Archived news and commentary: August 21 - 27, 2006

2006/08/21 - 2006/08/27
2006/08/14 - 2006/08/20
2006/08/07 - 2006/08/13
2006/07/31 - 2006/08/06
2006/07/24 - 2006/07/30
2006/07/17 - 2006/07/23

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, August 27, 2006

News and commentary:

"This video image released Sunday, Aug. 27..."
(AP, 2006/08/27)
"This video image released Sunday, Aug. 27, 2006 by the kidnappers of two Fox News journalists, cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, of New Zealand and correspondent Steve Centanni, 60, of the U.S., seized in Gaza two weeks ago, shows Centanni sitting cross-legged on the floor, raising his finger as he gives a statement." (See also the "mujahideen video showing their gunpoint “conversion,” accompanied by the Koranic verse that there is 'no compulsion in Islam.'" at LGF.)

"Kidnapped Fox News journalists freed" (Ibrahim Barzak, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/08/27)
"GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Militants freed two Fox News journalists on Sunday in the Gaza Strip, ending a nearly two week hostage drama in which one of the former captives said they were forced at gunpoint to make statements, including that they had converted to Islam. ...
On Sunday, before the journalists' release, a new video was released, showing Wiig and Centanni dressed in beige Arab-style robes. Wiig delivered an anti-Western speech, his face expressionless and his tone halting. The kidnappers claimed both men had converted to Islam.
Several hours later, the two men were dropped off at the Beach Hotel, wearing Western-style clothing. Wiig walked into the lobby behind Centanni, briefly turned when someone pulled him by the arm and shouted "get off" before heading upstairs.
"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint," Centanni later told Fox. 'Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on.'"

"Nasrallah: Soldiers' abductions a mistake" (CNN.com, 2006/08/27)
As James Taranto points out: "If Nasrallah was expecting an attack in October, it's hard to see how the Israelis would have had 'the element of surprise.'":
"BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) -- Had Hezbollah known how Israel was going to respond, the group would not have captured two Israeli soldiers last month in northern Israel, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday.
But, in an interview with Lebanon's New TV, Nasrallah also said the war would have happened anyway -- a few months later.
He insisted, without offering evidence, that Israel had been planning to launch military action in October, and the July raid by Hezbollah merely moved up the Israelis' timetable. ...
If someone had said July 11 that there was "a one percent possibility" Israel's military response would be as extensive as it turned out to be, "I would say no, I would not have entered this for many reasons -- military, social, political, economic," said Nasrallah, speaking in Arabic. ...
But, he added, "If we hadn't captured those soldiers, the war would have come in October anyway." Hezbollah's raid drew Israeli action sooner and "deprived the Israelis of the element of surprise," he said.
"The Israelis wanted to begin this war," Nasrallah said, calling it "an American decision" with "many European countries" involved. He insisted Israel was looking for 'an Arab cover.'"

"Here is a picture of the Reuters vehicle..."
(John, Power Line, 2006/08/27)
"Here is a picture of the Reuters vehicle that was supposedly hit by two missiles. Is that hole supposed to be the place where a missile entered?"

"Reuters Alleges Israeli Air Strike" (John, Power Line, 2006/08/27)
"Given Reuters's coverage of the conflict in Lebanon, it would perhaps be understandable if the Israelis started firing on Reuters vehicles. Which is what Reuters now says they did:

Israeli aircraft fired two missiles early Sunday at an armored car belonging to the Reuters news agency, wounding five people, including two cameramen, Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said. ...

I don't have an opinion at this point about whether the claims being made by Reuters' Palestinian stringers are true. To my untrained eye, the photos of the vehicle do not appear to depict an armored car that was hit by two missiles. The visible hole looks to me like an old, rusted-out tear or gap in the roof. But my knowledge of military ordnance is close to zero; I leave it to others to comment more knowledgeably on the photos than I can.
I will say this, however: given what we know about staged, phony incidents like the fake attack on a Red Cross ambulance in Lebanon, it is absurd for the world's news services to simply report the Palestinian claims as fact, as they have done. More investigation will be required to find out what, if anything, happened to the Reuters vehicle, and how the Palestinians came to be injured. In the meantime, count these as unproven allegations by an unreliable source." (See also: "The Red Cross Ambulance Incident" (Zombietime, August 2006))

"Life and Death" (Shelby Steele, OpinionJournal, 2006/08/27)
"Western guilt blinds us to the nature of Islamic extremism":
"White guilt in the West--especially in Europe and on the American left--confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. ...
And this works in today's world because the oppression script is so familiar and because American power cringes when labeled with sins of the white Western past. Yet whenever the left does this, it makes room for extremism by lending legitimacy to its claim of oppression. And Israel can never use its military fire power without being labeled an oppressor--which brings legitimacy to the enemies she fights. Israel roars; much of Europe supports Hezbollah.
Over and over, white guilt turns the disparity in development between Israel and her neighbors into a case of Western bigotry. This despite the fact that Islamic extremism is the most explicit and dangerous expression of human bigotry since the Nazi era. Israel's historical contradiction, her torture, is to be a Western nation whose efforts to survive trap her in the moral mazes of white guilt. Its national defense will forever be white aggression."

"Imagine the bombs had gone off: how would Britain have changed?" (Niall Ferguson, The Sunday Telegraph, 2006/08/27)
"Moreover, whereas 9/11 united Americans (albeit ephemerally), Britain would have been torn apart by 8/26, with the possibility of violent confrontation from Bradford to Brick Lane.
According to a YouGov poll published in Friday's Daily Telegraph, nearly one in five people believe that "a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism". Six years ago, only 32 per cent of those polled said they felt "threatened" by Islam. Today that figure is 53 per cent.
The feeling of alienation is decidedly mutual. A recent Pew global survey found that 81 per cent of British Muslims consider themselves to be Muslims first and British second. (Only Pakistan has a higher percentage of people who put their religion ahead of their nationality.) 8/26 could have been the trigger for the next English civil war."

"How right wing the left sounds after its moment of racial truth" (Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times, 2006/08/27)
"Quick, somebody buy a wreath. Last week marked the passing of multiculturalism as official government doctrine.":
"It has transpired that this was the final triumph of multiculturalism — to create within British society a sizeable body of people who have been assured that it is absolutely fine not to integrate because, if we’re honest, the prevailing culture is worthless: oppressive and decadent. People who are, as a result, perhaps terminally estranged and who have been relentlessly encouraged in their sense of alienation.
The news that the bombers of July 7 last year and those who allegedly plotted to blow up a whole bunch of aeroplanes were British born apparently came as a shock to the government. Well, it did not come as a shock to those of us who viewed multiculturalism as both dangerous and inherently racist.
It seemed, to people like Honeyford, a simple case of cause and effect. In the end, it is not the mad mullahs at whom we should direct our wrath, but the white liberals who enabled them to prosper. That the creed has now been binned should be a cause for celebration; but don’t for a moment expect an admission that they got it wrong in the first place."

"Hamza henchman defies law to praise 7/7 bombers" (Dipesh Gadher, The Sunday Times, 2006/08/27)
"AN associate of Abu Hamza, the hook-handed cleric, has defied Tony Blair’s ban on glorifying terrorism by praising the July 7 bombers and describing how he would “love” to kill British troops fighting in Afghanistan.
Abu Abdullah said he supports suicide bombers using “household chemicals” to attack the West and believes the prime minister is a legitimate target for assassination because of his foreign policy.
Abdullah, a former spokesman for Hamza, who was jailed this year for his hate-filled sermons, said the 9/11 attacks were a “deserved punch in the nose” for America. He argues that high street banks ought to be destroyed because they charge interest, which is against the tenets of Islam."

"Humbling of the supertroops shatters Israeli army morale" (The Sunday Times, 2006/08/27)
"As calls mounted this weekend — not least from the families of many of the 117 fallen Israeli soldiers — for the resignation of those deemed responsible for the failures, Olmert was expected to set up an inquiry into the conduct of the war. A poll showed that 63% of Israelis believed Olmert should quit, while 74% called for Amir Peretz, the defence minister, to go, and 54% wanted Halutz out.
“Olmert faces a serious risk of a no-confidence vote in the Knesset,” said Hanan Kristal, a leading political commentator. “A State Commission will give him four to six months of critical breathing time.”
Meanwhile the Israeli public are struggling to accept that the country’s security might now depend on whether a French-led United Nations peacekeeping force proves able to disarm Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. In addition to 7,000 troops already promised by EU states, the UN has received offers from several Muslim countries, some of which do not even recognise Israel. The force is unlikely to reach full strength for at least two months."

"America's Muslims Aren't as Assimilated as You Think" (Geneive Abdo, The Washington Post, 2006/08/27)
"At the same time, the real story of American Muslims is one of accelerating alienation from the mainstream of U.S. life, with Muslims in this country choosing their Islamic identity over their American one.
A new generation of American Muslims -- living in the shadow of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- is becoming more religious. They are more likely to take comfort in their own communities, and less likely to embrace the nation's fabled melting pot of shared values and common culture. ...
From schools to language to religion, American Muslims are becoming a people apart. Young, first-generation American Muslim women -- whose parents were born in Egypt, Pakistan and other Islamic countries -- are wearing head scarves even if their mothers had left them behind; increasing numbers of young Muslims are attending Islamic schools and lectures; Muslim student associations in high schools and at colleges are proliferating; and the role of the mosque has evolved from strictly a place of worship to a center for socializing and for learning Arabic and Urdu as well as the Koran." (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

Saturday, August 26, 2006

News and commentary:

"Italy Is Roiled by Murder of a Pakistani Woman and Other Violence Involving Immigrants" (Elisabetta Povoledo, The New York Times, 2006/08/26)
"BRESCIA, Italy, Aug. 23 — A series of unrelated killings here this month has pushed this elegant city to the center of a national debate on the challenges of immigration and cultural integration.

The trigger was the gruesome killing on Aug. 11 of Hina Saleem, a 20-year-old woman whose family moved here from Pakistan and who was found buried, with her throat slit, in the garden of her family home in a small town about 12 miles north of Brescia.

The tragedy ballooned into a cause célèbre after media reports alleged that Ms. Saleem had been killed because her traditionalist Muslim father objected to her Western lifestyle. She smoked and wore revealing, low-slung jeans like many young women. News reports said she had been living with an Italian man. Her body was found after her boyfriend reported her missing."

"Defying U.N., Iran opens nuclear reactor" (Ali Akbar Dareini, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/08/26)
"KHONDAB, Iran - Iran's hard-line president on Saturday inaugurated a heavy-water production plant, a facility the West fears will be used to develop a nuclear bomb, as Tehran remained defiant ahead of a U.N. deadline that could lead to sanctions.
The U.N. has called on Tehran to stop the separate process of uranium enrichment — which also can be used to create nuclear weapons — by Thursday or face economic and political sanctions.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that his nation's nuclear program poses no threat to other nations, even Israel, "which is a definite enemy."
Ahmadinejad said in a speech that Iran would never abandon what he once again called its purely peaceful nuclear program.
"There is no discussion of nuclear weapons," he said. 'We are not a threat to anybody even the Zionist regime, which is a definite enemy for the people of the region.'"

"Top official says Iran might produce nuclear weapons" (Iran Focus, 2006/08/26)
"Tehran, Iran, Aug. 26 – A top Iranian official warned on Friday that Tehran may develop nuclear weapons as a “preventative measure” against threats posed by the West.
“The patience of the Iranian nation has a limit. If [the West] crosses this limit, our nation, which is very suspicious of the good will of Western countries, will force Majlis to ratify the law for Iran to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”, Mohammad-Reza Bahonar, the deputy speaker of Iran’s Majlis, or Parliament, said on Friday.
“The Iranian nation is facing illogical powers that have nuclear weapons and see no deterrent. If they exert pressure on us it is possible that our nation will ask the government to produce nuclear weapons as a preventative measure”, Bahonar, who is also secretary general of the Islamic Association of Engineers, said following a meeting by the group’s leaders." (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

Friday, August 25, 2006

News and commentary:

"Where are the Muslim mothers for peace?" (Ginny Dougary, The Times, 2006/08/25)
"And so — I’m with Rushdie and Amis as I read all the sympathetic coverage in the liberal press about the poor, puzzled Muslims who feel that they are being picked on in airports and flights. If the parents of the young men who are attracted to this murderous martyrdom have lost control of their sons, then they must shoulder part of the blame. If the Muslims who choose to live in our society, with all its so-called tempting freedoms, do not protest against those who wish to destroy it, then how can they expect our tolerance? Why are the moderates not, in their hundreds and thousands, standing outside those mosques that are known to preach hatred, shouting “Not in our name” down their megaphones or “One, two, three, four, no more terror anymore”?
And where are the voices of the ordinary mothers and daughters and aunts from the Muslim community saying, “Enough. No more violence. No more deaths”, as did all those courageous women who helped to bring peace to Ireland? And if they, our Muslim sisters, are mute slaves to — or, worse, themselves in thrall to — the siren call of the death-wish culture, is there any hope for the rest of us?"

"Hezbollah Didn't Win" (Amir Taheri, OpinionJournal, 2006/08/25)
"Sayyed Ali al-Amin, the grand old man of Lebanese Shiism, has broken years of silence to criticize Hezbollah for provoking the war, and called for its disarmament. In an interview granted to the Beirut An-Nahar, he rejected the claim that Hezbollah represented the whole of the Shiite community. "I don't believe Hezbollah asked the Shiite community what they thought about [starting the] war," Mr. al-Amin said. "The fact that the masses [of Shiites] fled from the south is proof that they rejected the war. The Shiite community never gave anyone the right to wage war in its name." ...
To be sure, it is still powerful because it has guns, money and support from Iran, Syria and Hate America International Inc. But the list of prominent Arab writers, both Shiite and Sunni, who have exposed Hezbollah for what it is--a Khomeinist Trojan horse--would be too long for a single article. They are beginning to lift the veil and reveal what really happened in Lebanon.
Having lost more than 500 of its fighters, and with almost all of its medium-range missiles destroyed, Hezbollah may find it hard to sustain its claim of victory. "Hezbollah won the propaganda war because many in the West wanted it to win as a means of settling score with the United States," says Egyptian columnist Ali al-Ibrahim. 'But the Arabs have become wise enough to know TV victory from real victory.'"

"Mullahs tell aid groups in Pakistan to fire women or 'face violent protests'" (Marisol, Dhimmi Watch, 2006/08/25)
"Sharia Alert from AFP: "Mullahs tell aid groups to fire women"

ISLAMABAD: Muslim clerics in earthquake-hit Azad Kashmir have told aid agencies to fire all local women employees or face violent protests, officials and religious leaders said on Thursday.

The threat, given to district officials and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Bagh on Tuesday, will dent hopes that the October 8 quake could have a positive effect on women’s rights in the conservative region. "We have told the administration that we will not allow NGOs to exploit our women and asked them to give a date suitable to them for removal of all female workers," Syed Atta Ullah Shah, prayer leader of the Bagh central mosque, told Agence France Presse.

And if "we" don't get our way:

"If our demand is not met then we will take direct action and extreme steps. There will be demonstrations and damage may be caused to public property and a law and order situation would be created in the area," he added.

The religious leader said locals were angered by "obscene" activities at NGOs. "They hire beautiful girls and take them to Islamabad for enjoyment. They keep women in offices as decoration pieces because we know that women have no work and there is no such work that men cannot do," Shah said."

"Islam poses a threat to the West, say 53pc in poll" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/08/25)
"The alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners and last year's terrorist attacks on London have made more people fear Islam as a religion, not merely its extremist elements, a poll for The Daily Telegraph has found.
A growing number of people fear that the country faces "a Muslim problem" and more than half of the respondents to the YouGov survey said that Islam posed a threat to Western liberal democracy. That compares with less than a third after the September 11 terrorist attacks on America five years ago. ...
Most strikingly, there has been a substantial increase over the past five years in the numbers who appear to subscribe to a belief in a clash of civilisations. When YouGov asked in 2001 whether people felt threatened by Islam, as distinct from fundamentalist Islamists, only 32 per cent said they did. That figure has risen to 53 per cent.
Five years ago, a majority of two to one thought that Islam posed no threat, or only a negligible one, to democracy. Now, by a similar ratio, people think it is a serious threat."

"At Funeral, a Sunni Village Condemns Hezbollah’s Presence" (Hassan M. Fattah, The New York Times, 2006/08/25)
"MARWAHEEN, Lebanon, Aug. 24 — For months, the residents of this predominantly Sunni village near the Israeli border watched anxiously as the Shiite Hezbollah militiamen brought arms and rockets into town in preparation for battle. The residents grappled with whether they should accept the fighters’ presence and face a possible Israeli attack or try to eject them, with the more probable risk of retribution by Hezbollah. ...
Residents said Hezbollah was using them as human shields. “One man in this village was able to turn all our lives upside down for just a bit of money,” Ibrahim said. When the villagers left, he said, the fighters did too, as evidenced by the limited damage done to the town.
“We want the army and the United Nations to come in here and protect us,” he said. 'Israel is our enemy, but the problem is that Hezbollah gave them an excuse to come in and kill our children.'"

Added in archive:
"The Red Cross Ambulance Incident" (Zombietime, August 2006)
"First They Came For the Jews: The Story of Yet Another World War" (Fjordman, Dhimmi Watch, 2006/08/24)
"Vox Populi" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, 2006/08/24)
"Injured and threatened" (Aftenposten, 2006/08/08)

Thursday, August 24, 2006

News and commentary:

"This photo published in the Boston Globe..."
(Zombietime, August 2006)
"This photo published in the Boston Globe is among the best-known of the images depicting damage to the ambulance. The roof is dented and scarred, obviously, and yes, there is a circular hole right in the middle of the roof, caused (we are told) by the missile."

"The Red Cross Ambulance Incident" (Zombietime, August 2006)
"How the Media Legitimized an Anti-Israel Hoax and Changed the Course of a War":
"On the night of July 23, 2006, an Israeli aircraft intentionally fired missiles at and struck two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances performing rescue operations, causing huge explosions that injured everyone inside the vehicles. Or so says the global media, including Time magazine, the BBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and thousands of other outlets around the world. If true, the incident would have been an egregious and indefensible violation of the Geneva Convention, and would constitute a war crime committed by the state of Israel.
But there's one problem: It never happened." (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin.)

"First They Came For the Jews: The Story of Yet Another World War" (Fjordman, Dhimmi Watch, 2006/08/24)
A letter to the editor in City Stockholm under the daily heading BEST and PEST, 2006/08/25:

"BEST

I would like to thank the couple who warned my daughter on the subway on Sunday evening, when they overheard how two men discussed my daughter in French in very coarse terms and talked about pursuing her when she would leave the train. This couple knew French and understood what the men were saying. They accompanied my daughter when she stepped off the train, waited while she called her father and kept her company until he arrived with the car. Thousand thanks!!!

Grateful mother"

"Another much-debated topic in Norwegian media during the same period was an unprecedented rape wave in the capital city of Oslo. "We have seen a dramatic increase [in the number of rapes]," said Endre Sandvik, head of the emergency ward. The number of rapes in Oslo this summer was more than twice as high as it was last year. Brit Opjordsmoen from DIXI, support centre for rape victims, stated in a questions and answers session with Aftenposten's readers that they don't know what percentage of these rapes are committed by people with immigrant background, and that most of these speculations are just "prejudice." ...
In Norway, it is probably unprecedented in the thousand years since the city of Oslo was founded at the end of the Viking Age that the indigenous population is being attacked on such a large and random scale. And the government is doing… well, pretty much nothing really, except for hiding the problem as much as possible and continuing Muslim immigration. This isn't good enough.
We are tired of hearing nonsense about "Islamophobia" while our children live in fear of Islamic terrorism. The purpose of the state
is to uphold law and order and maintain the nation's borders and territorial integrity. Western European governments are doing neither, yet are busy with political censorship and interfering with details of our private lives where they have no business. It's time they are reminded that they are our servants, not our rulers."

"Vox Populi" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, 2006/08/24)
"Were Britons unreasonable to refuse to fly with Muslims?":
"By their action, they drew attention to two concerns. The first is the cowardly failure of the British government to oppose implacably the spread of Islamic extremism within Britain. The second is the unwillingness of Britain’s Muslims to recognize without equivocation that something evil is at work among them—something that has a relationship to their religion. ...
The Islamists will use the episode to dramatize not the consequences of what they themselves preach but rather the West’s insuperable prejudice against Muslims. The extremists want a polarized world with a fight to the finish, which they assume they will win, having, as they suppose, God on their side.
This was a small twist in the downward spiral toward such a possible apocalypse, for which the pusillanimity of the government and Muslim tolerance of extremism will be as responsible as the extremists themselves." (See also: "Mutiny on Flight 613" (Christopher Leake and Andrew Chapman, The Daily Mail, 2006/08/19))

"Arabs' Last Chance" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2006/08/24)
"Surely, if Arab societies were capable of producing and sustaining democracies, we would see at least one. Where are the massive rallies in favor of tolerance, that indispensable lubricant of democracy? Where are the militias fighting for constitutional government? Where are the insurgencies demanding female enfranchisement?
It would be racist to claim that Arabs are genetically inferior. It is simply the truth to admit that Arab societies are volatile disasters.
Arab terrorism isn't about redressing wrongs. It's about revenge on a successful civilization that left the dungeon-cultures of the Middle East in the dust.
We've done what we could in Iraq, and we've done it nobly. We should not withdraw our troops precipitously, but the clock is ticking. It's now up to the Iraqis to succeed - or become yet another pathetic Arab failure. If Iraqis are unwilling to grasp the opportunity our soldiers and Marines bought them with American blood, it's their tragedy, not ours.
We did the right thing by deposing Saddam Hussein. The Arab Middle East needed one last chance. Iraq is it. If Iraqi democracy fails, there will be no hope, whatsoever, for the Arab world."

"EU immigration is not the problem" (Andrew Green, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/08/24)
"But it is hard to avoid the impression that the media, and especially the BBC, are much happier discussing European immigration than the influx from the rest of the world. It is astonishing that, last autumn, when net immigration showed a 50 per cent jump in one year, it was not even mentioned on the BBC.
Indeed, it has gone largely unremarked in recent days that net immigration from outside the EU has now reached more than 250,000 a year. ...
The impact of an extra six million people over the next 30 years speaks for itself, especially as 75 per cent of immigrants come to London and the South-East.
Nor are all these immigrants coming here to work. The Economic and Social Research Council reports that, in 2003, only just over one in five immigrants were workers, while just over a quarter were students. The rest were mainly dependants, likely to add to the pressure on public services. ...
What lies behind this is the population projection buried in subsidiary papers. It shows that, in the next 15 years, the Pakistani population is expected to increase by 50 per cent and the Bangladeshi population by 70 per cent, while the white population will decline slightly. How can the host community be expected to cope with that?" (See also: "Biggest migrant influx in Britain's history" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/08/23))

"Once Muslim, Now Christian and Caught in the Courts" (Jane Perlez, The New York Times, 2006/08/24)
"KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Aug. 19 — From the scant personal details that can be pieced together about Lina Joy, she converted from Islam to Christianity eight years ago and since then has endured extraordinary hurdles in her desire to marry the man in her life.
Her name is a household word in this majority Muslim country. But she is now in hiding after death threats from Islamic extremists, who accuse her of being an apostate.
Five years ago she started proceedings in the civil courts to seek the right to marry her Christian fiancé and have children. Because she had renounced her Muslim faith, Ms. Joy, 42, argued, Malaysia’s Islamic Shariah courts, which control such matters as marriage, property and divorce, did not have jurisdiction over her.
In a series of decisions, the civil courts ruled against her. Then, last month, her lawyer, Benjamin Dawson, appeared before Malaysia’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, to argue that Ms. Joy’s conversion be considered a right protected under the Constitution, not a religious matter for the Shariah courts.
“She’s trying to live her life with someone she loves,” Mr. Dawson said in an interview.
Threats against Ms. Joy had become so insistent, and the passions over her conversion so inflamed, he had concluded there was no room for her and her fiancé in Malaysia. The most likely solution, he said, was for her to emigrate."

Added today:
"The Protestant Crusade Conspiracy" (Brenda Strohmaier, Der Spiegel, 2006/08/23)
"Roth's Latest" (New York Sun, 2006/08/23)
"Hezbollah sinks Australian warship" (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun, 2006/08/22)
"The Many Faces of Belgian Fascism" (Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal, 2006/08/22)

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

News and commentary:

"The Protestant Crusade Conspiracy" (Brenda Strohmaier, Der Spiegel, 2006/08/23)
"Who planted the bombs on German trains? Depends who you ask. Many Muslims in Germany think it's a government conspiracy. Just like with Sept. 11. And London....
This just in: The Lebanese men suspected of having deposited bombs on German trains last month were hired hands -- in the employ of the German government itself.
That, at least, is what one 27-year-old from Saudi Arabia believes. "It's all a Protestant crusade," the man explains. "All of northern Germany is Protestant, isn't it? And so is President Bush." Then the man launches into a melange of confusing arguments and historical facts. The bubonic plague, Martin Luther and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl all make a cameo. It's all connected somehow, the man is sure of it.
The young Saudi Arabian's views may make little sense from a Western point of view, but you can meet him and talk to him at a street corner in the middle of Hamburg, right by the central station. ...
Just a few days ago, a 17-year-old Kurd from Bonn espoused the following theory on SPIEGEL TV: "What happened first," he said, talking about the recent conflict in Lebanon, "was that the Jews raped a child, or something like that." Later he claimed to have learned from a credible source that Jews once systematically shot six-year-olds in a kindergarten. "They let the teacher live so she would become mentally ill," the young man said."

"Roth's Latest" (New York Sun, 2006/08/23)
"The executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, is at it again, twisting the facts in a letter to the editor of the New York Sun, his third in recent weeks attempting to defend his organization's slanted reporting against Israel against and to disparage critics who see it for what it is.":
"Mr. Roth goes on to deny a "rush to judgment" in Qana. But only hours after the attack, Mr. Roth and Human Rights Watch issued a press release headlined "Israel Responsible for Qana Attack, Indiscriminate Bombing in Lebanon a War Crime." The press release claimed the Israeli attack killed "at least 54 civilians," a death toll that subsequently was revised downward to 28. Mr. Roth denies that he rushed to judgment, but he found Israel guilty of a war crime in a press release issued only hours after the attack.
Mr. Roth claims the Israel Defense Force "admitted that on the day of the attack there was no evidence of Hezbollah activity or rocket fire from Qana," as if that were somehow dispositive. But the same IDF statement, according to a report in the New York Times, said that more than 150 rockets had been launched against Israel in the previous weeks from in and near Qana. Days after the Israeli strike on Qana that Mr. Roth decided in a matter of hours had been a "war crime," the New YorkTimes reported "The Israeli military said the rockets that hit Haifa were fired from the Lebanese village of Qana, and that the military had hit and destroyed the launcher shortly afterward."
The executive director of Human Rights Watch seems to think that even if hundreds of rockets are being fired from a Lebanese town at Israeli cities on the days before and after an Israeli attack, the Lebanese town should be immune from attack so long as no rockets were fired in the hours immediately preceding the attack." (See also: "Whose war crimes in Lebanon?" (Avi Bell, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/08/22))

"Militants Release Video of Journalists" (Ibrahim Barzak, AP/My Way, 2006/08/23)
"GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - An unknown militant group demanded the release of Muslim prisoners in U.S. jails within 72 hours in exchange for two kidnapped Fox News journalists, who were shown sitting cross-legged and barefoot on the floor in a video released Wednesday.
The video, which broke 10 days of silence from the kidnappers, marked the first time militants in Gaza have issued demands going beyond the conflict with Israel. The footage also had none of the trappings of locally produced videos, such as flags or masked gunmen, raising the possibility that foreign extremists may have taken root in Gaza.
Palestinian and Israeli officials say al-Qaida has been trying to infiltrate Gaza in the aftermath of Israel's withdrawal a year ago. The Egypt-Gaza border is now rife with smuggling tunnels, and Palestinian militant groups have blown up a border wall to allow people in and out of the area.
In the footage, American correspondent Steve Centanni, 60, of Washington, D.C., and cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, of New Zealand appealed for help in getting released."

"Dutch arrest 12 on US plane bound for India" (Nicola Leske, Reuters, 2006/08/23)
"AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch police arrested 12 passengers behaving suspiciously on a U.S. Northwest Airlines plane bound for India that was forced to turn back to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on Wednesday.
Police arrested 12 of the 149 passengers on flight 42 to Mumbai, which turned back to Amsterdam due to security concerns after the crew reported suspicious behavior, officials said. Two Dutch fighter jets accompanied the plane back to Schiphol.
"They will be interrogated in the coming hours by police investigators," a police spokesman said.
Asked whether a suspected terrorist plot could be ruled out, he said: "We don't want to get ahead of ourselves." ...
Dutch media cited eye witnesses saying those arrested were not following airline security rules and were exchanging mobile phones which had made other passengers uneasy."

"Young mother denies failing to inform on her husband" (Duncan Gardham, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/08/23)
"A woman with an eight-month-old child and her husband appeared in court yesterday among 11 people charged in connection with a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners. ...
Cossar Ali, 24, of Walthamstow, east London, appeared accused of failing to disclose information about her husband which could have helped prevent an act of terrorism.
Ahmed Abdullah Ali, also known as Abdullah Ali Ahmed Khan, 25, from Walthamstow, was one of eight men accused of conspiracy to murder and of intending to commit acts of terrorism.
They are said to have planned to smuggle the component parts of improvised explosive devices on to aircraft and assemble and detonate them on board. If found guilty, they face life in prison."

"Biggest migrant influx in Britain's history" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/08/23)
"More than a million non-EU foreign nationals have been given the right to settle in Britain since Labour took office in 1997, by far the highest level of inward migration in the country's history, official figures showed yesterday.
In 2005, settlement was granted to almost 180,000 people - an increase of 29 per cent on the previous year and three times the number in 1996, the last year of the previous Conservative government. ...
Mark Boleat, from the Association of Labour Providers, suggested that another 100,000 workers - or possibly a lot more - had arrived without registering. Tony McNulty, the immigration minister, conceded that the true figure was probably nearer 600,000. ...
One in three of the new immigrants was from Africa, and one in four from Asia outside the Indian sub-continent, which accounted for 16 per cent. About 12 per cent of new settlers came from Europe, eight per cent from the Americas, five per cent from the Middle East and four per cent from Oceania."

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

News and commentary:

"http://www.moqavemat.com..."
(Herald Sun 2006/08/22)
"http://www.moqavemat.com - an Iran-based website run by the Hezbollah terrorist group - is running this picture (above) of what it claims is the Israeli ship it hit with a missile last month."

"Hezbollah sinks Australian warship" (Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun, 2006/08/22)
"http://www.moqavemat.com - an Iran-based website run by the Hezbollah terrorist group - is running this picture (above) of what it claims is the Israeli ship it hit with a missile last month.
Now look at the Royal Australian Navy’s picture below - as published by Defence Industry Daily - of its sinking of the decommissioned Australian destroyer-escort HMAS Torrens off the coast of Western Australia in 1998 . We were told at the time the Torrens was deliberately sunk by a torpedo fired by one of our own submarines, the HMAS Farncomb.
Should we now think that we were in fact attacked by Hezbollah - or is this just the latest proof that Hezbollah will lie and lie again for propaganda gain?"

"The Many Faces of Belgian Fascism" (Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal, 2006/08/22)
"Belgium is the birthplace of René Magritte. So perhaps it's not surprising that, in politics, even the fascism here is surreal.":
"But that was as nothing compared to the reaction Mr. Belien provoked by an article following the Van Holsbeeck murder, in which he described the killers as "predators" and called for Belgium to decriminalize the possession of self-defense weapons (pepper-spray is what he says he had mainly in mind).
Two weeks after the article appeared, Mr. Belien received a letter from the Center for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism, a government-mandated body whose mission is to "assist victims of discrimination" and "sensitize the general public on anti-discrimination." (Belgium has one of the strongest anti-discrimination regimes anywhere.) Mr. Belien's article, according to the CEOOR, constituted an "incitement to violence"; he was ordered to remove it from his blog or face state prosecution. He complied. In the meantime, he says he received emails with pictures of burned corpses and messages reading, "This is what is going to happen to you." ...
Meanwhile, the real fascists in Belgium are gaining strength, largely protected from scrutiny by the country's "anti-racism" legislation. At Brussels's Imam Reza mosque, a preacher commemorated the 17th anniversary of the Ayatollah Khomeini's death: "The enemies cannot extinguish the light of the Islamic Revolution." And in Molenbeek, the newspaper Het Volk published a study of the local Muslim population: The editor, Gunther Vanpraet, described the commune as "a breeding ground for thousands of Jihad candidates."
The Belgian government may prefer not to notice. But as Magritte might have said, this is not a pipe."

"Whose war crimes in Lebanon?" (Avi Bell, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/08/22)
"On August 16, Hassan Fattah reported in The New York Times on the return of Lebanese civilians to the village of Srifa (spelled Sreifa by the Times). The following sentences are particularly striking: "Hussein Kamaleldin, a local official ... estimated that up to two-thirds of the town's homes and buildings were demolished, leaving more than 43 people buried in the rubble. A majority of them were fighters belonging to Hizbullah and the allied Amal Party, residents said."
This contrasts sharply with the claims of Human Rights Watch (HRW) that Israel had no legitimate military targets in Srifa and killed only Lebanese civilians, a claim that has played a starring role in HRW's attacks on the state of Israel throughout the month-long war in Lebanon. ...
HRW's report included a graphic description of the evil results of Israeli bombing strikes in Srifa, focusing on children "shivering in fear" and "family members... covered with rubble," as well as "terrified civilian" villagers in "a state of panic" after being "trapped [by] ... heavy Israeli bombardment."
In addition, HRW quoted extensively from several villagers who asserted not only that "was no Hizbullah in the neighborhood ... because we are 40 kilometers away from Israel, and ... not a strategic place," but also that '[e]xcept for one person, who didn't even belong to Hizbullah, no one in that neighborhood knew how to handle weapons.'"

"Iran says it's ready for 'serious' talks" (Ali Akbar Dareini, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/08/22)
"TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's top nuclear negotiator said Tuesday that Tehran was ready to enter "serious negotiations" over its disputed nuclear program but did not say whether it was willing to suspend uranium enrichment — the West's key demand.
The negotiator, Ali Larijani, hand-delivered Iran's response to a six-nation package of nuclear incentives aimed at persuading it to suspend enrichment. He gave the reply to ambassadors from Britain, China, Russia, France, Germany and Switzerland, state-run television said, without disclosing details.
"Iran is prepared as of Aug. 23 to enter serious negotiations" with the countries that proposed the package, state-run television quoted Larijani as telling the envoys.
Iranian officials close to the meeting said Iran offered a "new formula" to resolve the dispute as part of its formal response to the incentive package. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information."

Monday, August 21, 2006

News and commentary:

"Charges Over Terror Plot" (Sky News, 2006/08/21)
Londonistan III: "Eleven suspects in the alleged UK airport terror plot have been charged - as police revealed they had found bomb-making equipment and martyrdom videos.
They said eight people had been charged with conspiracy to murder and preparing acts of terrorism.
Three other suspects are charged with other offences under the Terrorism Act. One of these is a 17-year-old.
One woman has been released without charge and eleven others are still in custody.
Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner Peter Clarke said the investigation was "immense" and would go on for many months.
He said video and audio recordings, bomb-making equipment, electrical components, hydrogen peroxide and martyrdom videos had been found.
"We have found more than 400 computers, 200 mobile telephones and 8,000 items of removable storage media such as memory sticks, CDs and DVDs," he said."

"Al-Qaeda: Britain in its sights" (Zaki Chehab, New Statesman, 2006/08/21)
Londonistan II: "What was in 2001 an unimaginable transformation, a freak of nature, has now become - whatever the surprise being felt in Clapton and Walthamstow, High Wycombe and Birmingham - almost a factory production line. Al-Qaeda's leadership has surveyed the world and it has identified Britain both as a rich source of recruits and as an important target. The leaders' simple strategy is to put the two together, so today their proxies know every way there is to take average young British men and deliver them to martyrdom. ...
And if you can't afford to go to Pakistan, or can't get the time off work, there are options closer to home. There are training camps in Wales and Sussex; some radical groups have been known to rent sports halls in London suburbs such as Ealing, and even in the city centre, to deliver training unimagined by their hosts. The guidance is very Islamic: for female recruits, a female sports trainer is provided. One specific female trainer travels from Cardiff to a different city every week just to give instruction to young women interested in jihad.
In other cases, military training is provided by Muslim former members of the British armed forces who have acquired battlefield experience at the expense of Her Majesty's Government. ...
Al-Qaeda leaders see the same things that I see. They consider Britain a fertile recruiting ground, and have saturated many neighbourhoods with their literature and Bin Laden tapes that set out his goals in the terms likely to have most appeal here."

"British Law Against Glorifying Terrorism Has Not Silenced Calls to Kill for Islam" (Souad Mekhennet and Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2006/08/21)
Londonistan I: "LONDON, Aug. 20 — From his home on the northwest edge of this city, Muhamad al-Massari runs a Web site that celebrates the violent death of British and American soldiers. It is visited by tens of thousands of people every day, he said.
Mr. Massari maintains the Arabic-language site, tajdeed.org.uk, in the face of a strict new law aimed at curtailing violent speech and publishing. Just last week, the Council of Holy Warriors, a group affiliated with Al Qaeda, posted a declaration on the site praising a suicide bombing in Iraq that killed or wounded 55 people.
“If you kill our civilians, we kill your civilians,” Mr. Massari declared during an interview.
Mr. Massari’s Web site, and his public remarks, appear to violate of the Antiterrorism Act of 2006, which makes it a crime to glorify or encourage political violence. Inciting violence has long been illegal here but the new rules, drawn up after the London subway and bus bombings in July 2005, are intended to be much tougher. ...
Yet despite the antiglorification law, and an array of other measures approved since last summer’s bombings, Islamist leaders like Mr. Massari persist, some of them declaring it the duty of British Muslims to kill in the name of Islam."

"Train bomb plot brings fear of terrorism to Germany" (Roger Boyes, The Times, 2006/08/21)
"A LEBANESE student suspected of trying to paralyse the German railway network with a bomb concealed in a suitcase appeared in court yesterday, as a huge police hunt for a second suspect continued.
The 21-year-old man was remanded in custody by an investigating judge in Karlsruhe, southwest Germany, on charges of attempted murder, belonging to a terrorist organisation and attempting to cause an explosion.
The suspect was an engineering student in the north German town of Kiel, where he was held on Saturday morning.
His arrest has thrown the country into panic since it coincides with Berlin’s emotionally charged decision to deploy troops in the Middle East for the first time since the Second World War. Suddenly Germans, too, are beginning to feel that they have become a target. ...
The suspect, identified only as Youssef Mohammed E, is accused of being at the heart of a plot to blow up two regional trains simultaneously on July 31. Investigators say that only a flaw in the construction of the propane gas bombs prevented a disaster." (See also: "Police Arrest One Suspect in German Train Bomb Probe" (Deutsche Welle, 2006/08/19))

 

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Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

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

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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