Archived news and commentary: December 5 - 11, 2005

2005/12/05 - 2005/12/11
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

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, December 11, 2005

News and commentary:

"Riotous assembly..."
(Andrew Meares, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2005/12/12)
"Riotous assembly … a mob assaults a man with beer bottles at North Cronulla yesterday. By last night, youths of Middle Eastern background were out for revenge, which included vandalising more than 100 cars at Maroubra."

"Mob violence envelops Cronulla" (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2005/12/11)
"Police have been pushed, pelted with beer bottles and had their patrol cars stomped on as violence worsens at Sydney's Cronulla Beach.
Racial tension turned to violence today as at least 5000 angry people converged on the beach after simmering anger and disputes between beach users flared last week. ...
As the crowd moved along the beach and foreshore area today, one man on the back of a ute began to shout "No more Lebs" - a chant picked up by the group around him.
Others in the crowd, carrying Australian flags and dressed in Australian shirts, yelled "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie ... Oi, Oi, Oi".
North Cronulla Beach, in Sydney's south, was the scene of two violent incidents last week - an attack on two lifesavers on Sunday and a brawl later in the week in which youths turned on a media crew.
Two ambulance officers were injured when an angry mob attacked their vehicle." (Hat tip: Tim Blair, who has a useful round-up of news and commentaries on the mob violence, including an article on the incident last week: "Beach bashing arrest" (Kara Lawrence and Steve Gee, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/12/08): "The Middle Eastern youths allegedly told the lifesavers to get off the beach and that they "owned" the beach. The lifesavers allegedly responded by telling the youths that if they went in the surf, they would need rescuing because they could not swim.")

"Iraqi insurgents urge Sunnis to vote, warn Zarqawi" (Reuters, 2005/12/11)
"Saddam Hussein loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday's polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al Qaeda militants not to attack.
In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.
Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find.
Instead, election campaign posters dominate buildings in the rebel strongholds of Ramadi and nearby Falluja, where Sunnis staged a boycott or were too scared to vote last time around.
"We want to see a nationalist government that will have a balance of interests. So our Sunni brothers will be safe when they vote," said Falluja resident Ali Mahmoud, a former army officer and rocket specialist under Saddam's Baath party.
'Sunnis should vote to make political gains. We have sent leaflets telling al Qaeda that they will face us if they attack voters.'"

"But seriously folks, this clown is dangerous" (Mark Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times, 2005/12/11)
"So let's see: We have a Holocaust denier who wants to relocate an entire nation to another continent, and he happens to be head of the world's newest nuclear state. (They're not 100 percent fully-fledged operational, but happily for them they can drag out the pseudo-negotiations with the European Union until they are. And Washington certainly won't do anything, because after all if we're not 100 percent certain they've got WMD -- which we won't be until there's a big smoking crater live on CNN one afternoon -- it would be just another Bushitlerburton lie to get us into another war for oil, right?)
So how does the United States react? Well, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the comments of Ahmadinejad "further underscore our concerns about the regime." ...
We assume, as Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax and other civilized men did 70 years ago, that these chaps may be a little excitable, but come on, old boy, they can't possibly mean it, can they? Wrong. They mean it but they can't quite do it yet. Like Hitler, when they can do it, they will -- or at the very least the weedy diplo-speak tells them they can force the world into big concessions on the fear that they can. ...
There has always been a slightly post-modern quality to sovereignty in the transnational age: We pretend the Syrian foreign minister is no different from the New Zealand foreign minister, and in so doing we vastly inflate the status of the former at the expense of the latter. But with Ahmadinejad we're going way beyond that. If a genocidal fantasist is acceptable in polite society, we'll soon find ourselves dealing with a genocidal realist." (See also: "Iran's Ahmadinejad wants Israel moved to Europe" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/08))

"Do the sums, then compare US and Communist crimes from the Cold War" (Niall Ferguson, The Sunday Telegraph, 2005/12/11)
Ferguson on Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture: "Brings it all flooding back, doesn't it? The demand that the President and his allies be tried as "war criminals". The denunciation of the "infantile insanity" of nuclear weapons. No, don't worry, you haven't stepped into a time machine. It's not the 1970s, and that wasn't Henry Kissinger in drag, it was only Condi Rice. But yes, I am afraid that is still Harold Pinter, spouting the same old anti-American drivel he was spouting 30 years ago.
Truth and falsehood are indeed hard to distinguish in Pinter's drama, and his Nobel soliloquy was no exception. First, the true part. Thousands were indeed killed by US-backed dictatorships, especially in Central and South America. What is demonstrably false is that this violence is comparable in scale with that perpetrated by Communist regimes at the same time. ...
As for the allegation of a conspiracy to hush up American complicity in Cold War human rights violations, he really has to be kidding. You no longer need to rely on articles by Seymour Hersh to know about this stuff. There are easily accessible websites where you can download any number of declassified documents about all the dreaded dictatorships the CIA backed. On the basis of these and other sources, there have been at least five detailed monographs published in the last 10 years on Guatemala alone. Some cover-up.
Nobody pretends that the United States came through the Cold War with clean hands. But to pretend that its crimes were equivalent to those of its Communist opponents - and that they have been wilfully hushed up - is fatally to blur the distinction between truth and falsehood. That may be permissible on stage. I am afraid it is quite routine in diplomacy. But is unacceptable in serious historical discussion." (See also: "Art, Truth & Politics" (Harold Pinter, Nobelprize.org, 2005/12/07))

"Jailed Afghan Publisher Faces Possible Execution" (Griff Witte, The Washington Post, 2005/12/11)
Speaking of silence. Have any political columnist in a major Western newspaper, with the sole exception of Diane West, denounced the outrageous blasphemy case against Ali Mohaqeq Nasab?:
"When Ali Mohaqeq Nasab returned to Afghanistan last year after a long exile, he thought the atmosphere had opened up enough to raise questions about women's rights and the justice system in his country's nascent democracy.
But now the magazine publisher's provocative essays have put him at the mercy of that system -- imprisoned on blasphemy charges and facing possible execution. ...
His offense, according to the Afghan courts and conservative clerics, was to contravene the teachings of Islam by printing essays in his monthly magazine, Women's Rights, that questioned legal discrimination against women, harsh physical punishments for criminals and rigid intolerance of Muslims who abandon their faith.
The essays, published in May, attracted the belated attention of a prominent Muslim cleric, who delivered a sermon several months later denouncing Nasab as an infidel. Nasab reported the incident to Afghanistan's justice system, but instead of receiving the protection he had expected, he was arrested, put on trial and sentenced to two years in prison. Nasab, 47, has appealed to a higher court, but so have the prosecutors. They contend the two-year sentence was far too lenient, and that unless he apologizes, he should hang.
"According to sharia law, if he does not repent and if he does not return to his religion, he should be executed," Abdul Jamil, who heads the public security division of the attorney general's office, said, referring to Islamic law. ...
After Nasab's conviction, the Supreme Court issued a religious edict, or fatwa , saying he "should be given the harshest punishment, so he will be a lesson to others." A group of 200 religious scholars and clerics in the southern city of Kandahar recently issued a fatwa that said he should be given three days to repent or be hanged." (See also: "Cultural flash points" (Diana West, The Washington Times, 2005/12/09), "International charicatures" (Diana West, The Washington Times, 2005/11/18) and "Journalist Convicted of Blasphemy in Afghanistan" (Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gall, The New York Times, 2005/10/23))

"Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran" (Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter, The Sunday Times, 2005/12/11)
"Israel's armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.
The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations. ...
The order to prepare for a possible attack went through the Israeli defence ministry to the chief of staff. Sources inside special forces command confirmed that “G” readiness — the highest stage — for an operation was announced last week. ...
A “massive” Israeli intelligence operation has been underway since Iran was designated the “top priority for 2005”, according to security sources.
Cross-border operations and signal intelligence from a base established by the Israelis in northern Iraq are said to have identified a number of Iranian uranium enrichment sites unknown to the the IAEA. ...
If a military operation is approved, Israel will use air and ground forces against several nuclear targets in the hope of stalling Tehran’s nuclear programme for years, according to Israeli military sources.
It is believed Israel would call on its top special forces brigade, Unit 262 — the equivalent of the SAS — and the F-15I strategic 69 Squadron, which can strike Iran and return to Israel without refuelling."

"Present at the Disintegration" (Kanan Makiya, The New York Times, 2005/12/11)
"Washington and Baghdad will be tempted, with the adoption of a new Constitution and the election on Thursday for a four-year government, to declare victory in Iraq. In one sense, they are right to do so. The emerging Iraqi polity undoubtedly represents a radical break not only with the country's past but also with the whole Arab state system established by Britain and France after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
But in the larger sense, such optimism is misguided, for none of the problems associated with Iraq's monumental change have been sorted out. Worse, profound tensions and contradictions have been enshrined in the Constitution of the new Iraq, and they threaten the very existence of the state. ...
There is nothing wrong with having strong regions within a federal union. Unfortunately the new Iraqi Constitution fails to inject the glue that would hold such a union together: the federal government. It sets up a regional system with big short-term winners (Shiite Arabs and Kurds) and big short-term losers (Sunni Arabs). It even allocates extra oil and gas revenues to the regions that generate them, on the implicit assumption that because of the political inequities of the past, the state owes the Sunnis of the resource-poor western provinces less than it does the Shiites and Kurds. But these provinces are not significantly better off than other parts of Iraq. ...
Without the return of real power to the center, the ascent of sectarian and ethnic politics in Iraq to the point of complete societal breakdown cannot be checked. We cannot fight the insurgency, rebuild Iraq and live in any meaningful sense as part of the modern world without a state. There are no human rights, no law, and no democracy without the state; there is only anarchy and a state of insecurity potentially much worse than what Iraqis are experiencing today. For democracy to emerge out of the current chaos in Iraq, the state must be saved from the irresponsibility of the Iraqi parties and voting blocs that are today killing it."

"From Banality to Audacity" (John F. Burns, The New York Times, 2005/12/11)
Burns on the trial of Saddam Hussein: "He defied orders to keep the court's location secret, mentioning that he was in the former Baath Party headquarters in Baghdad's Green Zone. Protesting the exertions visited on him by American guards, he offered more precise coordinates, saying he had been forced to ascend four flights of stairs. And he used an outburst about his exhaustion, and his need for a recess to allow him to get a fresh shirt and underwear, to say he had been brought to the Green Zone for the trial "on an aircraft." He used an Arabic word that doubles for helicopter, another potential pointer for insurgents, who know that there are only a few designated landing zones in the Green Zone.
If these and other sallies by Mr. Hussein suggested he might have an eye toward escape, the idea may not be quite as fanciful as it might seem. ...
In any case, there have been signs, in the strategy adopted by Mr. Hussein and his lawyers in the opening weeks of the trial, that they have an end in mind that looks beyond escape. If the defense lawyers no longer speak of moving the trial outside Iraq, or moving it into an international court, it may be because they have begun to think there may be a more promising strategy - one that keeps the trial going in Iraq, but stretches it out as long as possible, along with any possibility of Mr. Hussein's execution, while events in the war continue to unfold against America.
That way, Mr. Hussein and his associates may think, they can hope that the day will come when their fate, like Iraq's, will be settled by an insurgent triumph that drives America out, or forces America's allies here to barter away the freedom of Mr. Hussein and his fellow captives as part of a settlement that brings peace."

"Murder of man of peace inspires a voters' revolt" (Hala Jaber, The Sunday Times, 2005/12/11)
"The grand mufti of Falluja, Sheikh Hamza Abbas al-Issawi, knew he was risking his life by urging worshippers to vote in Iraq’s elections this week and by preaching against terrorist violence.
Refusing to be intimidated, he intensified his rhetoric after receiving death threats from radical Islamists for criticising Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He challenged his shadowy enemies by declaring at prayers: “I know I am targeted.”
Death came to the 70-year-old grand mufti 12 days ago, when he was gunned down in front of his teenage son by three masked men in a silver BMW. Many inhabitants of Iraq’s “city of mosques” intend to honour his memory by casting their ballots on December 15.
Issawi was an influential scholar who castigated militants loyal to Zarqawi for “un-Islamic behaviour” and blamed them for provoking last year’s American military offensive against the city. ...
Following his assassination, the city held three days of official mourning. Shops, schools and government institutions shut down to protest against his killing. Thousands attended his funeral, with many chanting anti-American slogans.
But others vowed to avenge his death by hunting down Zarqawi loyalists. Often the two emotions got mixed up. “It is all Bush’s fault,” said Ahmad, who did not want his last name used. “Under Saddam, Al-Qaeda would not have dared to raise their heads and now people are slaughtered and assassinated every day.”
At the Mother of All Battles mosque in the western part of the city, a cleric denounced the “murderers” and said believers had a responsibility to vote on Thursday."

"Iraq's Dr No says Yes to peace and democracy" (Colin Freeman and Aqeel Hussein, The Sunday Telegraph, 2005/12/11)
"As befits the holder of a doctorate in classical Arabic, Adnan al Duleimi is known as one of the more polished orators among Iraq's aspiring politicians. Yet his popularity in volatile Sunni districts is based on the stubborn repetition of a single word: La, or No.
It was No to taking part in Iraq's historic elections last January and No in the constitution referendum. He is a firm No man on the continued presence of American troops. Such is his rejectionist record that the joke among Iraqis is that he would automatically decline a dinner invitation. But now, the man nicknamed Dr No is saying Yes.
Defying expectations, he has ended his boycott of the US-fostered political process and is campaigning in this week's elections for a new Iraqi government. The stern, grey-haired septuagenarian is one of a clutch of influential Sunni figures who, after more than two years of favouring the bullet rather than the ballot, have decided to seek office. ...
The decision by the likes of Dr al Duleimi to embrace democracy, however tentatively, is a huge relief to coalition officials, who hope that some of the energy being channelled into Iraq's Sunni-led insurgency will now be diverted into peaceful politics. His Sunni Family party, along with several other Sunni coalitions, could win up to 25 per cent of the seats when the polls open on Thursday."

"In Iraq, Bush Pushed For Deadline Democracy" (Peter Baker and Robin Wright, The Washington Post, 2005/12/11)
"In a sign of shifting political winds, the embattled city of Fallujah will be open for voting on Thursday -- with its own Sunnis staffing the polls. In January, few were willing to vote in a city that served as an early bellwether of the insurgency, and election workers had to be imported from elsewhere.
This time, Iraqi and U.S. officials expect a decent turnout. The Association of Muslim Scholars, which called for a boycott in January, now urges followers to vote. Considering the turbulent year, U.S. officials are almost optimistic about the final phase of the Bremer script.
Former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith, a key architect of the war, said the political process has not been perfect but that Bush was right to stick rigorously to the timetable. "That was a calculation," he said. "It involved some risk. It turned out not only not to be a disaster but a great success." ...
"It remains to be seen whether it works," cautioned Morrow. "We can't assume there will be enthusiasm by the Shiites and Kurdish parties for far-reaching amendments." Without compromise, the danger of civil war deepens.
For all that, some of the administration's toughest critics still see a chance for success. "Despite all the mistakes in our myopic clinging to arbitrary deadlines and our vision of what the political transition and pace should be, and our succession of lost opportunities to broaden the arena, I think we're finally beginning to get it right," said Diamond. 'There are some tantalizing signs of a political breakthrough.'"

Saturday, December 10, 2005

News and commentary:

"2005 contestants: ENGLAND - Hammasa KOHISTANI"
(Miss World 2005)

"The English beauty who fled Taleban to contest Miss World" (Will Pavia, The Times, 2005/12/10)
"Then came the media, the questions on religion, the death threats and the fan mail from all over the world," notes Will Pavia in the middle of this article on the first Muslim woman to hold the title as Miss England. Hm. Death threats against Miss England? Why have I never heard of them? Shouldn't that be newsworthy in itself? Or at least worth more than a throwaway mention? But Pavia doesn't give any further details.
And a search for other articles on the death threats comes up with almost nothing. There's apparently no previous article in The Times. BBC News also mentions the death threats in passing in their dispatch yesterday ("Islamic extremists have sent her death threats for taking part in the contest, which will be watched by two billion."), but I can't find any previous article on them.
In fact, I can only find two earlier, very short dispatches on the death threats whatsoever. One is an English translation of a dispatch in the Turkish paper Milliyet News, dated Sept. 6, which seems based on an article in The Sun:

"18 years old Hammasa Kohistani, of Uzbekistan origin and winner of the English Beauty Pageant, received death threats through e-mails. She has won her title during the weekend contest in Liverpool. Her mother, Leila Kohistani, expressed her deep concerns about their dughters [sic] safety, speaking to The Sun. She said that they reported to the police and the case is being investigated."

The other one is from the Times of India, dated Dec. 6:

"When she steps up to the Miss World microphone on Saturday as the first Muslim Miss England, she will be doing so in the face of fierce resistance from within her own religion.
Hammasa, 18, was completely unprepared for the weight of criticism. Her mother Layla, 41, has received extremist hate mail including a religious curse known as an 'evil eye'.
More moderate Muslim leaders voiced objections as it is against the Quran to show naked flesh."

Of course, I must have missed some articles, but it's apparent that there is an almost complete media silence surrounding the death threats against this year's Miss England, which is a very conspicuous and disturbing sign of the three wise monkeys mentality currently favored in Europe. But how can it ever help the situation, much less the actual victims, whether it is Miss England or a French 18-year-old girl, "doused with petrol and set alight in broad daylight", to not even report the incidents?:
"One evening this week Miss England, Hammasa Kohistani, sat before the Miss World judges. “They asked me where I would be in five years’ time,” she said.
She found it all rather easy because, since being pronounced Miss England, the first Muslim woman to hold the title, she has had to field constant questions from the world’s media.
Never have the pronouncements of Miss England received such attention. ...
Miss Kohistani, 18, was brought up in was brought up in Afghanistan as it crumbled into civil war. She remembers nights in Kabul cowering in the corridors when her block came under a hail of bullets and bombs, and how she refused to come out from under her bed sheets for days.
Her family fled the country as the Taleban came to power, and by way of Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Russia, ended up in Middlesex.
While her father set up a takeaway food business and her mother became an interpreter, Miss Kohistani was spotted on the Underground, aged 14, and began modelling for Gap and Superdrug.
Pronounced Miss England on September 3 this year, she took a year out from her A levels at Uxbridge College. “This is a real-life fairy story that couldn’t happen in any other country,” she said.
Then came the media, the questions on religion, the death threats and the fan mail from all over the world."

"What this cultural debate needs is more dirt, less pure stupidity" (Salman Rushdie, The Times, 2005/12/10)
Almost everything Rushdie has written on politics since 9/11 has been must-reads, but, somewhat surprisingly, he is disappointingly vague when he now tackles multiculturalism. Or, rather, the op-ed leads nowhere, which probably is a sign in itself that we're dealing with a problem with no apparent solution.
In "Group Think: It's not just France. It's Europe" (The New Republic, 2005/11/16), James Forsyth chronicles how "Europeans have spent the last four years hunting frantically for a model of integration that works." [emphasis added]:

"The first country to see the luster come off its integration model was Spain. ... But the Madrid bombings of March 2004 revealed that a warm culture of inclusion was not necessarily sufficient to defend against violence. ...
Europeans also looked to Holland, long regarded as the most liberal and tolerant society on the continent. ... It was another murder, that of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in November 2004, that returned the issue of Islam's compatibility with Dutch liberalism to the top of the national agenda. ... Holland, where the government is currently proposing a ban on wearing the burqa in public, is now studied more as an example of the tensions between liberalism and Islam than of their successful reconciliation. ...
Britain offered another possible solution. ... 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."

If neither multiculturalism or integration works, we are indeed left with with what Rushdie calls the "core values" approach, which seems more like an apt description of the problem (i.e., as a clash between different core values) than an applicable solution:
"Multiculturalism has always been an embattled idea but the battle has grown fiercer of late. In this, it is terrorism that is setting the agenda, goading us to respond: terrorism, whose goal it is to turn the differences between us into divisions and then to use those divisions as justifications. No question about it: it’s harder to celebrate polyculture when Belgian women are being persuaded by Belgians “of North African descent” to blow themselves — and others — up. ...
The British multiculturalist idea of different cultures peacefully coexisting under the umbrella of a vaguely defined pax Britannica was seriously undermined by the July 7 bombers and the disaffected ghetto culture from which they sprang. Of the other available social models, the one-size-fits-all homogenising of “full assimilation” seems not only undesirable but unachievable, and what remains is the “core values” approach, of which the “Britishness test” is, as presently proposed, a grotesque comic parody. ...
If we are to build a plural society on the foundation of what unites us, we must face up to what divides. But the questions of core freedoms and primary loyalties can’t be ducked. No society, no matter how tolerant, can expect to thrive if its citizens don’t prize what their citizenship means — if, when asked what they stand for as Frenchmen, as Indians, as Britons, they cannot give clear replies."

"Different freedoms, or why religion and politics should never mix" (Jonathan Sacks, The Times, 2005/12/10)
"Democratic politics — the worst system ever invented apart from all the others — is more than the rule of the majority. That, as Alexis de Tocqueville rightly said, can lead to the tyranny of the majority and the loss of rights on the part of minorities. Its virtues are that it allows for the non-violent resolution of conflict. It makes possible a change in government without revolution or civil war. Most importantly, it safeguards the free expression of dissent.
Politics turns into virtue what religions often see as a vice — the fact that we do not all think alike, that we have conflicting interests, that we see the world through different eyes. Politics knows what religion sometimes forgets, that the imposition of truth by force and the suppression of dissent by power is the end of freedom and a denial of human dignity. When religion enters the political arena, we should repeat daily Bunyan’s famous words: “Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from the gates of Heaven.” ...
Liberal democracy does what few great religions have ever achieved. It makes space for difference. It honours the person regardless of his or her beliefs. It allows societies to negotiate change without catastrophe."

"Gang rapist claims right to assault" (Natasha Wallace, Sydney Morning Herald, 2005/12/10)
"...and she was singing": "The eldest of four Pakistani gang rapist brothers has admitted lying at trial and apologised to his victims but said he thought he had a right to rape the "promiscuous" teenage girls.
MSK, 27, told the NSW Supreme Court yesterday that this was because the girls did not wear headscarves, were drinking alcohol and were unaccompanied when they went to his Ashfield home. MSK also blamed his intoxication, "cultural beliefs" and an undiagnosed mental disorder.
He and his brothers MAK, 25, MRK, 21, and MMK, 19 - who cannot be named for legal reasons - are serving between 10 and 22 years for raping two girls in 2002. All except MRK are yet to be sentenced for several other rapes.
Yesterday evidence was being heard on a sentence for MSK for the rapes of two more girls, TW, then 14, and CH, then 13. He admitted that some of the evidence he had given at an earlier trial was fabricated, particularly that he had had consensual sex with TW and that she had coaxed him. ...
During a long apology to TW, who was in court, he stopped mid-sentence to reprimand her.
"I wish to say this to [TW], that at the time when I commit these offences I come from such a background which led me to - don't shake your head, I'm telling you something - I say now that I hurt you and I'm extremely, extremely apologetic to you and I'm, I wish to say one thing more.
"I'm serving 22 years … I'm just requesting to you that you one day may come that you realise that the person who assaulted me is in prison … and I should forgive him. I'm asking for your forgiveness." He said it was only now, since he had gained a "better understanding of Australian culture", that he knew the rapes were wrong.
He arrived in Sydney for the ninth and final time four days before committing several rapes over six months. He had planned to study medicine.
He agreed he knew the girls did not want to have sex. "[TW] said no but I go ahead with it because I believe that at the time I commit these offences, I believe that she was promiscuous …" he said. "She don't know us, I don't know her, like she was not related to us and she was not wearing any purdah … like she was not … covered her face, she was not wearing any headscarf and she started drinking with us and she was singing." (Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch.)

"Author the Turks tried gag refuses to rewrite history" (Suna Erdem, The Times, 2005/12/10)
"Days before he goes on trial for publicly discussing his country’s slaughter of a million Armenians by Ottoman Turks, Orhan Pamuk, the most prominent Turkish writer, sounds anything but repentant. ...
Mr Pamuk’s alleged crime was to tell a Swiss newspaper this year that “a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands and no one but me dares to talk about it” — a reference not only to the Armenian slaughter but also to the two-decades-old conflict in southeast Turkey between Kurdish insurgents and the army.
The Turkish press wrongly reported that he had used the word genocide. He received death threats and, in August, a formal charge for “publicly denigrating Turkish identity”, for which, if convicted, he faces up to three years in prison. The official Turkish line is that hundreds of thousands of Armenians as well as Turks died in internecine fighting.
Mr Pamuk, a youthful 53, sounds far from contrite as he sits in his flat in a bohemian area of Istanbul with fine views of the Bosphorus. It was time that his country debated taboo issues such as the Armenian slaughter, he said. “This information is being hidden from the Turkish people and that isn’t good.”
He picked his words carefully, in view of his imminent trial, but insisted that Turkey needed to permit freedom of speech if it was to be fit for EU membership. For him the issue is not the accuracy of what he said about the killings — “I’m no expert,” he said — but his right to say it."

"Baghdad's Highway of Death 'now safe'" (Oliver Poole, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/12/10)
"The US military says it has secured the road linking Baghdad airport to the city - two and a half years after American troops first entered the capital.
Attacks on the five-mile route have dropped from 142 between April and June to fewer than a dozen last month.
The road had been a glaring symbol of the US failure to control Iraq. It became known as the Highway of Death since the journey meant risking shootings, suicide car bombs and booby traps.
In April, 13 people were killed and 23 wounded along the road. In the next three months another 39 died and 17 were wounded. But since the summer there has been a concerted effort to wrest control from insurgents.
Military convoys that had previously sped through to avoid ambush slowed down and prepared to engage any attackers. US troops went into surrounding areas to carry out house-to-house searches and Iraqi army units manned checkpoints at each of the road's seven access routes.
In September and October only one person was killed and there has not been a suicide car bombing in the past three months.
Maj Gen Rick Lynch, the American military spokesman, this week called the road 'one of the most safe and secure routes in all of Iraq.'"

"Banned Islamic Movement Now the Main Opposition in Egypt" (Daniel Williams, The Washington Post, 2005/12/10)
"On traffic-jammed Talat Harb Square, forlorn supporters of jailed politician Ayman Nour walked in little circles, chanted for his freedom and bemoaned the failure of his Tomorrow Party in Egypt's just-concluded parliamentary elections.
A few blocks away at a television studio, Essam Erian, a top official of the Muslim Brotherhood who himself has been imprisoned several times, smiled broadly as he held a series of interviews about the electoral success of his movement.
The contrast underscored a stunning shift in Egyptian politics. The Tomorrow Party and other legal, secular opposition groups were all but wiped out in the election -- together, they won no more than 10 seats. Candidates running as independents but representing the Muslim Brotherhood, which is formally banned from politics, won 88 seats and became the leading voice of dissent against President Hosni Mubarak's quarter-century rule. ...
"Most of the most democratic forces lost with only a handful of votes. They became yesterday's people. They fought to open the system, but it was the Muslim Brotherhood that benefited," said Mohammed Sayed Said, an analyst at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
"The old, official party system is dead," Erian said." ...
Kifaya, which ran no candidates, is rethinking its tactics. The movement succeeded in challenging bans on public demonstrations and broke taboos against criticizing Mubarak. But some supporters say the protests have reached a dead end. "We became addicted to demonstrations," said Wael Khalil, a Kifaya activist. 'We have to organize to make ourself relevant across the country. We simply don't have deep roots in Egypt.'"

Friday, December 9, 2005

News and commentary:

"Cultural flash points" (Diana West, The Washington Times, 2005/12/09)
"Now they want to put him to death — Mohaqeq Nasab, the Afghan editor already sentenced to two years hard labor for "blasphemy" against Islam. Now, Afghan prosecutors want to put him to death.
Why? The Muslim editor of Women's Rights magazine published articles in post-Taliban Afghanistan that criticized aspects of Islamic law, including the penalties of stoning for adultery, amputation for theft, and death for leaving Islam.
"Sometimes the whole religion and the rules of the religion were attacked," explained Muhammed Aref Rahmani, who sits on Afghanistan's council of Islamic scholars.
Attacked? "For instance," Mr. Rahmani told the Chicago Tribune, "he says one woman should be equal to one man, as a witness in a case, which is completely against our religion."
Yes, those seismic vibrations rolling across your eardrums are the sound of culture clash. Under Islamic law, a woman's court testimony is worth half as much as a man's — another rank inequality Mr. Nasab's magazine opposed — so I guess you could say Mr. Rahmani has an Islamic point. Of course, such Islamic "crimes" equal Western virtues. This, it seems, leaves Afghan officials unimpressed. ...
So much for post-Taliban — and, come to think of it, post-Operation-Enduring-Freedom — life in Afghanistan. Maybe the more useful exercise here is not to wonder how we became midwife to a theocratic police state but to see what we can learn from it. One thing is clear: where Islam is protected from so-called blasphemy, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech — let alone women's rights — are not." (See also: "International charicatures" (Diana West, The Washington Times, 2005/11/18) and "Journalist Convicted of Blasphemy in Afghanistan" (Abdul Waheed Wafa and Carlotta Gall, The New York Times, 2005/10/23))

"Citizens Turn Over 'Butcher of Ramadi' to Iraqi, U.S. Troops" (DefenseLINK News, 2005/12/09)
"The terrorist known as "the Butcher of Ramadi" was detained today, turned in by local citizens in the provincial capital of Iraq's Anbar province, U.S. military officials in Iraq reported.
Amir Khalaf Fanus -- listed third on a "high-value individuals" list of terrorists wanted by the 28th Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team -- was wanted for criminal activities including murder and kidnapping. Ramadi citizens brought him to an Iraqi and U.S. forces military base in Ramadi, where he was taken into custody.
Fanus was well known for his crimes against the local populace. He is the highest-ranking al Qaeda in Iraq member to be turned in to Iraqi and U.S. officials by local citizens.
His capture is another indication that the local citizens tire of the terrorists' presence within their community, Multinational Force Iraq officials said, adding that Iraqi and U.S. forces have witnessed increasing signs of citizens fighting the terrorists in Ramadi as the Dec. 15 national elections draw near."

"Man for a Glass Booth" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2005/12/09)
"Of all the mistakes that the Bush administration has committed in Iraq, none is as gratuitous and self-inflicted as the bungling of the trial of Saddam Hussein. ...
Instead of Hussein's crimes being on trial, he has succeeded in putting the new regime on trial. The lead story of every court session has been his demeanor, his defiance, his imperiousness. The evidence brought against him by his hapless victims -- testimony mangled in translation and electronic voice alteration -- made the back pages at best. ...
Why have we given him control of the stage? We all remember the picture of him pulled out of his spider hole. That should be the Saddam Hussein we put on trial. Instead, with every appearance, he dresses more regally, emerging from cowering captive to ordinary prisoner to dictator on temporary leave. Now he carries on as legitimate and imperious head of state. He plays the benign father of his country, calling the judge "son," then threatens the judge's life. Hussein shouts, defies, brandishes a Koran. The judge keeps telling him he's out of order. He disobeys with impunity, the guards not daring to intervene. ...
This is absurd. If anything, Hussein should be brought in wearing prison garb, perhaps in shackles, just for effect. And why was he given control of the script? He shouts, interrupts and does his Mussolini histrionics unmolested. Instead of the press being behind a glass wall, it is Hussein who should be. Better still, placed in a glass booth, like Eichmann, like some isolated specimen of deranged humanity, symbolically and physically cut off from the world of normal human values."

"Iranian president denies Holocaust and taunts Europe" (Anton La Guardia, The Daily Telegraph, 2005/12/09)
"President Mahmoud Amadinejad of Iran provoked fresh anger yesterday when he denied that the Holocaust took place and mockingly called for a Jewish state to be set up in Europe.
His comments came weeks after he declared that Israel should be "wiped off the map", drawing widespread international condemnation.
But the Iranian president seemed undeterred when he returned to the subject of Israel and Jews in comments yesterday in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
Mr Amadinejad argued that Israelis had "no roots" in the Middle East.
He said: "Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces and they insist on it to the extent that if anyone proves something contrary to that they condemn that person and throw them in jail.
'Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the Europeans is: is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the reason for their support to the occupiers of Jerusalem?'"

Thursday, December 8, 2005

News and commentary:

"Israel wiped off the map at the UN
on UN 'Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People'"
(Eye on the UN, 2005/11/29)
"This map was prominently displayed by the UN on November 29, 2005 at a public gathering at UN Headquarters, in the presence of all top three UN officials, the Secretary General, and the Presidents of the UN Security Council and the General Assembly. It purports to be a "map of Palestine." Israel, a UN member state for 56 years, is not on the map. Even the UN General Assembly partition lines of November 29, 1947 marking a Jewish and Arab state, which pre-date this 1948 map, do not appear." (Hat tip: LGF.)

"Iran's Ahmadinejad wants Israel moved to Europe" (AFP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/08)
"Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad triggered new international outcry by saying the "tumour" of the state of
Israel should be relocated to Europe.
His remarks were greeted with outrage from Germany, Austria, Israel and the United States, at the forefront of an international campaign to prevent the Islamic regime from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Ahmadinejad, who in October said arch-enemy Israel must be "wiped off the map", said that if Germany and Austria believed Jews were massacred during World War II, a state of Israel should be established on their soil.
"You believe the Jews were oppressed, why should the Palestinian Muslims have to pay the price?" he asked in an interview with Iranian state television's Arabic-language satellite channel, Al-Alam.
"You oppressed them, so give a part of Europe to the Zionist regime so they can establish any government they want. We would support it," he said, according to a transcript of his original Farsi-language comments given to AFP.
"So, Germany and Austria, come and give one, two or any number of your provinces to the Zionist regime so they can create a country there... and the problem will be solved at its root," he said.
"Why do they insist on imposing themselves on other powers and creating a tumour so there is always tension and conflict?" ...
In Ahmadinejad's interview, he referred to the Holocaust as a matter of belief, and raised the issue of revisionist historians -- who attempt to establish that figures on the number of Jews killed by the Nazis are wildly exaggerated -- being prosecuted in Europe."

"Suicide Bombing on Bus in Iraq Kills 30" (Hamid Ahmed, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/08)
According to AFP's dispatch, the victims were "mostly Shiite women, children and students":
"A suicide bomber who jumped on a bus after security checks had been completed detonated an explosives belt among passengers heading to a Shiite city Thursday, killing up to 30 people and wounding nearly 40, officials said.
Most of those killed were on the bus, which was gutted by flames, but several people gathered around a nearby food stall were also killed, police said. A hospital official said at least 37 people were injured.
Police said the attacker waited until the bus was slowly pulling away from the station, then jumped on board to avoid security checks. Police said the death toll was especially high because the blast triggered secondary explosions in gas cylinders stored at the food stall. ...
Witnesses told police that the suicide bomber left a car, boarded the packed bus and blew himself up as it was leaving for Nasiriyah, 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, police Lt. Ali Mitaab said.
Fire swept through the bus, trapping passengers who had been headed to the southern city for the weekend, which starts here on Thursday evening. Charred corpses were left in the seats, their faces starring out through the shattered windows. Police climbed over the top of the vehicle inspecting what remained of luggage.
"As the bus was going outside the station, a man carrying a bag tried to got into the bus, but the conductor was suspicious about him," police Lt. Wisam Hakim said. 'He tried to stop him but the man insisted. He sat in the middle of the bus and then the explosion took place.'"

"Saddam's chief apologist" (Christopher Hitchens, Slate, 2005/12/08)
"So now, [Ramsey] Clark — one of the chief spokesmen of the American antiwar movement, leader of the ANSWER coalition that filled the streets with protesters and compared President Bush to Adolf Hitler — is indeed in Baghdad, seated at the defense table for a client who on Monday terminated the proceedings by loudly comparing his own stand in the dock to the heroic struggle of Mussolini. ...
Yet before he had even had his credentials accepted by the court, Clark announced that his client was a) guilty of disgusting atrocities and b) justified in having committed them.
To be exact, in an interview with the BBC last week and another in the New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Clark addressed the charge that in 1982, after an apparent attempt on his life in the Iraqi town of Dujail, Hussein had ordered the torture and murder of about 150 men and boys from the area.
Far from denying that any such horror had occurred — and it is one of the smaller elements in the bill of indictment — Clark asserted that it was justifiable. He has now twice said in public that, given the war with the Shiite republic of Iran, Hussein was entitled to take stern measures. "He had this huge war going on, and you have to act firmly when you have an assassination attempt," he told the BBC. ...
For the most part, the antiwar faction has subordinated everything to its hatred of Bush, folded its hands and watched coldly as Iraqi democrats struggle in a sea of chaos and violence. That sham neutrality is bad enough. But now, the anti-warriors do have a permanent representative in Baghdad, in the form of an apologist for the past crimes and aggressions of a man who makes his hero, Mussolini, seem like an amateur.
I wonder: What will Cindy and the other humanitarians say this time? Or are they not "antiwar" at all, but simply pro-war and on the other side?"

"Terror suspect pleads from jail for British hostage's life" (Ben Hoyle et al., The Times, 2005/12/08)
"A high-profile terror suspect has made a television appeal from prison in England for the release of a British hostage being held in Iraq.
Abu Qatada was allowed to film his plea as part of an unprecedented effort to secure the lives of Norman Kember, 74, and three other Western peace activists. ...
Dressed in a flowing white robe and looking notably thinner than at his arrest in August, Abu Qatada, speaking in Arabic, told the kidnappers: “I am your brother Abu Qatada, Omar bin Mahmud Abu Omar, who is imprisoned in Britain.
“I urge my brothers, the Brigades of the Swords of Right in Iraq, to release the hostages in line with the principle of mercy of our religion.
“Our prophet said mercy should be shown unless there is a reason in Sharia [Islamic law] that prevents it.”
He did not condemn kidnapping and was careful to emphasise that the appeal was on behalf of the four Christian peace activists only and did not include other Western hostages."

"Brotherhood Wins 12 Egypt Parliament Seats" (Jasper Mortimer, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/08)
Egypt II: "Preliminary results in Egypt's elections gave the leading opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, a record 19 percent of the seats in parliament after a four-week election with unprecedented political violence.
The results — released privately Thursday by an official in the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the election — came a day after at least eight people were killed as police battled to stop voters reaching polling stations in Muslim Brotherhood strongholds.
In Wednesday's runoff polling, the Brotherhood won 12 seats, the National Democratic Party of President Hosni Mubarak and its allies took 111 seats, and the opposition front two seats, said the ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. Two more seats remain undecided.
If those results are confirmed, the tolls from Wednesday's runoffs would give the ruling NDP and its allies 333 seats, or 73 percent of parliament, and the Brotherhood 88 seats. ...
The results mean the Brotherhood — a group that is banned but tolerated with restrictions — has won almost six times the 15 seats it held in the outgoing assembly."

"Police Attack Voters During Last Day of Egypt Election" (Daniel Williams, The Washington Post, 2005/12/08)
Egypt I: "Police firing tear gas and rubber bullets blocked voters from reaching polling stations in several electoral districts around the country Wednesday and at least eight people were reported killed on the violent and chaotic last day of Egypt's fiercely contested parliamentary elections.
Clashes between riot police and irate voters broke out in several towns that were strongholds of opposition to President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party. Police have increasingly intervened in the parliamentary vote, which was spread out over almost four weeks when it became clear that candidates representing the formally outlawed Muslim Brotherhood would win a significant number of the contested seats. ...
There were major clashes in the northern Mediterranean town of Damietta, where television images showed police firing tear gas and rubber bullets outside of polling stations. Three men were killed in the town, hospital and human rights sources told the Associated Press.
Three people were killed in Sharqiya province, including a 14-year-old boy and a 22-year-old man shot in the head in the village of Qattawiya when police fired on crowds, the Associated Press reported. Two other men died of gunshot wounds in Dakahliya province, also in the Nile Delta, police and hospital sources told the news agency."

"In Iraq, Signs of Political Evolution" (Jonathan Finer, The Washington Post, 2005/12/08)
"As Iraqis nationwide prepare to go to the polls for the third time this year on Dec. 15 -- this time for a new parliament -- candidates and political parties of all stripes are embracing politics, Iraqi style, as never before and showing increasing sophistication about the electoral process, according to campaign specialists, party officials and candidates here.
"It is like night and day from 10 months ago in terms of level of participation and political awareness," said a Canadian election specialist with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a group affiliated with the U.S. Democratic Party that is working to ease Iraq's transition to democracy. ...
Evidence of political evolution is plastered all over Baghdad's normally drab concrete blast walls and hung on lampposts at nearly every major intersection: large, colorful, graphically appealing posters conveying a wide variety of punchy messages. ...
In January, most candidates outside the dominant few parties largely eschewed campaigning, fearing they could be kidnapped or assassinated. Now, even long shots are getting into the act. One day this week, National Democratic Institute instructors explained get-out-the-vote techniques to a dozen members of the Free Iraq Gathering, a new coalition that "probably won't get many more votes than you see in that room," according to an institute employee."

Wednesday, December 7, 2005

News and commentary:

"On screen the 2005 Nobel Literature laurete the British author Harold Pinter..."
(Henrik Montgomery, AP, 2005/12/07)
"On screen the 2005 Nobel Literature laurete the British author Harold Pinter makes a speech broadcasted from England to Swedish spectators and media at the Swedish Royal Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, Wednesday Dec. 7, 2005."

"Art, Truth & Politics" (Harold Pinter, Nobelprize.org, 2005/12/07)
Pinter's Nobel Lecture is a heartfelt tribute to the political system in the free world, which made it possible for him to become a multi-millionaire and acclaimed playwright, while guaranteeing him the freedom to rage against it for decades on end. Just kidding, of course.
Note that the fulminating speech was received with applauds and "made the crowded Swedish Royal Academy laugh several times."
Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, lauded the speech afterwards, saying that "you can feel the logic, where one thing leads to another" and that people who get offended should "think about the fact that we are served a far more black and white image of reality every day in the media."
So here it is — nuanced logic from this year's Nobel literature laureate, applauded by the Swedish cultural and media elite:
"But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period [the post-war period] have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. ...
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis. ...
How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London." (See also: "Harold Pinter does not deserve the Nobel Prize" (Johann Hari, johannhari.com, 2005/12/05))

"UN Concerned over Prophet Cartoons" (Ole Damkjær, Berlingske Tidende/fjordman, 2005/12/07)
Denmark II: "The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights understands the concern in Muslim countries over the 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad and expects UN experts on racism to deal with the matter. At the same time as Islamic countries in a meeting in Mecca are going to discuss joint action against Denmark, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has involved herself in the discussion.
The leader of the UN's work on human rights is saying in plain words that she is concerned over the drawings that Jyllands-Posten printed in September, expressing "apologies" for statements and actions demonstrating a lack of respect for the religion of other people. In a letter to the 56 member countries of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), she states: 'I understand your concerns and would like to emphasize that I regret any statement or act that could express a lack of respect for the religion of others.'"

"Mohammed cartoonists on Arabic meeting agenda" (DR Nyheder, 2005/12/07)
Denmark I: "The episode concerning twelve Danish cartoonists who were hired to draw caricatures of the prophet Mohammed for the daily Jyllands-Posten continues to cause unrest in the Muslim world.
Today 56 Islamic countries are holding a top meeting in Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and on the agenda is a discussion of a united front against Denmark.
Also the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has involved herself in the discussion. She has written a letter to the 56 Muslim countries expressing her apologises for the lack of respect for others religion that the episode has caused. She has also asked the UN's racism experts to look at the case.
Prime Minster Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he was aware of the Commissioner's letter but decline to comment further." (Hat tip: fjordman.)

"This Shameful Ranting Must Stop" (Carol Gould, current viewpoint, 2005/12/07)
"Just before going back to the USA after five months in the UK I attended the ‘Global Peace and Unity’ Conference at London’s Excel Centre presented by the new Islam Channel and sponsored by Emirates Airlines, Western Union (hmm??) and the Metropolitan Police.
It was advertised as a diverse event to which non-Muslims were invited and the impression one got from the website was of a celebration of Middle Eastern culture, food, music and children’s activities in a London milieu.
To my utter horror -- and I should have written this report two days ago but my physical and emotional shock have rendered me nearly inert -- it was a seven-hour call to Jihad by a succession of ranting and shouting rabble-rousers.
The eminent barrister Michael Mansfield QC, wearing black and white keffiyah scarf, shouted into the mike about the heinous crimes of the Western coalition countries. The crowd chanted and thundered its appreciation.
The terrifying demagogue George Galloway ascended the podium and exhorted the crowd to stand up for the redemption of the oppressed Muslim world or else the nation had better get ready for ‘rioting in every street in Britain.’.
The ‘slaughter in Palestine and Iraq’ being only part of the equation, Chechnya, Bosnia and Kashmir were also mentioned all day by every speaker including a crazed, chador-clad Yvonne Ridley, who at any moment I expected to self-immolate, such was her fury at the Zionists, the Americans and her fellow Britons. To my utter disbelief, she condemned the British police force as some form of fascist brigade in ‘jackboot Britain.’
To all of these exhortations came cries of ‘Alllahu Akhbar’ from the enormous, simmering crowd of what looked to me like the angriest gathering of young men and women with whom I have ever had the misfortune to be seated in my lifetime." (See also: The Global Peace & Unity Event.)

"Poll: Four Years After the Fall of the Taliban, Afghans Optimistic About the Future" (Gary Langer, ABC News, 2005/12/07)
"Four years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghans express both vast support for the changes that have shaken their country and remarkable optimism for the future, despite the deep challenges they face in economic opportunity, security and basic services alike. ...
Yet despite these and other deprivations, 77 percent of Afghans say their country is headed in the right direction — compared with 30 percent in the vastly better-off United States. Ninety-one percent prefer the current Afghan government to the Taliban regime, and 87 percent call the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban good for their country. Osama bin Laden, for his part, is as unpopular as the Taliban; nine in 10 view him unfavorably.
Progress fuels these views: Despite the country's continued problems, 85 percent of Afghans say living conditions there are better now than they were under the Taliban. Eighty percent cite improved freedom to express political views. And 75 percent say their security from crime and violence has improved as well. After decades of oppression and war, many Afghans see a better life."

"Saddam's chair empty as trial goes on without him" (Luke Baker and Gideon Long, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/07)
"Saddam Hussein refused to enter court for his trial on Wednesday, bringing the often chaotic proceedings to a halt before the judge decided to press on with the televised hearing without him.
After telling the court to "go to hell" the night before, the former dictator boycotted what would have been the fifth session of the trial and spent most of the day in talks with lawyers and a battle of wills with the Kurdish presiding judge.
Judge Rizgar Amin eventually opted to push ahead with proceedings and heard testimony from two more witnesses before adjourning the trial until December 21 -- six days after next week's election for the first full parliament of the post-Saddam era.
Amin said he would use the two-week break to consider a defense motion to review the way evidence was being given.
As the witnesses gave their testimony, Saddam's black leather chair stood conspicuously empty at the front of the defendant's penned-in dock in the marbled Baghdad courtroom.
The witnesses, speaking from behind a curtain for fear of their lives, described abuses they say they suffered in Saddam's jails in the 1980s and one of them, identified only as Witness F, said he saw a fellow prisoner tortured to death.
"They told us they wanted to speak to us for 10 minutes," the final witness, G, said of a round-up of people in the Shi'ite town of Dujail after an assassination attempt on Saddam in 1982.
'We were gone for four and a half years.'"

"'Do Some Soul Searching': Why aren't the media telling the whole story about Iraq?" (Donald Rumsfeld, OpinionJournal, 2005/12/07)
"I'm not one to put much faith in opinion polls. But the other day, I came across an interesting set of statistics that I want to mention. It seems that the Pew Research Center asked opinion leaders in the United States their views of the prospects for a stable democracy in Iraq.
Here were some of the results: 63% of people in the news media thought the enterprise would fail. So did 71% of people in the foreign affairs establishment and 71% in academic settings or think tanks. Interestingly, opinion leaders from the U.S. military are optimistic about Iraq by a margin of 64% to 32%. And so is the American public, by a margin of 56% to 37%.
And the Iraqi people are also optimistic. I've seen this demonstrated repeatedly -- in public opinion polls, in the turnout for the elections, and that tips to authorities from ordinary Iraqis have grown from 483 to 4,700 tips in a month.
This prompts the question: Which view of Iraq is more accurate? The pessimistic view of so-called elites in our country -- or the optimism expressed by millions of Iraqis and by the roughly 158,000 troops on the ground? ...
We have arrived at a strange time in this country when the worst about America and our military seems to be so quickly taken as truth by the press and reported and spread around the world -- with little or no context or scrutiny -- let alone correction or accountability -- even after the fact. Speed, it appears, is often the first goal -- not accuracy, not context.
Recently there were claims by two Iraqis on a speaking tour that U.S. soldiers threw them in a cage with lions. Their charges were widely reported--still without substantiation. Not too long ago, there was a false and damaging story about a Koran supposedly flushed down a toilet, and in the riots that followed people were killed. And a recent New York Times editorial implied America's armed forces -- your armed forces -- use tactics reminiscent of Saddam Hussein.
I understand that there may be great pressure on them to tell a dramatic story. And while it is easy to use a bombing or a terrorist attack to support a belief that Iraq is a failure, that is not the accurate picture. And further, it is not good journalism."

"It's Not Whether You 'Win' or 'Lose'..." (Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, 2005/12/07)
"Iraq is not Korea, of course, and the Middle East is not Asia. But it is perfectly possible that the two conflicts might eventually resemble one another in the ambivalence of their conclusions. Although both the administration and its antiwar opponents speak as if there must be an either/or solution for Iraq -- either democracy or Islamic fascism -- it is perfectly possible that we end up with both. We may indeed create the first truly democratic Arab regime, with independent media, real elections and a relatively liberal political culture. But we may also, simultaneously, strengthen al Qaeda and its radical Islamic allies, in Iraq and the entire region. We may create a more entrepreneurial, globally integrated Iraq that can inspire economic reform throughout the Middle East. We may also create a deep well of international anti-American resentment that hampers our ability to conduct everything from trade negotiations to counterintelligence for decades to come.
It is even possible, in the end, that we really will help bring into existence a new generation of democratic Arab reformers across the Middle East -- and that we will need to keep troops in the region for five decades to defend them. Would such an outcome mean the war was a "defeat"? Not necessarily. Would it mean the war was a "victory"? Not exactly. Can we, the nation that invented the Hollywood happy ending, live with such a conclusion? Hard to imagine, but we might not have a choice."

"Syria Attacks Evidence as U.N. Case Turns More Bizarre" (Michael Slackman, The New York Post, 2005/12/07)
"The United Nations investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, is beginning to show some cracks: one witness is dead, another is in jail and still another has recanted his testimony with a fantastic story of abduction, drugging and bribery.
In a case that has begun to sound more and more like a fictional spy thriller, with charges of Soviet-style intimidation tactics and a witness who died when his car ran off a road, the issue of witness credibility has risen to the forefront. ...
At the moment, Syrians are enjoying the spectacle of Hussam Taher Hussam, the rail-thin 30-year-old known as "the masked witness," who outed himself recently with outlandish claims to have given false testimony after being kidnapped, tortured and offered $1.3 million in bribes by Lebanese officials - charges that even critics of the investigation say are hard to believe.
Security agents escorted Mr. Hussam into a hotel room on Monday to recount for a reporter a tale that exonerates him and Syrian officials of all wrongdoing while implicating Syria's chief enemies in the killing and subsequent conspiracy to frame Damascus."

Added in archive:
"Fallaci: Warrior in the Cause of Human Freedom" (Robert Spencer, FrontPageMagazine, 2005/11/30)

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

News and commentary:

"The WSJ and Torture" (Andrew Sullivan, andrewsullivan.com, 2005/12/06)
Saddam III. So a 16-year old Iraqi girl was tortured with electrical shocks and probably raped ("She strongly suggested she had been raped, but did not say so outright.") by Saddam's henchmen and Andrew Sullivan's knee-jerk reaction is to compare her treatment favorable with "Bush administration policies" (for example, according to him: "she was not sexually abused and she was not threatened by dogs.")?
It's really disheartening to observe someone you've had outmost respect for turn into an obsessing moonbat, but that seems sadly to be the case:
"Here's an interesting case. In the Iraq court-room yesterday, a woman described being tortured by Saddam's thugs in Abu Ghraib, back when he controlled it. Her account of torture is as follows:

"They forced me to take off my clothes," said the woman, referred to only as Witness A by the court. "They kept my legs up. They handcuffed me and started beating me with cables. It wasn't just one guard, it was many guards." ...
"I agree that things in Abu Ghraib were, until recently, bad, but did they use dogs on you? Did they take photographs?" asked one defense attorney, attempting to raise the issue of U.S. prisoner abuse at the prison.
"No," she replied.

According to the Wall Street Journal's definition of torture, this woman wasn't subjected to "anything close" to torture. Repeated beatings are specifically not torture, as argued by AEI legal scholar, John Yoo, who helped craft Bush administration policies. The woman was not water-boarded, she was not shackled in stress positions, she was not subjected to hypothermia, she was not sexually abused and she was not threatened by dogs. She did not, in other words, come even close to being tortured, according to the Wall Street Journal."

"Saddam Says He Will Boycott 'Unjust Court'" (Hamza Hendawi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/06)
Saddam II: "A woman testified in the trial of Saddam Hussein and his seven lieutenants Tuesday that she was assaulted and tortured with beatings and electric shocks by the former president's agents. Later, at the end of the session, when the judges decided to reconvene Wednesday, Saddam suddenly shouted that he would not attend. "I will not return. I will not come to an unjust court! Go to hell!" Saddam yelled.
He also complained that he had no fresh clothes and that he had been deprived of shower and exercise facilities. "This is terrorism," he said.
At that point, the audio was cut off to the media gallery and the curtain drawn so reporters could not tell what transpired afterward.
Iraqi lawyer Bassem al-Khalili told The Associated Press that Saddam has no right to boycott the session and that 'a court can bring a defendant by force to the court according to Iraqi law.'"

"Woman Testifies of Torture by Saddam's Men" (Hamza Hendawi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/06)
Saddam I: "Her voice disguised but her weeping still apparent, a woman testified Tuesday from behind a screen in the trial of Saddam Hussein and his seven lieutenants that she was assaulted and tortured with beatings and electric shocks by the former president's agents.
In contrast to Monday's session where he interrupted and berated male witnesses, Saddam sat stone-faced, silently taking notes as the woman, known only as "Witness A," told the court how she and dozens of other families from the town of Dujail were arrested in a crackdown after a 1982 assassination attempt against him. ...
"I was forced to take off my clothes, and he raised my legs up and tied up my hands. He continued administering electric shocks and whipping me and telling me to speak," Witness A said of Wadah al-Sheik, an Iraqi intelligence officer who died of cancer last month.
Several times, the woman — hidden behind a light blue curtain — broke down. "God is great. Oh, my Lord!" she moaned, her voice electronically deepened and distorted.
She strongly suggested she had been raped, but did not say so outright. When Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin asked her about the "assault," she said: "I was beaten up and tortured by electrical shocks."
The witness, who was 16 at the time of her arrest, repeated that she had been ordered to undress.
"They made me put my legs up. There were more than one of them, as if I were their banquet, maybe more than five people, all of them officers," she said.
"Is that what happens to the virtuous woman that Saddam speaks about?" she wept, prompting the judge to advise her to stick to the facts."

"Dems in Disarray" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2005/12/06)
"On the other hand, San Antonio's WOAI-AM reports that party chairman Howard Dean is embracing defeat:

Saying the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean predicted today that the Democratic Party will come together on a proposal to withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops immediately, and all US forces within two years. . . .

"I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

An e-mail from John Kerry's"campaign" that popped into our e-mailbox this morning struck a decidedly different tone. It declared, "Each move they make we'll meet head on. We'll act quickly, decisively, and we won't yield an inch." Needless to say, Kerry referred not to America's enemies but to Republican fund-raising efforts." (See also: "Kerry Supports the Troops" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2005/12/05))

"Fiery Plane Crash in Iran Leaves 128 Dead" (Ali Akbar Darein, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/06)
"TEHRAN, Iran - A plane loaded with Iranian journalists slammed into a 10-story apartment building Tuesday as the pilot attempted an emergency landing after developing engine trouble. At least 128 people were killed — 34 on the ground.
Witnesses said the C-130 plummeted to earth after ripping open the top of the building and igniting a large fire. Cars were smashed and debris was scattered over a wide area. Panicked residents fled the Towhid residential complex, a series of high-rise apartment buildings for air force personnel in the Azadi suburb of Tehran.
Officials said everyone on the plane, 84 passengers and a crew of 10, was killed. Most were Iranian radio and television journalists heading to cover military maneuvers in southern Iran. In addition to the 34 residents of the apartment building who died, 90 were injured, Tehran state radio said. ...
The plane, which belonged to the army air force, had just taken off for Bandar Abbas in southern Iran when it developed engine trouble. As it headed back to Tehran's Mehrabad Airport, the pilot was unable to maintain sufficient altitude and hit the apartment complex, state-run television said.
The report discounted sabotage or terrorism. Aviation officials were not available for comment.
Witness Iraj Moradin told The Associated Press the plane appeared to be circling the airport when its tail suddenly burst into flames, leaving a smoke trail as it plummeted. He said he fled when he thought the plane was going to crash into a gas station, but turned in time to see it hit the building."

"Bombing at Baghdad Police Academy Kills 43" (Sameer N. Yacoub, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/06)
"Two suicide bombers struck Baghdad's police academy Tuesday, killing at least 43 people and wounding 73 more, U.S. officials said, while Al-Jazeera broadcast an insurgent video claiming to have kidnapped a U.S. security consultant.
The suicide attackers were wearing explosives-laden vests and a U.S. contractor was among those wounded, a U.S. military statement said. ...
"One of the suicide bombers detonated near a group of students outside a classroom," the Task Force Baghdad said. 'Thinking the explosion was an indirect-fire attack, (Iraqi police) and students fled to a bunker for shelter where the second bomber detonated his vest.'"

"France's Sarkozy backs beleaguered Finkielkraut over Muslim riot comments" (Daniel Ben Simon, Haaretz, 2005/12/06)
An update on the Finkielkraut affair: "The storm aroused by French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut refuses to subside. On Sunday, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy threw his full weight behind the beleaguered philosopher, who has been forced to remain cloistered at home following the sharp reactions to an interview he gave to Haaretz.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Sarkozy said: "Monsieur Finkielkraut is an intellectual who brings honor and pride to French wisdom ... If there is so much criticism of him, it might be because he says things that are correct." ...
Sarkozy appeared ready to take on the media. He had been following the attacks on Finkielkraut for two weeks and was waiting for a suitable opportunity. "What do you want of him?" he asked the media representatives. "M. Finkielkraut does not consider himself obliged to follow the monolithic thinking of many intellectuals, which led to Le Pen winning 24 percent in the elections. The philosophers who frequent the salons and live between Cafe de Flor and Boulevard St. Germain suddenly find that France no longer bears a resemblance to them."
This is an unprecedented attack on the left wing by the very person who is seen by many French as being the only one capable of preventing the disintegration of the republic. ...
The weekly Le Point also devoted a four-page report to the Finkielkraut affair this week. While the interviewees stressed his intellectual acumen, they almost all felt Finkielkraut had slipped up by mentioning the ethnic identity of the rioters - he had described them as blacks, Arabs and Muslims.
Nevertheless, to date, all the organizations and bodies that threatened to sue him for racism have changed their minds." (See also: "The Riot Act" (Nidra Poller, Tech Central Station, 2005/12/02) and "What sort of Frenchmen are they?" (Dror Mishani and Aurelia Smotriez, Haaretz, 2005/11/17))

"Sweden's rising Muslim tide" (James Brandon, The Christian Science Monitor, 2005/12/06)
"MALMO, SWEDEN – As a group of Swedish Muslims begin their midday prayers in a mosque still blackened by smoke from a recent Molotov-cocktail attack, Bejzat Becirov, director of Malmo's Islamic Center, is talking urgently.
"I'm afraid the same thing will happen here as in Paris," says Mr. Becirov, a Macedonian immigrant who opened Scandinavia's first mosque in this city in southern Sweden in 1984. ...
But while the mosque has been a target for attacks since its founding, there is increasing evidence that Islamic militants are gaining a foothold in Sweden by successfully exploiting racial tensions and Muslim anger over economic underachievement, and ghettoization.
Bosnian authorities arrested a Muslim Swede in Sarajevo in October for possession of explosives while Islamist websites published several inflammatory but unsubstantiated claims in late summer that a mujahideen training camp has been established in southern Sweden. ...
But although the attacks on Becirov's mosque have generated support from Muslims in Sweden and abroad, many Malmo Muslims are turning to increasingly radical forms of Islam - in some cases alienated by Becirov himself.
"This mosque is no good," says one Palestinian refugee who works nearby. "The imam, he is no good. He says one thing and he does another," he says, accusing him of un-Islamic activities, such as drinking alcohol.
Such suspicions may be pushing even mainstream Swedish Muslims toward radical street preachers, especially in the nearby suburb of Rosengaard where Muslim immigrants form a substantial majority.
"These neighborhoods are hunting grounds for Islamists but how many and how organized [they are] it's impossible to say," says Aje Carlbom, a Malmo University researcher who began studying Rosengaard society nearly ten years ago."

Added in archive:
"The Riot Act" (Nidra Poller, Tech Central Station, 2005/12/02)
"The radical loser" (Hans Magnus Enzensberger, signandsight, 2005/12/01)

Monday, December 5, 2005

News and commentary:

"Iraqi witness Ahmad Hassan Mohammed Al Dujaili..."
(Stefan Zaklin, AFP, 2005/12/05)
"Iraqi witness Ahmad Hassan Mohammed Al Dujaili cries while testifying in open court during the trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. Dujaili, the first witness to testify in person at the trial of Saddam Hussein gave harrowing testimony against the ex-Iraqi leader, who blasted the proceedings and vowed he was not afraid of the death penalty."

"Court told of Saddam horrors" (Michael Georgy and Luke Baker, Reuters, 2005/12/05)
Saddam II: "Saddam Hussein said he was not afraid to die and aggressively took on the court trying him on Monday, bullying a witness who described the horrors of his rule, including a meat grinder for human flesh. ...
At one point Saddam yelled at one of two witnesses who testified: "Don't interrupt me, boy." ...
Ahmed Hassan, 38, recounted how he and his family were seized and tortured after a 1982 attempt on the ousted leader's life in the Shi'ite Muslim town of Dujail.
Hassan, who risked reprisals by letting his face appear on television as he gave evidence, said they were taken to an intelligence building in Baghdad run by Barzan Ibrahim al- Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother and former intelligence chief.
Barzan, one of eight men charged with crimes against humanity, yelled at Hassan: "He should act in the cinema."
Saddam and his co-defendants are charged with killing 148 men from Dujail after the assassination attempt.
Hassan's testimony brought the charges chillingly to life after chaotic procedural wrangling during which former U.S. attorney-general Ramsey Clark led a defense walkout over threats to the lawyers and a challenge to the legitimacy of the court.
"I swear by God, I walked by a room and ... saw a grinder with blood coming out of it and human hair underneath," Hassan told the court. During the testimony, Barzan, sitting behind Saddam in the dock, interrupted Hassan, shouting: "It's a lie!"
Hassan said: "My brother was given electric shocks while my 77-year-old father watched ... One man was shot in the leg ... Some were crippled because they had arms and legs broken." ...
As he listened to the testimony, Saddam sometimes chuckled."

"Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein..."
(David Furst, Reuters, 2005/12/05)
"Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein (front) and his former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti berate the court during their trial in Baghdad December 5, 2005."

"Saddam Yells at Judge in Unruly Session" (Hamza Hendawi, AP/Yahoo! News, 2005/12/05)
Saddam I: "Saddam Hussein's defense team walked out of court Monday, the former leader yelled at the judge, and Saddam's half brother shouted "Why don't you just execute us!" in an often unruly court session that also saw former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark speak on behalf of the deposed president.
After the lawyers walked out, Saddam, shaking his right hand, told the judge: "You are imposing lawyers on us. They are imposed lawyers. The court is imposed by itself. We reject that."
Clark said he needed only two minutes to present his argument. But Chief Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin at first said only Saddam's chief lawyer could speak. Amin said the defense should submit its motion in writing and warned that if the defense walked out then the court would appoint replacement lawyers.
Saddam and his half brother Barazan Ibrahim then chanted "Long live Iraq, long live the Arab state."
Ibrahim stood up and shouted: "Why don't you just execute us and get rid of all of this!"
When the judge explained that he was ruling in accordance with the law, Saddam replied: "This is a law made by America and does not reflect Iraqi sovereignty."
It was the third court session in the trial of Saddam and seven co-defendants — accused in the 1982 killing of more than 140 Shiites after an assassination attempt against the president in Dujail — where Saddam at times appeared to be in control of the court as much as the judge presiding over the trial."

"Kerry Supports the Troops" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2005/12/05)
"The old proverb is right: A haughty, French-looking Massachusetts leopard who by the way served in Vietnam doesn't change its spots. John Kerry appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation" with Bob Schieffer yesterday, and his comments on U.S. troops in Iraq were vintage 1971 (link in PDF, quotes on pages 3-4):

Schieffer: Let me shift to another point of view, and it comes from another Democrat, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. He takes a very different view. He says basically we should stay because, he says, real progress is being made. He said this is a war between 27