Thieves of Baghdad

Last night a friend was talking about this book at dinner, and mentioned a really nasty review in today's Washington Post. When I saw the review myself, of this new book about the search for the art looted from the Baghdad Museum in today's Washington Post, I understood her excitement. The reviewer, Post critic Philip Kennicott, complained that the author sounded hostile to journalists, bureaucrats, and ivy-leaguers. He called him a "Marine snob." The Post's message, it's a good read--but don't read it!

So I thought: This book by William Bogdanos--a US Marine who tracked down the treasures and discovered the looting of the Iraq museum was an "inside job"--must be REALLY interesting.

After I get a copy, I may have some more to say....

Moscow's Ismailovsky Flea Market in 360 Degrees

I really love these 360-degree panoramas...

Kanan Makiya on European Racism on Iraq

From an interview in on Democratiya.com(ht War and Piece):

People like myself, those of us who went into Iraq after April and March 2003 as part of the effort to transform this country, have felt betrayed by Europe as a whole. We were attacked by the media of all the surrounding countries, countries utterly hostile to the sort of values on which Europe rests. Satellite stations distorted what was going on. The silence in Europe at that moment gave enormous sustenance to all those forces struggling against the transformation of Iraq. It enabled the Jihadis, the Ba'athists, the extreme Arab nationalists, and the Arab regimes, to say 'Look at the hostility of Europe to what the United States has done!' Europe made it possible to isolate not just the United States but everything that is represented by the west. Europe gave strength to the argument that it was a traditional colonist land grab or oil grab, which was nonsense, of course.

I would say that much of the strength of the hostility of the Jihadi movement, and of the forces that have made life so horrible in Iraq, came from the silence of Europe. Europe has a lot to answer for. It's not even that it was half-hearted. They fell in completely with the language of the non-democratic Arab regimes. They bought their line and they seemed to stand for the same things. They undermined entirely the values of the operation. Europeans knew that the United States was not going to permanently occupy Iraq. Deep down the smarter Europeans must have known it wasn't just about oil. It was - rightly or wrongly - a way of changing the traditional western attitude towards the Arab Muslim world. It was an end to the support for autocratic and repressive governments. It was a new view that if we are going to succeed in this war against terror then we are going to have to be viewed by the populations of this part of the world in a totally different way. Now Europe might not have thought it was the right time. Europe might have thought it should be done differently. But Europe should never have been seen to be undermining the argument itself.

Europe was justifying and supporting the foundations on which these repressive regimes stood. It had acquiesced so fully in that relativist language it had no views of its own that it thought could be shared. More: it looked racist because it looked like the democratic values it enjoyed were not possible for Arabs and Muslims to enjoy. All of a sudden the shoe was on the other foot entirely. It was not the Americans who were the imperialists or racists. It was the Europeans who, by sitting back, were saying 'you Arabs and you Muslims really can't do any better than this, so why mess around with this thing in the first place?'

Abu Hamza's Website

Also from Internet Haganah, this link to Abu Hamza's website: Shareah.org.. A sample Q & A:

Are Suicide attacks Haram?

Question:

Are Suicide attacks haram? In our country some Alims says that suicide attack leads you to jahhannam (Hell fire).

Answer:

Asalaam 'alaikum

If (the operation) is done for (the sake of) suicide just so that the person can die and run from his difficulties then it is haram (unlawful) of course.

But if it is done as a tactic of war because there is no other strong mean to resist the enemies then it is of course one of the highest and noblest form of shahadah (martyrdom).

Wasalaam 'alaikum

Shaykh Abu Hamza Al-Misri

Ann Coulter on the Alito Hearings

Ann says it was important:

Sam Alito marks the final purging of the Bork experience.

All the Democrats could do was scream about his inactive membership — back in the '70s — in CAP, Concerned Alumni of Princeton, which had a magazine called Prospect, which once ran an article, apparently satirical, complaining about Princeton admitting co-eds. In my mind, the only potentially disqualifying aspect of Alito's record was that he wasn't a more active member of CAP, a group opposed to quotas, set-asides and the lowering of academic standards at Princeton.

Then this week, we found out Sen. Teddy Kennedy still belongs to an organization that doesn't admit women. Oh — also, he killed a girl.

I'm fairly certain I've mentioned that before — I don't recall, Mr. Chairman — but I don't understand why everyone doesn't mention it every time Senator Drunkennedy has the audacity to talk about how "troubled" and "concerned" he is about this or that nominee. I bet Mary Jo was "troubled" and "concerned" about the senator leaving her in trapped in a car under water while he went back to the hotel to create an alibi.

It's not as if Democrats can say: OK, OK! The man paid a price! Let it go! He didn't pay a price. The Kopechne family paid a price. Kennedy weaved away scot-free.

Is Spielberg's 'Munich' Based on a Fabrication?

I found this interesting posting on The Internet Haganah website, following links from the Jawa Report story below. It seems they have found an item published in the Guardian that throws the credibility of Spielberg's 'Munich' into question:

Israeli Yuval Aviv, who teamed up with Canadian George Jonas to write Vengeance, the bestseller on which Spielberg's "Munich" is based, never served in the Mossad or any Israeli intelligence organization. His nearest approximation to spy work was as a lowly gate guard for the airline El Al in New York in the early '70s. The tale he had woven was apparently nothing more than a Walter Mitty fabrication.

Jawa Report Tip Leads to Conviction

Little Green Footballs tipped us off to this interesting story of bloggers catching a would-be terrorist in the midwest, thanks to a lead from The Jawa Report.

It turns out that "Ahmed" was really Jordanian born Mohammed Radwan Obeid. Obeid had fraudulently immigrated to the United States by marrying an American woman, and then having the marriage annuled. Obeid was working as a cashier in Dayton, Ohio last year and living with his girlfriend in a nearby town. It was from the Troy branch of the Miami (Ohio) County public library that he began to seek out fellow jihadis.

Obeid's posts at jihadi forums was noticed by more than those anti-terrorist crusaders who monitor them. Obeid's posts about nuclear weapons and gun silencers was somehow noticed by reference librarian Laura Girolamo. Ms. Girolamo contacted the FBI who, using their newly found powers under the Patriot Act, were able to confirm the librarians suspicions.

At about the same time, a Jawa Report reader from Virginia, David Vazquez, began e-mailing Obeid. Obeid was under the false impression that Vazquez was a fellow jihad supporter. Obeid, he says, was now trying to recruit him for a terrorist cause.

Obeid told David Vazquez in e-mails that "we are starting a big operation that will make 9/11 nothing but a little bit of headache."

According to Vazquez, "I was very alarmed at the words (Obeid) was saying." He contacted the FBI.

Armed with the knowlege provided them by their ability under the Patriot Act to monitor public library computers, and by David Vazquez's saved e-mail conversations, the FBI picked up Obeid on March 28th for 'immigration violations'.

When asked about whether or not the e-mails were his, Obeid denied that they were. Since he was asked under oath, Obeid's denials amounted to knowingly and willfully making a false material representation.

A Federal immigration judge ordered Obeid's deportation in September. Obeid was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in October. He pleaded guilty to the felony charge of lying to Federal investigators.

James Taranto on Uncle Salvador's Escape to Turkey

This is a great story, by James Taranto in Friday's Wall Street Journal:

Working for a newspaper, I often feel as though I'm observing history from a ringside seat. When I visited Istanbul a few years ago, my favorite uncle, Salvador Taranto, told me the story of a direct encounter with history--an encounter in which history might easily have swallowed him up.

It was late December 1942. Salvador, my father's elder half-brother, was a 25-year-old Turkish citizen living in Marseilles, in the south of France, which the German army had occupied the month before. He was also a Jew. (When I tell people my last name, they often ask if I'm Canadian, since the English pronunciation is similar to "Toronto." In fact, Taranto is of Italian origin and is a common Jewish name in Istanbul, where my father was born and raised.)

The Nazis were not yet deporting Jews from Marseilles, but Salvador wisely decided to leave. "I wrote a letter to the Ministry of Interior [in Vichy, the occupation capital], telling that I am a Turkish citizen of Jewish religion, and, as you don't want foreigners and Jews in France, I would like to receive my exit visa."

Salvador was called to the local prefecture and asked to present his passport. He complied, though he feared it would be confiscated. But the news was good. "OK, you have an exit visa from France," a local bureaucrat told him. "But you have to leave within three or four days." There were no passenger ships to Istanbul, Salvador recalled, so the only way to get there was by rail. "The next day, I took the train--I left."

He traveled overnight to Milan and went to the Consulate of Croatia, a nominally independent fascist puppet state. There he made the mistake of saying he was Jewish. "After half an hour, they told me, 'Sorry, you cannot have a Croatian visa.' " He waited outside, and when the consul left for lunch, Salvador confronted him to demand an explanation. "I know that you are [a] Jew," the diplomat told him, "so I cannot give the visa."

Salvador proceeded to the Turkish Consulate, where he was advised to travel on. Aboard the train, a passport-control officer told him that before he even got to Croatia he would need a German visa to travel through another portion of occupied Yugoslavia. He got off in Trieste, Italy, and went to the German Consulate, where he applied the lesson he had learned in Milan. The Germans asked his religion, and he said "Musulman"--French for Muslim. They asked his parents' names. He said his mother was "Aisha," a common Turkish name, "instead of Rebecca," because, as he told me, "Rebecca is a name [that is] 100% Jew." His father's first name, Vitali, was Italian, so it didn't arouse suspicion. He got a visa, valid for 24 hours.

Then came the most unnerving part of the journey. A border guard at the Italian city of Postumia (now Postojna, Slovenia) turned him back, saying his visa was valid only at Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia), some 50 miles away. To get there before the visa expired, he had to hitch a ride on a freight train. When he crossed into German-occupied territory, a Nazi officer wearing a swastika armband was waiting to greet him.

"He told me, 'Welcome.' He brought me to a wooden house: 'You will sleep here.' " It was dinnertime, and the train onward would not come until morning. In the officers' mess, a large portrait of Hitler hung on the wall, looking down on Salvador. After a meal of soup and bread, it was on to the guesthouse. "I didn't undress, because . . . I thought they were looking at what I was doing. . . . I didn't sleep, because I was afraid." In the morning one of the Nazis summoned him when the train arrived. In an act of kindness that today is hard to fathom, the Nazi gave him "a big piece of bread" to tide him over for the trip.

There's more, and it is worth reading the whole article.

Jill Carroll's Father Offers Deal

On Arab television, Jim Carroll told his daughters' kidnappers:

As a father, I appeal to you to release my daughter for the betterment of your cause," Carroll said. "Allow her to be your voice to the world. Her life as a reporter will better serve your purpose than her death."

I seem to remember similar self-abasing statements during pleas offered in the Daniel Pearl case. While they are understandable under such pressure, it was distressing to hear them then, and I am distressed to see them now--because they sound like surrender and submission to terrorist demands.

BBC: Abu Hamza Launches Defense

The BBC has an eyewitness account of Abu Hamza's defense as his trial in London continues:

For the defence, Edward Fitzgerald QC's opening had been simple.

"Mr Hamza is probably the most frequently abused and ridiculed figure in this country," he said.

"Certain sections of the press delight in having a go at him. They call him 'Hook' and 'Hookie';

The Ox Bow Incident

Tim Dirks lists this 1943 William Wellman western melodrama, starring Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Henry Morgan, Dana Andrews, and Jane Darwell, among his picks for the greatest films on his his FilmSite devoted to Hollywood classics.

I couldn't agree more. We saw it on a Netflix DVD, watching it on a laptop, and it holds up on the small-screen very well. A post at the IMDB page discussed the relevance of the film's message to today's debates over torture, Guantanamo, "rendition," "enemy combatants", and NSA eavesdropping. The original intent of the film's producers was to make a statement about Nazism and how it took root. What makes the film a classic is that it actually has withstood the test of time beautifully. It could equally have been about McCarthyism or accusations of sexual harrassment.

What is the difference between a legitimate posse and a lynch mob? That is the question posed by screenwriter Lamar Trotti and director William Wellman. The answer is: due process.

In the Ox Bow incident, three innocent men are hanged because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rather than go through a cumbersome trial and the law's delay, the mob kills first and asks questions later. Seven men oppose the mob, but are unable to stop the travesty of justice. In that sense, the film is a tragedy. Among the protesters are Henry Fonda and Henry Morgan. They are in the minority, they are out-voted, and they are right. The hot-headed majority, baying for blood instead of justice, is wrong. They compound their crime when it turns out that the man they thought had been killed was merely wounded, and has recovered--and the perpetrators found elsewhere.

Tragic irony. Deeply moving. Brilliantly filmed and acted.

A reminder why it is important to determine who is guilty by trial by jury in open court--not to protect terrorists but to protect the rest of us from becoming what we are fighting against.

Only respect for rule of law is differentiates a posse from a lynch mob--or band of terrorists. In this film, Henry Fonda embodies that deeply American value.

Yes, you can add it to your Netlfix queue.

Konstantin on Russian Winter

Konstantin's Russian Blog waxes eloquent about Russia's "General Winter":

A couple of years ago I talked with one British intellectual about WWW2. As almost all British intellectuals younger than 50 he soon started talking about General Frost that saved Soviets from imminent catastrophe. I asked him, “What about Admiral Channel? If England were not separated from the Continent by English Channel it would’ve taken German tanks only a couple of weeks to roll over streets of Glasgow.” He went mad. Totally mad. He started raving about British patriotism, bravery, tenacity, professionalism, superb command, etc. etc. Admiral Channel saved Hitler, he said, as it also prevented Brits from rolling over Berlin in a week or so.

People who talk about General Frost somehow forgot that Russians are not superhuman and suffer from frost exactly the same way as Germans. Only Russians know Russians winters are cold but Germans (and French and Swedish before them) somehow forgot about it. It speaks a lot about German military professionalism.

Text of Bin Laden Message

Text from BBC Monitoring:

My message to you is about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the way to end it.

I had not intended to speak to you about this issue, because, for us, this issue is already decided: diamonds cut diamonds.

Praise be to God, our conditions are always improving, becoming better, while yours are the opposite.

However, what prompted me to speak are the repeated fallacies of your President Bush in his comment on the outcome of US opinion polls, which indicated that the overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of the forces from Iraq, but he objected to this desire and said that the withdrawal of troops would send the wrong message to the enemy.

Bush said: It is better to fight them on their ground than they fighting us on our ground.

In my response to these fallacies, I say: The war in Iraq is raging and operations in Afghanistan are on the rise in our favour, praise be to God.

The Pentagon figures indicate the rise in the number of your dead and wounded, let alone the huge material losses.

To go back to where I started, I say that the results of the poll satisfy sane people and that Bush's objection to them is false.

Reality testifies that the war against America and its allies has not remained confined to Iraq, as he claims.

In fact, Iraq has become a point of attraction and recruitment of qualified resources.

On the other hand, the mujahideen, praise be to God, have managed to breach all the security measures adopted by the unjust nations of the coalition time and again.

The evidence for this are the bombings you have seen in the capitals of the most important European countries of this aggressive coalition.

As for the delay in carrying out similar operations in America, this was not due to the failure to breach your security measures.

Operations are in preparation and you will see them on your own ground once the preparations are finished, God willing.

Based on the above, we see that Bush's argument is false.

However, the argument that he avoided, which is the substance of the results of opinion polls on withdrawing the troops, is that it is better not to fight the Muslims on their land and for them not to fight us on our land.

We do not object to a long-term truce with you on the basis of fair conditions that we respect.

We are a nation to which God has disallowed treachery and lying.

In this truce, both parties will enjoy security and stability and we will build Iraq and Afghanistan which were destroyed by the war.

There is no defect in this solution other than preventing the flow of hundreds of billions to the influential people and war merchants in America, who supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars.

UPDATE: Here's a link to the full text via the AP and NY Times, which has this tidbit:

Don't let your strength and modern arms fool you. They win a few battles but lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are much better. We were patient in fighting the Soviet Union with simple weapons for 10 years and we bled their economy and now they are nothing.

In that there is a lesson for you.

IMHO, this is indeed the Bin Laden strategy, though I don't know that if he has calcuated his endgame as carefully as the Russians, who are now in comeback mode...

Muscovites Enjoy -30 Degree Weather

At least, according to the Moscow Times...

Iraq Blog Count

In my googling for the Jill Carroll story, I found this interesting blog about Iraq blogs--Iraq Blog Count.

Al Jazeera on Jill Carroll

Al Jazeera reports kidnapped American freelancer Jill Carroll was "anti-occupation":

Muthana Harith al-Dhari, head of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), condemned and denounced all violent acts that expose innocent citizens – regardless of their identities – to danger.

Al-Dhari told Iraqi television: "Regarding the recent kidnapping of the American journalist [Jill Carroll] ... This journalist is one of the anti-occupation journalists. Indeed, she wrote many articles that explain the negative signs of the occupation. Also, in a recent story, she focused on the violations performed by government security forces against civilians.

"So, [its possible] that the occupiers might not be far removed from responsibility for this event. But if it was done by some anti-occupation forces then this is a message from us to make them understand the situation and release her in order to allow her to go back to work and participate in uncovering the real reasons for the American occupation in Iraq and the violations against its people."

Interestingly, I heard Jackie Spinner of the Washington Post on the Newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS tonight say that Carroll had no agenda. And the Committee to Protect Journalists has called Carroll "a neutral observer." So who is to be believed in this case: Al Jazeera's Iraqi source, or the Committee to Protect Journalists and a Washington Post correspondent?

Here's a link to an interesting 2005 article with Carroll's byline, from American Journalism Review, A Grim Foreshadowing.

Here's a different sort of Blogger's reaction...a Christian Blogger's response here...an Iraq Blogger here...and a tribute to her translator, Alan, here (scroll down to "Thanks for the Music").

Brooks Boliek on Jill Carroll's Kidnapping

I got to know Brooks Boliek a decade ago, when he covered PBS for the Hollywood Reporter. Here's his remembrance of supervising Jill Carroll as a reporter for States News Service.

Here's a link to a digest of Jill Carroll's war reporting. And here are some no longer active links from Google to Katy Carroll's defunct blog Lady of Arabia:

Holiday Tradgedy in Iraq

31 Aug 2005 by Katie
I got this email from Jill today in response to the stampede in Baghdad today.
She also sent me these great pictures of her making a traditional dish for the
religious holiday today. Jill's the one in the black abaya. ...
Lady of Arabia - http://ladyofarabia.blogspot.com

Jill at the Khadamiya Shrine

26 Aug 2005 by Katie
I got this great email from Jill today. Just to give you an idea of what she's
up to. Not sure if she went for fun or for a story, but here it is:. "... This is
a picture of where I was today. I was sitting in the shrine in the middle ...
Lady of Arabia - http://ladyofarabia.blogspot.com

UPDATE: According to the LA Times, Carroll was a friend of the late Marla Ruzicka, who was killed in Iraq. Here's a link to Carroll's tribute to Ruzicka in the Christian Science Monitor.

Al Jazeera editor Natasha Tynes has posted a tribute to her friendship with Jill Carroll,here and on her weblog.

Central Asian Dining Hits New York City

Julie Moskin's NY Times article today about Central Asian restaurants in "Regostan" (Rego Park, Queens) and Brighton Beach brought back some fond memories of living in Tashkent. I hope the food Julie Moskin found is a little less greasy and the restaurants don't use cottonseed oil in the plov. On the other hand, I'd really miss the fresh lepioshka (aka Non)...

Human Rights Watch: Torture Deliberate US Policy

From Kenneth Roth's introduction to Human Rights Watch's 2005 Annual Report:

President Bush continued to offer deceptive reassurance that the United States does not “torture” suspects, but that reassurance rang hollow. To begin with, the administration’s understanding of the term “torture” remained unclear. The United Nations’ widely ratified Convention against Torture defines the term as “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.” Yet as of August 2002, the administration had defined torture as nothing short of pain “equivalent…to that…associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will likely result.” In December 2004, the administration repudiated this absurdly narrow definition, but it offered no alternative definition.

The classic forms of torture that the administration continued to defend suggested that its definition remained inadequate. In March 2005, Porter Goss, the CIA director, justified water-boarding, a sanitized term for an age-old, terrifying torture technique in which the victim is made to believe that he is about to drown. The CIA reportedly instituted water-boarding beginning in March 2002 as one of six “enhanced interrogation techniques” for selected terrorist suspects. In testimony before the U.S. Senate in August 2005, the former deputy White House counsel, Timothy Flanigan, would not even rule out using mock executions.

Moreover, President Bush’s pronouncements on torture continued to studiously avoid mention of the parallel prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. That is because, in a policy first pronounced publicly by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in January 2005 Senate testimony, the Bush administration began claiming the power, as noted above, to use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as the victim was a non-American held outside the United States. Other governments obviously subject detainees to such treatment or worse, but they do so clandestinely. The Bush administration is the only government in the world known to claim this power openly, as a matter of official policy, and to pretend that it is lawful.

Here's the introduction's topic links:

Introduction

Torture and Inhumane Treatment: A Deliberate U.S. Policy

A Compromised U.S. Defense of Human Rights

British Complicity with Torture

Canada’s Ambivalent Position

Detention

Counterterrorism as an Excuse for Silence

The European Union

The Nefarious Role of Russia and China

Darfur and the African Union

International Justice

The United Nations

Conclusion

Notice anything missing?

I'll clue you in: There is no chapter heading devoted to threats to human rights from Arab or Islamic countries, organizations, or terrorist groups. While I agree the US should stop torturing prisoners, it is clear from the emphasis of this Human Rights Watch report that the authors believe human rights are under greater threat from the US, UK, Canada, the EU, Russia, and China than from Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Taliban or Al Qaeda.

HRW's manifest priorities undercut the historic struggle for progress in human rights, just as George Bush's defense of torture does, by missing the real threat to human rights today--the organizations, religious leaders, and countries that don't even pay lip service to Enlightenment principles underlying the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

What Roth is doing rhetorically in his introduction, it seems to me, is a bit like criticizing President Lincoln for abolishing Habeus Corpus during the Civil War--and not mentioning a threat from Southern Slavery or the firing on Ft. Sumter. After all, John Wilkes' Booth shouted 'Sic Semper Tyrannis!' after shooting Lincoln. Was Booth a 'terrorist,' or a 'freedom fighter,' driven to rebellion by Lincoln's repressive rule?

Think carefully...

More on London's Abu Hamza Trial

Here's the latest story from London's Telegraph, about incitement to suicide bombings directed at tourists:

Abu Hamza, the Muslim preacher, promised his followers "72 beautiful women in paradise" if they became suicide bombers and called on them to target tourists.

The Old Bailey heard Hamza, preaching in a video tape made at Finsbury Park Mosque in north London. He said the aim of jihad (holy war) was to humiliate non-believers and convert them to Islam.

He added: "Now look at the suicide bombs. Does it fulfil all these purposes? Yes, all of them."

Hamza, 47, is accused of nine counts of soliciting to murder, four counts of using threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour and two further counts of possessing abusive recordings with a view to distribution and possession of a document useful to preparing terrorism.

He praised the mujahideen (holy warriors) and added: "You tell me by Allah, what other obligation in Islam, when the person dies have these kind of things that he will be shahid [martyr], he will have the mercy of Allah, no fear upon him, 72 beautiful women in paradise. These given to him as the first gift."

He was asked by a member of his audience: "I was wondering whether suicide bombing is allowed?"

Hamza replied: "It's not called suicide, it's called Shahid operation. Suicide, this is what people call it to put people off it.

"Because if the only way to hurt the enemies of Islam is by taking your life, then it is allowed."

Hamza added: "When these things happening to the disbelievers, Allah shake them, shake their hearts. Why?

"Because they become terrified. 'These people, what can we do? They're crazy, they're crazy, what can we do?'"

He said tourism was haram (forbidden) and tourists were the shaitan (satan) of all countries.

Sabbah's Blog has another view of the trial.