Archived news and commentary: November 14 - 20, 2005

2005/11/14 - 2005/11/20
2005/11/07 - 2005/11/13
2005/10/31 - 2005/11/06
2005/10/24 - 2005/10/30
2005/10/17 - 2005/10/23
2005/10/10 - 2005/10/16

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, November 20, 2005

News and commentary:

"Al-Zarqawi May Be Among Dead in Iraq Fight" (Robert H. Reid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/20)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. forces sealed off a house in the northern city of Mosul where eight suspected al-Qaida members died in a gunfight — some by their own hand to avoid capture. A U.S. official said Sunday that efforts were under way to determine if terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead. ...
In Washington, a U.S. official said the identities of the terror suspects killed in the Saturday raid was unknown. Asked if they could include al-Zarqawi, the official replied: "There are efforts under way to determine if he was killed."
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
On Saturday, police Brig. Gen. Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaida operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house in the northeastern part of the city.
During the intense gunbattle that followed, three insurgents detonated explosives and killed themselves to avoid capture, Iraqi officials said. Eleven Americans were wounded, the U.S. military said. Such intense resistance often suggests an attempt to defend a high-value target."

"France at the brink" (Alex Alexiev, The San Diego Union-Tribune, 2005/11/20)
"After two weeks of unrestrained violence across the country, France imposed curfews and a state-of-emergency rule on 24 of its provinces. The government certainly hopes that this wartime measure will quickly scale down the riots and it may well do that. Yet history is more likely to look back on this not as the end of an irrational burst of urban violence, but as the first act in a protracted time of troubles for France and Europe that could ultimately lead to the demise of European civilization as we know it. ...
The first thing to be noted, much hand-wringing to the contrary, is that none of the violence was either surprising or unexpected. Indeed, it was the easily predictable denouement of the gradual transformation over two decades of hundreds of Muslim enclaves into crime-ridden, self-isolated, anti-societies that have de facto seceded from French society in virtually every aspect except for continuing to depend economically on the welfare state. With 70,000 cases of vandalism and arson, 29,000 cars burned, pervasive drug trafficking and an epidemic of gang rapes in just the current year, these ghettoes were an explosion waiting to happen long before the recent events. None of this is new and numerous French authors have described in detail the troubling evolution of what one recent best-seller called "Lost Territories of the Republic." ...
It is probably true that the Islamists did not directly instigate the riots. But radical Islam has everything to do with today's culture of the Muslim enclaves. From its hatred of French secular society and its norms, fanatic anti-Semitism and cult of violence to misogyny, self-isolation from the "infidels" and admiration for extremists and terrorists, the dominant values and attitudes among third generation French Muslims are increasingly those of radical Islam. This is neither a coincidence nor the result of a spontaneous process. Misguided government policies in the socioeconomic and immigration realms have certainly contributed in a major way by creating a climate of hopelessness and extreme alienation in which the siren call of Islamism has flourished. But it is difficult to envisage the kind of radicalization that has taken place without three decades of organized subversion and infiltration of French Islam by the fascist-like Wahhabi/Salafi ideology."

"Irresponsible on Iraq" (The Washington Post, 2005/11/20)
"A serious congressional debate about Iraq is essential at a time when public support for the mission is falling and the danger of failure seems great. Aggressive challenges to the Bush administration's military and political strategy -- even calls for an immediate withdrawal of troops, such as that made by Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) on Thursday -- must be part of that democratic discussion. Yet what we've mainly seen during the past two weeks is a shameful exercise in demagoguery and name-calling. ...
It sounds like the final days of a bitter, mud-slinging political campaign. But what is at stake is not an election but a war in which American soldiers are being killed and wounded almost every day and in which one possible outcome is a major victory for the Islamic extremist movement that carried out the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Those losses won't be stemmed, nor the dangers averted, by attack rhetoric or sound bites that deliberately distort the facts. ...
What's needed is more talk about Iraq in 2005. Though there have been successes -- including the staging of an election and a constitutional referendum -- the country is in danger of splitting into pieces, and the Bush administration has not done enough to head that threat off. New elections in December could propel the country toward a political accord that would undermine the insurgency. But reconstruction has foundered and needs to be relaunched, with emphasis on supplying electricity and jobs. Iraqi troops are improving but still are far from ready to fight the counterinsurgency war on their own. If there is to be any chance of that war being won, the United States will have to commit its own forces to the fight for years, though perhaps not at current levels. The alternative is to risk a defeat that would be devastating to U.S. security. That's a hard truth to face: It can't be done amid a partisan free-for-all."

"The big cover-up" (Andrew Anthony, The Observer, 2005/11/20)
"Chowdhury is one of a growing number of Muslim women in Britain who choose to wear the niqab, the veil that leaves only the eyes on public view. Where once the sight of a fully hidden woman was restricted to a few traditionalist communities, nowadays it is not unusual to see the niqab on high streets throughout the major cities of England and in a number of smaller towns. ...
The main aim of the niqab is to deter contact between women and men who are not married or related. To approach an unknown woman and ask about her clothing might, therefore, be seen as an act of provocation or even aggression. I checked the etiquette on a Muslim website that detailed the requirements of a woman wearing a niqab. 'Do not engage in social conversation with persons of the opposite sex,' it instructed. 'This is simple, just don't do it. When a kaffir [infidel] of the opposite sex asks you, "Did you have a good weekend", look down and say nothing in return.'
I did try one couple. The husband was a tall, elegant man of Asian origin and his wife, judging by her hands, which were all that was visible, was Anglo-Saxon white. I told him about the situation in Maaseik and he described the law as 'racist'. I then asked permission to speak to his wife. He looked at me as if I were mad and referred me to the Central Mosque. Would I be able to speak to a woman there? I asked. 'No, of course not,' the man said. 'But there will be men there who will be able to tell you why it is best for Muslim women to be covered.' His wife remained silent."

"Machete killings fuel Indonesia's religious hatred" (Dan McDougall, The Observer, 2005/11/20)
"First light is the most captivating time of day as you cross the vastness of the Indonesian archipelago.
Set against the blood-orange horizon, the echoing call of the muezzin shakes you from your dreamlike state as men file to morning prayers in bleary-eyed procession. Islanders arch their backs against heavy carts laden with fresh jackfruit and laughing children in white uniforms dawdle to school.
But in the central towns of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi events of the past few weeks have destroyed the frivolity of the pupils' daily journeys.
Three weeks ago, four cousins from the tightly-knit Christian community, Theresia Morangke, 15, Alfita Poliwo, 17, Yarni Sambue, 17, and Noviana Malewa, 15, were brutally attacked as they walked to the Central Sulawesi Christian Church High School by men wearing black ski masks. Three of the girls were beheaded. Noviana, the youngest, survived, despite appalling machete wounds to her neck.
The headless bodies of her cousins were dumped beside a busy nearby road. Two of the heads were found several kilometres away in the suburb of Lege. The third, Theresia's, was left outside a recently built Christian church in the village of Kasiguncu.
A week after the attack, a day after Alfita's funeral, two other Christian girls, Ivon Maganti and Siti Nuraini, both 17, were shot by masked men as they walked to a Girl Scouts' meeting. They and Noviana are still critically ill in hospital. All six were Christians in a predominantly Muslim community.
And yesterday police in Sulawesi said two young women had been attacked on Friday by black-clad assailants on motorbikes armed with machetes." (See also: "Christian girls beheaded in grisly Indonesian attack" (AP/The Sydney Morning Herald, 2005/10/29))

Saturday, November 19, 2005

News and commentary:

"49 Die in Iraq Blasts; Bombs Kill 5 GIs" (Chris Tomlinson, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/19)
"A suicide bomber detonated his car in a crowd of Shiite mourners north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 36 people and raising the death toll in two days of attacks against Shiites to more than 120. Five American soldiers died in roadside bombings.
Earlier Saturday, a car bomb exploded in a crowd of shoppers at an outdoor market in a mostly Shiite neighborhood on the southeast edge of Baghdad, killing 13 people and wounding about 20 others, police reported. Witnesses said they saw a man park the car and walk away shortly before the blast.
In the north, U.S. and Iraqi forces raided a suspected al-Qaida hideout in Mosul and at least seven insurgents died — three committing suicide to avoid capture, Iraqi authorities said. Four Iraqi policemen also were killed and 11 U.S. troops wounded, Iraqi and U.S. officials said.
The second suicide car bomb exploded late in the afternoon as mourners offered condolences to Raad Majid, head of the municipal council in the village of Abu Saida, over the death of his uncle. Abu Saida is near Baqouba, a religiously mixed city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad."

"Barricaded in Paris" (Mireille Silcoff, National Post, 2005/11/19)
"French Jews are leaving the country in ever-growing numbers, fleeing a wave of anti-Semitism. They are moving to Israel, the United States, and increasingly, Montreal -- where the mostly English-speaking Jewish community is preparing for its greatest demographic change in decades. In the first of three stories, Mireille Silcoff examines the fear in France that is driving the emigration.":
"PARIS - Romain Barthel greets me at the gates of the Lycee Diane Benvenuti, a private secondary school in the leafy 16th arrondissement of Paris. It's the day after Yom Kippur and the school, a Jewish one, is closed. ...
Mr. Barthel explains the buddy system instituted at the Benvenuti school for children both arriving and leaving the premises. The students must travel in a pack and are not allowed to wear visible skullcaps or Stars of David anywhere but inside the school. They are also discouraged from dressing in a manner that Mr. Barthel calls "Shalala," meaning that they asked to refrain from dressing in a style which in North American parlance might be termed "Jappy."
"The Diesel jeans, the tight bomber jackets, these things can also make them look like Jews," he says. "They must look more quiet now, for safety."
Mr. Barthel is the father of two young children. Last year, his children's school bus, belonging to a Jewish school in Epinay-sur-seine, a northern suburb of Paris, was set on fire. "The bus was empty when it was attacked, but still, nobody did anything about it, not the police, not the government."
He says the Jews of France have increasingly felt as if they have had to take safety into their own hands. "For us now, this means one of two things: bunker in with bomb-proof glass, or leave."
Mr. Barthel and his family have chosen the latter, becoming part of what could easily qualify as an exodus of Jews. In the past four years, French-Jewish immigration to Israel has more than doubled." (Hat tip: Rochi Ebner.)

"The death of an easygoing culture" (Anthony Browne, The Times, 2005/11/19)
"Islamist murders and threats have transformed the once-tolerant Netherlands into a place of armed bodyguards and fear":
"Previously, only the Queen and the Prime Minister had police protection, and ministers cycled to their ministries. Now, many politicians, writers and artists are considered to be in such danger that they have permanent armed guards and are driven around in bomb-proof armoured cars. The Interior Ministry has set up a special unit assessing death threats from Islamic extremists and providing protection squads. ...
At Leiden University law school, Professor Afshin Ellian, a refugee from Iran who has called for reform of Islam, and even suggested that comedians should make jokes about it, is hustled through the electronically locked doors to his office by two bodyguards.
“In the Netherlands, terrorists want to threaten not only the public, on the underground or on trains, but they also want to kill public figures, such as artists, academics and politicians,” he said. “It is not special in terms of Islam — in Iran it is normal to kill people who criticise Islam, as in Egypt and Iraq. It is legitimised by Islamic political theology, which says it is all right to kill someone if they are an enemy of Allah. But this is happening in Europe.” ...
Frank Bovenkerk, of the University of Utrecht, undertook a study for the police that confirmed the rise in death threats across the country, and their seriousness.
“They are under real threat — they would be killed without protection,” he said. “It is to do with the sudden change in political manners. We have a type of provocateur which is unprecedented in the Netherlands. They claim it is about freedom of speech, but it is about freedom of cursing,” he said.
Even if the would-be assassins are foiled by the intelligence services and the protection squads, the death threats are already having some success in silencing criticism. “People are very afraid of saying things now,” Professor Ellian said. 'There is self-censorship.'"

"US author lauds suicide bombers" (David Nason, The Australian, 2005/11/19)
"One of the greatest living US writers has praised terrorists as "very brave people" and used drug culture slang to describe the "amazing high" suicide bombers must feel before blowing themselves up.
Kurt Vonnegut, author of the 1969 anti-war classic Slaughterhouse Five, made the provocative remarks during an interview in New York for his new book, Man Without a Country, a collection of writings critical of US President George W. Bush.
Vonnegut, 83, has been a strong opponent of Mr Bush and the US-led war in Iraq, but until now has stopped short of defending terrorism.
But in discussing his views with The Weekend Australian, Vonnegut said it was "sweet and honourable" to die for what you believe in, and rejected the idea that terrorists were motivated by twisted religious beliefs.
"They are dying for their own self-respect," he said. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's like your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."
Asked if he thought of terrorists as soldiers, Vonnegut, a decorated World War II veteran, said: 'I regard them as very brave people, yes.'"

"Nothing can prepare you for that moment when a suicide bomb is suddenly aimed at you" (Catherine Philip, The Times, 2005/11/19)
"After reporting on last month’s bombs that killed 23 people in Bali and 62 in Delhi, and then last weekend’s suicide bombs in Amman, our correspondent woke up yesterday as two trucks exploded outside her Baghdad hotel":
"I walked back to the hotel reception courtyard where a crowd of guards stood around looking at the severed foot of one of the bombers lying by a tree. A hand and a penis lay yards away.
I sat down on a concrete bolster for a moment and thought about my friend Marla, killed in a suicide bombing on the airport road in April along with her beloved colleague Fais.
I thought about Nadia, the bereaved bride from the Amman hotel bombings who had cried on my shoulder only a week before.
And the grieving relatives of the slain Diwali shoppers in Delhi, where I live, wailing outside the hospital. Then I thought about the night before in my hotel room when I watched the Bali bombers’ videotaped statements before they blew themselves up at a beach restaurant where I went the next day to watch the bereaved lay flowers. “When you see this, God willing, I will be in Heaven,” the bomber said, grinning.
I looked at the bomber’s foot still lying on the ground. No, I thought to myself. If I believed in Hell, I’d hope that you were there now."

"Iranians admit receiving nuclear warhead blueprint from disgraced Pakistani expert" (Ian Traynor, The Guardian , 2005/11/19)
"International suspicion of Iran's nuclear programme heightened yesterday when it was revealed that Tehran had obtained a blueprint showing how to build the core of a nuclear warhead.
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told diplomats that his inspectors had recently obtained documents from Tehran showing that the Iranians had been given various instructions on processing uranium hexafluoride gas and casting and enriching uranium. These had been obtained via the black market in nuclear technology headed by the disgraced Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan.
Informed diplomats said the blueprint for casting uranium was required in making the core of a nuclear warhead, although that alone was not enough for the manufacture of a weapon.
United Nations inspectors had long suspected that the Khan network had helped Iran, but this was the first time the Iranians had come clean on the issue. They told the inspectors they had not sought the information, but that the Khan network had supplied the documents anyway.
This claim stretched credulity among diplomats and nuclear experts, and reinforced their conviction that Tehran is determined to acquire the capacity and knowhow for nuclear weapons."

Friday, November 18, 2005

News and commentary:

"Jordanians hold an Arabic banner that reads 'Death for Zarqawi'..."
(Reuters, 2005/11/18)
"Jordanians hold an Arabic banner that reads 'Death for Zarqawi' (the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi) during an anti-terrorism rally in downtown Amman November 18, 2005."

"Al-Zarqawi Tape Threatens Jordan's King" (Jamal Halaby, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/18)
Zarqawi II: "AMMAN, Jordan - An audiotape in the name of al-Qaida in Iraq threatened on Friday to chop off King Abdullah II's head and bomb more hotels and tourist sites. The speaker on the tape, identified as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, also said the group's suicide bombers did not intend to bomb a Jordanian wedding party at an Amman hotel last week, killing about 30 people. ...
Al-Zarqawi insisted that the striking of the wedding party at the Radisson SAS hotel was a "lie" and a "forgery" by Jordanian security officials.
The Radisson bomber struck a hall where Israeli intelligence officials were meeting at the time, al-Zarqawi claimed. But part of the roof fell in on the wedding hall, either from the blast or even — he said — from a separate bomb placed in the roof, though not by al-Qaida. ...
Radisson spokesman Bassam al-Bana denied al-Zarqawi's claims about an intelligence meeting, telling The Associated Press, "There were no meetings of Israelis there." ...
Earlier Friday, thousands of flag-waving Jordanians thronged downtown Amman in the "March of the Nation," a noisy, emphatic demonstration against the hotel attacks.
"Al-Zarqawi, you coward, what brought you here?" the angry crowd shouted.
"Cease, cease, al-Zarqawi, you are a villain!" the throng chanted. "Cease, Cease, you terrorist, you are a coward!"
Jordanian television reported that 100,000 people marched; however, that estimate could not be independently verified. The size of the crowd appeared to be much larger than protests in the days right after the bombings."

"Zarqawi Sends Top Aide to Die" (Richard Miniter, Human Events Online, 2005/11/18)
Zarqawi I: "Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi was not able to detonate her bomb at the wedding party and fled with the guests as her husband exploded himself. Now, she is in the custody of the GID, Jordan’s intelligence agency. By all accounts, the interrogation is going slowly. Still, enough information is emerging for us to draw some lessons for the triple bombings in Amman, Jordan, on November 9.
Mrs. al-Rishawi’s family history reveals just how effective the U.S. military has proven to be in eliminating insurgents. Jordanian intelligence has learned that three of her brothers were killed by coalition forces in Iraq. Her brother, Thamir al-Rashawi, a member al-Zarqawi’s inner circle, was killed in April 2004 in Fallujah, when a missile fired from a U.S. aircraft struck his pick-up truck. Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister Marwan al-Mu’ashir described her brother, Thamir, as “the emir [commander] of the Al-Anbar region [of the Iraqi insurgency] in the Al-Qa’idah of Jihad Organization in the Land of Two Rivers. He was the right hand of Abu-Mus’ab al-Zarqawi.” ...
Following these air strikes and captures, Zarqawi ordered the Amman attacks. Was it a sign of desperation? Was he trying to regain the initiative from weeks of reverses?
Another sign of desperation: Consider who Zarqawi sent to run the Amman operation, Mrs. Al-Rishawi’s husband. He also a member of Zarqawi’s inner circle. He is now dead. Why did Zarqawi send a top officer to die? He has already lost so many. It suggests that either he’s running short of suicide bombers (typically Saudi recruits) or he’s running short of people he trusts. Either way, it’s a sign of desperation."

"A child embraces her father as they stand near a destroyed building..."
(Hadi Mizban, AP, 2005/11/18)
"A child embraces her father as they stand near a destroyed building at the site where two suicide car bombers detonated vehicles in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 18, 2005, in a residential district, and near a hotel housing foreign journalists."

"Bombers Kill 74 at Two Mosques in Iraq" (Chris Tomlinson, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/18)
Iraq II: "Suicide bombers killed 74 worshippers at two Shiite mosques near the Iranian border Friday, while a pair of car bombs targeting a Baghdad hotel housing Western journalists killed eight Iraqis.
The suicide attackers targeted the Sheik Murad mosque and the Khanaqin Grand Mosque in Khanaqin, 90 miles northeast of Baghdad, as dozens of people were attending Friday prayers, police said. The police command said 74 people were killed and 75 wounded in the largely Kurdish town.
At sunset, dozens of people were still searching the rubble of the three-story Khanaqin Grand Mosque. As the men dug, 12-year-old Sarkhel Akram collected copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book, then she kissed them and put them away.
The suicide attacker walked into the mosque and detonated his explosives in the middle of a group of people, said Ali Abdullah.
Omar Saleh, 73, said from his bed at Kalar hospital that he was bowing in prayer when the bomb exploded.
"The roof fell on us and the place was filled with dead bodies," he said."

"Two Car Bomb Blasts in Baghdad Kill Six" (AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/18)
Iraq I: "Two car bombs exploded within seconds of each other near a hotel in Baghdad that houses foreign journalists, the second attack on international media in less than a month. At least six people were killed and 43 wounded.
The double suicide bombing was also near an interior ministry building at the center of a torture dispute, but officials at the scene believed the Hamra hotel in the Jadriyah district was the target. ...
The blasts — less than a minute apart — echoed throughout the city center, producing a towering cloud of smoke. They were followed by gunfire.
The bombs brought down several residential buildings and gouged a large crater in the road. Residents helped firefighters dig through debris and pull victims from the rubble."

"You don't have to be an amnesiac to be a Democrat, buddy, but it helps" (Gerard Baker, The Times, 2005/11/18)
"Perhaps the biggest weapon in the arsenal of America’s critics is carefully selective amnesia. Conveniently forgetting important historical facts enables tactical amnesiacs to make claims about US policy that seem to support their contention that the country’s government is uniquely evil.
The latest evidence that George Bush is a war criminal has apparently come this week with the acknowledgment that the US military used white phosphorus (WP) on enemy positions in Fallujah. This is deemed an outrage, something decent countries never do, yet more proof that the Bush-Cheney cabal is sedulously destroying the very foundations of American civilisation.
The discovery that American soldiers refer to WP cavalierly as “shake and bake” seems to have come as an additional shock to the easily agitated sensibilities of the critics. Can you believe men can be so callous as to refer to something so horrible in such a jocular fashion? They must be Nazis.
In fact, WP is not a chemical weapon, not even banned by any treaty to which the US is signatory. It has been used by the armed forces in all countries in wars for decades. Indeed, if you look up the roll of US Congressional Medal of Honour winners, you will discover that quite a few received this highest military decoration precisely because they used “shake and bake” to such successful effect.
The weapon’s purpose is to create a smokescreen that flushes the enemy out of foxholes, so that the attacker can get a better chance of shooting them or blowing them up with high explosives. I wait with resigned anticipation for the reports of shocking new evidence that the US has used “bullets” and “bombs” in its attacks on the enemy."

"International charicatures" (Diana West, The Washington Times, 2005/11/18)
"In Afghanistan, the editor of "Women's Rights" magazine was convicted on "blasphemy" charges after a religious adviser to President Hamid Karzai accused the editor of publishing two "un-Islamic" articles: one criticizing the Islamic practice of punishing adultery with 100 lashes; the other arguing that leaving Islam wasn't a crime.
Such charges may seem as far as the moon to anyone raised in a free-speech society where adultery is a matter of private grief, not public beatings, and where freedom of conscience is a founding liberty.
Speaking of liberty, wasn't it the Taliban, and not the democratically elected Karzai government, who punished people for being "un-Islamic"? Doesn't that new constitution Americans died to enable Afghans to write guarantee protections and freedoms against such totalitarian practices?
Indeed, it does, but that same constitution also guarantees that no law may contradict the law of Islam. And the law of Islam says no messing with Islam. And that's not all: Since March 2004, a new media law signed by President Karzai outlaws anything Islamically "insulting." In other words, hello totalitarian practices, goodbye protections and freedoms. And goodbye Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the "blaspheming" editor sentenced to two years in jail. By all accounts, this was getting off easy: The prosecutor in the case was angling for a death sentence.
Has anyone heard ringing perorations from the White House on preserving Mr. Nasab's free speech — let alone Mr. Nasab?" (See also: "Journalist Convicted of Blasphemy in Afghanistan" (Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gall, The New York Times, 2005/10/23))

"I took Saddam's cash, admits French envoy" (Francis Harris and David Rennie, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/11/18)
"One of France's most distinguished diplomats has confessed to an investigating judge that he accepted oil allocations from Saddam Hussein, it emerged yesterday.
Jean-Bernard Mérimée is thought to be the first senior figure to admit his role in the oil-for-food scandal, a United Nations humanitarian aid scheme hijacked by Saddam to buy influence.
The Frenchman, who holds the title "ambassador for life", told authorities that he regretted taking payments amounting to $156,000 (then worth about £108,000) in 2002.
The money was used to renovate a holiday home he owned in southern Morocco. At the time, Mr Mérimée was a special adviser to Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general.
According to yesterday's Le Figaro, he told judge Philippe Courroye during an interview on Oct 12: "I should not have done what I did. I regret it."
But he also said that the payments were made in recompense for work he had done on Iraq's behalf. "All trouble is worth a wage," he is reported to have said." (Hat tip: Captain Ed.)

"Iran in turmoil as president's purge deepens" (Simon Tisdall and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, 2005/11/18)
"Iran is facing political paralysis as its newly elected president purges government institutions, bringing accusations that he is undertaking a coup d'état.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's clearout of his opponents began last month but is more sweeping than previously understood and has reached almost every branch of government, the Guardian has learned. Dozens of deputy ministers have been sacked this month in several government departments, as well the heads of the state insurance and privatisation organisations. Last week, seven state bank presidents were dismissed in what an Iranian source described as "a coup d'état". ...
There has been a series of rows about Mr Ahmadinejad's nominees to top ministry jobs, including in the oil ministry. The stock market has fallen 30% since the new president took office, and there is growing criticism of his failure to deliver on promises to create jobs and raise living standards."

"Bin Laden’s ruthless rival spreads tentacles of jihad across region" (Richard Beeston et al., The Times, 2005/11/18)
"The world’s most feared terrorist mastermind, who has been responsible for a two-year campaign of violence in Iraq, is planning to turn his sights on moderate regimes in the Middle East, Europe and Africa, where he intends to spread his ruthless brand of jihad.
An investigation by The Times into Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, has revealed that the former petty criminal from Jordan has built up a formidable terrorist network that stretches from Britain to Afghanistan and covers many countries in between.
Once regarded as a brutal but relatively minor figure in the al-Qaeda hierarchy, al-Zarqawi has outstripped his mentor, Osama bin Laden, who has not been heard of for a year.
Al-Zarqawi commands more people, has access to greater funds and enjoys growing support among young Muslims drawn to his slick internet websites, which give lurid details of his latest attacks on “infidels”.
A recent study about Iraq’s insurgency by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington estimated that 3,000 foreign fighters had gone to Iraq to join the insurgency.
Now, battle-hardened, they form the vanguard of a “foreign legion” ready to take the jihad to their homelands in what US intelligence officials refer to as “bleed-out”.
The National Counterterrorism Centre in America believes that al-Zarqawi’s network extends to 40 countries and that he has developed links with 24 militant groups worldwide."

"From Tapes, a Chilling Voice of Islamic Radicalism in Europe" (Elaine Sciolino, The New York Times, 2005/11/18)
"MILAN - Playing an Internet video one evening last year, an Egyptian radical living in Milan reveled as the head of an American, Nicholas Berg, was sawed off by his Iraqi captors.
"Go to hell, enemy of God!" shouted the man, Rabei Osman Sayed Ahmed, as Mr. Berg's screams were broadcast. "Kill him! Kill him! Yes, like that! Cut his throat properly. Cut his head off! If I had been there, I would have burned him to make him already feel what hell was like. Cut off his head! God is great! God is great!"
Yahia Ragheh, the Egyptian would-be suicide bomber sitting by Mr. Ahmed's side, clearly felt uncomfortable.
"Isn't it a sin?" he asked.
"Who said that?" Mr. Ahmed shot back. "It is never a sin!" He added: "We hope that even their parents will come to the same end. Dogs, all of them, all of them. You simply need to be convinced when you make the decision."
Unconvinced, Mr. Ragheh replied: "I think that it is a sin. I simply think it is a sin."
The blunt exchange is contained in an 182-page official Italian police report that has not been made public, but is widely available in court circles and frames the judicial case against the two men. "The Madrid attack was my project, and those who died as martyrs were my dearest friends," Mr. Ahmed boasted in one intercepted conversation."

Thursday, November 17, 2005

News and commentary:

"Jenah Benzanfour, 16, nests herself in the arms of her guardian..."
(Scheherezade Faramarzi, AP, 2005/11/17)
"Jenah Benzanfour, 16, nests herself in the arms of her guardian, Manoubia Khalil, left, Monday Nov. 7, 2005, during an interview at her home in a housing project of Saint-Denis, a suburb North of Paris. ... Benzanfour was 11 when her mother threw her out of the house because she was getting into trouble at school and with police for stealing and threatening her teacher with a knife. At 13, she started selling marijuana and Ecstasy for neighborhood thugs. At 14, she says, her uncle raped her over a period of several months. At 15, she was a prostitute."

"Young Female Immigrants in France at Risk" (Scheherezade Faramarzi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/17)
"SAINT-DENIS, France - Fifteen-year-old Rawa risks verbal abuse — or worse — every time she leaves her house wearing jeans. Jenah was thrown out of the family home at 11, became a drug dealer at 13, and was raped by a relative a year later.
If young men in France's poor housing projects — scenes of three weeks of nightly arson and unrest — have it rough, girls often have it worse. Not only do they suffer from racism, unemployment and deprivation: They also endure daily harassment and even violence in their own communities. ...
The plight of girls and women in the high-rise housing projects indicates that while racial discrimination may keep immigrants and their offspring on the margins of French society, that may not be the whole picture.
Some people in France's mostly Muslim North and Sub-Saharan African immigrant communities have resisted accepting Western values and the French way of life — making it harder for them to thrive. Polygamous households, while uncommon, can also be a barrier to integration. ...
Physical violence — including gang rapes — has been widely reported against girls and young women of North African origin.
Amara notes a pattern of unemployed immigrant fathers losing authority to sons who bring in money by dealing drugs, stealing or who have adopted radical Islam. Girls in such families are often exposed to violence and exploitation or to religious repression, she said. ...
For her part, 15-year-old Rawa Khalil doesn't leave home after dark, though daytime can be harrowing, too, with boys on the street calling her "whore."
Her mother, Manoubia, 37, had been a victim of domestic violence at the hands of her drug dealing ex-husband. But now she is treated with contempt because she is no longer married.
"We have no father," Rawa said, 'no one to protect us.'" (See also: "Violence part of life for girls in French suburbs" (Kerstin Gehmlich, Reuters, 2005/11/10))

"Dutch MP to make gay Islam film" (BBC News, 2005/11/17)
"A Somali-born Dutch MP who collaborated on the film that led to the murder of director Theo van Gogh has written a sequel, about Islam's attitude to gays.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali received death threats after her work on Submission, a film about Islam's treatment of women.
Van Gogh was shot and stabbed by a Muslim radical, Mohammed Bouyeri, as he cycled through Amsterdam in 2004.
The film will use anonymous actors and carry no credits in an effort to protect those involved in the project.
Ms Ali told Dutch media that she had co-written the script with Van Gogh in the summer of 2004, months before he was killed last November.
"I examine the position of homosexuals in Islam in the film Submission II," she told the De Volkskrant newspaper.
"In the movie, they are called Allah's creatures," she added.
The MP is an outspoken critic of Islamic values and describes herself as a "lapsed" Muslim.
Mainstream Islamic thought treats Islam and homosexuality as incompatible, and hostility to homosexuals is widespread in many parts of the Muslim world."

"Iran president's religious views arouse interest" (Paul Hughes, Reuters, 2005/11/17)
"His call for the destruction of Israel may have grabbed headlines abroad, but it is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's devotion to a mystical religious figure that is arousing greater interest inside Iran.
In a keynote speech on Wednesday to senior clerics, Ahmadinejad spoke of his strong belief in the second coming of Shi'ite Muslims' "hidden" 12th Imam.
According to Shi'ite Muslim teaching, Abul-Qassem Mohammad, the 12th leader whom Shi'ites consider descended from the Prophet Mohammed, disappeared in 941 but will return at the end of time to lead an era of Islamic justice.
"Our revolution's main mission is to pave the way for the reappearance of the 12th Imam, the Mahdi," Ahmadinejad said in the speech to Friday Prayers leaders from across the country.
"Therefore, Iran should become a powerful, developed and model Islamic society."
"Today, we should define our economic, cultural and political policies based on the policy of Imam Mahdi's return. We should avoid copying the West's policies and systems," he added, newspapers and local news agencies reported. ...
But what really has tongues wagging is the possibility that Ahmadinejad's belief in the 12th Imam's return may be linked to the supposed growing influence of a secretive society devoted to the Mahdi which was banned in the early 1980s.
Founded in 1953 and used by the Shah of Iran to try to eradicate followers of the Bahai faith, the Hojjatieh Society is governed by the conviction that the 12th Imam's return will be hastened by the creation of chaos on earth."

"What sort of Frenchmen are they?" (Dror Mishani and Aurelia Smotriez, Haaretz, 2005/11/17)
A must-read interview with Alain Finkielkraut on the rioting in France:
"Finkielkraut: "In France, they would like very much to reduce these riots to their social dimension, to see them as a revolt of youths from the suburbs against their situation, against the discrimination they suffer from, against the unemployment. The problem is that most of these youths are blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity. Look, in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is difficult - Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese - and they're not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character. ...
To see them as a response to French racism is to be blind to a broader hatred: the hatred for the West, which is deemed guilty of all crimes. France is being exposed to this now." ...
"That's why these events sadden me so greatly; not so much because they happened. After all, you'd have to be deaf and blind not to see that they would happen. But because of the interpretations that have accompanied them. These dealt a decisive blow to the France I loved. And I've always said that life will become impossible for Jews in France when Francophobia triumphs. And that's what will happen." ...
And I have been just horrified by these acts, which kept repeating themselves, and horrified even more by the understanding with which they were received in France. These people were treated like rebels, like revolutionaries. This is the worst thing that could happen to my country. And I'm very miserable because of it. Why? Because the only way to overcome it is to make them feel ashamed. Shame is the starting point of ethics. But instead of making them feel ashamed, we gave them legitimacy. They're 'interesting.' They're 'the wretched of the earth.'
'Imagine for a moment that they were whites, like in Rostock in Germany. Right away, everyone would have said: 'Fascism won't be tolerated.' When an Arab torches a school, it's rebellion. When a white guy does it, it's fascism. I'm 'color blind.' Evil is evil, no matter what color it is. And this evil, for the Jew that I am, is completely intolerable.'" (Hat tip: Rochi Ebner.)

"Not all Muslims want to integrate" (Bruce Bawer, The Christian Science Monitor, 2005/11/17)
"For many Muslims in Europe, self-segregation has come naturally. What's tragic is that European authorities have supported it.":
"Millions of "French Muslims" don't consider themselves French. A government report leaked last March depicted an increasingly two-track educational system: More and more Muslim students refuse to sing, dance, participate in sports, sketch a face, or play an instrument. They won't draw a right angle (it looks like part of the Christian cross). They won't read Voltaire and Rousseau (too antireligion), Cyrano de Bergerac (too racy), Madame Bovary (too pro-women), or Chrétien de Troyes (too chrétien). One school has separate toilets for "Muslims" and "Frenchmen"; another obeyed a Muslim leader's call for separate locker rooms because "the circumcised should not have to undress alongside the impure."
Many Muslims, wanting to enjoy Western prosperity but repelled by Western ways, travel regularly back to their homelands. From Oslo, where I live, there are more direct flights every week to Islamabad than to the US. A recent Norwegian report noted that among young Norwegians of Pakistani descent, family honor depends largely on "not being perceived as Norwegian - as integrated." ...
In Britain, imams have pressed the government to designate part of Bradford as being under Muslim law. In Belgium, Muslims in the Brussels neighborhood of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek consider it to be under Islamic jurisdiction. In Denmark, Muslim leaders have sought similar control over parts of Copenhagen. In France, an official met with an imam at the edge of Roubaix's Muslim district out of respect for his declaration that it was Islamic territory. In many cities, police have stopped patrolling certain enclaves, the authorities having effectively ceded control to local religious leaders." (See also: "Leaving No French Islamist Behind" (Olivier Guitta, The Weekly Standard/FrontPageMagazine, 2005/05/20) and "Allah Mode - France's Islam problem" (Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/07/15 issue))

"An Incomplete Investigation: Why did the 9/11 Commission ignore 'Able Danger'?" (Louis Freeh, The Wall Street Journal, 2005/11/17)
"Recent revelations from the military intelligence operation code-named "Able Danger" have cast light on a missed opportunity that could have potentially prevented 9/11. Specifically, Able Danger concluded in February 2000 that military experts had identified Mohamed Atta by name (and maybe photograph) as an al Qaeda agent operating in the U.S. Subsequently, military officers assigned to Able Danger were prevented from sharing this critical information with FBI agents, even though appointments had been made to do so. Why?
There are other questions that need answers. Was Able Danger intelligence provided to the 9/11 Commission prior to the finalization of its report, and, if so, why was it not explored? In sum, what did the 9/11 commissioners and their staff know about Able Danger and when did they know it?
The Able Danger intelligence, if confirmed, is undoubtedly the most relevant fact of the entire post-9/11 inquiry. Even the most junior investigator would immediately know that the name and photo ID of Atta in 2000 is precisely the kind of tactical intelligence the FBI has many times employed to prevent attacks and arrest terrorists. Yet the 9/11 Commission inexplicably concluded that it "was not historically significant." This astounding conclusion--in combination with the failure to investigate Able Danger and incorporate it into its findings--raises serious challenges to the commission's credibility and, if the facts prove out, might just render the commission historically insignificant itself."

"A world without Israel" (Amnon Rubinstein, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/11/17)
"Iran's president is not alone in wiping Israel off the map. A group of academics and journalists are eradicating Israel - not with nuclear weapons but with ink and paper.
On bookshelves in the West, you can see quite a number of books which wipe Israel off the map, and it is almost impossible to find any book - apart from Alan Dershowitz's writings - which refute their arguments.
These books are not attacking the occupation, but the very idea of a Jewish state. Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, by former BBC foreign correspondent Alan Hart, is a lengthy - 600 pages in the first volume - diatribe against Zionism, the Balfour declaration and the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine.
The title is taken from a motion discussed in a symposium organized by London's Evening Standard, in which the mainly Jewish audience voted for the motion. Hunt [sic], quite rightly, sees this debate and vote as an event of historical significance and develops this thesis into a two-volume treatise.
Jacqueline Rose's The Question of Zion and John Rose's Myths of Zionism are two similar attacks against Zionism. Professor Tony Judt of New York University also wiped Israel off the map in the New York Review of Books in October 2003 by writing that "Israel is an anachronism" and by proposing that it be replaced by a binational state. ...
Their attacks against Zionism are compulsive, non-academic, full of half-baked truths and barely disguised hysteria. Indeed, Israel-bashers use a style which is very similar to the language used by anti-Semites: Israel is inferior and should not enjoy the rights accorded to other peoples. Formerly it was the Jewish person, now it is the Jewish state. The Nazi refrain was "the Jews are our disaster;" now, the Jewish state is being portrayed as the world's disaster." (Hat tip: Melanie Phillips.)

"Masked militant threatens West" (Dean Yates and Achmad Sukarsono, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/17)
"A masked man believed to be one of Asia's most wanted militants has warned Western countries, especially Australia, of more attacks in a video found last week by Indonesian anti-terrorist police.
The video was broadcast on Indonesia's Metro TV on Thursday.
Vice President Jusuf Kalla, quoted by the Kompas newspaper, said he believed the militant on the tape was Malaysian Noordin M. Top, a senior operative of Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asian group seen as the regional arm of al Qaeda.
"We repeat that America, Australia, England and Italy are all our enemies," said the militant, wearing a black balaclava and constantly pointing his right finger in the air.
"We especially remind Australia that you, Downer and Howard, are killing Australia, leading it into darkness and misfortune and mujahideen terror," he said, referring to Australia's Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
"Know that as long as you (all) continue to colonize the land of
Iraq and Afghanistan and intimidate Muslims then you too will feel our intimidation and terror."
The video marks the first time militant threats have been made on tapes found in the world's most populous Muslim nation, a practice common among radicals in the Middle East."

Note: Tom Gross, one of my favourite Middle East commentators, has a new website, with lots of very interesting readings. Hat tip: Melanie Phillips.

Added in archive:
"British MP George Galloway at Damascus University: US Army Is Defeated in Iraq. US Will Not Dare to Attack Syria. Bashar Al-Assad Is the Last Arab Leader and Tony Blair Is A Slave of Slaves" (MEMRI TV, 2005/11/13)

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

News and commentary:

"Behind the scenes, Saddam in fighting mood" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/16)
"Ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has shown no remorse during questioning and was beaten up when he hurled an obscenity at two of Shiite Islam's holiest figures, a source close to the investigation said.
The source, an Iraqi lawyer briefed by investigative judges in the Iraqi High Tribunal, said Saddam was being questioned over the brutal suppression of the Shiite uprising after Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait.
He admitted helicopters were used to machine-gun civilians in the central shine city of Karbala, saying that the armed opposition was targeted, added the source not directly involved in the case but close to Iraq's new leaders.
Asked about the shrines of the imams Hussein and Abbas that were targeted by government forces seizing back control of Karbala, he pretended at first not to know to whom the investigative judges were referring, the lawyer told AFP.
"Who do you mean, those 'mnayeech' (ass-fuckers)?" the lawyer quoted him as saying, provoking two of the court's clerks taking notes to lunge at the fallen dictator and start pummeling him with blows.
The 68-year-old former strongman, who used to surround himself with layer upon layer of security during his quarter century at the helm of Iraq, fought back before the chief judge intervened to restore order.
Saddam was left with a minor bruise to the forehead, the source said, while his US guards posted outside the makeshift courthouse near Baghdad international airport were amused and opted not to intervene."

"Fundamentalist Group Doubles Egypt Seats" (Nadia Abou El-Magd, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/16)
CAIRO, Egypt - The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's leading Islamic group, more than doubled its legislative representation in runoff parliamentary elections, according to initial results announced Wednesday.
The fundamentalist group won 34 seats in the first round, while the ruling National Democratic Party won around 70 seats, after a runoff vote Tuesday. The results were reported by the semiofficial Middle East News Agency, quoting judges in counting stations.
The result was "a shock," said Abdel Gelil el-Sharnoubi, editor of the Brotherhood's Web site. "I'm now praying to God to protect us from future government wrath."
As a banned organization, the Brotherhood is not allowed to run as a political party, but it fields candidates who stand as independents. It had 15 members in the outgoing parliament. ...
The runoffs — which were marred by scattered violence and fraud allegations — were called to decide the 133 seats in races in which no candidate won more than half the vote in Nov. 9 polls, the first round in the elections held over four weeks."

"Group Think: It's not just France. It's Europe" (James Forsyth, The New Republic, 2005/11/16)
"Europeans have spent the last four years hunting frantically for a model of integration that works. The reason is simple: After September 11, as Americans looked outward for a solution to terrorism, Europeans looked inward. They surveyed their own societies and saw a large number of disaffected Muslims, many of them young and male. ...
And so, for European leaders, the question of how to integrate their Muslim populations has taken on a special urgency. The problem is that every time a country is thought to have devised a workable model, something happens to prove that it hasn't. France is merely the latest European nation to see its approach to integration unmasked as seriously flawed. ...
In Britain, a country that has rarely been happy with the idea of state-imposed identity, the concept of letting the economy and time do the work seemed the best approach -- especially as it had worked before. But this past summer's bombings in London -- carried out by British citizens -- demonstrated the model's shortcomings. Radical Islam had apparently been flourishing in Britain, and its adherents had proven immune to liberal multiculturalism's charms.
And so fearful Europeans turned to France, with its unyielding emphasis on universal, enlightenment values. The liberal British magazine Prospect argued that the London bombings had demonstrated the "limits of the laissez-faire multiculturalism." The magazine placed great stock in Britain's ability to develop "a liberal-integrationist language -- the beginnings of a French-style ideology of common citizenship -- with which to address the problem of ethnic enclaves." Of course, French lessons on creating a tolerant and prosperous multicultural society now seem far less attractive."

"Where the WMDs Went" (FrontPageMagazine, 2005/11/16)
"Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bill Tierney, a former military intelligence officer and Arabic speaker who worked at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and as a counter-infiltration operator in Baghdad in 2004. He was also an inspector (1996-1998) for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) for overseeing the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles in Iraq.":
"FP: Let’s talk a little bit more about how the WMDs disappeared.
Tierney: In Iraq’s case, the lakes and rivers were the toilet, and Syria was the back door. Even though there was imagery showing an inordinate amount of traffic into Syria prior to the inspections, and there were other indicators of government control of commercial trucking that could be used to ship the weapons to Syria, from the ICs point of view, if there is no positive evidence that the movement occurred, it never happened. ...
Could the assessments of Iraq’s weapons program been off? I am sure there were some marginal details that were incorrect, but on the matter of whether Iraq had a program, the error was not with the pre-war assessment, the error was with the weapons hunt.
I could speak at length about the problems with the weapons hunt. Mr. Hanson has an excellent article in “The American Thinker,” and Judith Miller, one of the few bright lights at the New York Times, did an article on the problems with the weapons hunt that I can corroborate from other sources. But if the Iraqi Survey Group had been manned by a thousand James Bonds, and every prop was where it should have been, I doubt the result would have been much different. The whole concept of international arms inspections puts too much advantage with the inspected country. Factor in the brutality used by the Baath Party, and it amounts to a winning combination for our opponents.
I was shocked to learn recently that members of the Iraqi Survey Group believed their Iraqi sources when they said they don’t fear a return of the Baath Party. During my eight months of counterinfiltration duty, we had 50 local Iraqis working on our post who were murdered for collaborating."

"What Paradise?" (Pierre Rehov, FrontPageMagazine, 2005/11/16)
"As a filmmaker of the new documentary Suicide Killers, I will tell you that Hany Abu-Assad’s film Paradise Now is an artistically fashioned fiction. A dangerous fiction about dangerous people in a dangerous world. As fiction, his film stages good and bad characters. And since the film is about the final days of life for two suicide bombers, the killers automatically become the heroes. ...
Presented from the Palestinian point of view, moderate or otherwise, suicide bombings are the result of occupation, oppression, lack of freedom, and the desire for cultural pride. All of this reasoning is a lie. A myth. I spent hours speaking with would-be suicide bombers in Israeli jails and with their families in Gaza, Jordan, the West Bank and inside Nablus, where Paradise Now was filmed. And I am sorry to tell the Jury of the Amnesty International Award and the Best European Film Blue Angel Award and whoever is ecstatic about the courage and the sacrifice of these supposed heroes that they are just manipulated kids, victims of a system and a culture, or, as Dr. Boaz Ganor from the Hertzliya Center for Studies on Terrorism puts it, “stupid bombs and smart bombs at the same time.” ...
Yes, suicide bombers are humans who draw our sympathy for the insidious cycle of lies that pervade their lives. But as long as films like Paradise Now perpetuate the myth that they are heroes standing up to a cruel oppressor, the line for new suicide bombers will continue to grow longer. This film promotes a lie that spells continued death and destruction without the possibility of progress for the Palestinian culture and its future generations. It celebrates the beauty of their selfless sacrifice, shows them as having nothing to lose, and elevates what in real life is senseless slaughter to noble action rewarded in heaven." (See also, for example: "Palestinian children learn at a young age..." (BBC News, 2005/11/09))

"Blowback" (Fouad Ajami, The Wall Street Journal, 2005/11/16)
"'Iraqi Insurgent Blamed for Bombings in Jordan' was a headline on the front page of the New York Times of Nov. 13: Not quite! For Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as his nom de guerre specifies, is a man from the town of Zarqa, a stone's throw from Amman. The four Iraqis who brought calamity to Jordan were in the nature of a return visit, blowback from a campaign of terror and incitement, and a traffic of jihadists that had sent deadly warriors of the faith from Jordan to Iraq. ...
Once more, we are face to face here with the phenomenon of Arab denial, an unwillingness on the part of broad segments of the peoples of Arab lands to own up to the harvest of their own history, and to acknowledge their own creations. We have seen this before, a cynical belief -- unstated but powerful all the same -- that the terror should play out on foreign soil and spare the populations that spawn it. How else can we explain the anger of Jordanians that Zarqawi had struck his own birthplace? In an unwritten pact with that prince of darkness, Zarqawi was to hit other lands and spare his own. ...
An embarrassingly large number of Arabs, after 9/11, wanted schooling -- and shopping -- in London, but hailed the terror that struck its buses and transit. They were full of rage about Iraq's "suffering" under American occupation after years of looking away from the mass graves that littered the Iraqi landscape. Slowly, people in Arab lands will have to see their history as something they shaped by themselves, with their own hands. When this comes to pass, decent men and women will not have to arrive at moral clarity only on the day terror comes to their own doorstep." (See also: "Palestinians Taste a Dose of Their Own Medicine" (Daniel Pipes, New York Sun/danielpipes.org, 2005/11/15))

"Torture Alleged at Ministry Site Outside Baghdad" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2005/11/16)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 15 - Iraq's government said Tuesday that it had ordered an urgent investigation of allegations that many of the 173 detainees American troops discovered over the weekend in the basement of an Interior Ministry building in a Baghdad suburb had been tortured by their Iraqi captors. A senior Iraqi official who visited the detainees said two appeared paralyzed and others had some of the skin peeled off their bodies by their abusers. ...
The discovery of what appeared to have been a secret torture center created a new aura of crisis for American officials and Iraqi politicians who hold power in the Shiite-led transitional government. For many Iraqis, the episode carried heavy overtones of the brutality associated with Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated government.
Ominously, amid rising sectarianism here, Interior Ministry officials reported that the abused detainees appeared to have been mostly Sunni Arabs, and their abusers Shiite police officers loyal to the notorious Badr Organization, a militia with close links to Iran."

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

News and commentary:

"Palestinians Taste a Dose of Their Own Medicine" (Daniel Pipes, New York Sun/danielpipes.org, 2005/11/15)
"A suicide bombing in Hadera, Israel, on October 26 that killed five people inspired the usual Palestinian joy: some 3,000 people took to the streets in celebration, chanting Allahu Akbar, calling for more suicide attacks against Israelis, and congratulating the "martyr's" family on the success of the attack.
But Palestinian Arabs were uncharacteristically morose after three explosions went off on November 9, killing 57 persons and injuring hundreds, in Amman, Jordan. That's because, for the very first time, they found themselves the main victim of those same Islamist "martyrs."
The massacre at a wedding in the Radisson SAS hotel ballroom took the lives of 17 family members attending the nuptials of what the London Times called a Palestinian "golden couple, beloved of their prominent Palestinian families and friends." The bombing also killed four Palestinian Authority officials, notably Bashir Nafeh, head of military intelligence on the West Bank.
After two decades of doling out this horror against Israelis, some of whom were also attending festive events (a Passover dinner, a Bar Mitzvah), Palestinians, who form a majority of the Jordanian population, unexpectedly found themselves at the receiving end.
And, guess what: They did not like it.
The brother of a woman injured in the attack told a reporter, "My sister, I love her. I love her to death, and if something happened to her, I'd be really..." Choked, he stopped speaking and cried. Another relative called the terrorists "vicious criminals." A third cried out, 'Oh my God, oh my God. Is it possible that Arabs are killing Arabs, Muslims killing Muslims?'" (See also: "Jordan Attacks Claim 17 From One Family" (Mohammed Ballas, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/10))

"U.N. Reinstates Official Fired in Scandal" (Nick Wadhams, AP/The New York Times, 2005/11/15)
"UNITED NATIONS -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan reversed his decision to fire a key official in the Iraq oil-for-food probe, the United Nations said Tuesday, an embarrassing move as the world body recovers from one of the worst scandals in its history.
Annan's decision, made known as he traveled in the Middle East, came after an internal U.N. appeals panel exonerated Joseph Stephanides in a ruling disclosed last week. The Joint Disciplinary Committee agreed that he had been made a "sacrificial lamb" by U.N. officials responding to public scrutiny that surrounded revelations of corruption and mismanagement in the $64 billion operation.
The panel had recommended that the 60-year-old Stephanides, who was scheduled to retire in September, be reinstated, issued a written apology, and paid about $200,000 - about two years' back pay - for the emotional suffering and damage to his reputation."

"Bicultural Europe is doomed" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/11/15)
Meanwhile, David Aaronovitch writes that to warn about a "clash of cultures" in Europe is a "self-fulfilling prophecy." So as it slowly but surely gets worse, remember to blame Mark Steyn:
"But the Continent isn't multicultural so much as bicultural. There are ageing native populations, and young Muslim populations, and that's it: "two solitudes", as they say in my beloved Quebec. If there's three, four or more cultures, you can all hold hands and sing We are the World. But if there's just two - you and the other - that's generally more fractious. Bicultural societies are among the least stable in the world, especially once it's no longer quite clear who is the majority and who is the minority - a situation that much of Europe is fast approaching, as you can see by visiting any French, Austrian, Belgian or Dutch maternity ward. ...
Even in relatively peaceful bicultural societies, politics becomes tribal: loyalists vs nationalists in Northern Ireland, separatists vs federalists in Quebec. Picture a French election circa 2020, 2025: the Islamic Republican Coalition wins the most seats in the National Assembly. The Chiraquiste crowd give a fatalistic shrug and Mr de Villepin starts including crowd-pleasing suras from the Koran at his poetry recitals. But would Mr Le Pen or (by then) his daughter take it so well? Or would the temptation to be France's Col Rabuka prove too much? ...
In a democratic age, you can't buck demography - except through civil war. The Yugoslavs figured that out. In the 30 years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 per cent to 31 per cent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 per cent to 44 per cent.
So Europe's present biculturalism makes disaster a certainty." (See also: "It's the latest disease: sensible people saying ridiculous things about Islam" (David Aaronovitch, The Times, 2005/11/15))

"Egypt campaigns against Danish newspaper cartoons" (Reuters, 2005/11/15)
It should perhaps be mentioned that Egypt is notorious for its never-ceasing avalanche of anti-Semitic cartoons in its state-controlled media. As far as I know, no heads have lost their positions because of that:
"CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt said on Monday it was leading a diplomatic campaign against a Danish newspaper which published cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammad.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters that the publication, in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, was "a scandal" for which an apology was due.
He said the Egyptian government had been writing letters to leaders around the world to muster support, including U.S. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the head of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
"The aim is that this would lead at the end of the day to mutual understanding, possibly to apology, an end to such acts and a stimulus to Europe to correct its approaches," he said. ...
Asked what he thought the reaction would have been if a religion other than Islam had been at the centre of the dispute in Denmark, Aboul Gheit said: "Then we would see heads and officials lose their positions and their responsibilities. But that's the way the world is today."
"The Arab and Muslim world must take a stand on this."
In the letters Egypt said the cartoons broke laws and violated international resolutions and asked for the recipients to intervene, he said.
In answer to Egyptian and other Arab protests, the Danish government said the publication took place in the context of the freedom to express opinions, an official source said." (See also: "Muslims march over cartoons of the Prophet" (Kate Connolly, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/11/04))

"Women defy odds in Afghan polls" (Tom Coghlan, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/11/15)
"Female candidates have triumphed in Afghanistan's parliamentary elections, with one bidding to become the new parliament's speaker.
After a delay in counting of more than a month, official results show women secured seats ahead of male candidates in a quarter of the 34 provinces, while in one a woman was outright winner.
Before September's parliamentary vote, the first for 30 years, there had been widespread predictions that, due to the conservatism of Afghan society, women would only gain seats through a quota system which automatically reserved 25 per cent of seats for them under the country's new constitution. But women won seats in their own right and will take up 68 of the 249 in the lower house when it convenes later this month. ...
Malalai Joya, an outspoken critic of the warlords who has faced a number of attempts on her life, won a resounding and symbolic second place overall in the south-western province of Farah. Several women candidates have indicated that they will attempt to form a women's party in the new chamber, the Wolesi Jirga."

Monday, November 14, 2005

News and commentary:

"Palestinian children learn at a young age..."
(BBC News, 2005/11/09)
Via LGF: "In an admiring photo essay on the making of suicide bomber propaganda film “Paradise Now,” the BBC reaches a new low in the caption of a photo of Palestinian child abuse...
'Palestinian children learn at a young age about the struggle for freedom. To some, the Palestinian martyrs are heroes. Here a child poses for a photograph at a rally organised by militants.'" [Note: BBC has now altered the caption.]

"No debating their hatred: Some just see U.S., Israel as focus of all that’s evil" (Clifford D. May, Boston Herald, 2005/11/14)
"We had gathered at the venerable University Philosophical Society of Trinity College in Dublin to debate the resolution: “This house believes that George W. Bush is a danger to world stability.”
But those tasked with defending the resolution were disinclined even to discuss what they clearly considered gross understatement. Instead, Patrick Cockburn, a British journalist, began by angrily accusing the United States of embarking on an “old-fashioned imperial war” in Iraq and beyond.
As for terrorism, that he dismissed as “something people believe in like they believe in witchcraft. What does it mean?” ...
Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East bureau chief, announced: “George Bush is a threat to world peace on so many levels we can’t begin to discuss it.”
So he didn’t try. Instead, he turned to the topic that really fires him up: Israel. Yasser Arafat, he said, had been correct to reject the offer of Palestinian statehood made at Camp David in 2000 because it was “a pro-Zionist type of approach.” It would have allowed the Jewish state to survive. He found that a distasteful prospect.
I was not surprised. Before the debate, he’d noted that he had heard a BBC host cut off a caller who wanted to discuss Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map.” The caller didn’t see what was so terrible about this idea. Llewellyn lamented that there now seems to be a taboo against expressing such opinions." (Hat tip: BackSpin.)

"Believe It or Not" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2005/11/14)
"Are you sure you want to keep saying we were fooled by Ahmad Chalabi and the INC?":
"Let us suppose, then, that we can find a senator who voted for the 1998 act to remove Saddam Hussein yet did not anticipate that it might entail the use of force, and who later voted for the 2002 resolution and did not appreciate that the authorization of force would entail the removal of Saddam Hussein! Would this senator kindly stand up and take a bow? He or she embodies all the moral and intellectual force of the anti-war movement. And don't be bashful, ladies and gentlemen of the "shocked, shocked" faction, we already know who you are.
It was, of course, the sinuous and dastardly forces of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress who persuaded the entire Senate to take leave of its senses in 1998. I know at least one of its two or three staffers, who actually admits to having engaged in the plan. By the same alchemy and hypnotism, the INC was able to manipulate the combined intelligence services of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, as well as the CIA, the DIA, and the NSA, who between them employ perhaps 1.4 million people, and who in the American case dispose of an intelligence budget of $44 billion, with only a handful of Iraqi defectors and an operating budget of $320,000 per month. That's what you have to believe. ...
What a travesty this is. Not only do the liberal Democrats apparently want their own congressional votes from 1998 and 2002 back. It sometimes seems that they are actually nostalgic for the same period, when Saddam Hussein was running Iraq, and there were no coalition soldiers to challenge his rule, and when therefore by definition there was peace, and thus things were more or less OK. Their current claim to have been fooled or deceived makes them out, on their own account, to be highly dumb and gullible. But as dumb and gullible as that?"

"Gangs in Search of an Ideology" (Michael Radu, FrontPageMagazine, 2005/11/14)
Theory and practice. The official EU position seems to be that there's no connection whatsoever between terrorism and the underlying ideology. Taken to its logical conclusion this should mean that the actions of Nazi Germany, for example, cannot be allowed in any way to cast a shadow upon the ideology of Nazism [emphasis added]:
"The fundamental problems of the French banlieues are far from unique. Romano Prodi, the leader of the Italian leftist opposition, has already stated that similar developments in his country are a matter of when, not if. Nor are the European elites' confusion and inability to leave political correctness behind different from France's. The even more serious problem is the "democratic deficit" within the European Union. Brussels and many national elites show disregard, if not contempt, for the anxieties of the majority, and for reality. A recent EU Commission paper echoes the French Left's approach. As The Guardian reports: "In an attempt to ensure that the vast majority of peaceful Muslims are not portrayed as terrorist sympathizers, the paper says: 'The commission believes there is no such thing as 'Islamic terrorism,' nor 'Catholic', nor 'red' terrorism. . . . The fact that some individuals unscrupulously attempt to justify their crimes in the name of a religion or ideology cannot be allowed in any way . . . to cast a shadow upon such a religion or ideology."
This, after the very same commission identified a "crisis of identity" among young people born to immigrant parents as a key danger. "The document describes radicalization as "a modern kind of dictatorship", likens it to neo-Nazism or nationalism, and says the internet, university campuses, and places of worship are tools of recruitment. It says second-generation immigrants often feel little connection to their parents' country or culture but may also encounter discrimination in European countries. In short, the commission correctly identified the nature of the threat -- Islamist terrorism -- but lacked the courage to name it. How very Brussels!
France has long been seen, and still sees itself, as a model for Europe. The present developments may well prove that Francophiles are right, but not for the reasons they usually have in mind. Geography, size, and its number of Muslims all make France a pivotal element in what amounts to a cultural conflict of continental dimensions." (See also: "Brussels calls for media code to avoid aiding terrorists" (Nicholas Watt and Leo Cendrowicz, The Guardian, 2005/09/21))

"Syrian Parliament- speaker receive British MP George Galloway" (Champress, 2005/11/14)
As if on cue, Galloway proves Ralph Peter's point: "Speaker of the People’s Assembly Dr. Mahmoud al-Abrash on Sunday discussed with Member of the British House of Commons George Galloway the current situation in the region and the Syrian firm principles stance vis-à-vis the regional issues.
Mr. Galloway stressed that the speech delivered by President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday was welcomed by all the honest around the world, adding that his speech was that of a man who refuses subordination and believes in independent decisions and full Arab rights.
The British parliamentarian stressed importance of activating the Syrian and Arab media in confronting the Anti-Syrian flow of information as well as the importance of dialogue in clarifying the Syrian stance." (Hat tip: Harry's Place. UPDATE: See also "British MP George Galloway at Damascus University: US Army Is Defeated in Iraq. US Will Not Dare to Attack Syria. Bashar Al-Assad Is the Last Arab Leader and Tony Blair Is A Slave of Slaves" (MEMRI TV, 2005/11/13))

"Deadly 'Stability'" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2005/11/14)
"We've arrived at a bizarre point in our history when domestic extremists on both right and left agree that ridding the world of dictators is a bad idea.":
"The worst of the Cold Warriors are back, the "realists" who tied the United States to the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein and the Saudi royal bigots. They've risen from their historical graves to warn against "instability" should we place too much pressure on Syria's Baathist regime.
Wait a minute, Dr. Realpolitik: Bashar Assad and his family mafia murdered Lebanon's prime minister. Then, forced to withdraw Syrian troops, they began a bombing campaign to destabilize a country that voted for freedom.
The Assad regime harbors die-hards from Saddam's murder machine and vigorously supports the Sunni-Arab insurgency in western Iraq.
Assad & Co. turn a blind eye to the use of Syrian territory to launch international Islamist terrorists into Iraq.
Syria's Baathist thugs continue to support terrorists who attack Israeli civilians and who are determined to prevent the rise of a rule-of-law state among Palestinians.
Let me see if I have this right: The collapse of the Assad regime would destabilize the Middle East? Exactly which stability are we talking about?"

"A woman walks past a primary school..."
(Remy Gabalda, AP, 2005/11/14)
"A woman walks past a primary school damaged when rioters rammed a car into its gate then set the building on fire, in the southern city of Toulouse, Monday, Nov 14, 2005."

"France Set to Extend State of Emergency" (D'Arcy Doran, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/14)
"PARIS - The government approved a bill Monday to extend France's state of emergency for three months, giving itself more policing tools to stop the country's worst civil unrest since the 1960s.
Though violence has abated since breaking out 18 days ago, scattered arson attacks continued early Monday, with youths setting schools and cars ablaze.
President Jacques Chirac was to make his first presidential address to the nation on the crisis later in the day.
The government's bill, if approved by parliament as expected, would allow the current 12-day state of emergency to be prolonged until mid-February if needed. The emergency measures empower regions to impose curfews on minors, conduct house searches and take other steps to prevent unrest.
Chirac told his Cabinet that the state of emergency was "necessary to give security forces all the means they need to restore calm definitively."
"It is a measure of protection and precaution," he said, stressing that the plan was temporary and that regional officials would use it "only where it is strictly necessary."
About 40 French towns, including France's third-largest city, Lyon, have used the measure to impose curfews for minors."

"Saudi jailed for discussing the Bible" (Reuters/The Washington Times, 2005/11/14)
"RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) -- A court sentenced a teacher to 40 months in prison and 750 lashes for "mocking religion" after he discussed the Bible and praised Jews, a Saudi newspaper reported yesterday.
Al-Madina newspaper said secondary-school teacher Mohammad al-Harbi, who will be flogged in public, was taken to court by his colleagues and students.
He was charged with promoting a "dubious ideology, mocking religion, saying the Jews were right, discussing the Gospel and preventing students from leaving class to wash for prayer," the newspaper said.
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, strictly upholds the austere Wahhabi school of Islam and bases its constitution on the Koran and the sayings of the prophet Muhammad. Public practice of any other religion is banned."

"Fight over cinemas kills at least 12" (Mohamed Ali Bile, Reuters/The Australian, 2005/11/14)
"Heavy fighting apparently sparked by an Islamic militia's moves to close cinemas and video stores in the lawless Somali capital has killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 21.
Clashes between gunmen loyal to Mogadishu's Islamic courts and local militia defending the densely populated Yaqshid district began yesterday and flared again today.
"The Islamic courts' militia are trying to close all entertainment centres of the district," one local resident Ahmed Dhuhulow said.
Three people died yesterday and another nine today in clashes that caused inhabitants to flee the area and shops to close, witnesses said.
Heavy firing could be heard from all over Mogadishu, home to one million of Somalia's 10 million people and scene of frequent street battles during 14 years of anarchy. ...
Leaders of Mogadishu's influential Islamic courts oppose Western and Indian films which they say promote immorality in the mainly Muslim nation."

"Christians under siege in Pakistan after riot" (Isambard Wilkinson, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/11/14)
"The Christians of Sangla Hill in Pakistan were a community under siege last night after a Muslim mob rampaged through the town, burning churches and a Roman Catholic compound.
Father Samson Dilawar, parish priest of the Roman Catholic Church of Nazooli-i-Rooh, the Blessing of the Sacred Spirit, was still dressed in the cassock in which he fled when the mob knocked down the gate to the church compound on Saturday.
"I heard the mullahs had been telling people over loudspeakers, 'We are guardians of the Koran and it is our foremost duty to teach a lesson to those kafirs'," he said. "Then they came to my door." ...
They shouted insults at the Christians, calling them "kafirs" and "chucha", the abusive term for non-Muslims and untouchables, and "kuta", which means dogs. ...
His residence was doused in chemicals and set alight, gutting the building and destroying century-old documents.
In the same compound, St Anthony's Primary School, which has 1,500 Muslim and Christian pupils, was ransacked and burnt.
The same treatment was meted out to the church, convent, boarding house and medical centre. The feet were snapped off statues of Jesus, metal crucifixes were buckled and nuns' habits torched." (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch. See also: "Anti-Christian rampage features 2,000 Muslims" (WorldNetDaily, 2005/11/13))

"Nuclear Link Alleged in Australia Arrests" (Meraiah Foley, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/14)
"SYDNEY, Australia - Police believe a nuclear reactor in southern Sydney was a possible target for an Islamic terror cell there, according to details of an Australian counterterror investigation released Monday.
Police previously stopped and questioned three recently arrested Sydney terror suspects near Australia's only nuclear reactor in December last year, according to an outline of police allegations made public Monday.
The document also outlined what it said were plans by the men to stockpile chemicals for making explosives and that they "obtained extremist advice and guidance" from a firebrand cleric arrested along with them.
The three men stopped near the nuclear reactor were among 18 terror suspects arrested in Sydney and Melbourne last week and accused of plotting to carry out a "catastrophic" attack in Australia. The police document recounted the December incident under the heading, 'Possible targets for terrorist attack.'"

Added in archive:
"Go home in the name of Allah, order imams with megaphones" (Charles Bremner, The Times, 2005/11/08)
"Youths' poverty, despair fuel violent unrest in France" (Colin Nickerson, The Boston Globe, 2005/11/06)
"16 Muslims reportedly rape Christian girl" (Jeremy Reynalds, WorldNetDaily, 2005/10/02)

 

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