Archived news and commentary: June 6 - 12, 2005

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Sunday, June 12, 2005

News and commentary:

"An Iranian woman holds a photograph..."
(Raheb Homavandi , Reuters, 2005/06/12)
"An Iranian woman holds a photograph during a protest gathering in front of Tehran University in Tehran June 12, 2005. About 300 women took part in the protest against gender discrimination in the Islamic republic of Tehran."

"Iranian Women Defy Authority to Protest Sex Discrimination" (Nazila Fathi, The New York Times, 2005/06/13)
"Hundreds of women staged an unauthorized demonstration in Tehran on Sunday, protesting sex discrimination under Iran's Islamic leadership just days before the June 17 presidential election.
The protest was the first public display of dissent by women since the 1979 revolution, when the new leadership enforced obligatory veiling. "We are women, we are the children of this land, but we have no rights," they chanted. More than 250 marched outside Tehran University, and about 200 others demonstrated two blocks away after hundreds of riot police officers prevented them from joining the main protest.
There were reports that the police had clubbed several women, though there were no hospital reports of injuries. Demonstrators said they had seen some women being detained and dragged away by officers. But the situation appeared to stabilize, and after about an hour of demonstrating, the women disbanded without further incident."

"Bombs kill 8, wound 75 in Iran before election" (Hossein Jasseb, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2005/06/12)
"AHVAZ, Iran (Reuters) - Bombs killed eight people and wounded 75 in
Iran on Sunday in a rare string of attacks five days before a presidential election.
Security is tight in the Islamic republic, where bombings have been almost unheard of in the past decade.
Officials blamed the attacks on exiled opposition groups seeking to dissuade Iranians from voting.
Four bombs in Ahvaz, capital of the partly Arabic-speaking province of Khuzestan, where most of Iran's oil reserves lie, targeted government buildings, killing seven people, provincial officials said.
Hours later, a bomb in the capital Tehran killed one person."

"Guantanamo Provides Valuable Intelligence Information" (U.S. Department of Defense, 2005/06/12)
The interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani II: "Using approved and monitored interrogation approaches, including additional authorities approved by the Department of Defense in December 2002, Kahtani admitted he had been lying. He also admitted:

• He had been sent to the U.S. by Khalid Sheik Mohamed, the lead architect of the 9/11 attack;
• That he had met Osama Bin Laden on several occasions;
• That he had received terrorist training at two al-Qaida camps;
• That he had been in contact with many senior al-Qaida leaders.

More importantly, he provided valuable intelligence information helping the U.S. to understand the recruitment of terrorist operatives, logistics, and other planning aspects of the 9/11 terrorist attack. He also provided information that:

• Clarified Jose Padilla’s and Richard Reid’s relationship with al-Qaida and their activities in Afghanistan
• Provided infiltration routes and methods used by al-Qaida to cross borders undetected
• Explained how Osama Bin Laden evaded capture by U.S. forces, as well as provided important information on his health
• Provided detailed information about 30 of Osama Bin Laden’s bodyguards who are also held at Guantanamo."

"Inside the Wire at Gitmo" (TIME, 2005/06/12)
The interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani I: "TIME has obtained the first documented look inside the highly classified realm of military interrogations since the Gitmo Camp at Guantanamo Bay opened. The document is a secret 84-page interrogation log that details the interrogation of ‘Detainee 063’ at Guantanamo Bay. It is a remarkable look into the range of techniques and methods used for the interrogation of Mohammed al Qahtani, who is widely believed to be the so-called 20th hijacker, a compatriot of Osama bin Laden and a man who had tried to enter the U.S. in August 2001 to take part in the Sept. 11 attacks. ...
More Muscular Strategies: Al-Qahtani’s resilience under pressure in the fall of 2002 led top officials at Gitmo to petition Washington for more muscular “counter resistance strategies.” On Dec. 2, Rumsfeld approved 16 of 19 stronger coercive methods. ...
Dripping Water or Playing Christina Aguilera Music: After the new measures are approved, the mood in al-Qahtani’s interrogation booth changes dramatically. The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music. ...
Has Big Story to Tell: Over the next month, the interrogators experiment with other tactics. They strip-search him and briefly make him stand nude. They tell him to bark like a dog and growl at pictures of terrorists. They hang pictures of scantily clad women around his neck. A female interrogator so annoys al-Qahtani that he tells his captors he wants to commit suicide and asks for a crayon to write a will." (See also: "Extracts from an Interrogation Log" (TIME, 2005/06/12))

"Sir Ibrahim Hooper and Lord Salam Al-Marayati?" (Daniel Pipes, danielpipes.org, 2005/06/12)
"Well, they live in the wrong country to receive such accolades, and much they must rue it, for their British counterpart, Iqbal Sacranie, was knighted today, in the Queen's Birthday Honours. As secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain (on which, see Chris Blackburn's analysis, "The Dark Side of the Muslim Council of Britain"), Sacranie has been one of the most important advocates of radical Islam in the United Kingdom – so what could be more appropriate than to reward him with a hoary English title?
The comparison with Hooper is not a stretch, for the MCB and CAIR work together; Beila Rabinowitz of MilitantIslamMonitor.org has even called the MCB "a carbon copy of CAIR."
Among Sacranie's actions: calling for censorship of religious speech, trying to change the plot of the action series 24, boycotting Holocaust Remembrance ceremonies, denying the existence of Islamic terrorists, interpreting the Bush administration's true agenda as the "recolonization and the re-mapping of the Middle East," and accusing Israel of genocide." (See also: "Knighted Muslim vows to speak out" (BBC News, 2005/06/12))

"The philosopher and the ayatollah" (Wesley Yang, The Boston Globe, 2005/06/12)
"'IT IS PERHAPS the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and most insane.' With these words, the French philosopher Michel Foucault hailed the rising tide that would sweep Iran's modernizing despot, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi Shah, out of power in January 1979 and install in his place one of the world's most illiberal regimes, the Shi'ite government headed by Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini. ...
"As an Islamic movement it can set the entire region afire, overturn the most unstable regimes, and disturb the most solid," Foucault wrote enthusiastically. "Islam — which is not simply a religion, but an entire way of life, an adherence to a history and a civilization — has a good chance to become a gigantic powder keg, at the level of hundreds of millions of men."
Foucault penned seven dispatches for the front page of the leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra as well as subsequent articles in French. But until the publication this month of Kevin Anderson and Janet Afary's "Foucault and the Iranian Revolution" (University of Chicago), which includes the first full translation of Foucault's Iranian writings, few of the English-speaking scholars who have otherwise pored over everything Foucault wrote and said have dealt with the episode at length. ...
In an interview with an Iranian journalist conducted on his first visit, in September 1978, Foucault made plain his disillusionment with all the secular ideologies of the West and his yearning to see "another political imagination" emerge from the Iranian Revolution. "Industrial capitalism," he said, had emerged as "the harshest, most savage, most selfish, most dishonest, oppressive society one could possibly imagine." The failure of Communism, for which Foucault had no great sympathy, left us, "from the point of view of political thought," he argued, 'at point zero.'" (Hat tip: FrontPageMagazine.)

"A witch’s brew of idiocy" (Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times, 2005/06/12)
"The horrible case of the little African girl, Victoria Climbié, has been back in the news. She was murdered by her foster parents because they thought she was possessed by the devil. Now, Victoria’s social worker, Lisa Arthurworrey, has been told she shouldn’t shoulder too much blame. She was instead, a tribunal decided, a caring and dedicated professional and, indeed, a "victim". ...
In an “exclusive” interview with the Daily Mail — a newspaper that tends to take a robust stance towards immigrants, until they are murdered — Arthurworrey painted an interesting picture of life inside Haringey social services in 2000.
One senior manager believed in witchcraft; another loathed all white people (especially the police). A third was obviously disturbed. Meetings degenerated into discussions about how unpleasant it was to be a black person living in England. The executives in the Climbié case received no punishment. All now have very remunerative jobs elsewhere in the public sector. ...
Last month police investigating the murder of the boy whose torso was found in the Thames in 2001 announced that 300 African boys aged between four and seven had gone missing in a three-month period in the capital that year, though — a police spokesman reassured us — “there is no reason to assume that they have all been murdered”. ...
Unfortunately, we now have the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill about to enter the statute books, so I am prohibited from suggesting that people who believe in witches, the demonic possession of children and exorcisms are either cretins from a Stone Age culture or psychologically deranged. Which is a shame, because that’s what I’d hoped to do."

"Arab Media: Our Faith, Their Lies" (Khaled Batarfi, Arab News, 2005/06/12)
"The Arab media kept telling us that all our troubles are due to Zionist conspiracies. They explained to us that we had to prepare for the liberation of Arab occupied lands. Sacrifices had to be made. Freedom, democracy, economic prosperity, good education and all kind of luxuries had to wait. Many believed. Many were skeptical. And as the wait got longer, the prison larger, the civilization gap with the rest of the world wider, more started to get skeptical. Resentment followed. ...
Then came the Internet and Satellite TV. Then came CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeerah. Others followed and suddenly the truth can’t hide behind the smiley anchors’ faces anymore. The public eye and mind went past the newsroom curtain and the Dear Leader’s portraits to rich sources of information and explanations. So what the media answer would be?
Surprise, surprise! More lies, more going. No one believes? Who cares! There is a whole industry of perception manufacturing. Where would all these people go? How would this entire infrastructure be dismantled? Better leave things as they are, hoping somebody, somewhere still have faith.
Meanwhile, the elite will continue to benefit, the flaws will still be there, and the ship will go on sinking. The people’s knowledge of the truth will grow larger, their patience will get thinner, and the pot will be more and more boiling. The inevitable big bang will happen ... soon enough."

"Interrogating Ourselves" (Joseph Lelyveld, The New York Times Magazine, 2005/06/12)
"How do we feel about coercive techniques that are commonly, if somewhat cavalierly, held to fall short of torture?":
"These methods are variously known as C.I.D. (for ''cruel, inhuman and degrading'' treatment) or H.C.I. (for ''highly coercive interrogation''); or, in blander Pentagon-speak, ''counterresistance strategies'' (ranked in order of severity in two groups, Class II and Class III); or ''professional interrogation techniques,'' to use the postmodern gloss recently offered by the director of Central Intelligence, Porter J. Goss, to describe ''waterboarding'' (a refinement of the ancient practice of water torture, with which American troops first experimented a hundred years ago on Philippine insurgents). All these terms are sometimes loosely subsumed in opinion articles under the heading ''torture lite'' (though you might wonder what's so ''lite'' about waterboarding). None of them would be remotely legal in an investigation of an American on American soil.
This broad category of abuse was originally deemed by agile government lawyers to be just inside the realm of what's legal for foreigners held abroad so long as there's no intent on the part of interrogators to cause permanent physical or psychic harm; in other words, if no conspicuous scars are left by techniques from sleep deprivation to solitary confinement in a filthy windowless cell to the denial of toilet facilities and medical assistance to the pouring of icy water on a body that may be naked, hooded or lightly clothed to shackling that same body in positions of stress -- or, possibly, all of the above, combined in an atmosphere of general menace, suggesting to the prisoner that, however long it has lasted, what he has experienced may be only the beginning. How widely torture lite is practiced now and who authorizes it is a matter of pure guesswork for anyone who doesn't happen to be an official with a high security clearance or a ranking member of a Congressional intelligence committee."

"The massacre families who bay for Saddam’s blood" (Ali Rifat, The Sunday Times, 2005/06/12)
An article on the Dujail massacre: "Those left in the village faced a terrible fate. Hundreds of families were arrested and thousands of acres of palm and fruit plantations, the main source of income for the villagers, were put to the torch. Even today, the scars are visible — the main road is pocked with holes from the shells that rained down 23 years ago. ...
Dujail’s Special Committee of Freed Prisoners, which has submitted the case to the lawyers preparing Saddam’s prosecution, said it had found documents listing 148 inhabitants executed by a special decree signed by Saddam and dated July 23, 1985. Most of them had endured show trials. The committee estimates that in total 385 were executed. ...
Witnesses speak of Abu Ghraib’s torturers pulling out nails and teeth, and administering electric shocks. Victims were whipped and had their skin cut with razors. Women were brought naked in front of their husbands and sons and threatened with hanging to extract confessions. ...
Um Talal’s grim odyssey did not end at Abu Ghraib. Women, children and the elderly were moved to a huge prison in Bassiyah, stuck in the desert that stretches towards Iraq’s border with Saudi Arabia.
“No one could come in or escape,” she said, describing how she and her daughters spent 4 years incarcerated. In an act of appalling cruelty, she said, the guards killed Raida, her pregnant daughter-in-law, by tying her legs together when she was in labour.
“She screamed in pain for hours,” she said. 'They left her in labour and would not untie her. Eventually she and the unborn baby died.'"

"U.S. Campaign Produces Few Convictions on Terrorism Charges" (Dan Eggen and Julie Tate, The Washington Post, 2005/06/12)
"On Thursday, President Bush stepped to a lectern at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy in Columbus to urge renewal of the USA Patriot Act and to boast of the government's success in prosecuting terrorists.
Flanked by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush said that "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."
Those statistics have been used repeatedly by Bush and other administration officials, including Gonzales and his predecessor, John D. Ashcroft, to characterize the government's efforts against terrorism.
But the numbers are misleading at best.
An analysis of the Justice Department's own list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people -- not 200, as officials have implied -- were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security.
Most of the others were convicted of relatively minor crimes such as making false statements and violating immigration law -- and had nothing to do with terrorism, the analysis shows."

"Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan" (Walter Pincus, The Washington, 2005/06/12)
"A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.
The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.
In its introduction, the memo "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" notes that U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but adds that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, 'the aftermath and how to shape it.'"

Saturday, June 11, 2005

News and commentary:

"They deserve something better" (Jihad i Malmö, 2005/06/10)
Translation of an e-mail from a teacher at an upper secondary school in Malmö, Sweden, who accepted publication if "neither the school nor herself could be identified":
"A couple of months ago I went into an IT classroom where selfstudies was supposed to be going on. A dozen Arab boys in the class were gathered round a computer and the mood was high. My spontaneous reaction was that they were surfing for porn and I approached for a look, expecting them to be ashamed. But, no, they were watching a DVD of hostage killing in Iraq. One disgusting decapitation after another were rolling over the screen.
Somewhat chocked I asked them what they were doing. "We are watching Allah's fighters killing Jews and Americans," they said.
"It's awful to kill innocent people," I tried to rebuke them.
They didn't understand what I was talking about. Everybody talked at the same time, trying to explain that the "infidels" got their just punishments.
When a Japanese man was decapitated on the screen, Amir laughed and pointed: "That's what's in store for all Jews."
His friend filled in: "Allahu Akbar!" ...
I was still in chock when I got hold of the principal and told him what had happened. But, alas, my chock was not lessened by his complete indifference. At first he argued that it was a private matter what films the pupils were watching. When I referred to the school's task to foster democratic values, non-violence and anti-racism, he argued that I was "overreacting."
Finally, the atmosphere became so inflamed that he spat out: 'Then you should get a job at some damn Sörgården [i.e. idyllic] school with well-behaved Swedish students.'" (For more on the situation in Malmö, see also: "A Swedish Dilemma" (Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2005/02/28 issue), "Swedes Reach Muslim Breaking Point" (Steve Harrigan, FOX News, 2004/11/26) and "The Swedish Way" (Steve Harrigan, FOX News, 2004/10/22))

"The Model School, Islamic Style" (Marguerite Michaels, TIME, 2005/06/11)
A report on the "Universal School, an Islamic institution teaching 638 students in pre-K through 12th grades in Bridgeview, Ill.":
"The first order of business is removing temptation. The codes of dress and behavior are strict. Students must have regular haircuts ("no bleaching or 'off' colors are allowed"). Students must wear socks and closed-toe shoes. Boys cannot wear earrings or have any body piercing. Students may not wear makeup during school. Through Grade 5, the girls wear plaid jumpers and leggings, but the head scarf called a hijab is optional; the boys wear navy dress pants and light blue shirts. Older girls must wear the hijab (light blue for middle schoolers, gray or white for high schoolers) and a calf-length navy top that resembles a raincoat. Wearing the hijab full-time is a big commitment, so some girls take it off as soon as they leave the building. ...
The Universal School makes clear its independence from the controversial institution right next door, the copper-domed Bridgeview mosque. Built a decade before the school, the mosque was started by moderates but then saw a power struggle in which hard-liners came out on top. Among its leaders, said the Chicago Tribune in an investigative report, "are men who have condemned Western culture ... and encouraged members to view society in stark terms: Muslims against the world." Last year a member of the mosque was indicted for allegedly funneling money, before 9/11, to Hamas, the militant Palestinian group.
The students next door sometimes give voice to the commonplace resentment that can be found among Muslims the world over. Assigned by his English teacher to write an essay about his own American Dream, a 15-year-old wrote that the occupied territories should be returned to the Palestinians and 'the Jews should be left to suffer.'" (Hat tip: Daniel Pipes.)

"Bush: Syria must not interfere in Lebanon" (CNN.com, 2005/06/11)
"President Bush said Friday that he was disturbed by reports that Syria might still have intelligence agents operating in Lebanon.
"Obviously, we are are going to follow up on these troubling reports and we expect the Syrian government to follow up on these troubling reports," Bush said during a media availability with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.
Bush said the message of the United States and the United Nations is for Lebanon to be free, Syria must remove both military and intelligence personnel.
A U.N. investigation team will be sent into Lebanon to check into the allegations, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Friday. No date was set.
A senior State Department official told CNN that the United States has received what it believes are credible reports that Syria has drawn up a "hit list" of Lebanese political figures targeted for assassination in an effort to regain control of the country." (See also: "U.S. Has 'Credible' Word of Syrian Plot to Kill Lebanese" (Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times, 2005/06/10))

Friday, June 10, 2005

News and commentary:

"Oscar-winning U.S. actor Sean Penn takes notes..."
(Raheb Homavandi, Reuters, 2005/06/10)
"Oscar-winning U.S. actor Sean Penn takes notes as he observes Friday prayers at Tehran university June 10, 2005. Penn arrived to the Islamic Republic of Iran as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle."

"Sean Penn in new role at Friday Prayers in Tehran" (Reuters, 2005/06/10)
All-Time Low II. Sean Penn in Team America: "Last year I went to Iraq. Before Team America showed up, it was a happy place. They had flowering meadows and rainbow skies, and rivers made of chocolate, where the children danced and laughed and played with gumdrop smiles.":
"TEHRAN (Reuters) - Hollywood actor Sean Penn, adopting the role of a journalist, scribbled in his notebook as Friday prayer worshippers in Tehran chanted "Death to America."
Penn, 44, in Iran on a brief assignment for the San Francisco Chronicle ahead of presidential elections on June 17, may be one of the best known faces in film, but he went unrecognized by the 6,000 faithful at Tehran University.
Working with a translator, Penn took copious notes as hardline cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati urged the congregation to vote en masse "to make America angry."
The actor, who visited Iraq before and after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and wrote an account of his second trip for the Chronicle, told Reuters he had decided to come to Iran because of growing tensions between Washington and Tehran."

"Gallup: Public Confidence in Papers, TV News Falls to All-Time Low" (Editor & Publisher, 2005/06/10)
All-Time Low I: "Public trust in newspapers and television news continued to decline in Gallup's annual survey of "public confidence in major institutions" in the United States, reaching an all-time low this year.
Those having a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers dipped from 30% to 28% in one year, the same total for television. The previous low for newspapers was 29% in 1994. Since 2000, confidence in newspapers has declined from 37% to 28%, and TV from 36% to 28%, according to the poll. ...
The military topped the poll with a 74% confidence rating, with the police at 63% and organized religion at 53%."

"Egyptian Historian on Saudi Iqra TV: The Vatican's Mission of Destroying Islam was Delegated to the U.S. – Which Carried Out 9/11 on Assignment by the World Council of Churches" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 920, 2005/06/10)
My God, doctor. This is unbelievable!: "The following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian historian Professor Zaynab Abd Al-Aziz, which aired on Saudi Iqra TV on May 26, 2005...
Abd Al-Aziz: "The decision to impose one religion over the entire world was made in the Second Vatican Council in 1965."
Host: "Huh?"
Abd Al-Aziz: "Yes. A long time ago. ... It was agreed upon and pre-arranged. John Paul II prepared a five-year plan, on the eve of the third millennium, Christianize the world. His address in 1995 was based on the assumption that by the year 2000, the entire world would be Christianized. Since the plan was not accomplished, the World Council of Churches assigned this mission to the US in January 2001, since the US is the world's unrivaled military power. They named the decade between 2001-2010 "the age of eradicating evil" – "evil" referring to Islam and Muslims. ...
When in January 2001, the World Council of Churches delegated this mission to the US - what did the US do? It fabricated the show of… is it September 9 or 11?" ...
Host: "My God, doctor. This is unbelievable! You're saying that this destruction…"
Abd Al-Aziz: '...was a controlled demolition. The building collapsed in its place, without hitting a single building to its left or right. The three towers fell in place.'"

"The Anti-Semitic Disease" (Paul Johnson, Commentary, from the June 2005 issue)
"What is in any case clear is that anti-Semitism, besides being self-inflicted, is also self-destructive, and of societies and governments as much as of individuals.":
"As an example of the self-destructive force of anti-Semitism, the case of Hitler and Nazi Germany is paralleled only by what has happened to the Arabs over the course of the last century. ...
Over the last half-century, anti-Semitism has been the essential ideology of the Arab world; its practical objective has been the destruction of Israel and the extermination of its inhabitants. And this huge and baneful force, this disease of the mind, has once again had its customary consequence. Just as Hitler ended his life a suicide, having failed in his mission of destroying the Jewish people, so 100 million or more Arabs, marching under the banner of anti-Semitism, have totally failed, despite four full-scale wars and waves of terrorism and intifadas without number, to extinguish tiny Israel.
In the meantime, by allowing their diseased obsession to dominate all their aspirations, the Arabs have wasted trillions in oil royalties on weapons of war and propaganda — and, at the margin, on ostentatious luxuries for a tiny minority. In their flight from reason, they have failed to modernize or civilize their societies, to introduce democracy, or to consolidate the rule of law. Despite all their advantages, they are now being overtaken decisively by the Indians and the Chinese, who have few natural resources but are inspired by reason, not hatred.
Yet still the Arabs feed off the ravages of the disease, imbibing and spreading its poison." (Note: The essay is in PDF format.)

"The journalism of warfare" (Keith Windschuttle, The New Criterion, from the June 2005 issue)
Windschuttle on Robert Fisk and, here, John Pilger:
"He claimed that in the first Gulf War, no less than 250,000 Iraqis were killed. He cited the Medical Educational Trust of London as his source. In 2003, the Australian journalist Tony Horwitz checked this out. He did a search of every English-language newspaper since 1990 but could find no mention of this trust or its alleged report — except in articles with the byline John Pilger. Studies by both Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. and the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London put the plausible death toll, of both soldiers and civilians, at between 10,000 and 20,000 dead. In the same vein, Pilger claimed the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001–2002 killed more Afghans than Americans who died in the twin towers. He put the civilian death toll at 5000. This was the highest figure claimed by anyone. In contrast, the Associated Press, Reuters, and Human Rights Watch New York, all of whom, unlike Pilger, had personnel in the country at the time, put civilian casualties at between 600 and 1000. In other words, Pilger today simply plucks figures like this out of the air, inventing any number that serves his political purposes.
Between them, Pilger and Fisk represent the nadir of Western journalism in our time. They take us back to those apologists of the Soviet era in the 1930s, such as Walter Duranty, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times, who lavished praise on Stalin and the USSR at a time when hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians were dying of starvation or perishing before the regime’s firing squads. In his day, Duranty, who won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize for his efforts, was as celebrated as Pilger and Fisk are now, but what stuck in the long run was the epithet another Moscow correspondent, Malcolm Muggeridge, later gave him: “the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in 50 years of journalism.” Duranty and his successors betrayed their profession."

"Guantánamo is not the Gulag" (Cathy Young, The Boston Globe/IHT, 2005/06/10)
"What about the "American gulag"? It is important to remember that the United States is dealing with the unprecedented situation of de facto enemy combatants who belong not to the army of a hostile state but to a vast, murky terror network - a network that proved its deadliness on Sept. 11, 2001, and other occasions. This does not give America carte blanche for indefinite detention without charges, let alone torture of suspects, but it does pose serious issues of balancing civil rights and national security that other democracies, such as France, are grappling with as well. While the mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. detention facilities has been too common to be dismissed as bad acts by a few bad apples, it remains the exception, not the rule.
Prisoner abuse remains a real issue. But Amnesty's comparison, which the former Soviet political prisoner Vladimir Bukovsky characterizes as "stupid" and "an insult to the memory of millions who perished" in Soviet camps, does not help matters. Instead, it revives the tired specter of moral equivalency between flawed democracies and totalitarian dictatorships - a specter particularly obscene when real gulags still exist in places like North Korea. It also gives the Bush administration an "out" to deflect attention from its own policies to its critics' hyperbole."

"Symposium: Murdering Women For 'Honor'" (Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine, 2005/06/10)
"[Hans-Peter] Raddatz: In the first two volumes of the new UN-sponsored 'Encyclopaedia of Women in Islamic Cultures' (EWIC) mostly female authors contribute to the subject of power and violence executed by men over and against women. Some of them arrive at very interesting results. They show that over the centuries the jurists and theologians of Islam have widened the rules of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition into an unlimited licence, some sort of blank cheque, for men to handle women as they deem appropriate. ...
So the uniting band of all Islamic cultures is simultaneously the top human right in Islam. It is male and comprises the authority of husbands as well as fathers and brothers who guard what they call the "chastity" of their daughters and sisters. Veiling and domestic arrest secure the so-called "honor" which then equals the human right to female obedience, unlimited readiness for sexual intercourse and punishment in case of disobedience. For the Western mind this is seen as violent abuse, but in Muslim law it forms one of the central regulations securing not only the "honor" but the Islamic state as such. This leads to the first question of why violence and "honor killings" are currently increasing to an alarming extent, not only in the West but also and particularly in the Islamic region.
EWIC bases its findings on quite recent UN statistics which show an exorbitant increase of violence in the Arab world. Meanwhile beating, rape and killing of women occur in every third family and, most disquietingly, out of this third almost one third again are rapes in the family, i.e. incestuous actions against women and children. These figures are similarly confirmed for Turkey, an allegedly secular country."

"Meet the Parents Circle" (Lee Kaplan, FrontPageMagazine, 2005/06/10)
"The latest event put on by the RCNV [Resource Center for Nonviolence] is a case in point. Billed under the deceptive banner of “Palestine Awareness Week,” it featured two women — one an Israeli named Robin “Robi” Damelin, and the other a Palestinian woman named Nadwa Saranda — who appeared as representatives of a group called the Parents Circle. Participants were led to believe that both women had both lost loved ones in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Supposedly, both women had family members killed by the opposite side, tragedies that compelled them to reach out together to create a “dialogue” in the name of peace and non-violence. It all sounded perfectly innocent. ...
Yet an investigation into the details of Nadwa Saranda’s story reveals that, her claims notwithstanding, her sister, Naela, was not in fact killed by a “Jewish settler.” She was, rather, killed by a Palestinian Arab who confessed to killing her. According to Al Quds, the Palestinian national newspaper, Naela was killed after being stabbed in the chest several times near the Jerusalem Municipality building in al-Musrara quarter. She was killed by 23-year-old Mohammed Sha'lan from the village of Hizma, who claims he thought she was an Israeli. ...
Since Nadwa Saranda’s sister was killed by a Palestinian Arab and not a Jew, what “pain” was she sharing as a bereaved woman whose sister had been killed by Israelis? Wasn’t she a fraud?
This line of questioning proved too much for Scott Kennedy. He stood in front of one of our cameras to block the picture, and Robi Damelin began to scream and carry on. She threw off her microphone and walked out, ordering Nadwa to follow her. So much for honest dialogue from the Parent’s Circle and the Resource Center for Nonviolence."

"Assault on Women at Protest Stirs Anger, Not Fear, in Egypt" (Michael Slackman, The New York Times, 2005/06/10)
"The images of women being hit and sexually abused - particularly offensive in this conservative Islamic society - have helped bring together groups as diverse as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Center for Socialist Studies in their calls for change. For a country whose political life has atrophied in more than two decades under emergency laws, the attacks on May 25 have also inspired many political novices to become active, creating a backlash that has taken the government by surprise. ...
The assaults have also jump-started the women's movement here, not a Western-style feminist force, but one where women have moved to take a leading role in trying to motivate and expand opposition to the ruling National Democratic Party and its leader, President Hosni Mubarak. The opposition groups are still small in number and national reach, but their very existence represents an unprecedented challenge for the president.
"We are opening a real popular female movement," said Jihan El Halafawy, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, speaking Thursday night at a forum called "The Street Is Ours," organized by some of the women who were attacked." (See also: "Egypt 'backed protester beatings'" (BBC News, 2005/05/27) and "Beatings, arrests at Egyptian referendum" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2005/05/25))

"A New Syria?" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2005/06/10)
"DAMASCUS, Syria -- I'm standing in the hot sun at the gate of a fancy new conference center outside town, trying (unsuccessfully) to get inside and watch the Baath Party debate political reforms. The headline in the morning's government-run Syria Times has proclaimed: "Congress continues with openness and transparency." But alas, it's not so open and transparent that they're actually going to let me in.
Sorry, says the guard eventually, the meeting is over for the day. And with that, a line of Mercedes-Benz limousines begins to roar past. They're big, fancy sedans, many with curtains drawn so the Baath Party luminaries won't have to look at the little people along the road. It takes nearly five minutes for the cars to go by.
That's the essential reality of this week's much-ballyhooed Baath congress." (See also: "Assad: Media, tech crushing Arabs" (CNN.com, 2005/06/06))

"U.S. Has 'Credible' Word of Syrian Plot to Kill Lebanese" (Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times, 2005/06/10)
"The United States has received "credible information" that Syrian operatives in Lebanon plan to try to assassinate senior Lebanese political leaders and that Syrian military intelligence forces are returning to Lebanon to create "an environment of intimidation," a senior administration official said Thursday.
The official said that the information had come from "a variety of Lebanese sources" and that "we assess it as credible." The information, he said, was gathered after the recent assassinations of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February, and of Samir Kassir, a well-known journalist, a week ago.
Both were outspoken critics of Syrian domination of Lebanese politics, and Mr. Kassir had blamed Syria for the assassination of Mr. Hariri.
"This is a moment when many politicians are facing overt Syrian intimidation in the middle of the election period," said the official, referring to parliamentary elections held last month and again this month. "When Lebanese sources tell us that they are hearing that the Kassir killing will be followed by others, we take it seriously."
The administration official volunteered the information about what he said was a "Syrian hit list" on the condition that he not be identified by name or agency." (See also: "U.S. Wary Of Syria Targeting Lebanese" (Robin Wright, The Washington Post, 2005/06/10))

"Building Iraq's Army: Mission Improbable" (Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru, The Washington Post, 2005/06/10)
"BAIJI, Iraq -- An hour before dawn, the sky still clouded by a dust storm, the soldiers of the Iraqi army's Charlie Company began their mission with a ballad to ousted president Saddam Hussein. "We have lived in humiliation since you left," one sang in Arabic, out of earshot of his U.S. counterparts. "We had hoped to spend our life with you." ...
Almost to a man, the soldiers said they joined for the money -- a relatively munificent $300 to $400 a month. The military and police forces offered some of the few job opportunities in town. Even then, the soldiers were irate: They wanted more time off, air-conditioned quarters like their American counterparts and, most important, respect. Most frustrating, they said, was the two- or three-hour wait to be searched at the base's gate when they returned from leave.
The soldiers said 17 colleagues had quit in the past few days.
"In 15 days, we're all going to leave," Nawaf declared.
The two-dozen soldiers gathered nodded their heads.
"All of us," Khalaf said. "We'll live by God, but we'll have our respect."
But the Americans said the Iraqis hadn't earned respect. "As Arab men, they want for us to think that they're just the same as us as soldiers, that they're just as brave," Cato said. 'But they show cowardice. They'll say to me, 'I wasn't afraid.' But if you're running, then you were obviously not just afraid, you were running away.'"

Added in archive:
"The Way Forward" (Fouad Ajami, USNews.com, 2005/05/30)

Added in Themes:
"Who's Really Abusing the Koran?" - News and commentary on "Newsweeksgate" and the "American Gulag".

Thursday, June 9, 2005

News and commentary:

"Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis" (John W. Whitehead, oldSpeak, 2005/06/09)
An interview with Bat Ye'or: "JW: You reference the fact that the Islamic mosques in Europe teach the principle of jihad, which is, of course, directly opposed to the western concept of democracy. There is also a growing Islamic population in the United States and an increasing number of mosques being built throughout the country. There are some conservatives who argue that many of these mosques should be closed. Do you believe this should be done in Europe?
BY: Not all mosques teach jihad. In fact, many are opposed to it. And I do not see how with a European population from 25 to 30 million Muslims, mosques could be closed. This is contrary to the principles of human rights. Once immigrants are accepted, it is a moral duty, as well as a law, to accept their right to religious freedom. In fact, I have no solution to offer for the prevention of the culture of dhimmitude, denial and hate and for the subversion of truth and values that is invading Europe. This is because it is encouraged by our own leaders, intellectuals and media. This is the model society that they praise. Many brilliant minds fought against it with no avail. This is Eurabia."

"The Dutch-Muslim Culture War" (Deborah Scroggins, The Nation/Yahoo! News, 2005/06/09)
"The backlash against Hirsi Ali has astonished and disappointed many Dutch feminists, who continue to count themselves among her biggest fans. Margreet Fogteloo, editor of the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer, said flatly that Mak is crazy. "People like him feel guilty because they were closing their eyes for such a long time to what was going on," she said. In what appears to be a Europe-wide pattern, some feminists are aligning themselves with the anti-immigrant right against their former multiculturalist allies on the left. Joining them in this exodus to the right are gay activists, who blame Muslim immigrants for the rising number of attacks on gay couples. ...
Hirsi Ali is only the most prominent of a number of young Muslim women who have lately begun to criticize their own communities for their treatment of women. In Sweden, Fadime Sahindal campaigned against forced marriages before her father killed her in 2002 for having a relationship with a Swedish man. In France, Fadela Amara heads the Ni Putes ni Soumises ("Neither Whores nor Submissives") movement against Islamist groups she calls "the green fascists." In Germany, where six honor killings have taken place just this year, Seyran Ates, a Berlin-based lawyer, has charged the government with allowing Islamic fundamentalism to flourish under a policy of false tolerance."

"Did Amnesty International Call For Kidnapping Of American Leaders?" (Captain's Quarters, 2005/06/09)
"Here's the link to AI-USA's statement with this call for capturing US officials while traveling abroad...

If the US government continues to shirk its responsibility, Amnesty International calls on foreign governments to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating all senior US officials involved in the torture scandal. And if those investigations support prosecution, the governments should arrest any official who enters their territory and begin legal proceedings against them. The apparent high-level architects of torture should think twice before planning their next vacation to places like Acapulco or the French Riviera because they may find themselves under arrest as Augusto Pinochet famously did in London in 1998. ...

It seems to me that this rhetoric is much more offensive than the "gulag" analogy, and it represents a Rubicon of sorts for Amnesty International and its supporters. I think those who fund AI and align themselves politically with Schulz and its other leaders should be pressed to answer whether they support Schulz' call for the kidnapping of American officials traveling abroad. It's a simple question and demands a straightforward answer." (See also: "Statement Of Dr. William F. Schulz Executive Director, Amnesty International USA" (Amnesty International, 2005/05/25))

"The law can’t stop hate" (Melanie Phillips, The Spectator, from the 2005/06/11 issue)
"Yet two weeks ago the French appeal court in Versailles ruled that in a comment piece published by Le Monde in 2002 entitled ‘Israel-Palestine: the Cancer’, the paper was guilty of ‘racial defamation’ against the Jewish people. In other words, under cover of an attack upon Israel in language which is replicated every week in Britain and Europe, the most prestigious newspaper in France had been whipping up hatred of the Jews. ...
If political views that promote anti-Jewish or other racist hatred were banned, so too must all literary anti-Jewish and racist stereotypes be banned, which would mean censoring much of English literature, not to mention the New Testament and the Koran. What is hateful and prejudiced to one person may be legitimate comment to another. The way to deal with prejudice is surely through the public pillory, naming and shaming and countering it with the truth. In other words, far from suppressing expression the remedy is to open up debate.
The problem, though, is that the media refuse to do this over Israel because the prejudice is omnipresent. This is why ‘blogs’ — website comment spots — are becoming increasingly important to bust the monopoly of the mainstream media and subject its bias and prejudice on any subject to systematic exposure, deconstruction and opprobrium." (See also: "J'Accuse" (Tom Gross, The Wall Street Journal/defenddemocracy.org, 2005/06/02) and and "Israel-Palestine: The Cancer" (Edgar Morin, Sami Naïr and Danièle Sallenave, Le Monde/Watch, 2002/06/03 [2003/01/07]))

"Piss and wind" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2005/06/11 issue)
"Nobody got killed in Gitmo, so instead America is being flayed as the planet’s number one torturer for being insufficiently respectful to the holy book of its prisoners, even though the Americans themselves supplied their prisoners with the holy book, even though the preferred holy book of most Americans is banned in the home country of many of the prisoners, even though Americans who fall into the hands of the other side get their heads hacked off, even though the prisoners’ co-religionists themselves blow up more mosques and Korans than Americans ever do, and even though the alleged insufficient respect to the prisoners’ holy book occurred at a rate of one verified incident of possibly intentional disrespect per year. But sure, go ahead, close Gitmo and wait for the torrent of rave reviews — right after the complaints that it is culturally insensitive to rebuild the World Trade Center when it’s the burial site of ten devout Muslim flying enthusiasts. ...
But I wonder if the Islamists’ ability to play the Western press like a fiddle is quite so smart in the long run. The majority of Americans have a higher regard for their military than their media, and for the jihad to retain its power in the popular imagination it has to be credible. When Newsweek, CBS et al fall over themselves to shill for Islamist spin-doctors, complaining that the infidels are not handling the Koran in appropriately submissive ways, they risk turning the jihad into one huge laughing stock. In that sense, the whiners are doing far more damage to Islam than the urinators are."

"Who's Really Abusing the Koran?" (Max Boot, Los Angeles Times, 2005/06/09)
"It would be nice if the global Islamic community, the news media and assorted human rights agitators could display the same level of outrage about the real atrocities perpetrated by our enemies as they do about the imaginary horrors of the American Gulag.":
"All the headlines about "Abuse of the Koran at Gitmo" are absolutely accurate. Brig. Gen. Jay Hood's internal investigation has uncovered some shocking incidents. On at least six occasions, Korans were ripped up. They were urinated on three times, and attempts were made to flush them down the toilet at least three other times.
Why aren't millions of Muslims rioting in response to these defilements? Because the perpetrators were prisoners, not guards. As John Hinderaker notes on weeklystandard.com, the most serious desecrations of the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility were committed by the Muslim inmates themselves.
You'd never know this from the news coverage, which pounced on Hood's finding of five confirmed incidents of Koran abuse as proof that Newsweek was on to something with its phony-baloney report about guards flushing a Koran down the toilet.
Far from confirming accusations of American depravity, what the report actually shows is that Guantanamo is the first gulag in history run on the principle that no sensibility of the inmates should be offended, no matter how inadvertently."

"Decadent Europe" (Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, 2005/06/09)
"For one plausible long-term interpretation of the chaotic reaction in Europe since the French non of May 29 is that these are the symptoms of a civilisation in decline, if not in decadence.":
"Never before have so many European states been liberal democracies, joined in one and the same economic, political and security community. Yet the European Crisis has arrived just a year after this triumph, and partly caused by it. For, among many other things, the French and Dutch votes were also noes to the consequences of enlargement and to the prospect of further enlargements.
Thirty years ago Aron worried about a kind of hedonistic self-indulgence characteristic of decadent societies. At the risk of sounding like a cross between Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford, the thought does occasionally occur when flicking through British and European TV channels, from Celebrity Love Island, through Big Brother, to the endless onanistic German chatshows. Aron also worried about Europe's low birth rates, which in the meantime have become still lower. "The civilisation of self-centred enjoyment," he dared to write, 'condemns itself to death when it loses interest in the future.'"

"Lawmaker's Book Warns of Iran" (Dana Priest, The Washington Post, 2005/06/09)
"Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), whose flair for drama has included lugging around a replica of a suitcase-size nuclear bomb, alleges in a new book that Iran is hiding Osama bin Laden, is preparing terrorist attacks against the United States, has a crash program to build an atomic bomb and, as a Shiite country, is the chief sponsor of what is a largely Sunni-directed insurgency in Iraq.
In "Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America . . . and How the CIA Has Ignored It," Weldon accuses the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and his colleagues on the House and Senate intelligence committees of ignoring his trove of information.
These secrets, he says, come from "an impeccable clandestine source," whom Weldon code-names "Ali," an Iranian exile living in Paris who is a close associate of Manucher Gorbanifar. ...
"The intelligence community may be avoiding Ali like the plague, despite his excellent intelligence, because they want to avoid, at all costs, drawing the United States into a war with Iran." But, of Ali's tip that Iran was planning a terrorist attack against a U.S. nuclear reactor that would destroy Boston, he says that 'this alone is a reason for a military response, a legitimate casus belli.'"

"Reformers in Saudi Arabia: Seeking Rights, Paying a Price" (Neil MacFarquhar, The New York Times, 2005/06/09)
"The resistance to change became abundantly clear to Mrs. Bakr, an associate professor of education at King Saud University in Riyadh, at a workshop she taught for supervisors on new ways to evaluate teacher performance.
When it was over, one of the more enthusiastic participants handed her an envelope. Inside was a fatwa, or religious ruling, from a local cleric admonishing Mrs. Bakr that her plucked eyebrows were a sin.
"Religion has been made so superficial," Mrs. Bakr says, echoing a common frustration among educated Saudis.
The mind-set that reduces every tiny detail of life to whether it conforms to Wahhabi teaching has prevented Saudi Arabia from using its oil wealth to become one of the richest, most developed countries on earth, many Saudi reformers say. ...
Fourth graders are taught how to clean themselves in the Islamically acceptable manner after relieving themselves in the desert. The telephone is described as a modern innovation.
At a middle school's traffic safety day recently, one talk focused on the risk of being tortured in the grave if you died in a traffic accident while living contrary to God's commandments. ...
Major limitations on pushing for change still remain. Not least, male professors bar their female colleagues from attending department meetings because Islam dictates that men should hear a woman's voice only when absolutely necessary, lest they become aroused."

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

News and commentary:

"Rangel: Bush Iraq 'Fraud' as Bad as Holocaust" (Debra Burlingame, NewsMax.com, 2005/06/08)
Moonbat II: "Top House Democrat Charles Rangel complained on Monday that the Bush administration's decision to concoct a "fraudulent" war in Iraq was as bad as "the Holocaust."
"It's the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country," Rangel told WWRL Radio's Steve Malzberg and Karen Hunter. "This is just as bad as six million Jews being killed. The whole world knew it and they were quiet about it, because it wasn't their ox that was being gored." ...
Asked to clarify his Holocaust comparison, Rangel told Malzberg:
'I am saying that people's silence when they know terrible things are happening is the same thing as the Holocaust, where everyone would have me believe that no one knew those Jews were killed over there.'" (Hat tip: The Corner.)

"British MP George Galloway on Al-Jazeera: Calls for Bush, Blair, Koizumi, and Berlusconi to Stand Trial" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 918, 2005/06/08)
Moonbat I. A transcript of an interview with George Galloway on Al-Jazeera:
"I am speaking for tens of millions, and maybe more, around the world, who know the truth about Iraq. Who know that the real criminals are in Washington. Not in the United Nations. The real criminals are in the White House, not in the Elysee Palace. The real criminals are in the Congress, not in the anti-war movement. So I have no respect for this...
This is one of the reasons why we need Al-Jazeera in English, so that we can reach the people who, if you can reach them, you can win their hearts. They are not bad people. The American people are not bad or evil people. But they are ruled by bad people.
Bush, and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation, through their support for Israel, and through their support for a globalized capitalist economic system, which is the biggest killer the world has ever known. It has killed far more people than Adolph Hitler. It has killed far more people than George Bush."

"The Great Ground Zero Heist" (Debra Burlingame, The Wall Street Journal, 2005/06/08)
"Ground Zero has been stolen, right from under our noses. How do we get it back?":
"The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary "gateway" to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom"...
In fact, the IFC's list of those who are shaping or influencing the content and programming for their Ground Zero exhibit includes a Who's Who of the human rights, Guantanamo-obsessed world:
• Michael Posner, executive director at Human Rights First who is leading the worldwide "Stop Torture Now" campaign focused entirely on the U.S. military. He has stated that Mr. Rumsfeld's refusal to resign in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal is "irresponsible and dishonorable." ...
• Eric Foner, radical-left history professor at Columbia University who, even as the bodies were being pulled out of a smoldering Ground Zero, wrote, "I'm not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House." This is the same man who participated in a "teach-in" at Columbia to protest the Iraq war, during which a colleague exhorted students with, "The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military," and called for "a million Mogadishus." The IFC website has posted Mr. Foner's statement warning that future discussions should not be "overwhelmed" by the IFC's location at the World Trade Center site itself."

"Amnesty's Amnesia" (Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 2005/06/08)
Gulag II: "I don't know when Amnesty ceased to be politically neutral or at what point its leaders' views morphed into ordinary anti-Americanism. But surely Amnesty's recent misuse of the word "gulag" marks some kind of turning point. In the past few days, not only has Amnesty's secretary general, Irene Khan, called the U.S. prison for enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "the gulag of our times," but Amnesty's U.S. director, William Schulz, has agreed that U.S. prisons for enemy combatants are "similar at least in character, if not in size, to what happened in the gulag." In an interview, Schulz also said that foreign governments should prosecute U.S. officials, as if they were the equivalent of the Soviet Union's criminal leadership.
Thus Guantanamo is the gulag, President Bush is Generalissimo Stalin, and the United States, in Khan's words, is a "hyper-power" that "thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights" just like the Soviet Union. In part, I find this comparison infuriating because in the Soviet Union it would have been impossible for the Supreme Court to order the administration to change its policies in Guantanamo Bay, as it has done, or for the media to investigate Abu Ghraib, as they has done, or for Irene Khan to publish an independent report about anything at all."

"The G-Word" (Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, 2005/06/08)
Gulag I: "In short, if you're going to toss a loaded grenade of a word like gulag, you'd better be able to back it up.
Which is why the "Fox News Sunday" interview of Amnesty's U.S. chief, William Schulz, was quite revealing. ...

WALLACE: Is it possible, sir, that by excessive rhetoric or by your political links, that you have hurt, not helped, your cause?
SCHULZ: Chris, I don't think I'd be on this station, on this program today with you if Amnesty hadn't said what it said and President Bush and his colleagues haven't responded as they did. If I had come to you two weeks ago and said, "Chris, I'd like to go on FOX with you just to talk about U.S. detention policies at Guantanamo and elsewhere," I suspect you wouldn't have given me an invitation. ...

Excuse me, but did Schulz say that it's okay to unleash words like "gulag," even if it's not an "exact or literal analogy," because it gets him booked on Fox News? Is that the new standard? Yes, Chris, I called the president a war criminal because it was the only way I could get on Hardball?" (See also: "'FOX News Sunday' Transcript: Amnesty Int'l USA Chief William Schulz" (FOX News, 2005/06/05))

"Uncover your eyes" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times/IHT, 2005/06/08)
A report from Labado, Sudan: "A desert town that used to hold about 25,000 people, Labado was attacked in December by the Sudanese military and the militia known as the janjaweed. For several days, the army burned huts, looted shops, killed men and raped women.
For months, Labado was completely deserted and appeared destined to become a ghost town. But then African Union forces, soldiers from across Africa who have been dispatched to stop the slaughter, set up a small security outpost of 50 troops here. Almost immediately, refugees began returning to Labado, followed by international aid groups.
Today there are perhaps 5,000 people living in the town again, building new thatched roofs over their scorched mud huts. The revival of Labado underscores how little it takes to make a huge difference on the ground. If Western governments help the African Union establish security, if we lean hard on both the government and the rebels to reach a peace agreement, then by the end of this year Darfur might see peace breaking out.
For now, Labado is only an oasis, and when the people here step out of the town they risk being murdered or raped by the janjaweed.
Refugees fleeing to Kalma from a village called Saleya described how nine boys were seized by the janjaweed, stripped naked and tied up, their noses and ears cut off and their eyes gouged out. They were then shot dead and left near a public well. Nearby villagers got the message and fled.
Aid workers report that in another village, the janjaweed recently castrated a 10-year-old boy, apparently to terrorize local people and drive them away. The boy survived and is being treated." (See also: "A Policy of Rape" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2005/06/05))

"Colonel Sanders Finds Himself Under Fiery Siege in Pakistan" (Somini Sengupta, The New York Times, 2005/06/08)
"KARACHI, Pakistan, June 3 - Four times since Pakistan allied itself with the United States campaign against terrorism, a KFC outlet here has been attacked. Each time, the owner, Rafiq Rangoonwala, dutifully cleaned up and reopened for business. This time, with six of his employees dead, he's not so sure.
This KFC outlet in Karachi was set afire by angry Shiites after a suicide bombing at a nearby mosque. Six KFC employees were killed.
Last week, as evening prayers began at a Shiite mosque down the street, a suicide bomber believed to belong to a Sunni extremist group linked to Al Qaeda blew himself up inside the mosque compound, splattering his remains across the high courtyard wall.
Minutes later, a mob, believed to be led by outraged Shiites, stormed Mr. Rangoonwala's KFC outlet, dousing its floors with gasoline, setting it ablaze and then blocking the entry of rescue workers. Six hours later, the six bodies were hauled out. Four had been burned. Two had frozen to death in the walk-in freezer; their bodies were found only after a mobile phone belonging to one of the men rang. The dead had all worked at the KFC, and they were all local men in their mid-20's.
Now the restaurant is a gutted, blackened hulk, with the familiar profile of Colonel Sanders still visible and a billboard, now sooty and macabre, looming above. "Come have a chicky meal," it reads, 'cuz you are going to love this deal.'"

"Outside Iraq but Deep in the Fight" (Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, The Washington Post, 2005/06/08)
"A Smuggler of Insurgents Reveals Syria's Influential, Changing Role":
"Syria's role in sustaining and organizing the insurgency has shifted over time. In the first days of the war, fighters swarmed into Iraq aboard buses that Syrian border guards waved through open gates, witnesses recalled. But late in 2004, after intense pressure on Damascus from the Bush administration, Syrian domestic intelligence services swept up scores of insurgent facilitators. Many, including Abu Ibrahim, were quietly released a few days later. ...
Those interviews also echoed earlier accounts of Iraqi insurgents, including descriptions of the role of a Syrian cleric known as Abu Qaqaa in promoting a holy war, or jihad, against the West. Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, the notion of jihad has "had a galvanizing impact on the imagination and reflexes" of many young Muslim men, especially those with the means and resources to travel, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group, based in Brussels.
"They think jihad will stop if they kill hundreds of us in Iraq," Abu Ibrahim said with a note of defiance. "They don't know what they are facing. Every day, more and more young men from around the Muslim world are awaking and coming to the jihad principle.
'Now the Americans are facing thousands, but one day soon they will have to face whole nations.'"

Added in archive:
"What Insurgency?" (Niles Lathem, New York Post, 2005/06/01)

Tuesday, June 7, 2005

News and commentary:

"Amnesty and al Qaeda: The instructive case of Ahmed Hikmat Shakir" (The Wall Street Journal, 2005/06/07)
"On November 19, 2001, Amnesty issued one of its "URGENT ACTION" reports on his behalf: "Amnesty International is concerned for the safety of Iraqi citizen Ahmad Hikmat Shakir, who is being held by the Jordanian General Intelligence Department. . . . He is held incommunicado detention and is at risk of torture or ill-treatment." Pressure from Amnesty and Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked; Mr. Shakir was released and hasn't been seen since.
Mr. Shakir is believed to be an al Qaeda operative who abetted the USS Cole bombing and 9/11 plots, among others. Along with 9/11 hijackers Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, he was present at the January 2000 al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was working there as an airport "greeter" -- a job obtained for him by the Iraqi embassy. When he was arrested in Qatar not long after 9/11, he had telephone numbers for the safe houses of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. He was inexplicably released by the Qataris and promptly arrested again in Jordan as he attempted to return to Iraq. ...
But there is no doubt that the Hussein regime, whatever its reasons, was eager to have the al Qaeda Shakir return to Iraq. It was aided and abetted to this end by Amnesty International.
We don't recount this story to suggest Amnesty was actively in league with Saddam. But it shows that, even after 9/11, Amnesty still didn't think terrorism was a big deal. In its eagerness to suggest that every detainee with a Muslim name is some kind of political prisoner, and by extension to smear America and its allies, Amnesty has given the concept of "aid and comfort" to the enemy an all-too-literal meaning."

Monday, June 6, 2005

News and commentary:

"When Drama Becomes Propaganda" (Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal, 2005/06/06)
"Mr. Shepard, who is one of America's most celebrated playwrights, described "The God of Hell" as a "satire" of "Republican fascism." Except for the fact that satires are supposed to be funny, I'd say that was a fair enough description of the play, in which a smirking, prancing fellow made up to look like Paul Wolfowitz invades the home of a Wisconsin farmer and his wife, festoons their kitchen with American flags, hooks up the genitalia of the man of the house to an electronic torture machine, and administers painful shocks until he agrees to surrender his heifers to the government for use in an unspecified but self-evidently nefarious secret project. ...
To date I've seen three plays about the Hollywood blacklist, one of which, "Trumbo," was a tribute to a Communist screenwriter who went to his grave without once publicly expressing the mildest of reservations about the policies of Joseph Stalin, whose murderous regime he had enthusiastically supported throughout the 1930s and '40s. I've seen "Embedded," an antiwar tract of such modest political sophistication that Tim Robbins, its author, put into the mouth of the political philosopher Leo Strauss a phony quote that he'd found in a magazine published by Lyndon LaRouche. I've seen "Guantánamo: 'Honor Bound to Defend Freedom,' " a British "documentary play" about the internment of suspected Arab terrorists that was so dramatically inert even the roomful of political activists with whom I saw it could summon up only tepid applause at evening's end. ...
Instead of seeking to persuade -- to change the minds of its viewers -- it [much of today's political art] takes for granted their concurrence. It assumes that everyone in the audience is already smart enough to hate Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and, above all, George W. Bush, and thus does not need to be reminded of their underlying humanity, or of the possibility, however remote, that their intentions might be good. By extension it also takes for granted that no truly creative artist could possibly think otherwise, that good art is by definition liberal (or, to use the term commonly preferred by such artists, "progressive") in its view of the world, and that only progressive thinkers are truly creative. Conservatives are generally thought too repressed or narrow-minded for creative activities."

"Demystifying Terrorism" (Michael Walzer, The American Prospect, from the June 2005 issue)
"In October 2001, I wrote a piece for the Prospect [see “Excusing Terror”] in which I criticized “the politics of ideological apology” -- the excuses that some on the left were making for terrorism. No one was justifying terrorism, but we were often asked to “understand” it. I argued that terrorism as a political strategy had to be condemned and opposed without regard to the causes that the terrorists claimed to serve. In fact, terrorism served no decent cause.
Is anybody still excusing terrorism? The answer is yes: Secret sympathy, even fascination, with violence among men and women who think of themselves as “militants” is a disease, and recovery is slow." (See also: "Excusing Terror - The Politics of Ideological Apology" (Michael Walzer, The American Prospect, 2001/09/22))

"The Doctor Is In" (David Pryce-Jones, National Review/Manhattan Institute, 2005/06/06)
A review of "Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses", a collection of essays by Theodore Dalrymple:
"A sense that he has perpetually been seeking evidence that things are for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds certainly infuses his work. From sparse clues he drops here and there in these essays, he seems to have been conditioned from childhood to take a low, indeed a tragic, view of human nature. His father was a lifelong Communist who nonetheless encouraged him to read widely; his mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany. These two outsiders were engaged more in a civil war — "a kind of hell"— than in a marriage. In their son¦s presence, they did not speak to each other. One night, he awoke when his mother was exclaiming, "You're a wicked, wicked man"— these were the only words he ever heard pass between his parents. When he was about eleven, he says, he lined up for a ticket to a soccer match. A blind beggar with an accordion passed by, whereupon some young men drowned him out by turning up their radio, laughing loudly at his bewilderment. ...
"Men commit evil within the scope available to them." That, for him, is the inescapable brute fact about the human race, and wisdom consists in facing it and drawing the proper conclusions. Until the 20th century, it was generally accepted that civilization rested on restricting the scope available for evil, and that government, law, morality, taboos, and custom were all enrolled in that purpose. Dalrymple often praises Shakespeare because he demonstrates better than anyone else how the absence of restraint destroys the individual and the society."

"Assad: Media, tech crushing Arabs" (CNN.com, 2005/06/06)
"DAMASCUS, Syria (CNN) -- Syrian President Bashar Assad has said the media and technological revolution sweeping the region and the world is helping his country's foes to undermine and crush the Arab identity.
Assad told the congress of Syria's ruling Baath Party on Monday that a media influx had left Arabs "swamped by disinformation" about themselves.
"These many inputs, especially with the evolution of communication and information technology, made the society open, and this opened the door for some confusion and suspicion in the minds of Arab youth.
"The ultimate objective of all this is the destruction of Arab identity; for the enemies of the Arab nation are opposed to our possessing any identity or upholding any creed that could protect our existence and cohesion, guide our vision and direction, or on which we can rely in our steadfastness," Assad said Monday.
'We must face this situation with great awareness, responsibility and defiance.'" (Hat tip: Best of the Web Today.)

"Press in Iraq Gains Rights But No Refuge" (Jonathan Finer, The Washington Post, 2005/06/06)
"Israa Shakir scrawled out the first edition of the Iraq Today newspaper on a few sheets of lined paper 10 days after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Three months later, she said, a man followed her home from work and put a gun to her head.
Shakir had published a story about an Islamic group that was forcing Iraqi women to wear the hijab, a traditional Muslim head scarf. Someone circulated a pamphlet calling for her to be killed, and a colleague with contacts in Iraq's insurgency told her it would cost $200 to get her name off the hit list. She refused to pay, but for some reason her would-be executioner did not pull the trigger.
"I still don't know why he didn't kill me," she said, recounting the story in a recent interview. "I guess it was just a warning."
In an office cluttered with old newspapers and trinkets from her travels around the Middle East, Shakir, now 29, keeps a cell phone by her ear, a notebook in her back pocket and a 7mm pistol on her hip. More than two years after its launch, Iraq Today has grown into a broadsheet published daily, with a circulation of more than 5,000.
But as her ever-present sidearm suggests, Iraq is adjusting uneasily to its newfound press freedoms, which proponents consider as important to cultivating democracy here as free and fair elections. At least 85 journalists and other employees of news organizations -- the vast majority of them Iraqis -- have been killed here since March 2003, according to the International Federation of Journalists, which opened an office in Baghdad in April to distribute safety information."

"First Court Case of Hussein Stems From Killings in Village in '82" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2005/06/06)
"The Iraqi court set up to hear cases against Saddam Hussein and his top aides plans to bring him to trial by late summer or early fall in its first case, involving the 1982 killings of nearly 160 men from Dujail, a predominantly Shiite village north of Baghdad, after he survived an assassination attempt there, according to a senior Iraqi court official. ...
Laith Kubba, spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who took power last month as the head of Iraq's first Shiite-majority government, told reporters on Sunday that the government wanted Mr. Hussein's trial to begin within two months.
Mr. Kubba said there was "no reason to waste time" in preparing for a trial that would hold Mr. Hussein, a Sunni Arab, to account in the 500 separate cases of crimes against humanity, many involving Shiites and Kurds, that Mr. Kubba said were under investigation.
"It is the government's view that the trial of Saddam should take place as soon as possible," Mr. Kubba said.
Mr. Kubba said the government preferred an approach concentrating on 12 "fully documented cases," including Dujail, and that those would ensure that Mr. Hussein, 68, received the death sentence."

"Reluctant U.S. showing signs of shift on Hamas" (Aluf Benn, Haaretz, 2005/06/06)
"The Bush administration is showing signs of easing its hard-line approach toward Hamas, in response to the militant group's rising political clout in the Palestinian territories and appeals for flexibility from European allies, officials and diplomats said.
The White House acceded to Hamas running candidates in Palestinian elections, even though it has refused to disarm and Washington lists it as a major terrorist organization.
Officials said they may be open to contacts with some Hamas political affiliates and left open the possibility of dealing with the group if it gave up weapons and ended violence, in contrast to past calls for its total dismantlement.
U.S. officials and diplomats cast any shift as pragmatic: Hamas-funded social services are popular with many Palestinians; it is winning local races and was expected to make a strong showing in newly postponed parliamentary elections, and some Hamas-backed politicians and affiliates are seen as moderates.
The shift also follows a behind-the-scenes push by European allies, including Britain and France, for Washington to drop its call to dismantle Hamas completely. European officials warned Washington that doing so would be a "disaster" for Palestinians who benefit from Hamas aid, sources said.
"There is now a realization that they (Hamas) do have a role to play ... that if you can bring them into the political fold, then you'll be marginalizing the military elements of those groups," said a European diplomat."

"Hezbollah Wins Easy Victory In Elections in Southern Lebanon" (Hussein Dakroub, AP/The Washington Post, 2005/06/06)
"Hezbollah, the armed Shiite Muslim movement, and its allies claimed a massive victory in southern Lebanon in the second stage of national elections Sunday, a vote the group says it hopes will prove its strength and send a message of defiance to the United States.
Four hours after polling stations closed, Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheik Naim Kassem, and an ally, Nabih Berri of the Shiite Amal movement, said they had won all 23 seats in this region bordering Israel. ...
The United States, which labels Hezbollah a terrorist organization, wants the guerrilla group to abandon its weapons in line with last year's U.N. Security Council Resolution 1559. Hezbollah has refused to disarm, a position backed by Lebanese authorities."

Added in archive:
"J'Accuse" (Tom Gross, The Wall Street Journal/defenddemocracy.org, 2005/06/02)

 

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

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

"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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