Archived news and commentary: November 28 - December 4, 2005

2005/11/28 - 2005/12/04
2005/11/21 - 2005/11/27
2005/11/14 - 2005/11/20
2005/11/07 - 2005/11/13
2005/10/31 - 2005/11/06
2005/10/24 - 2005/10/30

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Sunday, December 4, 2005

News and commentary:

"Forgiveness Requested" (Tim Blair, timblair.net, 2005/12/04)
"Mother Sheehan asks that her son’s killers forgive her:

If I met the mother of the person whose bullet killed my son, I would say I don’t blame your son, your family or your country. I blame the administration for sending our children to invade and occupy a country that’s not a threat to the United States ... I ask forgiveness from all Iraqis, including the one who killed my son.

Thing is, Casey Sheehan wasn’t killed by a lone gunman; the attack that left Sheehan and seven other soldiers dead involved multiple RPGs and small-arms fire. It’d be quite a crowd from whom Mother would be begging forgiveness, if ever she gets a chance to meet them personally: “You, the guy who launched the first grenade? Please forgive me. And you, the snarling fellow; I understand you were among several shooting at my son. Forgive me. Second grenade launcher, way over in the back there? Next to the third machine gunner? My apologies.” And so on."

"Dems determined to ignore progress in Iraq" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Tribune, 2005/12/04)
"But Kerry drones that we need to "set benchmarks" for the "transfer of authority." Actually, the administration's been doing that for two years -- setting dates for the return of sovereignty, for electing a national assembly, for approving a constitution, etc, and meeting all of them. And all during those same two years Kerry and his fellow Democrats have huffed that these dates are far too premature, the Iraqis aren't in a position to take over, hold an election, whatever. The Defeaticrats were against the benchmarks before they were for them.
These sad hollow men may yet get their way -- which is to say they may succeed in persuading the American people that a remarkable victory in the Middle East is in fact a humiliating defeat. ...
In a week's time, Iraqis will participate in the most open political contest in the history of the Middle East. They're building the freest society in the region, and the only truly federal system. In three-quarters of the country, life has never been better. There's an economic boom in the Shia south and a tourist boom in the Kurdish north, and, while the only thing going boom in the Sunni Triangle are the suicide bombers, there were fewer of those in November than in the previous seven months. ...
So Bush has chosen to embark on a project every other great power of the last half-millennium has shrunk from: the transformation of the Middle East. You can argue the merits of that, but once it's underway it's preposterous to suggest we need to have it all wrapped up by Jan. 24. The Defeaticrats' loss of proportion is unworthy of a serious political party in the world's only superpower. In next week's election, the Iraqi people will shame them yet again."

"Europe's 'Moral Outrage'" (The Wall Street Journal, 2005/12/04)
"In much of Europe's public debate, the true meaning of human rights has degenerated into a tool that gives anti-Americanism an aura of legitimacy. The real, horrendous human-rights violations in the Middle East, North Korea, China, Cuba, etc., are largely ignored or relegated to news blurs on the back pages. For front-page coverage, you need an American angle.
It is often said that this has nothing to do with anti-Americanism but with the fact that democracies, such as the U.S., must be held to higher standards. Really? Let's look at some recent European violations of human rights.
In October, the European Council's Commissioner for Human Rights inspected what the French call a detention center for foreigners. Alvaro Gil-Robles believes it is more properly called a dungeon. "With the exception of maybe Moldavia, I have not seen a worse center," he said about the facilities underneath the Palais de Justice in Paris, located not more than a few hundred yards from Notre Dame.
And what was Europe's reaction to these astonishing accusations? A yawn, a few wire reports and press pickups; that's it. After all, those prisoners, locked up under horrendous sanitary conditions, without natural sunlight and ventilation, some of whom, according to one prison guard, have in desperation mutilated themselves and smeared their blood on the walls, were only simple illegal immigrants. No need to suspend French voting privileges on their account, that's for sure.
Let's imagine for a moment the media coverage, the moral outcries and the calls for inquiries if those unfortunates had not been harmless migrants held in the City of Lights but jihadi terrorists held by Yankee soldiers?"

"Buried in Amman's Rubble: Zarqawi's Support" (Fawaz Gerges, The Washington Post, 2005/12/04)
"Amid the continuing bloodshed in Iraq, there is evidence of fresh thinking. The change is, ironically, brought about by Abu Musab Zarqawi himself, whose indiscriminate terrorism appears to have succeeded in uniting people there against his global jihad ideology. Since the hotel bombings in Zarqawi's native Jordan, more and more Sunni Iraqis and Arabs have condemned the terrorist leader's nightmarish vision for their societies -- one that promises further "catastrophic" suicide attacks. Their reaction represents an important turning point, both for the militants for whom this change of outlook represents a new predicament and for the U.S. government, which must recognize that securing Iraq's future stability is not up to foreign military forces but depends on local public opinion. ...
Even the senior leadership of the jihadist movement has publicly voiced its anger. Abu Mohammed Maqdisi, Zarqawi's spiritual and ideological mentor who spent three years in prison with him from 1995 to 1999, has said on al-Jazeera TV, "The kidnapping and murder of relief workers and neutral journalists has distorted the image of jihad." ...
Zarqawi has even been disowned by members of his family, part of the influential Bani Hassan tribe: "We sever links with him until doomsday," one wrote in a Jordanian newspaper. According to tribal traditions, some family members may now seek to kill him."

"Puddin' It On!" (Paul Martin and Maria Wera Cedrell, News of the World, 2005/12/04)
"Saddam whinges about jail treatment in first interview":
"The ex-dictator — who gassed thousands of Iraqis and strung up the bodies of executed opponents outside their family homes — even lashes out at the International Red Cross for not arranging enough visits from his relatives.
"They're not doing their humanitarian job," he stormed. ...
Although he said he gets enough to eat, Saddam is not happy with the prison puddings—and he is furious that he's not allowed to shave.
He has been denied razor blades amid fears he could kill himself or attack prison guards. But that's not how Saddam sees it.
"They want me to look ugly and mad when they put me in court," he whinged. "But they'll never break me." ...
The deluded dictator also says he is behind the suicide bomb atrocities that have killed hundreds of civilians and servicemen since his capture.
He claimed: "The Iraqi resistance has prepared itself in a proper manner. The second phase of the battle started on April 8th, 2003 (just three weeks after the war began). I met with politicians and the military commanders and ordered them, ‘Start with the second phase'...
"So what is happening now is not a coincidence and not a reaction but something planned for a long time before the war."
Sickeningly he added: 'I really enjoy the sounds of explosions I hear now and then.'"

"Making of Muriel the suicide bomber" (Nicola Smith, The Sunday Times, 2005/12/04)
"Her school friends and neighbours remember her as ‘a good little girl’. So what made her turn into the first female European suicide bomber.":
"But Degauque’s apparent happiness soon came to an end when she married Moroccan-born Issam Goris, seven years her junior. She changed her name to Myriam and her parents began to worry about the radical turn her Muslim faith had taken, fearing she had been brainwashed.
Goris tried to impose his own rules when visiting her parents, insisting the women and men ate separately and banning beer and television.
“The last time we saw them we told them that we had had enough of them trying to indoctrinate us,” said Liliane. Her outstanding memory of her daughter’s increasing remoteness was when she spent two weeks in a hospital just a few hundred yards from where Muriel was working.
“She did not come to see me once,” said Liliane. “When I got out I asked if she still remembered she had a mother. She looked at me and I said, ‘Well, you didn’t come to see me’.”
In Brussels the couple were keeping a low profile in their rundown apartment block on Rue de Mérode in the heart of an immigrant quarter near the main railway station. Muriel cloaked herself in a burqa, wearing gloves that concealed her pale hands. Last week many of her neighbours were astonished to learn she had been the suicide bomber who was dominating headlines. Most had not even realised the unassuming woman next door was a white Belgian."

Saturday, December 3, 2005

News and commentary:

"Pakistan: Key al-Qaida Commander Killed" (Munir Ahmad, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/03)
"ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A man described as al-Qaida's operational commander has died in an explosion in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, the president said Saturday, with intelligence officials claiming Hamza Rabia was hunted down with U.S. help, then killed in a rocket attack.
The remains of Rabia, who was ranked between third and fifth in the terror network's hierarchy and was a key associate of al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri, were identified with a DNA test, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said.
In Washington, a senior U.S. defense official said he could not confirm that Rabia was dead. The official did say that Rabia is believed to be the successor to Abu Farraj al-Libbi as the chief of international operations.
Rabia had been linked to a number of terror attacks and murders of government officials in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering
Afghanistan. He had risen to al-Qaida operational commander following the May arrest of Abu Farraj al-Libbi in northwestern Pakistan, Ahmed said. Al-Libbi was later handed over to Washington's custody.
"He was al-Qaida's No. 5 and this is what we know," Ahmed told The Associated Press.
However, other officials said Rabia ranked as high as third, just behind Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahari."

"Turk journalists charged in new test of free speech" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/03)
"ANKARA (Reuters) - In a fresh test of Turkey's human rights record and its bid to join the EU, a state prosecutor has filed charges against five journalists for comments they made on a conference about World War One massacres of Armenians.
The five respected newspaper columnists face between six months and 10 years in jail if found guilty of the charges of "trying to influence the judicial process" and "insulting state judicial organs", Turkish media reported on Saturday.
Four of the five columnists are being charged under the controversial Article 301 of Turkey's penal code -- the same used against the country's most famous novelist, Orhan Pamuk, whose trial begins on Dec. 16, and many other journalists.
The article makes it a crime to insult state institutions or "Turkishness".
The trial of the columnists is scheduled to start on Feb. 7, 2006. Four of them work for the liberal Radikal newspaper and the fifth for the centrist Milliyet daily.
The journalists had all criticised efforts by prosecutors and nationalist lawyers to ban a September academic conference at two universities in Istanbul dedicated to the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces 90 years ago."

"The big black book of horrors" (Rebecca Weisser, The Australian, 2005/12/03)
"With the trial of Saddam Hussein under way, those in the God-damn-America camp find themselves uncomfortably wedged. Should they justify their opposition to the war by downplaying Saddam's crimes while sheeting home blame for the present turmoil to the US and its allies? Or do they opt for the defence of moral equivalence, conceding that Saddam was indeed a monster but those US presidents who once backed his regime, including George H.W. Bush, are the real monsters.
The best riposte to this warped analysis is a scholarly and sober 700-page volume recently published in France, of all places. Le Livre Noir de Saddam Hussein (The Black Book of Saddam Hussein) is a robust denunciation of Saddam's regime that does not fall into the trap of viewing everything in Iraq through a US-centric prism. The writers - Arabs, Americans, Germans, French and Iranian - have produced the most comprehensive work to date on the former Iraqi president's war crimes, assembling a mass of evidence that makes the anti-intervention arguments redundant. ...
Sinje Caren Stoyke, a German archeologist and president of Archeologists for Human Rights, catalogues 288 mass graves, a list that is already out of date with the discovery of fresh sites every week. ...
Stoyke estimates one million people are missing in Iraq, presumed dead, leaving families with the dreadful task of finding and identifying the remains of their loved ones. ...
"The American war was perhaps not a good solution for getting rid of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. But, as this book shows, after 35 years of a dictatorship of exceptional violence, which has destroyed Iraqi civil society and created millions of victims, there wasn't a good solution," Kutschera writes." (Hat tip: Harry's Place. See also Archeologists for Human Rights and their compilation of "Mass grave sites in Iraq" [PDF]: "The number of missing persons in Iraq comes up to 1.3 million. Most them will be found in mass graves: the deported men of the Barzani tribe (1983), victims of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), the victims of the „Anfal“ campaign (1987-89), tens of thousands of Shias after 1991, furthermore Turkmens, Assyrian christians, Marsh Arabs, political prisoners and prisoners of war.")

"Truth or Consequences" (David Tell, The Weekly Standard, 2005/12/12)
"On October 24, the ACLU made public an analysis of several dozen autopsy reports and related documents obtained from the Pentagon by means of a Freedom of Information Act request for records concerning foreigners detained in Afghanistan and Iraq. The deaths-in-custody of 44 such detainees were detailed in those documents, according to the ACLU's press release and accompanying explanatory chart. ... More to the point -- the intended point being, in the words of the press release, that "U.S. operatives tortured detainees to death during interrogation" -- was the contention that the Pentagon itself had labeled 21 of these 43 deaths "homicide." ...
There were 13 official "homicides," not 21. And documents associated with at most 5 of those homicides contain even the vaguest hint of possible wrongdoing by American personnel. The other 8 appear to have been "homicides" only in the technical sense that mortuary physicians use the term -- to indicate any nonaccidental death resulting from human agency, whether sinister or innocent.
And what would an entirely innocent homicide look like, you ask? Innocence is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but try this on for size: Two of the very same "homicides" the ACLU has for two months now been content to cite as evidence of "widespread" human rights abuses involve wounded Iraqi insurgents captured after armed engagements with American troops. Both men were evacuated to U.S. hospitals where surgeons attempted to save their lives. But neither man survived his injuries.
Not the sort of thing they investigate on Law and Order."

Friday, December 2, 2005

News and commentary:

"The Riot Act" (Nidra Poller, Tech Central Station, 2005/12/02)
Poller on French reactions to the interview with Alain Finkielkraut in Haaretz. The apparent witchhunt only makes his last comments in the interview stand out even more clearly:

"So your worldview doesn't stand a chance anymore?
"No, I've lost. As far as anything relating to the struggle over school is concerned, I've lost. It's interesting, because when I speak the way I'm speaking now, a lot of people agree with me. Very many. But there's something in France - a kind of denial whose origin lies in the bobo, in the sociologists and social workers - and no one dares say anything else. This struggle is lost. I've been left behind."

"Here in France, where no accusation against America or Israel is too scurrilous for official dissemination and mass consumption, Finkielkraut was beaten almost senseless for developing, with utmost precaution, a thoughtful analysis of the riots. Going beyond the simplistic sociological description of ghettoized youths bursting out in frustration against discrimination and unemployment, Finkielkraut analyzes the violence as a nihilistic attack against the French Republic. He points out the dangers inherent in romanticizing the riots as the justified revolt of the wretched of the earth. And he has the courage to mention that the perpetrators of the street violence are, for the most part, black and/or Muslim…born in France but anchored to an ethno-religious identity that makes their integration well nigh impossible. He cautions against a misguided anti-racism that may become the totalitarian menace of the 21st century, as was Communism in the latter half of the 20th.
Every detail of the extensive Haaretz interview merits debate and reflection. But the prevailing dhimmitude climate leaves no room for debate: It is forbidden to criticize Islam. ...
Mouloud Aounit, executive officer of the Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l'amitié entre les peuples, announced that he was suing the philosopher for racism and hate speech. The MRAP, originally a Communist-inspired movement against racism and anti-Semitism, is now distinguished for associating with notorious Islamists and defending their causes. The NGO-infiltration strategy pays off -- instead of coming on like a scary cloak-and-qur'an cell pronouncing a fatwa against Finkielkraut, the MRAP stands proudly as a government-subsidized anti-racist association and unashamedly goes public with a vicious assault on Finkielkraut that has been raging for years on Islamist and fellow traveler websites. And the mainstream media join the mob." (See also: "What sort of Frenchmen are they?" (Dror Mishani and Aurelia Smotriez, Haaretz, 2005/11/17))

"Demonstrations in Pakistan have escalated into death threats against Danish illustrators who drew pictures of the prophet Mohammed" (The Copenhagen Post, 2005/12/02)
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has warned Danish travellers to Pakistan of increased hazard after a Danish newspaper's decision to publish cartoons of Muslim prophet Mohammed escalated into a bounty being placed on the heads of the cartoonists.
Daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoon drawings of Mohammed in September, sparking angry reactions from Denmark's Muslim population and a number of Muslim countries.
A bounty of DKK 50,000 had been put on the head the cartoonist responsible for the drawings, daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende reported on Friday. The Pakistani group offering the reward mistakenly believes that the 12 cartoons were created by just one person.
Danish Ambassador to Pakistan Bent Wigotski said the bounty had been promised by religious party Jamaat-e-Islami and its youth organisation, which had also demanded Danish representatives expelled from the country.
Danish authorities immediately informed the Pakistani government about the death threats and bounty promised by the party, which is described as nationalistic and fundamentalist.
Ever since the demonstrators marched through the streets of Islamabad, the party has been spreading its message through the media and flyers."

"Kidnappers Threaten to Kill Iraq Hostages" (Bassem Mroue, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/02)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - The kidnappers of four Christian peace activists threatened to kill the hostages unless all prisoners in U.S. and Iraqi detention centers are released, according to a videotape broadcast Friday by Al-Jazeera television.
The tape showed what the broadcaster said were two Canadian hostages. An American and a Briton are also being held. In a statement delivered with the tape, the kidnappers gave the two governments until Dec. 8 to meet their demands, according to Al-Jazeera.
The Canadians were shown eating from plates of what appeared to be Arabic sweets. In a second clip, the British and American hostages were shown to talking to the camera, but no audio was transmitted. All four men appeared frightened."

"Europe's 'Good Jews'" (Emanuele Ottolenghi, Commentary, December 2005)
"But to help put matters into historical perspective, I want to focus here on a particular feature of the new European anti-Semitism that has been less commented on. This is the crucial role played by some European Jews themselves, mostly intellectuals or academics, who have responded to the latest assault on the Jewish people by excusing it, justifying it, and in effect joining it.
In October 2002, a number of leading European authors discussed Israel’s conduct in the pages of the London Independent. For one of these writers, it was plain that Israel had “adopted tactics which are reminiscent of the Nazis.” For another, it was no less plain that the Israelis “were educated by the Nazis.” And so it went. Such assertions, staples of Arab and Palestinian propaganda, have by now assumed canonical status in liberal European opinion.
But what, aside from rhetorical bombast, is meant by the term “Nazi” in such statements? Ultimately, the evil that Israel is said to embody is the evil of an extreme, aggressive, and racially exclusive nationalism—that is, the very same disease that Europe, in the aftermath of Hitler and the Holocaust, has sought so strenuously and with such success “to limit, transcend, and overcome” (in the flattering words of the historian Anatol Lieven). Now this great sickness is alleged to have returned in the lurid form of present-day Israel, throwing the whole world into turmoil and disturbing the hard-won tranquility of post-nationalist Europe by inflaming the passions of its rising Muslim population.
Hence the obsessive intensity with which European elites have focused on a territorial conflict that, in the scale of the world’s problems, would seem rather less worthy of their concern, let alone of their one-sided rage, than many another."

"The cost of incompetence" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2005/12/02)
"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a self-professed holy man. In a video released on an Iranian Web site linked to the Revolutionary Guards (and reported on by "Regime Change in Iran" Web site), Ahmadinejad related that during his speech in the fall to the UN General Assembly, he "felt a light" surrounding and protecting him. In his words, after the light appeared, "the atmosphere changed and for 27-28 minutes the leaders could not blink…. All the leaders were puzzled, as if a hand held them and made them sit. They had their eyes and ears open for the message from the Islamic Republic."
Apparently Mr. "Wipe Israel off the map" feels comfortable enough in his own shoes these days to expose himself not merely as the most overtly radical Iranian leader since the 1980s, but also as a wacko mystical prophet of genocide. And why shouldn't he feel that way? His speech about liquidating Israel went off with scarcely a hitch. ...
The West's incompetence in contending with the forces of jihad from Iran to Switzerland to Lebanon and Ramallah shows clearly that the European and increasingly the American strategy for dealing with the rising forces of global jihad is to bury their heads in the sand. Apparently the hope is that the jihad will end with Israel. The problem is that the Sharon government is acting in exactly the same manner.
If the West doesn't wise up, it will pay a price in economic dislocation, a loss of liberty and the death of many of its citizens. If Israel doesn't shape up, the price we will pay will be of another order altogether." (See also: "Iran: President Says Light Surrounded Him During UN Speech" (Golnaz Esfandiari, Radio Free Europe, 2005/11/29))

"Yes, we have opened Pandora's box in Iraq - but freedom has sprung free" (Gerard Baker, The Times, 2005/12/02)
"We’re overwhelmed every day with the hard statistics of loss: Britain may soon endure its 100th death of a serviceman in Iraq; America has just passed the 2,000 mark; tens of thousands of Iraqis have perished. We have spent billions of dollars, not always efficiently. These are tangible, measurable losses; hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, billions.
Success is less tangible. It is articulated not in the indicative but in the subjunctive: potential threats removed; future wars that don’t have to be fought. It is numbered in the unenumerable: the slow awakening of human freedom; the steady, incremental spread of dignity it brings to people cowed and trampled for decades.
And yet it leaves its mark in tangible ways, even in the turmoil of Iraq. In a couple of weeks, Iraqis will go to the polls in their millions for the third time this year (the exercise of democracy can be habit-forming, can’t it?). This time they will choose a government that will have real power over the direction of the country. It will be a genuine first in the history of a region where medievalist tyranny has enjoyed five centuries of extra time.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein, the most powerful living expression of that legacy, the tormentor of his own people and oppressor of others, stands trial for his crimes. ...
Tony Blair famously said after September 11, 2001, that the kaleidoscope of geopolitics had been shaken. An alternative way to put it might be to say that we have opened a kind of Pandora’s box in the Middle East.
We have, surely, unleashed a violent fury of terrorism and guerrilla war that has a broader reach than Iraq or even the Middle East. But we have also unleashed the great virtue that in time will conquer these vices — not hope this time, though we could use some of that, but freedom. It would be a tragic mistake to cut our losses now, long before we have ensured that the virtue triumphs over the vices."

"Progress in The Mideast" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2005/12/02)
"Because we Americans tend to gauge Middle East success by White House signing ceremonies complete with dignitaries, three-way handshakes and pages of treaty provisions, no one seems to have noticed how, in the absence of any of that, there has been amazing recent progress in defusing the Arab-Israeli dispute.
First, the more than four-year-long intifada, which left more than 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians dead, is over. And better than that, defeated. There's no great Palestinian constituency for starting another one. In Israel, tourism is back, the economy has recovered to pre-intifada levels, and the coffee shops and malls are full again.
Second, the Gaza withdrawal was a success. On the Israeli side, it was accomplished with remarkable speed and without any of the great social upheaval and civil strife that had been predicted. As for the Palestinians, without any fanfare whatsoever, their first-ever state has just been born. ...
The Gaza Palestinians have just received exactly what they wished for: self-government, borders, openings to the outside world and an absence of any Jews. As a result, however, they are now faced with the distinctly unromantic task of creating their new state. It's not that many Gazans would not like to continue the romance of revolutionary terrorism and jihad. But they no longer have the means. The separation fence makes it almost impossible to launch attacks into Israel. And rockets launched into Israeli towns are met by retaliatory Israeli artillery barrages that make the rocketeers rather unpopular at home. A similar equilibrium will be achieved on the West Bank when the fence is completed next year.
Sharon represents the majority of Israelis bent on achieving that equilibrium. It will not only bring stability and relative peace, but it also offers the contours of an ultimate settlement. That's why even old regional antagonists see the promise of this moment -- all achieved, mind you, without a single Rose Garden ceremony."

"Girl next door who became a suicide bomber" (Stephen Castle, The Independent, 2005/12/02)
Muriel Degauque II. Castle tries to blame the radicalisation of Islamists on the Iraq war. Of course, if you're an Islamist you're not likely to become less radical by the spectacle of infidels fighting Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, but note how his very first examples predates the war by a wide margin:
"Western governments have been forced to recognise that the Iraq war and the televised brutal treatment of Muslims has radicalised an entire generation.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan origin who is accused of being the 20th hijacker, was a law-abiding student who became an extremist, taking flying lessons with the purported intention of committing mass murder.
Richard Reid, a Briton, has been sentenced for trying to blow up an airliner over the Atlantic in December 2001. Reid, from Bromley, south-east London, converted to Islam in prison, where he was serving a sentence for mugging. He and Moussaoui attended the radical Finsbury Park mosque."

"The girl who went from baker's assistant to Baghdad bomber" (Anthony Browne and Rory Watson, The Times, 2005/12/02)
Muriel Degauque I: "She came from an ordinary family in an industrial Belgian town. She used to sell baguettes in a bakery, and worked as a waitress in a café. She showed the rebelliousness of a typical teenager, but even in their worst dreams her parents never imagined that Muriel Degauque would end her life by blowing herself up in a suicide bomb attack against American troops in Iraq. ...
Jean and Liliane Degauque, a former crane operator and a medical secretary, said that they had watched their daughter’s gradual transition from Christian to Islamic zealot, and feared the worst when they saw the TV news on Tuesday. ...
Muriel moved from Charleroi to Brussels, which has a large Islamic community. She married and divorced a Turkish man, and had a long relationship with an Algerian, who converted her to Islam in 2001. Three years ago she married Issam Goris, who was born in Belgium to Moroccan parents, and followed him to Morocco. ...
When Muriel returned to Belgium, her mother no longer recognised her. She had become “more Muslim than Muslim”, she said. “The religion was totally ingrained in her. She only lived for that.”
Initially, she wore a hijab, or Islamic veil, but soon started wearing the head-to-toe chador that leaves the face visible. Finally she wore a burka. She became ever more estranged from her parents. “When we saw them, they imposed their rules. We were at home, but my husband had to eat in the kitchen with Issam while the women ate together in the sitting room. There was no question of putting on the TV or opening a beer,” M Degauque said."

"Man is killed as police fire on Egyptian voters" (Tim Butcher, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/12/02)
"One man was killed and dozens injured as Egyptian security forces used tear gas and live bullets in clashes that marred yesterday's final round of voting in parliamentary elections.
In what appeared to be an attempt to counter a strong showing by the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, police stopped voters reaching polling stations across the country. There were claims that officers beat up four judges working as election monitors.
At several polling stations crowds claiming they were being denied the right to vote surged towards the police lines and officers opened fire. One particularly determined group stormed a station, using ladders to scale the perimeter wall. ...
The man who died yesterday at Baltim, in the Nile Delta, north of Cairo, was named by the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights as Gomaa Saad el-Ziftawi, a supporter of the Leftist politician Hamdin Sabahi.
The group said in a statement: 'He was killed after security forces fired live ammunition and tear gas at him. Tens of voters were wounded.'"

Added in archive:
"The Muslim Brotherhoods plan for the conquest of the world" (Le Temps/The Daily Ablution, 2005/11/24)
"Eurabia’s Morass Elicits Mythical 'Solutions'" (Andrew G. Bostom, The American Thinker, 2005/11/24)

Thursday, December 1, 2005

News and commentary:

"This is our Belgian Kamikaze killed in Iraq"
(La Derniere Heure, 2005/12/01)
Caption from Yahoo! News: "The frontpage of today's edition of Belgium's newspaper 'La Derniere Heure' that headlines 'This is our Belgian Kamikaze killed in Iraq' and shows a picture of Muriel Degauque from the southern city of Charleroi, Belgium, in Brussels. Belgians were trying to come to terms Thursday with the news that a working class woman from an industrial southern city had turned from a 'nice' shop assistant into a suicide bomber who blew herself up in Iraq."

"The radical loser" (Hans Magnus Enzensberger, signandsight, 2005/12/01)
"Since before the attack on the World Trade Center, political scientists, sociologists and psychologists have been searching in vain for a reliable pattern. Neither poverty nor the experience of political repression alone seem to provide a satisfactory explanation for why young people actively seek out death in a grand bloody finale and aim to take as many people with them as possible. Is there a phenotype that displays the same characteristics down the ages and across all classes and cultures?
No one pays any mind to the radical loser if they do not have to. And the feeling is mutual. As long as he is alone – and he is very much alone – he does not hit out. He appears unobtrusive, silent: a sleeper. But when he does draw attention to himself and enter the statistics, then he sparks consternation bordering on shock. For his very existence reminds the others of how little it would take to put them in his position. One might even assist the loser if only he would give just up. But he has no intention of doing so, and it does not look as if he would be partial to any assistance. ...
The project of the radical loser, as currently seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, consists of organizing the suicide of an entire civilisation. But the likelihood of their succeeding in an unlimited generalization of their death cult is negligible. Their attacks represent a permanent background risk, like ordinary everyday deaths by accident on the streets, to which we have become accustomed.
In a global society that constantly produces new losers, this is something we will have to live with." (Hat tip: Angus Cook.)

"Don't call them 'riots'" (Clive Davis, clivedavis.blogs.com, 2005/12/01)
"French Prime Minister (and prominent Boney-phile) Dominique de Villepin went on CNN to try to re-define what happened in the banlieues. He's been reading too many PR manuals:

Amanpour: You know, many people, after hurricane Katrina struck the United States said, that it exposed the poverty and racism that exist in the United States. Many people in France said that ... around the world said it. Many people also said that the riots in the ghettos if you like... in the suburbs ...

De Villepin: I am not sure you can call them riots. It's very different from the situation you have known in 1992 in L.A. for example. You had at that time 54 people that died, and you had 2,000 people wounded. In France during the 2 weeks period of unrest, nobody died in France. So, I think you can't compare this social unrest with any kind of riots.

Amanpour: What do you call it then?

De Villepin: Social unrest, you have to understand also, there were no guns in the streets. No adults; mostly young people between 12 and 20 ... so it is very special movement."

(See also: "De Villepin interview: Full text" (CNN.com, 2005/11/29))

"Blair must show leadership in the battle for free expression" (Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, 2005/12/01)
"People are trying to kill her just for saying what she thinks. Last year, he was actually killed simply because he made a provocative work of art. Welcome to our brave new Europe, three centuries after the Enlightenment.
She is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian-Dutch politician and writer, who wrote the script for the film Submission. He was Theo van Gogh, the Dutch director of that film, who as a result was murdered on an Amsterdam street just over a year ago. ...
Last week I had a conversation with Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and caught a glimpse of what it's like to live with a 24-hour top-security guard, under permanent threat of death for exercising your right of free expression. ...
But her central claim seems to me vital and irrefutable: if being a free country means anything at all, it must mean that people have the chance to criticise freely, and without fear of reprisal, Islam, Hinduism or Sikhism, as they now in practice have the chance to excoriate Christianity (despite Britain's ridiculous blasphemy laws), Judaism or, for that matter, Darwinism. To establish that claim, she is determined to go ahead and make Submission 2, which will treat the story from the men's side, and Submission 3, which will suggest a possible response from Allah. Whatever the merits of the resulting films, we must salute her courage and support her in every way we can. It's not just the rights of women from Muslim families she is fighting for; it's a basic right for us all.
This right to free speech, which is to an open society what oxygen is to human life, is under direct threat from people whose position is very simple: if you say that, we will kill you." (See also: "The Freedoms We Fight For" (Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, The Weekly Standard, 2005/11/28))

"Western white woman a suicide bomber" (Anthony Browne, The Times, 2005/12/01)
"Mireille, who was born in Belgium to a white, middle-class Christian family, blew herself to pieces last month in a suicide attack against American troops near Baghdad.
In one of the most extraordinary tales of Islamic radicalisation, she is thought to be the first white Western woman to carry out a suicide bombing.
Belgian investigators, who arrested 14 people associated with her, are keeping the 38-year-old woman’s true identity secret, but details have started to emerge. She was from the southern Belgian town of Charleroi, married to a Moroccan and converted to an extreme form of Islam.
“This is how she came into contact with the organisation which allowed her to become a fighter for jihad,” said Glenn Audenaert, the federal police director. Her Belgian documents show that she travelled with her husband to Iraq. On November 9 she blew herself up in a car bomb attack on a US military convoy, killing — according to conflicting reports — either only herself, or six people. Her Belgian passport was near by. Her husband was killed by American troops in a separate incident. ...
The backgrounds of those arrested show that the problem of Islamic terrorism is no longer confined to immigrant communities — seven of those arrested were Muslim converts of native Belgian origin, two were Belgians of north African origin, two were Tunisians and three were Moroccans." (See also: "Suicide bomber 'was Belgian woman'" (David Rennie, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/11/30))

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

News and commentary:

"Fallaci: Warrior in the Cause of Human Freedom" (Robert Spencer, FrontPageMagazine, 2005/11/30)
"Oriana Fallaci, who received the Center for the Study of Popular Culture’s Annie Taylor Award in New York Monday evening, has been a warrior for human freedom ever since she joined the anti-fascist resistance in 1944, at age fourteen.":
"Fallaci spoke fervently Monday evening about how Western nations are selling their own homelands and culture to their mortal enemies. “We seem to live in real democracies,” she said, “but we really live in weak democracies ruled by despotism and fear.” Western elites – government and media – are paralyzed by fear, afraid to speak out against the life-destroying aspects of the Sharia law that Islamic jihadists want to impose on the rest of the world. The risk of offending Muslims is, in their calculus, apparently greater than the risk of national or civilizational suicide. Alexis de Tocqueville, according to Fallaci, explained that in dictatorial regimes, despotism strikes the body: the dissenter is tortured into silence. But in democratic regimes that have succumbed to corruption, despotism ignores the body and strikes at the soul. One is not tortured for dissent; instead, one is discredited for it. To affirm the patent fact that Islam is not a religion of peace today renders one “unelectable,” or “bigoted,” or beyond the bounds of what is fit to print. In despotic democratic regimes, Fallaci observed, everything can be spread except truth. ...
Fallaci told the audience that she faced three years in prison in Italy if convicted in her trial for hate speech. “But can hate be prosecuted by law? It is a sentiment. It is a natural part of life. Like love, it cannot be proscribed by a legal code. It can be judged, but only on the basis of ethics and morality. If I have the right to love, then I have the right to hate also.”
Hate? 'Yes, I do hate the bin Ladens and the Zarqawis. I do hate the bastards who burn churches in Europe. I hate the Chomskys and Moores and Farrakhans who sell us to the enemy. I hate them as I used to hate Mussolini and Hitler. For the cause of freedom, this is my sacrosanct right.'"

"'Working Undercover as Christian Peace Activists'?" (Daniel Pipes, danielpipes.org, 2005/11/30)
"In a tragic irony, four of what are known as "peace activists," were kidnapped from their car in western Baghdad on Nov. 26 by a group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. ...
Christian Peacemaker Teams showed its colors responding to the abductions: "We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and U.K. government due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people." Note the total absence of "anger" at the people who kidnapped its members.
Why did the abductors threaten their friends in this way? What is their possible logic? The statement that accompanied the video that charged the men with "working undercover as Christian peace activists" provides some clues. First, for Islamists and other Iraqis, an organization with "Christian" in the title must be missionary in purpose and presumably targeting Muslims for conversion, something they find unacceptable. Second, the notion that Westerners, and Americans especially, are more sympathetic to the Islamists than to the U.S. government just does not register. Iraqis more readily see such people as spies than as self-loathing Americans, the latter phenomenon remaining deeply foreign to them. Put another way, how could the "Swords of Righteousness Brigade" understand the "Christian Peacemaker Teams"? Their names alone point to a nearly unbridgeable divide." (See also: "Video Shows Activists in Captivity in Iraq" (Chris Tomlinson, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/30))

"Bush releases Iraq 'victory strategy'" (Martin Walker, UPI, 2005/11/30)
Strategy II: "Victory in Iraq is a vital U.S. interest, says a new policy document, "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq," published Wednesday by the White House.
But while it rejects proposals for a timetable for withdrawal, it holds out the prospect of early U.S. troop reductions, even while the United States remains committed to the stabilization and democratization of Iraq in the longer term.
"With resolve, victory will be achieved, although not by a date certain," the document says. "No war has ever been won on a timetable and neither will this one.
"But lack of a timetable does not mean our posture in Iraq (both military and civilian) will remain static over time. As conditions change, our posture will change," it says. "We expect, but cannot guarantee, that our force posture will change over the next year, as the political process advances and Iraqi security forces grow and gain experience.
"While our military presence may become less visible, it will remain lethal and decisive, able to confront the enemy wherever it may organize," the document says. "Our mission in Iraq is to win the war. Our troops will return home when that mission is complete." ...
"The fate of the greater Middle East -- which will have a profound and lasting impact on American security -- hangs in the balance. Failure is not an option," it says, in a clear challenge to the rising chorus of voices in the United States and abroad calling for a clear timetable for a withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces." (See also: "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" (The White House, 2005/11/30))

"Troops out, but how?" (Martin Walker, UPI, 2005/11/30)
Strategy I: "The debate about withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq that was finally slammed into the political mainstream by the pro-military Democratic Congressman John Murtha has suffered from the absence of any serious or credible timetable or plan -- though there is little doubt that the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon have one ready to hand if needed.
But in recent days, two highly respectable versions have emerged. One comes from the former terrorism czar in the Clinton White House, Richard Clarke, and the other from Professor Martin van Crefeld of Hebrew University in Israel, one of the world's leading military historians and analysts, and the only non-American author on the U.S. Army's required reading list for officers.
Clarke and van Crefeld each believes the war to have been a serious strategic mistake. Van Crefeld, in a recent op-ed article in the Jewish paper Forward, calls it "the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them" and adds Bush "deserves to be impeached." ...
"Tehran is certain to emerge as the biggest winner from the war -- a winner that in the not too distant future is likely to add nuclear warheads to the missiles it already has," van Crefeld writes. 'In the past, Tehran has often threatened the Gulf States. Now that Iraq is gone, it is hard to see how anybody except the United States can keep the Gulf States, and their oil, out of the mullahs' clutches. A continued American military presence will be needed also, because a divided, chaotic, government-less Iraq is very likely to become a hornets' nest. From it, a hundred mini-Zarqawis will spread all over the Middle East, conducting acts of sabotage and seeking to overthrow governments in Allah's name.'" (See also: "Costly Withdrawal Is the Price To Be Paid for a Foolish War" (Martin van Creveld, Forward, 2005/11/25))

"Suicide bomber 'was Belgian woman'" (David Rennie, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/11/30)
"A Belgian-born convert to Islam has become the first European woman suicide bomber, killing herself recently in Iraq, French intelligence officials have claimed.
The reports are being taken "seriously", Belgian sources said last night. If the woman, whose identity has not been released, is confirmed as a suicide bomber, she would be the first European female known to have taken part in such an attack.
European intelligence officials learned that US troops in Iraq recently found the remains of a European woman at the site of a suicide attack with a Belgian passport.
Unconfirmed reports on RTL France radio, said that the woman's Belgian nationality had been established by her home country's security service, the Sûreté de l'État.
Belgian counter-terrorism experts had established that the woman converted to Islam and was married to an Islamist radical. Her passport showed that she had reached Iraq via Turkey, and that the journey was carried out partly overland, RTL stated."

"Video Shows Activists in Captivity in Iraq" (Chris Tomlinson, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/30)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - A peace group blamed the United States and Britain for the abduction of four activists shown in an insurgent video, saying the kidnapping was the direct result of the occupation of Iraq. ...
Christian Peacemaker Teams, a group that has had activists in Iraq since October 2002, said it was saddened by the video of their workers. The workers, the group said, were working against the occupation of Iraq.
"We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and U.K. government due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people," the group said.
The group listed the names of those abducted as Tom Fox, 54, of Clearbrook, Va.; Norman Kember, 74, of London; James Loney, 41, of Toronto, Canada; and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, of Canada." (Note: For more on the Christian Peacemaker Teams, see the profile at DiscoverThe Networks.org.)

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

News and commentary:

"This is an image taken from an Arab Satellite TV channel..."
(AP, 2005/11/29)
"This is an image taken from an Arab Satellite TV channel of two of four peace activists taken hostage in Iraq and broadcast Tuesday Nov. 29, 2005. A previously unknown group claiming responsibility for the kidnapping The Swords of Righteousness Brigade said the four were spies working undercover as Christian peace activists, al-Jazeera television news reported. A British passport belonging to Norman Kember was also shown in the broadcast. A white-haired man, shown in the passport photograph, could also be seen sitting, at left, on a floor next to three other men in the video. The other man is unidentified."

"New Wave of Kidnappings Descends on Iraq" (Chris Tomlinson, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/29)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - Al-Jazeera broadcast video Tuesday of four Western peace activists held hostage, part of a new wave of kidnappings that police fear is central to a campaign of disrupting elections.
The brief, blurry tape was shown the same day German TV displayed a photo of a blindfolded German woman being led away by armed captors in Iraq. The kidnappers threatened to kill aid worker Susanne Osthoff and her Iraqi driver unless Germany halts all contacts with the Iraqi government. ...
The footage of the four Westerners showed Norman Kember, a retired British professor with a shock of white hair, sitting on the floor with three other men. The camera revealed Kember's passport, but the other hostages were not identified.
Al-Jazeera said the four were seized by a previously unknown group calling itself the Swords of Righteousness Brigade, which claimed they were spies working under the cover of Christian peace activists. It was not clear when the video was made.
The captives were members of the Chicago-based aid group Christian Peacemaker Teams, which confirmed they disappeared Saturday. Besides Kember, Canadian officials said the hostages included two Canadians and an American whose names have not been released."

"Iran: President Says Light Surrounded Him During UN Speech" (Golnaz Esfandiari, Radio Free Europe, 2005/11/29)
"Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad says that when he delivered his speech at the UN General Assembly in September, he felt there was a light around him and that the attention of the world leaders in the audience was unblinkingly focused upon him. The claim has caused a stir in Iran, as a transcript and video recording of Ahmadinejad's comments have been published on an Iranian website, baztab.com. There are also reports that a CD showing Ahmadinejad making the comments also has been widely distributed in Iran. Is the Iranian president claiming to be divinely inspired?
Prague, 29 November 2005 (RFE/RL) -- According the report by baztab.com, President Ahmadinejad made the comments in a meeting with one of Iran's leading clerics, Ayatollah Javadi Amoli.
Ahmadinejad said that someone present at the UN told him that a light surrounded him while he was delivering his speech to the General Assembly. The Iranian president added that he also sensed it.
"He said when you began with the words 'in the name of God,' I saw that you became surrounded by a light until the end [of the speech]," Ahmadinejad appears to say in the video. "I felt it myself, too. I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there, and for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink."
Ahmadinejad adds that he is not exaggerating.
"I am not exaggerating when I say they did not blink; it's not an exaggeration, because I was looking," he says. 'They were astonished as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic.'" (Hat tip: Regime Change Iran.)

"Mosque sells anti-Semitic material" (Inti Chavez Pere, Sveriges Radio, 2005/11/27)
Translation of an article in Swedish. Note that the reporter seems unaware that the first excerpt is from Sahih Al Bukhari, "the most generally accepted collection of traditions (Hadith) from Muhammad," according to Wikipedia. The second excerpt is almost a staple in Palestinian Authority sermons:
"Audio cassettes with fundamentalistic contents are being sold at the Stockholm mosque, the largest mosque in Sweden. On the tapes God is asked for help for the extermination of Jews and jihad, a holy war, is propagated.

"I think it is a matter of unprofessionalism"

"Judgement Day will come only when the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, until the Jew hides behind the tree and the stone, and the tree and the stone say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him'"

That is an excerpt from one of the tapes which were bought at the book shop at the Stockholm mosque in Södermalm [the South Side].

Call for the extermination of Jews

On the cover of the cassette a picture of the Statue of Liberty is draped in a burning American flag. The Arabic speaking narrator talks a lot about the distrust of Jews, hatred of Jews, extermination of Jews.

The other cassette has a picture of a dead Hamas leader, Ahmed Yassin, on its cover. On the tape Jews are spoken of as a disease, as brothers to monkeys and pigs, and it's said that there is no solution regarding the Jews except for jihad, a holy war.

"Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews. Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews. Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews! Oh, Allah, curse them and expel them and let them be whipped with suffering. Oh, Allah over Heaven and Earth!"

This is what the spokesperson for the Stockholm mosque said when Ekot called him:

"I think it is a matter of unprofessionalism, where volunteers who are engaged in Dubai or somewhere else are sending material they find interesting. I don't think people know that these tapes exist," says Abdalla Sallah.

"The dissemination of hate propaganda is forbidden"

This is how Mariam Osman Sherifay, Social Democratic member of parliament and Muslim, reacted to excerpts from the tapes bought at the Stockholm mosque:

"Do you mean that you have seen this tape at the Stockholm mosque?"

Yes

"That is bad. The dissemination of hate propaganda is forbidden in Swedish law. I'm not familiar with this law, so this will be a matter for the public prosecutor," says Mariam Osman Sherifay." (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

"Our Troops Must Stay" (Joe Lieberman, OpinionJournal, 2005/11/29)
"I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. More work needs to be done, of course, but the Iraqi people are in reach of a watershed transformation from the primitive, killing tyranny of Saddam to modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood--unless the great American military that has given them and us this unexpected opportunity is prematurely withdrawn.
Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity. The Sunni triangle, geographically defined by Baghdad to the east, Tikrit to the north and Ramadi to the west, is where most of the terrorist enemy attacks occur. And yet here, too, there is progress.
There are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones in Iraqi hands than before. All of that says the Iraqi economy is growing. And Sunni candidates are actively campaigning for seats in the National Assembly. People are working their way toward a functioning society and economy in the midst of a very brutal, inhumane, sustained terrorist war against the civilian population and the Iraqi and American military there to protect it.
It is a war between 27 million and 10,000; 27 million Iraqis who want to live lives of freedom, opportunity and prosperity and roughly 10,000 terrorists who are either Saddam revanchists, Iraqi Islamic extremists or al Qaeda foreign fighters who know their wretched causes will be set back if Iraq becomes free and modern. The terrorists are intent on stopping this by instigating a civil war to produce the chaos that will allow Iraq to replace Afghanistan as the base for their fanatical war-making. We are fighting on the side of the 27 million because the outcome of this war is critically important to the security and freedom of America. If the terrorists win, they will be emboldened to strike us directly again and to further undermine the growing stability and progress in the Middle East, which has long been a major American national and economic security priority."

"Wake up and listen to the muezzin" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/11/29)
"Forget Kyoto and the problem of "unsustainable growth"; the crisis that Britain and most of Europe faces is unsustainable sloth. Their insistence, at a time of falling birth rates and dramatic demographic change, on clinging to the right to pass a third of your adult life as one long bank holiday ought to be as morally reprehensible as what Gary Glitter gets up to on his own weekend breaks. Apart from anything else, its societal impact is far more widespread.
The Kyoto fetishisation is the definitive act of post-modern politics, in which our leaders are grave and responsible but only when it comes to issuing wake-up calls for stuff that isn't worth getting out of bed for. For the real issues confronting Europe, they're happy to go on slumbering well, as events spiral as remorselessly as the 2012 Olympic tab.
There's one image of the Second World War that sums it up: in London, the morning after a night of Luftwaffe bombing, Churchill would walk through the ruins; in Berlin, Hitler never visited bombed-out areas and, just in case the driver should take a wrong turn, he drove through the streets with his car windows curtained.
If you can't bear to pull open the curtains, chances are you're going to lose. When it's a bet between reality and delusion, bet on reality. What does the European political class really know of today's challenges? We mock the Islamists for wanting to turn the clock back to the eighth century. But, if it's a choice between eighth-century reality or 21st-century fantasy, it's not such an easy call.
By the time that Olympic mega-mosque is open for business, you'll be surprised how well it fits in." (See also: "Giant mosque for 40,000 may be built at London Olympics" (The Sunday Times, 2005/11/27))

"'Hitler' wins Palestinian primary elections" (Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily, 2005/11/29)
The headline says it all really: "A terrorist known in his hometown as "Hitler" – both for his physical resemblance to the German dictator and for his policies – has swept local primaries and will represent his district for the ruling Fatah party in upcoming Palestinian legislative elections, according to Palestinian sources.
Jamal Abu Al-Rub, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, won the Fatah primaries in the northern Samarian village of Qabatya, just outside Jenin, election officials say. He was one of dozens of terrorists and militant leaders to dominate the local elections.
The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, founded in 2000, is a terrorist group responsible for dozens of deadly suicide bombings and hundreds of shooting attacks against Israeli civilians. ...
A source close to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WND, "If you ask around in the West Bank who is Abu Al-Rub, most people won't know. But when you ask them about the guy nicknamed Hitler, everyone knows exactly who he is."
Continued the source: 'While the nickname came because of his looks, he is known more as Hitler because of his policies. He runs a tight ship in his town through fear and intimidation. And he not only calls for executions but personally carries them out in public so everyone can see what happens when 'Hitler' thinks you collaborated with Israel.'"

"Sunnis Accuse Iraqi Military of Kidnappings and Slayings" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2005/11/29)
"As the American military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods.
Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged in recent weeks, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation.
Some Sunni men have been found dead in ditches and fields, with bullet holes in their temples, acid burns on their skin, and holes in their bodies apparently made by electric drills. Many have simply vanished. ...
The chief suspects, according to Sunni leaders, human rights workers and a well-connected American official here, are current and former members of the Badr Brigade, the Iranian-backed militia controlled by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a principal part of the current government. Since the fall of the Hussein government in April 2003, Badr gunmen are suspected of having assassinated dozens of its former officials, as well as suspected insurgents.
Since April, when the Shiite-led government came to power, Badr fighters have joined the security services, like the police and commando units under the control of the interior minister, Mr. Jabr, who is also a senior member of the Supreme Council.
With Badr gunmen operating inside and outside the government, the militia can act with what appears to be official backing. It is not clear who is directing the security services, the government officials or the heads of the militias.
"The difference between the Ministry of the Interior and the Badr Brigade has become very blurry," the human rights investigator said."

"Hussein Is Unruly as Trial Resumes" (Doug Struck, The Washington Post, 2005/11/29)
"Saddam Hussein, the dictator who once held the power of life and death over millions of Iraqis, was reduced Monday to squabbling over pens and paper during his trial on charges of ordering wholesale executions during his rule.
Scowling and jabbing, Hussein used the defendant's dock as a pulpit from which to lecture the judge on how to treat foreigners. He complained that while being brought to the courtroom by U.S. guards, he had been handcuffed, forced to walk up flights of stairs and stripped of papers and writing implements.
When the chief judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, said he would tell the guards to give him writing implements, Hussein thundered: "Don't tell them -- I want you to order them! They are foreigners and occupiers and invaders."
The grievances that led to Hussein's bluster paled in comparison with the charges that could send him to the hangman and with the symbolic importance of the trial to Iraq's stumbling new democracy. ...
During one afternoon break, Hussein read from a poem he had apparently composed during the morning sessions. "We help the weak, but when we strike, we strike the elite," the poem read in part."

Added in archive:
"My battle with liberal Britain" (Shaun Bailey, The Sunday Times, 2005/11/27)
"Gays face hormone treatment" (Jim Krane, News24.com, 2005/11/26)

Monday, November 28, 2005

News and commentary:

"The Freedoms We Fight For" (Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, The Weekly Standard, 2005/11/28)
"Last month, Islamic radicals threatened to kill actor and Muslim convert Omar Sharif. Sharif had recently played St. Peter in an Italian TV film and spoke highly of the role, saying that he "seemed to hear voices" during filming and that "it will be difficult for me to play other roles from now on." Although Sharif's comments seem innocuous, they prompted a death threat. According to the Adnkronos International news agency, a message on a web forum which has been used by al Qaeda in the past linked to another website that threatened Sharif's life. The website containing the threat said, "Omar Sharif has stated that he has embraced the crusader idolatry. He is a crusader who is offending Islam and Muslims and receiving applause from the Italian people. I give you this advice, brothers, you must kill him."
This incident is relatively minor in the grand scheme of the war against radical Islam, but telling. It provides another glimpse into the Islamists' single-minded fanaticism and their willingness to punish any type of ideological non-conformity. ...
Unfortunately, we in the West haven't always been vigilant about standing behind speech rights. Too often, when Islamists threaten free expression, some Westerners clamor to make excuses for them. In 1997, for example, Salman Rushdie and novelist John le Carré had a high-profile feud in the letters section of the Guardian. In the course of the feud, le Carré said that Rushdie bore the responsibility for the bounty on his head because "there is no law in life or nature that says that great religions may be insulted with impunity." ...
Ultimately, it is Salman Rushdie's response to John le Carré that encapsulates the consequences of not recognizing the current Islamist attack on free speech: 'John le Carré is right to say that free speech isn't an absolute. We have the freedoms we fight for, and we lose those we don't defend.'"

"Ziauddin Sardar - on the culture of martyrdom" (Ziauddin Sardar, The New Statesman, 2005/11/28)
"What are we to make of a semi-literate teaching assistant exhorting young British Muslims to commit suicide? Mohammad Sidique Khan, who blew himself up at Edgware Road in London on 7 July, has sent a message from the grave. In a video recorded just before his death, Khan calmly addresses his audience. "Muslims," he says to the camera in a distinctly Yorkshire accent, "I strongly advise you to sacrifice this life for the hereafter." ...
But where did Khan acquire his logic and rhetoric? Did he learn all this simply from his patrons in al-Qaeda?
I think the initial draw, the impulse that drove Khan to the bosom of al-Qaeda, is to be found elsewhere. It lies in the sick culture that glorifies "martyrdom" and projects young suicide bombers as heroes. Al-Qaeda may have capitalised on this culture, but it has been intrinsic in certain segments of Muslim societies for at least two decades. Those who may be attracted to Khan's message are fascinated not so much with what he says as with the heroic image that he portrays. ...
This culture is embraced by people who ought to know better. The Egyptian scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a frequent visitor to London, finds it difficult to condemn Palestinian suicide bombers. Various prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain have condemned suicide bombing elsewhere but have supported its use in Palestine. ...
They practise double standards: it is OK there but not here. And they provide legitimacy for the likes of Khan to take an inductive leap - from Palestine to London to everywhere.
Khan, as many Muslim leaders in Britain have rightly pointed out, is an anomaly. But the only way to prevent recurrence of such incongruity is to stand up unambiguously against all suicide bombings everywhere - in Palestine as elsewhere. And to denounce, loudly and clearly, the vile culture of martyrdom. Suicide bombers are not heroes but murderers, pure and simple."

"Saddam Lashes Out at U.S. As Trial Resumes" (Hamza Hendawi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/11/28)
"BAGHDAD, Iraq - A combative Saddam Hussein lashed out Monday at his treatment by American "occupiers and invaders" and lectured the chief judge about leadership as his trial resumed in a rambling and unfocused session. ...
Saddam, immaculately groomed and the only defendant wearing Western clothes, moved quickly to try to seize control of the proceedings at the heavily guarded Baghdad court.
Dressed in black trousers and a gray jacket with a white handkerchief in the breast pocket, the 68-year-old former president was the last defendant to enter the chamber.
While other defendants appeared frightened and exhausted, Saddam swaggered confidently to his seat, greeting people along the way with the traditional Arabic greeting, "Peace be upon the people of peace" as he cradled a copy of the Quran.
Saddam began with a verse from the Muslim holy book that reminds believers who aspire for heaven that God knows who actually participated in jihad, or holy war.
He then complained that he had to walk up four flights of stairs in shackles and accompanied by "foreign guards" because the elevator was not working.
The chief judge, Rizgar Mohammed Amin, said he would tell the police not to let that happen again.
"You are the chief judge," Saddam snapped back, speaking like a president to a subordinate. 'I don't want you to tell them. I want you to order them. They are in our country. You have the sovereignty. You are Iraqi and they are foreigners and occupiers. They are invaders. You should order them.'"

"March for girl set alight after marriage refusal" (Henry Samuel, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/11/28)
The "lack of public outcry" which the victim's brother criticises might be connected to the complete lack of news articles on the horrendous attack.
It happened two weeks ago, but I have missed it completely. Of course, that doesn't say much, but news searches on Google and Yahoo! are also fruitless, resulting in just three articles, including this one, and not even one written before yesterdays demonstration:
"The family and friends of an 18-year-old girl, doused with petrol and set alight in broad daylight by the man she refused to marry, led a silent march through a Parisian suburb yesterday.
Chahrazad Belayni is currently fighting for her life in intensive care after suffering severe burns on 60 per cent of her body. She is being kept in an artificial coma.
On the morning of Nov 13, the Moroccan teenager was attacked while walking near her home in Neuilly-sur-Marne in the north eastern Seine-Saint-Denis suburb.
She knew her assailant. He was a former workmate of Pakistani origin who was angry about her refusal to marry him. The man and a suspected accomplice are on the run.
"This man asked her to marry him three times. He didn't understand her refusals and wouldn't leave her alone," said Sonia, a classmate. "Chahrazad was a beautiful young girl, very soignée and coquettish. He hurt her more than most by physically damaging her."
Several hundred people marched to the town hall yesterday behind a smiling portrait of Chahrazad and a banner calling for "justice, liberty, respect".
"We are here to denounce this horrible act," said the girl's brother, Abdelaziz, who criticised the lack of public outcry following the attack.
'We are here, not to call for revenge but that justice is done. We are here to denounce all violence against women: women must be able to say No or Yes'"

"Under Duress, Egypt's Islamist Party Still Surges at Polls" (Michael Slackman, The New York Times, 2005/11/28)
"CAIRO, Nov. 27 - The Muslim Brotherhood may be banned, but it has demonstrated in the latest parliamentary elections that it is by far the strongest Egyptian opposition group, trouncing the secular political opposition and weakening the governing party's power monopoly.
Results released by the government on Sunday showed the Brotherhood winning 29 more seats in the runoff on Saturday for the second round of parliamentary voting. It won 47 seats in the first round this month, meaning that with just one more round of elections to go, the Brotherhood already has 76 seats - more than five times its total in the departing Parliament.
Because of the group's outlaw status, its candidates run as independents.
The group's most recent gains have come despite the efforts of government security forces to block supporters from getting to the polls on Saturday, independent election monitors said. And it is now the only opposition group likely to qualify to nominate a candidate to run against President Hosni Mubarak in future elections. ...
Mr. Mubarak's governing National Democratic Party will apparently continue to control a vast majority of the seats in Parliament, having already won 195. But the new makeup of the chamber, which has 444 elected positions, may mean that the party will find itself forced to publicly defend its record and its actions against the increasingly empowered Brotherhood, which wants to make Egypt a religious state governed by Islamic law."

"Hussein's Trial Resumes in Baghdad" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2005/11/28)
"Less than 24 hours before Saddam Hussein returned to court on charges of crimes against humanity, the police in northern Iraq said Sunday that they had arrested 10 Sunni Arab men carrying orders from a fugitive associate of Mr. Hussein's to assassinate the court's best-known judge. ...
The police commander in the northern oil city of Kirkuk, Gen. Sarhad Qader, said the 10 men seized there in two predawn raids on insurgent safe houses on Sunday were being questioned in connection with a bomb plot to kill Raid Juhi, the chief investigative judge of the court that is trying Mr. Hussein.
General Qader said the men were caught with a document containing orders to carry out the killing from Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Mr. Hussein's former vice president and the last of his inner circle of associates to have evaded capture or death. ...
General Qader, the Kirkuk police commander, said the raids that uncovered the plot to kill Mr. Juhi had also found three car bombs ready to be driven to targets, as well as other documents linking the men seized in the raids to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy to Osama bin Laden. He said the document ordering Mr. Juhi's assassination was signed with a pseudonym, "Sheik of the Mujahedeen," and that the captured men, one of them a former secret police officer under Mr. Hussein, had said that that was the title used by Mr. Ibrahim."

Added in archive:
"US author lauds suicide bombers" (David Nason, The Australian, 2005/11/19)
"The death of an easygoing culture" (Anthony Browne, The Times, 2005/11/19)

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

 

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Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

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"'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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