinian local elections is a disaster for the Palestinians' hopes for peace, and for Israel. It is a historical turning point. The West will have to choose between recognizing what is happening or veering onto some very dangerous territory. ...
Now Israel is faced with the problem of withdrawing from a Gaza Strip where Hamas will be dominant, of turning over West Bank towns to a Palestinian Authority showing no interest in disarming or stopping terrorists, and of trying to help a regime that has no interest in a peace agreement. ...
So the problem remains the same as before: A Palestinian movement shaped by Arafat, extremism, terror and demonization o