Max Frankel: How Washington Really Works

Today's New York Times Sunday Magazine runs an interesting article by Max Frankel on how "secrets" are routinely revealed in the nation's capital--and why this is a vital part of the American democratic system. He quotes from a memo he wrote to justify publication of the Pentagon Papers:

The governmental, political and personal interests of the participants are inseparable in this process. Presidents make “secret” decisions only to reveal them for the purposes of frightening an adversary nation, wooing a friendly electorate, protecting their reputations. ... High officials of the government reveal secrets in the search for support of their policies, or to help sabotage the plans and policies of rival departments. ... Though not the only vehicle for this traffic in secrets — the Congress is always eager to provide a forum — the press is probably the most important.

Captured British Sailors Face Iranian Death Penalty

The confrontation between Iran and the UK appears to be heating up, according to the Times of London

FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying.

A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted.

Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.”

The warning followed claims by Iranian officials that the British navy personnel had been taken to Tehran, the capital, to explain their “aggressive action” in entering Iranian waters. British officials insist the servicemen were in Iraqi waters when they were held.

The penalty for espionage in Iran is death.

A friend who once served in the US Navy tells me that the only way the British marines could have been captured is if the British frigate supporting their operation backed down to the Iranian navy in the first place, when the marines were captured. He says the British could have fired on their Iranian captors, which might have stopped them. If that is indeed the case, then Britain may, in a sense, have lost its first naval engagement with the Iranian fleet...so it looks like "mush" rather than "steel" from NATO and the Iraq/Afghan "coalition of the willing."

French Court OKs Mohammed Cartoon Publication

Reuters reports that French public opinion favors the anti-Islamist verdict:

PARIS (Reuters) - A French court on Thursday ruled in favour of a satirical weekly that had printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, rejecting accusations by Islamic groups who said the publication incited hatred against Muslims.

Following a recommendation by the public prosecutor, the court said the cartoons published by the weekly Charlie Hebdo fell under the category of freedom of expression and did not constitute an attack on Islam in general.

"The acceptable limits of freedom of expression have not been overstepped, with the contentious pictures participating in a public debate of general interest," the court said.

The cartoons, originally published in 2005 by a Danish daily, provoked violent protests in Asia, Africa and the Middle East that left 50 people dead. Several European publications reprinted them as an affirmation of free speech.

With France's presidential election just a month away, the court case has been overshadowed by election politics and added to a debate about freedom of speech and whether religions can be criticised.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative presidential frontrunner, his centrist rival Francois Bayrou, and Socialist party leader Francois Hollande have all spoken out in defence of the weekly.

Melanie Phillips on Leeds University's Kuntzel Affair

Melanie Phillips accuses Leeds University of defending Nazism, when the administration cancelled Matthias Kuntzel's planned lecture on the Nazi roots of Islamist extremist ideology:

Now, fresh information has reached me which reinforces the view that the cancellation was indeed designed to suppress Küntzel’s views. After meeting the university authorities the head of the German department, Professor Stuart Taberner, told his staff that, although he didn’t think censorship was the issue, if Küntzel were to be re-invited the university would have to ‘look closely’ at the subject of his talk.

‘Having now found the text of what I take to be his talk on the web,’ he said, ‘I’m convinced that the university would want to be reassured that it was striking the correct balance between free speech — the expression of ideas — and its obligation to be mindful of the language in which these ideas are framed’.

The real reason for the cancellation was thus laid bare. It was because of what Küntzel was saying. The implication was that his language was somehow inflammatory. But his lecture — which he previously delivered in January at Yale — is merely a scholarly and factual account of the links between Nazism and Islamic antisemitism.

He argues that the alliance between the Nazis and the Arabs of Palestine infected the wider Muslim world, not least through the influence of the Nazi wireless station Radio Zeesen which broadcast in Arabic, Persian and Turkish and inflamed the Muslim masses with Nazi blood libels laced with Arabic music and quotes from the Koran.

Subsequently, this Nazified Muslim antisemitism was given renewed life by both the Egyptian President Nasser and the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the intellectual inspiration for both Hamas and much of the current jihad against the west.

So what exactly is the ‘correct balance’ that this account fails to strike? Indeed, Küntzel makes the eminently balanced claim that this history shows there is nothing inevitable about Muslim antisemitism, which is merely Nazism in new garb.

The link he makes is no more than the demonstrable truth. But clearly, it is not possible to speak this truth at Leeds university. And the reason for this is surely that it draws a straight line between today’s Islamic world and Hitler’s Germany.

Indeed, Küntzel sees a seamless connection between Nazism and the jihad against the west. Hitler, he says, fantasised about the toppling of the skyscrapers of New York, the symbol of Jewish power. And the Hamburg trial of terrorists associated with 9/11 heard evidence that New York had been selected for the atrocity because it was a ‘Jewish city’.

For Islamists, however, such a connection threatens the image they have so assiduously cultivated for themselves as the victims of prejudice.

For their appeasers, it destroys the illusion that Islamist extremism arises from rational grievances such as the war in Iraq or ‘Islamophobia’. Worse still, those on the left who march shoulder to shoulder with radical Islamists are thus exposed as the allies of Nazism.

The result is that Leeds has now joined the growing list of universities which have spinelessly given up the defence of free speech, and thus, in the great battle for civilisation against barbarism, run up the campus white flag.

British Captives Taken To Teheran

The BBC News reports that British captives have been moved to Teheran:

The 15 Royal Navy personnel seized at gunpoint in the Gulf by Iranian forces have been transferred to Tehran, Iranian news agency Fars has reported.
The personnel reportedly arrived in the Iranian capital at 1200 local time.

The UK says the eight sailors and seven marines had been carrying out routine duties in Iraqi waters. It has called for their immediate release.

Tehran says the 15 were "illegally" in Iranian waters. They would be asked to explain their actions, Fars said.

In other developments, Iranian armed forces spokesman Gen Ali Reza Afshar told Iranian radio the Britons were in "sterling health" and had admitted to being in Iranian waters.

And the BBC has also learned that Foreign Office junior minister Lord Triesman will meet Iran's ambassador to London on Saturday to demand their release.

This story looks interesting, almost like an Iranian provocation to test Western resolve. Richard Nixon liked to quote Lenin to describe dealing with the Soviets:

"Communist leaders believe in Lenin’s precept: Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw."

It looks like Iran might be reading from the same playbook.

The Russia Journal

Just found this website featuring news about Russia, through its reprint of Nathan Hamm's interview about Registan.

Lyndon Allin on Registan and Central Asia

Andy at Siberian Light has continued his interesting interview series with one of Nathan Hamm, the man behind the legend that is Registan.net. Registan is still one of this blog's top referrers of all time, with most of the hits probably dating back to May of 2005, when I was obsessively blogging about the Andijan massacre. But Nathan is an inspiration for different reasons - he has created an authoritative website about this part of the world, a blog which I'm sure is a must-read for English-speaking followers of the region; and his blog definitely played some role in my decision to just say WTF and take a trip to Uzbekistan in the summer of '05 - though I didn't get around to posting some of the better photos from that trip until last month! People I "met" in Registan's comments section gave me a couple of the more useful travel tips I received.

Channel Four Documentary: The Great Global Warming Swindle

Browsing Google's top videos, I came across this download of Britain's Channel Four Documentary critical of Al Gore's position on global warming--a topic of much discussion on Radio Four podcasts after Britons revolted against Gordon Brown's plan to tax their airline tickets to holiday destinations in warmer climates...

Number 17, With a Bullet?

It's not exactly Billboard's Top 100 chart, but I just saw that ScienceDirect Top 25 Hottest Articles has listed Cultural Challenges to Democratization in Russia • Article Orbis, Volume 50, Issue 1, 1 December 2006, Pages 167-186 Jarvik, L. at number 17 on their chart...A few more downloads and perhaps they'll add a bullet, like Billboard Magazine's...

More on Lung Cancer in Non-Smokers

Thanks to a link on Michelle Malkin's blog to a post by Cathy Seipp's daughter Maia, I found this Lung Cancer Alliance webpage describing an epidemic of lung-cancer among non-smokers, as reported by Heather Wakelee, M.D of the Stanford University Clinical Cancer Center:

"Our paper provides firm data about the number of people who develop lung cancer who are never-smokers. Though we had estimates of these numbers before, we didn't have a comprehensive study that could really put those numbers in perspective. We can now say that lung cancer in never-smokers is as big of an epidemic as cervical cancer in women. Our study lays a foundation upon which further research can build looking at whether rates of lung cancer in never-smokers are increasing, and exploring the case of this disease. Underscoring the magnitude of this problem will hopefully increase awareness of the need for better treatments for all lung cancer patients."

And this item, from the Lung Cancer Alliance press release:

Laurie Fenton, LCA president, praised Dr. Wakelee for her research.

“For years the public health establishment has refused to address lung cancer as a disease, fueling the negative attitude toward lung cancer patients – whether they smoked or not – and using the stigma of smoking to justify the underfunding of research,” said Fenton. “Now we face an epidemic of lung cancer, particularly in nonsmoking women.”

Given the new figures, an estimated 14,200 women who have never smoked will die of lung cancer this year, nearly four times the total number of women – 3,700 – who will die of cervical cancer.

Rafael Medoff on "The Accomplices"

He links Bernard Weinraub's play to a controversy over the 1983 Goldberg Commission report. From The Jewish Press:

Weinraub recently retired from the Times after a long and distinguished career as a staff correspondent. He is best remembered in the Jewish community for his explosive front-page exposes in 1983 about the ill-fated American Jewish Commission on the Holocaust.

Chaired by former associate justice of the Supreme Court Arthur Goldberg, the commission brought together scholars and representatives of Jewish organizations, ostensibly to prepare an impartial review the American Jewish community’s response to news of the Holocaust. Instead, as Weinraub revealed, it fell apart, largely because some Jewish groups were not ready to acknowledge their predecessors’ failings.

Weinraub’s articles in 1983 stimulated some much-needed introspection among American Jews, and “The Accomplices” will help complete the process. There is no doubt that the American Jewish community’s view of its past has matured a great deal in recent decades. Most Jewish leaders today recognize the need to learn from, rather than attempt to deny, the mistakes that were made in the 1940’s. Those mistakes are addressed frankly, but soberly, in “The Accomplices.”

Visual DNA

Thanks to a tip on Cousin Lucy's Spoon, I just took an online personality quiz from imagini.net, called Visual DNA. It's fun, although I'm sure the results are completely scientific...

Cathy Seipp Remembered

By Luke Ford, in a long interview and blog post. I learned she was ill with lung cancer from Michelle Malkin's blog, and remembered meeting her when she worked at the UCLA Bruin and a friend of a then-friend who worked on the paper. Later, she worked at Buzz magazine with another old friend of mine. Our paths had not crossed in person for about 30 years, but I usually read what she wrote with interest. Here's an excerpt from the interview:

Cathy: "It makes me grateful for this Okie area I grew up in, even though I hated it then and wanted to get away. It teaches you that not everyone thinks the way you think. It's a good thing to learn as a journalist that most people are not like the cultural elite in the newsroom. It's so easy to shock journalists. If you have a different opinion, they're shocked."

"I worked for the AP after college for less than a year. I left because I was frustrated that I wasn't hired as a reporter from a copy clerk. My first job after that was at this hideous thing called The California Apparel News (CAN), the poor man's Women's Wear Daily, a trade paper for fashion. CAN brought in a new boss, Michael Belluomo. We called him Balumbo because he was such a dope. I was so young and stupid at the time that I didn't realize that you couldn't constantly make fun of the new boss. They will fire you. That was a shock. I cried. That was the last time I cried at an office. I was 20.

"I then went to the Los Angeles Daily News for four years, leaving in 1985. They doubled my salary to $400 a week. I was a fashion writer and for a year I wrote a daily column. It was a proto-blog. They had a stupid new features editor come in who I hated - Jane Amari. She's now at the Arizona Daily Star. I see her on Romenesko occasionally. She gets in trouble for doing some moronic thing."

From Jim Romenesko's page 10/28/02: "Several dozen Arizona Star readers let the paper know they weren't happy to see child killer Frank Jarvis Atwood's guest column opposing the death penalty. "I would cancel my subscription if my husband would allow me," says one reader. Star editor and publisher Jane Amari says she regrets publishing the murderer's essay. "Choosing to run the piece was a serious lapse in judgment," she says. "If we felt making that point was so important, I feel sure we could have located an author who is not on death row for a heinous crime." PLUS: The Star also regrets running an editorial cartoon equating the D.C. sniper with the gun lobby."

Cathy: "At that point, I didn't want to work in an office any more and have people tell me what to do. Since then, I've been a freelancer."

Luke: "When did your relationship with the LA Times begin?"

Cathy: "My first published article at age 19 was in the LA Times. I was friendly with a journalism professor named Digby Diehl and he was the Books editor at the LA Times and he gave me an assignment (biography of the real person behind the Three Faces of Eve book) and it was on the front page of the LA Times Book Review. At that time, you had to drive the story downtown because there weren't faxes and email. I didn't know how to drive from Westwood to downtown but I did it. Digby had a mean secretary named Eve who was horrible to me and screamed at me for having the margins wrong.

"When I was four and we moved to this country, I read the Times. Smart people got the Times. Stupid people got the Long Beach Press Telegram or the Orange County Register. When I wrote that thing about Bella Stumbo [LA Times feature writer] when she died, I've been reading her since high school.

"I freelanced for the Times until I started writing about them for Buzz. They would still call me up occasionally and try to assign me freelance articles. After I got into that niche of writing about media, and doing what I wanted to do - opinionated essays - I didn't want to do just some stupid assignment. As Ben Stein once told me, you want to have monopoly money instead of general money. You want to have a niche where you write about stuff that only you can do - so they will pay you more for it. You dilute the franchise if you start doing celebrity interviews."

Luke: "How did the Times react to your Buzz column?"

Cathy: "At first, they didn't know who did it. It took them two years to figure it out. It took the Daily News ten minutes when they wanted to. I'd mentioned the Daily News in some context and they got on the phone and figured it out. I first wrote under the pseudonym Margo Magee because they had a comic strip Apartment 3G and there's a girl in it called Margo Magee. It was my little inside-the-Times joke. They didn't read their own comics so they couldn't figure it out. I kept the pseudonym as a persona like Spy's Celia Brady [Hollywood gossip column written by various people and edited together by Kurt Anderson]. The Times thought for a long time that it was a bunch of people reporting my column and one person would write it. I was insulted. It was all mine. They couldn't get it out of their head that it was a man writing it."

Luke: "Did they ever threaten lawsuits?"

Cathy: "No, because nothing was inaccurate. And for what? Hurting their feelings? The argument was never that I was inaccurate. It was that I was mean-spirited and angry. As you can see, I'm not angry and I don't think that I'm mean-spirited. With American journalism, if you write something blunt, people get shocked. The English have much stricter libel laws but you're allowed to be ruder. In America, everything's got to be psycho-therapized and you have to considerate of people's feelings and you can't ever write about what people are really talking about.

"Robert Scheer was angry [with me]."

Luke: "David Horowitz wrote he was always opening up people's refrigerators looking for stuff to eat."

Cathy: "Well, that sounded like Scheer. He's a masher - an old fashioned term for an older guy who picks up on young women. I'd always refer to him as Robert "Romeo" Scheer and he'd get really mad.

"As a kid, I loved Rolf Harris records [Australian folk singer, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" et al]. It shows you how eccentric we were growing up in Los Alamitos. There was this one song: "I've got hair oil in my ears and me glasses slipping down/ But baby I can see through you." That always reminded me of Robert Scheer and he got mad when I wrote that about him. And the good thing about Buzz is that they never made me explain the reference like a lot of bad editors. If you don't know who Rolf Harris is, you can figure it out."

Luke: "Why did Buzz close in 1998?"

Cathy: "Because Disney decided not to sell Los Angeles Magazine. There wasn't room for two monthly LA magazines. LA Magazine had made money every year except when Buzz started. Buzz was never profitable. If Disney had closed LA Magazine, Buzz would've stayed open. When Buzz became bad the last year or two, when the editor Allan Mayer left and they turned Buzz into this Tiger Beat meets In Style sensibility... I was fired from Buzz because they couldn't afford to pay me any more.

"The only time I got mad when I was fired from some place was Salon because they never bothered to tell me. I only found out when a reader emailed me and said, 'They reorganized the whole look of the site. Are they keeping your column?' I called the sub-editor that I worked with and he said, 'Oh yeah, I was going to call you. We're dropping the column but you can still pitch us with stories.' The editor-in-chief who hired me, David Talbot, never bothered to call me, which is terrible. When I called him and left a message, and emailed him, he never called me back. He'd also promised 10,000 shares of stock, which he never gave. That's a moot point now because it's worth nothing.

"The most lucrative column I ever had was the one for Media Week's online site [trade magazine]. I did it for two years. It started off as a twice-a-week column. I've liked getting into more writing about media instead of what I used to have to do - some schleppy celebrity interview."

Luke: "Which members of the media have taken greatest exception to your writing on them?"

Cathy: "Robert Scheer is still resentful and he refers to me as evil. There was a funny time when I called up Noel Greenwood, an old City editor at the LA Times. I had to ask him if he did have an affair with Carol Stogsdill, the really mean sub-editor that everybody hated and was the then-ranking woman at the Times."

Luke: "That's a horrible question to have to ask."

Cathy agrees. "I was very dutiful. I call him up. 'I'm sorry I have to ask you this but...' He replies, 'Hahaha, that's none of your business.' I say, 'That's fair enough. I just had to ask you.' And I'm about to say goodbye, when he says, 'And I don't respect your work.' Click.

"That's one advantage that calling people has over email. You'd much rather email people that question but if you don't call them, you don't hear their voice. I confirmed that he's pompous and insufferable, which couldn't have been done through email. Noel was angry.

"[LAT's media reporter] David Shaw was nice to me when I called him up to get quote on something but that was before I insulted him.

"Poor Robin Abcarian was real angry with me. She used to have a column [in the LA Times and a radio show]. We worked together at the Daily News and we were friends. I felt bad about having to insult her but the column was insultable, what are you going to do?

"I'd avoided writing about her because we were friendly. But if you're writing about the Times and somebody does something spectacularly stupid, you have to report it. I remember she had seriously libeled somebody's parents. Some woman had been abused by her parents but Robin identified the parents. Until you've been convicted in a trial, you cannot refer to them as rapists and child abusers. An editor should've caught that. So they had to trash something like a 20,000 copy run of the paper. I had to write about that. She got mad. I don't blame her. Then the cat was out of the bag and I made fun of her columns and she was resentful.

"An old friend of mine, Richard Rouillard, stopped talking to me. He was editor of the Advocate [gay magazine]. He stopped talking to me for no fair reason. I didn't insult him it was just some stupid..."

Luke: "Was there ever time when people's anger at you overwhelmed you and inhibited your writing?"

Cathy: "Never. If you are going to care about people getting mad, you should be a social worker, not a journalist. I used to like to go to the Times' cafeteria and I started to feel like I shouldn't go there anymore. If people write something stupid, I'm going to write about it. People forget that I did make friends [through my Buzz column]. Stupid people got upset but smart people liked the column and made friends with me. That's how I know Matt [Welch] and Ken [Layne] because they remembered reading the column."

I was sorry to read about Cathy Seipp's struggle with lung cancer, a disease that suffers from a lack of medical research dollars compared to illnesses like HIV or breast cancer, apparently because smokers are an unfashionable demographic. Even more unfortunate is that many non-smokers get the disease, and suffer and die without much public concern because of the stigma. For more information on this terrible disease, here's a link to the website of the American Lung Association.

LA Times obituary here.

Happy Navruz!

It's that vernal equinox time of year again, celebrated by the ancient Persian holiday discussed here.

Eliyho Matz on the Future of Iranian-Israeli Relations

“I don’t think educated Indonesians speak any language
which can be used to express and develop their thinking.”

V.S. Naipaul, Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (Random House, 1988).

“Am lo levadad yishkon” – A nation shall not dwell alone.

In his article titled “There is a Need for a Strategic Change,” which appeared in the Ha’aretz newspaper of September 1, 2006, well known military correspondent Zeev Schiff is completely wrong in his approach to the issue of needed change in Israel”s military, and confuses the untrained and even the sophisticated reader. At first look, the article appears to be an eye-opener, a deep and reasonable analysis of the current political military situation. But, in reality, it is faulty in the presentation of facts, and obviously one might then guess that Schiff’s conclusions are wrong and misleading. So the Israeli public is again deceived and confused as Ha’aretz’s experienced correspondent brings us what has become a familiar story.

The nation of Iran and its President converse in private and speak in public from morning till nightfall of their desire to see the Israeli nation destroyed. The immediate conclusion is that we definitely have an enemy, who is ready to destroy the Israelis. If it is only possible, I would like to state that Iran does not threaten the Israeli nation, with or without nuclear weapons.

The issue is very simple: any nation would have to be politically and otherwise totally crazy to use nuclear weapons. Even if one possesses nuclear weapons, they cannot be used, because of obvious consequences, including nuclear radiation and world opinion. Nuclear weapons cannot be used, even as a deterrent. This is the unspoken agreement among nations, and it held well in the years of the Cold War. Iran, despite all its grandiose dreams and out-of-control statements, will not use nuclear weapons for the simple reason that the world-at-large will respond, and how the world will respond I do not know at this moment.

In the 2006 war between Israel and the Hezbolla in Lebanon, this terrorist organization used weapons supplied to it by the Iranians, via the Syrians. The conclusion, therefore, is, if Iran provides rockets to Hezbolla, then Iran is actually fighting Israel via proxy. This issue needs clarification. The use of Iran’s rockets by the Hezbolla does not make Iran an enemy of Israel, just as US weapons to Pakistan does not make the US an enemy of India.

Of course, there are threats against the Israeli nation by a number of nations and people, and Israelis have to respond to them. Unfortunately, the Israeli nation, ever since its inception as a nation-state of the Israelis, has lacked the know-how to play politics. In business I would guess that Israelis have proved themselves capable. But politics is a different story altogether. For the past two-thousand years, Jews, living among many nations, were not generally involved in their region’s politics, never mind world politics. It has become increasingly clear that the politics of the Israeli nation from 1948 to 2006 have failed inside the country (cf., no constitution) and outside Israel (cf. failure to establish relations with other nations), so failures are abundant, and many more will inevitably occur in the future.

The 2006 war in Lebanon is another example of the total failure of internal and external Israeli politics. The instability and divisions among the various Israeli political parties, and the choice and election of inappropriate people to positions of power, have led to this total failure surrounding the decision to go to war. The Israeli army, in its great excitement, based its strategy on a fantasy of ideas, focusing on an air war rather than on a combined effort of military branches, while soldiers were not equipped properly to fight, and civilians had no idea that they would have to flee from the north to the south from their homes in the north. In short, the army has been fighting a “don-quixotic” war with strategy drawn by inexperienced military and political leadership.

Here is a suggestion I proposed during the war. Since Israelis have been threatened by the Iranians, and Israel just completed a war in Lebanon, why should not the Israelis ask their leader, the Israeli prime minister, to appear at a press conference, in front of the foreign press, or even at the UN in New York, to say a few words regarding these threats? This is what I might suggest:

Since northern Israel has been attacked and therefore more than a
million people cannot work and function – because of the Katusha rockets
raining on us by the Hezbolla, who received them from the Iranians and
Syrians, we the Israelis are hereby declaring, to all the UN nations, that if the
Katusha rockets do not stop falling in Israel, we will give twelve-hours notice
to stop them, before Israel begins a nuclear attack against Tehran and Damascus
using whatever weapons we have available.

Every person whom I have suggested this tactic to has said to me, “Eliyho, you are completely crazy!” People have responded by saying that it is impossible to use nuclear bombs, not as a deterrent and not as a practical weapon, neither by Israel and nor by Iran. Then, my question is, why has Israel spent billions of dollars on creating bombs which can not or will not be used? It is clear that the Iranian threat to Israel is a fantasy, and therefore there is no need, as indicated by Shiff, to change strategy. Israelis do not have to change their thinking against the Iranians, because the Iranian threat is a fiasco (dud).

There is a tiny little issue, an issue which is not really clear. The prime minister of Israel did not speak to the US president for more than a month during the war in Lebanon. I wonder why. What happened here? Is it possible that Israel hesitated to enter into battle because it had plans for a nuclear attack on Iran? Is it possible that Israel had other plans for the Iranians? Is it possible that the US did not want to be told of any alternative Israeli strategy and thus created this schism. One would be hard-pressed to explain how such a break in communication between the US and Israel could occur at such a critical time.

On the other hand, the conflict with the Palestinians does call for a new strategy. The new strategy needs to be bound by politics, by today’s political reality, and not by Zionist religious messianic ideological or other dreamlike visions. There is a great difficulty for the Israelis to understand that they won the battle in 1967, but lost the war. As a result of the 1967 war, the Israeli body politic has become unrealistic, dreamlike, religious visionary and disconnected with any reality.

The 1967 war has given rise to all sorts of religious theories that have no basis in the politics of nations, by this I mean free and independent nations. The visions of “settling” the “West Bank” and of Jews returning to ancient Jewish territories are only visions, and will not produce a basis for peace and, in light of past history, will not bring, by the way, the “Mashiach.”
The fact that various Israeli governments since 1967 and still today have not understood real politics, proves once more that this historical axiom in Jewish and Israeli past to future continues as an unwaering straight line. The lack of political experience built-up over 2000 years of history does not serve in 2006, and did not help in 1948, or in 1967.

The new Israeli strategy should be a fresh political approach: to enter into a direct dialogue with the Palestinian leadership. It is time for the government of Israel to endorse the need for the Palestinians to have a territory, a viable territory, and to help them to declare sovereignty and become a state. I hope it is clear to all sides that are involved here and especially to the radical Palestinians that we would not be talking here about the destruction of the Israeli nation. The Israelis under no circumstances have ever expressed any intention or attempted to destroy the Palestinian nation. I hope that the incendiary statements made possibly by some Palestinian factions calling for the destruction of the Israeli political entity are not serious, and have been expressed only in the heat of the moment. If the Palestinians wish to conduct themselves in an irrational political fashion, the Israelis will be able to contribute their own fanaticism to this fiasco.

There is a need to develop proper diplomacy rather than Israeli political stuttering, that was once dipped in ambiguous ideology, which has no use in serious conversations with the Palestinian leadership.

There is a need, first of all, to create an atmosphere of reconciliation, a sulcha, between the Israeli and Palestinian nations. There is a need to develop cooperation between the nations, cooperation that will bring a closer political strategic understanding between potential geopolitical friends in a new Middle East. A strategic cooperation will be the best insurance for a living together.

The Israelis must no longer act as though they are Am Levadad Yishkon, a nation dwelling alone, but rather as Am Lo Levadad Yishkon, a nation living as part of a world community. This drastic change in Israeli ideology could bring with it an important change to the region. Until today Israelis have not understood that the lack of a strategy of cooperation has actually hurt them. Israelis must seek a new approach, a less ideological religious approach which only leads us into more and more conflicts. The rebirth of the new Israeli nation after 2000 years without any experience in world and local politics has caused all sorts of irregularities, and this we must correct.

The failure of many Israelis to understand that an Israeli constitution for the Israeli nation is a necessity, coupled with the fact that Israel does not have a constitution, lead to internal and external weaknesses: this fact cannot be overlooked. The endless wars are largely caused by Israel political imbalance. Smart politics, resulting from a written constitution, is the solution. A constitution cannot be written by an Israeli Knesset, as proposed by some, or by any dubious academic scholars who may mean well but are limited by their academic approach. A constitution should be written by at least 36 people or more, coming from from diverse backgrounds, assigned to the task. The group would be sequestered for a period of one year, after which the nation would vote upon whether or not to accept their proposed constitution. A constitution is the only way to initiate stability in the chaotic Israeli political system.

The creation of a Middle East common market as a primary factor leading to cooperation between Palestine and Israel is not an illusive dream, but can be a reality, [unless there are (we are led by) those who believe/maintain that wars are forever or have an unhistoric approach to events]. If we Israelis wish to continue as a nation, we will have to adapt to today’s political reality. The Israelis will have to become Am Lo Levadad Ishkon.

Matthias Küntzel: European Roots of Antisemitism in Current Islamic Thinking

Melanie Phillips reported that Matthias Kuntzel's talk at Leeds University on links between Nazism and Islamist extremism was cancelled after protests from Muslim students, for "security reasons." It made me curious about what he had to say, so thanks to Google, I found out he's an expert on the topic of the Nazi roots undergirding Islamist ideology. A 2004 article from his website gives a sample of what he might have had to say in England, had the university permitted him to makes his presentation. An excerpt:

Islamic antisemitism is a key challenge of our time. It is not only expressed through Al Qaida’s suicide terror attacks against synagogues or through attacks against Jewish institutions perpetrated by European Muslims, but is propagated day by day throughout the Arabic-Islamic world. Allow me to present to you three examples of this particular kind of antisemitism:

Firstly Sheikh Madiras, an Imam from Palestine. In September this year, he addressed the following to the faithful: “The Resurrection will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them. The Muslims will kill the Jews, rejoice [in it], rejoice in Allah’s Victory.… The Prophet said: the Jews will hide behind the rock and the tree, and the rock and the tree will say: oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim this is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!… Everything wants vengeance on the Jews, on these pigs on the face of the earth.”[2] No-one protested when the Palestinian Authority’s official TV station broadcast this call for genocide. The story of the rock and the tree is a popular one and a standard item on the Hamas propaganda menu.

Secondly Sheikh Tantawi, the Head of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University and thus the most renowned spiritual authority in Sunni Islam. The fourth edition of his standard work “The people of Israel in the Koran and in the Sunna” appeared in 1997. In it, Tantawi writes that the Jews instigated the French Revolution and October Revolution; that they provoked the First and Second World Wars; that they control the world’s media and economy; that they endeavour to destroy morality and religion and run brothels worldwide. Tantawi, the highest Sunni Muslim theologian, quotes Adolf Hitler’s words in Mein Kampf that “in resisting the Jew, I am doing the work of the Lord”. He praises the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, noting without the slightest trace of regret that “after the publication of the Protocols in Russia, some 10,000 Jews were killed.”[3]

The Protocols are in fact an instrument of war. They project all the supposed evils of modernity onto one single enemy, the Jews, dividing the world on Manichean lines: on the one side the endangered Good, on the other, the Jewish Evil, leaving as the only choice either the destruction of this Evil or one’s own downfall. In Russia, this pamphlet triggered pogroms, while in Germany it was the textbook for the Holocaust; no other forgery had greater influence on Hitler’s policy towards the Jews.[4]

Isn’t this a sufficient reason for this key text to be internationally outlawed, and people like Sheikh Tantawi who promote it ousted? But the opposite is taking place. Apart from the Koran, no other book enjoys greater influence in the contemporary Arab world than the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And that brings me to my third example: This forgery which guided Hitler has actually been popularised in recent years in soap-opera form in several TV series. Egyptian state television and many other TV stations have broadcast this incitement repeatedly during Ramadan.[5] Anyone acquainted with Nazi films like “Jud Süss” [The Jew Süss] knows what incredible suggestive power the antisemitic film exerts. For example, at one point in the Arab film version of the Protocols, Jews haul a frightened youngster into a room. Then the camera zooms in on the child for a close-up shot of the Jews slitting his throat and collecting his blood in a basin.[6] Here we have the blood libel, according to which Jews consume the blood of infidels during the Passover, being drummed into the minds of millions of Muslims at peak viewing time. It will take generations to get rid of this poison.

The seriousness of this development is rarely grasped in the Western world. Many either react as if hating Jews was a feature of the Oriental world, like hookahs or mosques. Or antisemitism among Muslims is glossed over as a kind of “anti-imperialism of fools” and rationalised as an alleged response to the Middle East conflict. The quintessence of both modes of thinking is the belief that Muslim antisemitism is totally different from European antisemitism.

This view, however, won’t stand up to close examination. In Islamic tradition, the Jews were viewed as being inferior. As a result, the fear of “eternal” Jewish hostility or even a “Jewish conspiracy” was unknown in the Muslim world for centuries. An antisemitism based on the notion of a conspiracy of World Jewry is not rooted in Islamic tradition, but is based rather on European ideological models. The decisive transfer of this ideology took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda. How did Nazi Germany promote Islamic antisemitism?

THIS Was An Interesting Radio Show...

Just heard this program on NPR, on my car radio...today's episode of Warren Olney's KCRW show, TO THE POINT, with all sorts of guests discussing the state of Islam in America.

Most interesting of all was the interview with David Frum--who admitted that President Bush came up with the phrase "Axis of Evil" in order not to say "Islamist Terrorism" after 9/11. On top of that, Frum claims that President Bush came up with that odd word "evildoer" -- because it translates well into Arabic. Note to President Bush and David Frum: It translated lousy into English.

No wonder we're in trouble in Iraq...

Washington Post Publishes Giuliani Expose

Andrew Kirtzman's Revealing the Total Giuliani. Photo featured Giuliani in drag. But after reading the article, I think it made Giuliani look even better. An excerpt:

Saintly? Liberal? The words have almost no relevance to the mayor who once ruled over Gotham. Giuliani is an enormously gifted man, with extraordinary accomplishments to his credit. He's also a highly idiosyncratic figure prone to unusual, sometimes self-destructive acts. As the presidential race moves into a more serious phase, it may be best to put aside the cliches about America's Mayor for a while. If voters are going to elect Rudy Giuliani president, there are a few things they'd better know.

It would be an understatement to say that drama tends to follow Giuliani; it's more like he thrives on it. He has a knack for inserting himself into the center of controversy, as he did when he had Yasser Arafat thrown out of Lincoln Center, sparking an international incident. Or when he waged a culture war by attempting to pull city funding from the Brooklyn Museum of Art over an exhibit he found offensive. It was evident when he endorsed Gov. Mario Cuomo for reelection in 1994 over his fellow Republican George Pataki on live television. To those who had grown accustomed to his love of shocking the public, it wasn't a total surprise when he sang "Happy Birthday, Mister President" in full drag in 1997. But his taste for drama is just one of the many unusual traits that make Giuliani such an unorthodox public figure.

Every crusader needs a good crusade, and Giuliani found his calling when he marched up the steps of New York City Hall in January 1994. A Republican in a town of Democrats, he was determined to smash a status quo that had long accepted billion-dollar deficits, deteriorating services and exploding welfare rolls as the norm. The city by then had grown so filthy, crime-ridden and politically dysfunctional that even liberal Democrats were willing to look the other way for someone who could bang some heads. They found their man in the new mayor.

The public soon learned that Giuliani was driven by an overriding need for control. He immediately stripped decision-making powers from dozens of city agencies and centralized them in his office. The men around him, many of them lawyers once derided in his U.S. attorney days as "Yes-Rudys," became the most powerful figures in city government. In the new regime, every morsel of information had to be vetted by the mayor's media operation at City Hall, down to the water reservoir levels released each day to the New York Times weather page. When Giuliani's famously successful police commissioner, William Bratton, resisted City Hall's tight rein and spoke freely to reporters (often about himself), Giuliani booted him from office. The mayor's press secretary charged, characteristically, that Bratton and his lieutenants, who were decimating crime by historic proportions, were "out of control."

The City Hall steps have historically served as New York's town square, hosting an unending stream of colorful protests and news conferences. But that proved too anarchic for the mayor, who tightened security -- before 9/11 -- to the point that reporters, politicians and interest groups were banned from the steps, rendering the place desolate. Only pressure from the City Council forced him to relent. The boss viewed the world in terms of friends and enemies. New York's top-tier elected black leaders -- all of them Democrats -- were written off as sympathizers of Giuliani's predecessor David N. Dinkins; Giuliani refused to meet with any of them for years. He counseled his aides to stay on the offensive -- and he illustrated the point every day. The mayor's battles with the media were pure theater: He'd storm out of news conferences, demean his questioners, pick fights. Nothing restrained him from turning to a Newsday reporter one day and dressing him down in front of his colleagues. "What the hell is wrong with you?" he demanded.

"Unauthorized" Pro-Obama, Anti-Hillary Spot

(ht Drudge)

US-Funded Channel Airs Terrorist Propaganda

Why am I not surprised by Joel Mowbray's story in Opinion Journal, reporting that US-funded Al Hurra is broadcasting terrorist propaganda?

"Everybody feels emboldened. [Former CNN producer Larry] Register changed the atmosphere around here," notes one staffer. "Register is trying to pander to Arab sympathies," says another.

The cultural shift inside the newsroom is evident in the on-air product. In the past several months, Al-Hurra has aired live speeches from Mr. Nasrallah and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, and it broadcast an interview with an alleged al Qaeda operative who expressed joy that 9/11 rubbed "America's nose in the dust."

While a handful of unfortunate decisions could be isolated, these actions appear to be part of Mr. Register's news vision. Former news director Mouafac Harb, a Lebanese-born American citizen, was not shy about his disdain for terrorists and had a firm policy against giving them a platform. But Mr. Register didn't wait long to allow Hamas officials on the air to discuss Palestinian politics.

At a staff meeting announcing the reversal of the ban on terrorists as guests, Mr. Register "bragged" about his personal relationship with Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, a top Hamas official, according to someone who was present. Contacted on his cell phone for comment, Mr. Register declined, indicating that he couldn't spare even two minutes anytime in the coming days.

Unfortunately, Mowbray doesn't tell us which Bush political appointee made the decision to hire Mr. Register at Al Hurra...

Lafayette & Washington

Before the trip to Chicago, someone I know and yours truly visited Mount Vernon to see the exhibition A Son and His Adoptive Father: The Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington. The exhibit will travel to Lafayette College and the New York Historical Society later this year. It is well worth a look--in fact, it was more interesting that the recent renovation of Mount Veron, which unfortunately is so crowded that viewing the historic home was an ordeal. In addition, the much-hyped original Mount Vernon colors seem to look like something picked out by a slumlord in Spanish Harlem, while curtains and bedcovers resemble something from a mail-order catalog. If that was what the place looked like under George Washington--well, let's put it this way, glossy green paint slathered an inch thick over all the trim and fireplaces is an American tradition we might do without...

Meanwhile the special exhibition hall and museum had the original key to the Bastille, which used to hang in the hallway of Mt. Vernon--as well as lots of other stuff from the mansion. It sort of is a shame, but at least it was possible to look at them, because after standing for hours in line to see the mansion and slowly creep through it, not too many people stayed to look at the museum, which is a treasure trove.

The Lafayette show is just great, and worth the trip. Most of all for the insight that Lafayette convinced Washington to free all his slaves upon the death of Martha--the only Founding Father to free his laborers. Also worth seeing: George Washington's stables, sword and his suit--he was really tall, looked good on a horse, for sure. The Mt. Vernon Ladies Association did a great job restoring outbuildings and former slave quarters. Shame about the house, though...

The Best Little Art Museum in Chicago...

In case you haven't heard of it, it's Chicago's Loyola University Museum of Art. Someone I know and I were visiting a friend in the Windy City and had a few moments to explore this interesting collection in an office building located at Water Tower Place (John F. Kennedy reportedly lived there while he was in the Navy during WWII). It was a hidden chamber of wonders...George Roualt's series "Miserere et Guerre," collections of banned books from the Vatican and other Italian libraries --including a first edition of Newton's Optics, and works by Galileo. Zwingli, and a lot of Humanist "big names"--and in a hallway, Molly Schiff's Purim pictures. Only one disappointment--the Russian Icon exhibition had been cancelled, no doubt a result of Catholic-Orthodox tensions. Shame, though. The gift shop was filled with Buddhist trinkets--ecumenical, educational and impressive.

A must-see...

Send Posada Carriles to Guantanamo!

Agustin Blazquez argues that Al Qaeda terrorists are treated better at an American prison in Cuba than Cuban-Americans accused of terrorism are treated in the USA:

VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS: THE LUIS POSADA CARRILES CASE
by Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of James Sutton

While the liberal U.S. media constantly reports the violations of human rights of the terrorists at Guantanamo, they are silent about the violations of human rights on the case of Posada Carriles, a Cuban-American suffering under the press of burocracy/intimidation/political pseudo interests.

It is very sad for the people who believe in the precepts on which this republic was founded, that there are shameful violations of human rights by the United States government in our own land. The case of Luis Posada Carriles is a prime example.

Posada Carriles is a 79-year-old man with cancer and heart problems. He is a broken man who has been languishing in solitary confinement at the Otero County Jail in New Mexico since January 2007. His elderly wife and daughter live in Miami.

Before being sent to the Otero County Jail he was in detention at El Paso Immigration Facility in Texas since May 2005, where he was awaiting his immigration trial. However, the judge said that unless the Justice Department advised him that Posada Carriles represented a danger for the society and the security of the United States by February 1, 2007, he would be released, in compliance with the Supreme Court directive that a person cannot be detained indefinitely without specific charge.

The Justice Department did not act upon the judge’s request. But, somehow, out of the blue, just before the deadline, criminal charges were filed. They charged him with lying on his application for citizenship – citizenship he is entitled to under the U.S. law that calls for citizenship for those who have served this country. And he did serve this country dearly.

Before being transferred to the Otero County Jail, while he was at El Paso Immigration Facility, Posada Carriles was treated well and his Mexican American guards treated him with great respect. He felt well there. He was allowed visits and phone calls. Because of his artistic talent, he was allowed to paint. He used his art to support his family in Miami. His paintings were sold in exhibits in Miami and the money went to his elderly wife.

Posada Carriles’ legal situation is complicated and political. And difficult to sort out – purposefully, I’d say. He was made a “hot potato” by way of the accusations of a known agent of Fidel Castro, Gilberto Abascal. For example, Posada Carriles states that he entered the U.S. via Mexico. Abascal claims that he came via a boat, “Santrina.”

It is relevant to mention that the accusations of Castro’s agent Abascal are exactly the same accusations that Castro made on the Cuban state television show “Mesa Redonda” (Round Table) in 2005, just before Abascal made the claims officially in the U.S.


Luis Posada Carriles is a patriot who served the United States honorably and with dedication. He served in View Nam as a Lieutenant. He was trained by and worked for the CIA. He is a man who, in spite of the way this country is paying him back for his service, he loves and honors this country and if he had the opportunity to serve the U.S. again, he would do it without hesitation. He is not a criminal to deserve this kind of punishment; in fact, not even criminals deserve it, and see below for details.

So, how did he end up in this situation?

In 2005, Castro, a pathological liar, and his copycat, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, declared Posada Carriles a terrorist. He is wanted by Chavez in Venezuela for a kangaroo trial, to declare him guilty, despite the fact that he was found not guilty in two separate trials in Venezuela. Both a criminal court and a military court have found him innocent, despite numerous appeals by both government bodies.

Apparently, the U.S. is bowing once more to the international blackmail of those two goons. Posada Carriles was arrested in the U.S. for illegal entry into the country – you have to have guts to do such a thing in a country constantly invaded by illegal aliens and hardly anything happens to them!

Actually the situation of Posada Carriles in the Otero County Jail is more reminiscent of a prisoner in Castro’s Cuba, than in the U.S. The other inmates refer to it as “the hole.” According to a source, there is a calculation that in the U.S., 1% of the penal population is sent to “the hole” as punishment for severe infractions such as being found with drugs in the urine, for fighting or when an inmate kills another.

But in the case of Posada Carriles, there is no such reason. According to a source that went through the same treatment, if you ask why, the standard reply would be, “for your own protection.”

He can appeal the decision, but according to the same source with experience in another federal facility, they all have the same system of “the hole.” There is no precedent for a successful appeal for someone in that situation.

The opinion generally stated for denial of recourse is that the inmate is kept there in solitary confinement to keep him isolated from the outside world.

This is “the hole” Posada Carriles is kept in, on U.S. soil:

The lights are on 24-7 in his small punishment cell. Twenty-three hours of the day without seeing any other human – I omitted “being” on purpose. The food is given to him through an opening in the door of his cell. He is allowed to make phone calls every two weeks. They take him out of his cell to the phone with his feet and hands chained, so it wasn’t easy to make the call. Fortunately on February 24, they discontinued the chains to go to the phone. But he can only call collect. And if the person doesn’t happen to be in, bad luck. He is not allowed to call cell numbers.

He has limited access to two books a week and he cannot choose them. They take him out one hour a day to watch television. However Posada Carriles cannot hear very well and they don’t allow him to wear an earphone. His is not allowed to receive visits or packages in the mail.

I am not discounting the charges against Posada Carriles – but considering the sources (Castro-Chavez-Abascal); their veracity is questionable. What I am concern with is the treatment he has been receiving without a guilty verdict. His trial is scheduled for May 10. 2007.

And the reason for the harsh treatment in the jail in New Mexico for this elderly man with cancer and heart problems? You have to seriously consider the unthinkable – that the plan is to cause his death in jail so Castro and Chavez will be satisfied, or at least quiet. As of March 13, a source told me that he was extremely depressed and confused in a recent phone call. So don’t be surprised if in the not so distant future Posada Carriles dies while in jail.

Meanwhile in Miami, on February 24, where a group of about 500 Cuban Americans were participating in a quiet demonstration in favor of the freedom of Posada Carriles, two small planes flew overhead carrying banners saying “POSADA TERRORISTA,” my guess paid for by Castro-Chavez and his untouchable agents in the U.S.

If Posada Carriles weren’t a member of the most openly hated and politically discriminated minority in the U.S. – the Cuban Americans – and even if he had been a real terrorist, he would be in a much better position. At the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo, the terrorist inmates sleep at night with the lights off, are allowed to see the blue Cuban skies all day, are allowed to read all kinds of religious books of their choice, and are well dressed and well fed – all scrutinized by international organizations of human rights.

But a 79-year-old, sick and harmless Cuban American doesn’t deserve the same treatment as the Talibans in Guantanamo and that is perfectly OK, right here in the United States and no one cares.

I care.
© 2007 ABIP
Agustin Blazquez, producer/director of the documentaries
COVERING CUBA, premiered at the American Film Institute in 1995, CUBA: The Pearl of the Antilles, COVERING CUBA 2: The Next Generation, premiered in 2001 at the U.S. Capitol in and at the 2001 Miami International Book Fair COVERING CUBA 3: Elian presented at the 2003 Miami Latin Film Festival, the 2004 American Film Renaissance Film Festival in Dallas, Texas and the 2006 Palm Beach International Film Festival, COVERING CUBA 4: The Rats Below, premiered at the two Tower Theaters in Miami on January 2006 and the 2006 Palm Beach International Film Festival and the 2006 Barcelona International Film Festival for Human Rights and Peace, Dan Rather "60 Minutes," an inside view , RUMBERAS CUBANAS, Vol. 1 MARIA ANTONIETA PONS, COVERING CUBA 5: Act Of Repudiation premiered at the two Tower Theaters in Miami, January 2007, at the Hispanic Cuban Club in Madrid, Spain and will be at the 2007 Palm Beach International Film Festival.

ALL AVAILABLE AT: www.CubaCollectibles.com
For previews visit: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Agustin+Blazquez

What the New York Times Didn't Tell You About CAIR

Can be found on Protein Wisdom (ht lgf):

MacFarquhar somehow fails to mention that Marzook (per McCarthy) is a specially designated global terrorist under U.S. law, is currently wanted on a U.S. terrorism indictment in Chicago, and was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a second U.S. terrorism indictment. He also fails to mention that Marzook is not among the “big five” usually identified by CAIR critics. Those five are:

• Ghassan Elashi (founding board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter) – was Chairman of Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), which was shut down by the United States for raising millions of dollars for HAMAS; in July of 2004, was convicted of conspiracy, money laundering, and making false statements about shipments of high-tech equipment to countries deemed state sponsors of terrorism;

• Randall Todd “Ismail” Royer (national staff member of CAIR) – past Communications Director of the Muslim American Society (MAS), an organization that publishes materials calling suicide bombings against Israelis justifiable; in April of 2004, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his participation in a network of Al-Qaeda-related militant jihadists centered in Northern Virginia;

• Bassem Khafagi (CAIR’s Community Director) – was co-founder and past President of the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), an organization that has been investigated for possible funding to terrorist-related groups and publishing of materials calling for suicide bombings in the United States; in November of 2003, was sentenced to prison for bank fraud and making false statements on his visa application; was later deported to Egypt;

• Rabih Haddad (fundraiser for CAIR’s Ann Arbor chapter) – was co-founder and past Executive Director and Public Relations Director for Global Relief Foundation (GRF), which was shut down by the United States for its financing of terrorist groups, specifically Al-Qaeda; was arrested by INS for visa violations, in December of 2001, and was later deported to Lebanon;

• Siraj Wahhaj (national board member of CAIR) – in February of 1995, was named by federal prosecutor, Mary Jo White, as a possible co-conspirator to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center; was a character witness for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence for his part in the ’93 bombing conspiracy; currently sits on the board of directors of the radical Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).

BTW, CAIR featured Wahhaj at one of its big events on March 3rd of this year.

The Accomplices

Bernard Weinraub's play about Peter Bergson, Ben Hecht and their work during WWII is profiled in today's New York Sun by Gabrielle Birkner, who neglects to mention the title of the controversial documentary in question (FYI, it's Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?):

Preparations for the play's six-weekrun coincide with a burgeoning public interest in Bergson, and his small band of collaborators known as the Bergson Group. In addition to Mr. Weinraub's play, the group's wartime efforts will be the focus of a first-of-its-kind conference at Fordham Law School in June.

Mr. Weinraub's own fascination with Bergson, who was born "Hillel Kook" into a family of rabbinic scholars, goes back a quarter century. At that time, the playwright was reporting for the Times on a controversial television documentary about America's tepid response to the Holocaust. "Through the story, I became interested in the whole issue of American complicity — of what America did, and didn't do, and what Jews here did and did not do," Mr. Weinraub told The New York Sun.

He added: "People obviously didn't know the full scale of what was happening, but there was also a lot of shutting your eyes to the realities."

The Bergson Group did not flinch. It tirelessly pleaded its cause — lobbying Congress, taking out advertisements in the New York Times, organizing a rabbis march on Washington, and, with playwright Ben Hecht, producing a Madison Square Garden pageant dedicated to the Jews who were being murdered overseas.

Indeed, the group's work was an impetus for the Roosevelt administration to establish the War Refugee Board in January 1944. That board ultimately rescued 200,000 Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe. But with a Jewish body count of 6 million, the activists regarded their efforts as failed. "They never thought they accomplished much, and that their efforts were insignificant given the scale of what happened," Mr. Weinraub, who has interviewed some of the activists and their family members, said.

Idiocracy

When Judith Warner mentioned the 2005 film Idiocracy in her March 7th New York Times op-ed, I knew that I just had to order it from Netflix. Last night I watched it with someone I know, and the tears were streaming down my cheeks from laughter. Mike Judge & Co. made Office Space, which satirized corporate life. This is just as good. It takes on the contracted-out, super-sized, incomptent nightmare that is America under President George W. Bush through a Swiftian parable of time-travel to a world 500 years in the future--which is, of course, Washington, DC today...

I can't begin to describe it--just watch it, and enjoy.

Robin MacNeil: Fight Islamic Fundamentalism With Art

According to a reporty by Philip Kennicott in today's Washington Post, ex-PBS Newshour anchor Robin MacNeil delivered his call to arms at the annual Nancy Hanks Lecture for arts advocates at Washington DC's Kennedy Center:

And the guest of honor was Robert MacNeil, the journalist, who gave a bold and perhaps even controversial speech that included sustained criticism of religious fundamentalism.

Speaking to about 1,000 of the fervent at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, MacNeil lamented the influence of fundamentalism on science education, individual freedoms and the larger public dialogue about the hot-button moral and political issues of the day. Since he left PBS's "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" in 1995, MacNeil has been chairman of the board of the MacDowell Colony, a tony artists' retreat in New Hampshire. And so, no surprise, he leapt to the defense of artists, in particular, from the influence of fundamentalism and the perils of the culture wars....

..."I think art can be an important weapon in the struggle against Islamic fundamentalism," MacNeil said.

I can't find the transcript online yet via google. If and when the text is posted, I'll try to link to it...

Michael R. Winston Remembers Frank M. Snowden, Jr.

A moving tribute to a legendary Howard University professor from Sunday's Washington Post:

The obituary of Frank M. Snowden Jr. noted his pioneering scholarship on blacks in the ancient Greco-Roman world. As important as that is, it is a small part of his achievement as one of the remarkable educators of his time. For close to 50 years he shaped the thinking of thousands of Howard University students.

I can still remember vividly the day in September 1958 when he charged into a seminar room in Founders Library (he never merely walked into a classroom), dropped his green Harvard book bag on the desk and announced without preliminaries that we would begin our discussion of Homer by considering the quotation by Protagoras that "man is the measure of all things." For the next 50 minutes you could hear a pin drop as he masterfully spread before callow freshman honors students the agenda of timeless issues of character, fate and freedom that we would explore in Homer, Plato, Sophocles and Thucydides.

In the succeeding weeks, students observed a professor whose passion for teaching a subject that he regarded as a key to Western culture and history was obvious. He not only opened a world to us, he also inspired confidence in the value of intellect, the indispensability of excellence in work and in life. In that racially segregated era, his teaching and example were crucial resources for students who understood that American society placed them, by law and custom, on the margins and expected them to stay there.

Could anyone be his student and emerge with a feeling of marginality? I doubt it. He believed at the core of his being that a liberal arts education was liberating, in every sense of the word. He quoted the Roman dramatist Terence: "I am a man and I consider nothing human foreign to me."

When Frank Snowden succeeded George Morton Lightfoot in 1940 as the lone teacher of Latin and Greek at Howard, classical languages and literature were dying in American higher education. The revival of the field at Howard was attributable to Snowden's energetic teaching and his advocacy of the classics. In the 1950s and 1960s he emerged as a national leader in the effort to stem creeping vocationalism in liberal arts colleges, insisting that the general education program required of all freshmen and sophomores include classical literature in English translation, to be followed by serious study of foreign languages and literatures.

The Cricket World Cup

You can follow it here, on the ICC Cricket World Cup West Indies website.

Rudy Giuliani's CPAC Speech

Full transcript here. An excerpt:

We’re not a country of one ethnic group. We’re not French or German or Italian or Spanish or whatever group. We’re not Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist or anything like that.

We’re all different religions. And we’re all different races.

Since we’re not identified that way, what identifies us as Americans? The thing that identifies us as Americans are our ideas. And our ideas are wonderful ideas. And they’re ideas that the world is moving toward.

Ronald Reagan understood that. He understood that and he was able, therefore, to make very difficult decisions and to stick with them even when they were unpopular.

I remember when he deployed the cruise missiles and pointed them at the Soviets. Very, very unpopular. ABC did a documentary about the end of the world when he did that.

And then I remember when he walked out of Reykjavik —very, very unpopular.

A typical politician wouldn’t have done either of those two things. Maybe even a typical president wouldn’t have done either of those two things, because they made him unpopular. His unfavorability went up; his favorability went down.

So why did he make those decisions? He made those decisions because he could consult something broader than just public opinion. He could consult a set of ideas, a set of principles, a set of goals. And he could say: Well, right now public opinion actually isn’t correct.

Abraham Lincoln had to do the same thing during the Civil War. The Civil War was very, very unpopular. Draft riots in New York in 1863. Three generals that turned out to be failures.

Lincoln was viewed by many, many people as an incompetent president. The war took too long.

Well, Abraham Lincoln actually didn’t have to listen to polls on CNN. They didn’t have them then. (Laughter)

But I suspect, even if they did have polls on CNN, and ABC and NBC, Abraham Lincoln would have made exactly the same decision, which is: It’s my goal to keep this union together. It’s my goal to end slavery in order to extend freedom. And I’m not going to cave in to the immediate pressure of public opinion because, if I do and we end this war and we entreat frustration, we’re going to have two separate countries and they’re going to go to war with each other who knows how many times in the future and we’re going to lose a lot more lives.

And those are the calculations that leaders have to make. And when you do nonbinding resolutions, you’re trying to escape the responsibility of making those decisions. (Applause)

There’s another thing they learned from Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan used to say, "My 80 percent ally is not my 20 percent enemy."

What he meant by that is that we all don’t see eye to eye on everything. You and I have a lot of common beliefs that are the same, and we have some that are different.

You just described your relationship, I think, with your husband, your wife, your children. We don’t all agree on everything.

I don’t agree with myself on everything. (Laughter)

And the point of a presidential election is to figure out who do you believe the most, and what do you think are the most important things for this country at a particular time?

Happy International Women's Day!

ABOUT INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
International Women's Day has been observed since in the early 1900's, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies.

1908
Great unrest and critical debate was occurring amongst women. Women's oppression and inequality was spurring women to become more vocal and active in campaigning for change. Then in 1908, 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding shorter hours, better pay and voting rights.

1909
In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman's Day (NWD) was observed across the United States on 28 February. Women continued to celebrate NWD on the last Sunday of February until 1913.

1910
At a Socialist International meeting in Copenhagen, an International Women's Day of no fixed date was proposed to honour the women's rights movement and to assist in achieving universal suffrage for women. Over 100 women from 17 countries unanimously agreed the proposal. 3 of these women were later elected the first women to the Finnish parliament.

1911
Following the decision agreed at Copenhagen in 1911, International Women's Day (IWD) was honoured the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19 March. More than one million women and men attended IWD rallies campaigning for women's rights to work, vote, be trained, to hold public office and end discrimination. However less than a week later on 25 March, the tragic 'Triangle Fire' in New York City took the lives of more than 140 working women, most of them Italian and Jewish immigrants. This disastrous event drew significant attention to working conditions and labour legislation in the United States that became a focus of subsequent International Women's Day events. 1911 also saw women's 'Bread and Roses' campaign.

1913-1914
On the eve of World War I campaigning for peace, Russian women observed their first International Women's Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. In 1914 further women across Europe held rallies to campaign against the war and to express women's solidarity.

1917
On the last Sunday of February, Russian women began a strike for "bread and peace" in response to the death over 2 million Russian soldiers in war. Opposed by political leaders the women continued to strike until four days later the Czar was forced to abdicate and the provisional Government granted women the right to vote. The date the women's strike commenced was Sunday 23 February on the Julian calendar then in use in Russia. This day on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere was 8 March.

1918 - 1999
Since its birth in the socialist movement, International Women's Day has grown to become a global day of recognition and celebration across developed and developing countries alike. For decades, IWD has grown from strength to strength annually. For many years the United Nations has held an annual IWD conference to coordinate international efforts for women's rights and participation in social, political and economic processes. 1975 was designated as 'International Women’s Year' by the United Nations. Women's organisations and governments around the world have also observed IWD annually on 8 March by holding large-scale events that honour women's advancement and while diligently reminding of the continued vigilance and action required to ensure that women's equality is gained and maintained in all aspects of life.

NY Times Magazine: Belief in God is Part of Evolution

A very interesting article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, by Robin Marantz Henig, argues that religion is hardwired into our genes--by evolution:

Call it God; call it superstition; call it, as Atran does, “belief in hope beyond reason” — whatever you call it, there seems an inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent, unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or understanding of science. “Why do we cross our fingers during turbulence, even the most atheistic among us?” asked Atran when we spoke at his Upper West Side pied-à-terre in January. Atran, who is 55, is an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, with joint appointments at the University of Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. His research interests include cognitive science and evolutionary biology, and sometimes he presents students with a wooden box that he pretends is an African relic. “If you have negative sentiments toward religion,” he tells them, “the box will destroy whatever you put inside it.” Many of his students say they doubt the existence of God, but in this demonstration they act as if they believe in something. Put your pencil into the magic box, he tells them, and the nonbelievers do so blithely. Put in your driver’s license, he says, and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells them to put in their hands, few will.

If they don’t believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?

New Chief for US Propaganda Board

According to the Washington Post, the Bush administration has chosen AEI scholar James Glassman (author of Dow 36,000, former Washington Post business columnist and Roll Call publisher) to succeed Ken Tomlinson as head of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, Radio Marti, and Al Hurra's Arabic broadcasting, among other operations.

Reading between the lines of Tomlinson's January resignation letter, it seems Tomlinson could not get the US Senate to confirm his reappointment--no doubt due to scandals swirling around him. Here's the BBG press release:

Broadcasting Board of Governors Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson has asked President Bush not to put his name in nomination for another term. Tomlinson said he serves at the pleasure of the President and plans to remain in office until his successor is confirmed.

In a letter to President Bush dated January 9, Tomlinson said he is proud of his record of service and “appreciated deeply your repeatedly submitting my name to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for reconfirmation to this position. However, I have concluded that it would be far more constructive to write a book about my experiences rather than to seek to continue government service.”

Glassman hosted a 2004 AEI conference, Selling America: How Well Does U.S. Government Broadcasting Work in the Middle East?, which may be related to his appointment as BBG topper. He said this:

The BBG, in its earlier incarnations and this one, has done fine work. But Ambassador Djerejian's advisory group, of which I was a member, made two recommendations regarding broadcasting.

First, we urged that the BBG, like all other elements of public diplomacy, be "brought under the strategic direction" of the White House--through an office headed by a special counselor to the president with Cabinet rank. Today, BBG spends nearly as much money on public diplomacy as the State Department, yet it operates outside the broader policy agenda.

Second, we urged that the BBG, again like all other agencies that practice public diplomacy, set clear objectives that can be measured. The objective should not merely be to build audience, but to "move the needle"--to change attitudes toward the United States. Evidence of the success or failure of broadcasting entities to meet objectives needs to be publicly disseminated.

There should be no fear that journalistic integrity and credibility will be compromised if these recommendations are followed. The point is to set strategic goals, not to interfere with the way specific news or entertainment is broadcast.

Think of it this way: a broad international security strategy is set; then a public diplomacy strategy is set to help implement it. Then the BBG, as part of the public diplomacy apparatus, operates within that strategy.

As an example, it is our strong national interest is to promote democratic regimes in the Arab and Muslim world. That may be the main reason we are in Iraq. Public diplomacy should follow this same track, even--and, in fact, especially, if it means criticizing existing non-democratic regimes. Public diplomacy can often do that when official diplomacy cannot. We will know Al Hurra is succeeding, says an Egyptian born friend, when Sec. Powell is besieged with complaints from heads of government in the Arab world complaining of mistreatment.

As for the prison abuse scandals, public diplomacy should not merely show what Americans have done wrong and what we are trying to set right but should also highlight prison abuse throughout the Arab and Muslim world. It is not an isolated problem.

If I sound disappointed with the greeting the Djerejian report--and others like it--have received, I am. Yes, many of our enemies will never approve of our policies in the Arab and Muslim world, but many others, given a clear and forceful explanation, will. We need to get serious. That was our message. The best sign of seriousness would be establishing the office and the structure we suggest and to fund public diplomacy adequately. It would not be difficult.

IMHO, I do hope Glassman is better at selling America to the world than at predicting the Dow Jones industrial average--currently 12,290.90...

Did Scooter Libby Want To Get Caught?

One of the cliches of Washington is: "It's not the crime, it's the coverup."

In the Scooter Libby case, they may not have been any crime at all prior to the cover-up, but the jury found that there was indeed a criminal cover-up. So, in the aftermath of this guilty verdict, one is moved to ask: "Did Scooter Libby Want To Get Caught?"

He had every incentive to leave the administration, but without appearing disloyal. This conviction enables him to get off a sinking ship--with a clear conscience.

First, Libby is not stupid. He's a Yale graduate and a Columbia Law School alumnus, who had a career at the highest levels of government. He knew better than to lie to a grand jury.

Second, the Libby defense seems to have skipped a number of chances to strike harder--for example, by permitting 11 jurors to decide the case, instead of insisting on 12, which would have thrown a monkey-wrench into the deliberations. Libby must have told his lawyer to "forget it"--strange, given that a new juror might have tipped the balance in what was obviously not an open-and-shut case.

Third, the now-discredited Libby cover-story dragged in Washington reporters--"Bigfoot" reporters like Tim Russert and Judy Miller--apparently against their will. Reporters who were sure to gossip, leak, squeal. Judy Miller went to jail to protect her source, it is true--but in the end, she testified against him...

Who would put top national correspondents in such a difficult position, except a person with a "death wish" who wanted to be caught?

My speculation--and there is no evidence for it other than the results so far--is that Libby may have felt guilty about something going on in the White House, and wanted out, at least at a subconscious level. He couldn't quit, out of loyalty to his superiors and perhaps a personal ethos of service. So, he constructed a complicated scheme that he knew at some level would result in the end of his career as a political operative--he lied.

When he lied to the Grand Jury, Libby sealed his fate (he beat one rap on lying to the FBI). He was then out of the game, and would no longer be involved in US foreign policy failures like Iraq and Afganistan--no doubt under his purview as Vice President Cheney's "go-to guy".

Further evidence is found in Libby's reputation. Almost everyone who has met him says he's a nice guy, a smart guy--not malicious. He wrote a novel that took 20 years to complete: The Apprentice: A NovelSuch a character might have felt uncomfortable doing the heavy lifting for others who may not be so nice.

With a conviction on his record, he's definitely not coming back to work in the Bush administration. Even if he's pardoned, it unlikely that he will be able to resume a legal career. Supposing that he is jailed until 2008 (President Bush might pardon him on his way out of town, without any repercussions), he will have plenty of time to write another book--and no responsibility whatsoever for the fall of Baghdad, should it happen on the watch of his superiors...

You can buy The Apprentice here, from Amazon:

Libby Juror Worked for Washington Post

Talk about trying your case in the press, according to Editor & Publisher, Libby juror Denis Collins used to work at the Washington Post:

Denis Collins, the juror in the Libby/CIA leak case who delivered a lengthy post-verdict commentary for the press, spent about a decade at The Washington Post, where he covered both metro news and sports, and spent time on the copy desk, according to editors at the paper.

The longtime journalist, who has also written for The Miami Herald and the San Jose Mercury New, is recalled as smart, hardworking and energetic, although not always "coloring within the lines."

The jury convicted Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief aide to Vice President Cheney, on four of five counts today, including perjury and obstruction of justice. Collins, whose identity was not known until today, came out of the courthouse and spoke to the press, saying that as a former reporter he felt this was the right thing to do.

Cable TV news commentators noted the irony of a former reporter becoming chief jury spokesman -- at least today -- in a trial where reporters played such a central role. Some also wondered how someone who had written a book on spying (including the CIA variety) had made it on this jury.

In the jury selection phase, before Collins name came out, he was identified as having worked with Bob Woodward at the Post and being a neighbor of NBC's Tim Russert. Both would later testify in the case.

Washington, DC sure is a small town...

Byron York on the Libby Verdict

From National Review:

So now Libby has been convicted. His lawyers say they will ask for a new trial and, failing that, they will appeal the verdict. “We have every confidence Mr. Libby ultimately will be vindicated,” lead attorney Ted Wells told reporters. “We believe Mr. Libby is totally innocent and that he didn’t do anything wrong.” If Libby loses again, he could face a maximum of 25 years in prison.

What is next? Libby’s—and Cheney’s—enemies have always hoped that a guilty verdict would result in Libby flipping, in fingering the vice president for some still-unspecified crime for which Cheney would then be tried and convicted, or, even better, impeached and removed from office. “Mr. Libby, are you willing to go to jail to protect Vice President Cheney?” shouted MSNBC’s David Shuster as Libby walked away after his lawyers’ statement. That question will undoubtedly be heard many times in the days to come.

After Libby Conviction, Cheney Must Go...

Because of White House statements like this, when the Valerie Plame leak case first came up several years ago:

"I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." [Bush Remarks: Chicago, Illinois, 9/30/03]

"The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." [White House Briefing, 9/29/03]

Even if the case was a "perjury trap," Libby fell into it--interestingly, juror Denis Collins told the press that he and other jurors felt sorry that Libby appeared to be a fall guy for the Vice President. Given President Bush's 2003 statements, Cheney must go now--or he will surely bring further troubles upon the Bush administration...

Christopher Hitchens on Ayaan Hirsi Ali

From Slate(ht lgf):

W.H. Auden, whose centenary fell late last month, had an extraordinary capacity to summon despair—but in such a way as to simultaneously inspire resistance to fatalism. His most beloved poem is probably September 1, 1939, in which he sees Europe toppling into a chasm of darkness. Reflecting on how this catastrophe for civilization had come about, he wrote:

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analyzed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

"The enlightenment driven away … " This very strong and bitter line came back to me when I saw the hostile, sneaky reviews that have been dogging the success of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's best seller Infidel, which describes the escape of a young Somali woman from sexual chattelhood to a new life in Holland and then (after the slaying of her friend Theo van Gogh) to a fresh exile in the United States. Two of our leading intellectual commentators, Timothy Garton Ash (in the New York Review of Books) and Ian Buruma, described Hirsi Ali, or those who defend her, as "Enlightenment fundamentalist[s]." In Sunday's New York Times Book Review, Buruma made a further borrowing from the language of tyranny and intolerance and described her view as an "absolutist" one.

Now, I know both Garton Ash and Buruma, and I remember what fun they used to have, in the days of the Cold War, with people who proposed a spurious "moral equivalence" between the Soviet and American sides. Much of this critique involved attention to language. Buruma was very mordant about those German leftists who referred to the "consumer terrorism" of the federal republic. You can fill in your own preferred example here; the most egregious were (and, come to think of it, still are) those who would survey the U.S. prison system and compare it to the Gulag.

In her book, Ayaan Hirsi Ali says the following: "I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and sexual emancipation. After making this voyage I know that one of these two worlds is simply better than the other. Not for its gaudy gadgetry, but for its fundamental values." This is a fairly representative quotation. She has her criticisms of the West, but she prefers it to a society where women are subordinate, censorship is pervasive, and violence is officially preached against unbelievers. As an African victim of, and escapee from, this system, she feels she has acquired the right to say so. What is "fundamentalist" about that?

Washington Times: USAID Supported Hamas Terrorism

Why am I not surprised by Joel Mowbray's report in today's Washington Times?

Millions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid have been given in the past several years to two Palestinian universities -- one of them controlled by Hamas -- that have participated in the advocacy, support or glorification of terrorism.

The funding -- principally in scholarships to individual students -- is being eyed by several members of Congress and their aides, who say it may violate U.S. law.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided more than $140,000 in assistance to the Hamas-controlled Islamic University in Gaza -- including scholarships to 49 of its students -- since Congress changed the law in 2004 to restrict aid to entities or individuals "involved in or advocating terrorist activity."

No U.S. assistance was directed to Islamic University last year, but USAID continues to fund multimillion-dollar programs through American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), which is building a high-tech facility for the school. U.S. law requires that any recipient of U.S. aid have no association with terrorists.

USAID also gave $2.3 million in aid last year to Al-Quds University, which has student groups affiliated with designated terrorist organizations on campus and last month held a weeklong celebration of the man credited with designing and building the first suicide belts more than a decade ago.

"It is outrageous that U.S. taxpayer dollars are going toward institutions that support terrorists," said Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, New York Democrat and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia.