Has Pope Benedict Ignited a New Crusade?

That's the gist of charges by Islamic leaders reported in this article in Ha'aretz:

"We do not accept the apology through Vatican channels ... and ask him [Benedict] to offer a personal apology - not through his officials - to Muslims for this false reading [of Islam]," Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah told worshippers in his Friday prayers sermon.

Fadlallah's words were some of the strongest yet in response to the pontiff's remarks on Islam's prophet Mohammed and holy war, during a speech this week in Germany, which angered many in the Muslim world.

"We call on the Pope to carry out a scientific and fastidious reading of Islam. We do not want him to succumb to the propaganda of the enemy led by Judaism and imperialism against Islam," Fadlallah said.

Dmitri Simes on Bush's Torture Lobbying

From The National Interest:

So, here we are now in the United States, after a victory in the Cold War, where the President of the United States—and not just any President, but one who has made moralism his trademark—is asking Congress to approve legislation that would allow finding people guilty of serious crimes without revealing key evidence against them. Joseph Stalin used to say that “the [security] organs don’t make mistakes.” Do we really want to have a legal system making the same assumption about the CIA?

...It’s troubling that Mr. Bush does not accept as self-evident truth that torture is wrong and un-American. The argument that it may save innocent lives misses the point. Through the history of combat, most torture was not inflicted by pathological sadists, but rather by interrogators who wanted to get information that could save the lives of their troops and civilians. If the United States makes it acceptable to use “alternative techniques” against enemy combatants, it is a no-brainer that American soldiers and even ordinary Americans living abroad would be in great peril.

More broadly, in taking the positions he does on torture, President Bush should forget about the ideological struggle he has proclaimed to win the hearts and minds of Muslims. Since as a practical matter that the vast majority of those subjected to “alternative techniques” are likely to be Muslims—and in the age of the internet, their stories are bound to be quickly known all throughout the Islamic world—all Mr. Bush’s claims about his noble desires to make the world safe for democracy would sound hollow. Senator John McCain, Senator John Warner, Senator Lindsey Graham, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and retired Army General John Vessey are exactly right to insist on modifying the President’s military tribunal plans on the grounds of both security and morality. No improved homeland security procedures, no tighter screening of airline passengers, or even better examination of containers at American ports, can compensate for turning millions of Muslims into America’s enemies. Yet President Bush is proposing another step in that direction.

Agustin Blazquez on Kofi Annan's Cuban Visit

From Agustin Blazquez, this email message:

The "wonderful" United Nations at work!!!

Kofi Annan, the U.N. Secretary General visited with the totalitarian tyrant of Cuba, however he refused an invitation from the dissidents to meet with them in Havana. How thoughtful and sensitive to the over 100,000 Castro victims and about two million exiles worldwide. Agustin Blazquez, Sept. 15, 2006 ABIP

The Poetry International Web

Just found out about this international poetry website from Very Like a Whale (in our blogroll): Poetry International Web.

Nicholas Sarkozy Goes to Washington

The French minister of the interior, leading candidate in the French election, came to Washington and New York to demonstrate French solidarity with America, according to The Washington Post:

Sarkozy said the French remember American heroism in France's defense in two world wars. He also recalled that the United States and France have never gone to war, a situation that contrasts sharply with the violence that marked U.S.-British ties in early U.S. history.

He's certainly won my endorsement. Vive Sarkozy!

Orianna Fallaci

Michelle Malkin reports that Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci has died of cancer, aged 77. Here's the Reuters story.And here's a link to the AP. And here's the Times of London obit. An excerpt:

Fallaci, who had been ill with cancer for several years, died at a private clinic in her home city of Florence overnight, said Paolo Klun, of the RCS publishing group, which published Fallaci’s work. She had returned to Florence in the last days of her life after living for decades in New York. In recent years, she had gained a second notoriety for her vitriolic writings on Islam.

Small, beautiful, and extraordinarily tough, Fallaci was an Italian resistance fighter who became a war correspondent in the 1950s and 1960s, covering the Vietnam War and conflicts in the Middle East and Latin America. She was shot three times and beaten by Mexican police covering student riots in 1968.

I'd really like to see a TV movie-of-the-week about her life...

The Tin Star (1957)

Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins, and Betsy Palmer star in The Tin Star, an Anthony Mann western that still resonates with today's war on terrorism. The tin star of the title is pinned to Tony Perkins' vest--but he's obviously not up to the job. Enter Henry Fonda as bounty-hunter Morg Hickman, riding into town with a dead body on his saddle to collect the reward for bringing back a criminal "Dead or Alive." It's a sophisticated film, about the meaning of justice. Neville Brand plays Bart Bogardus, a racist villian who has the town quaking--until Henry Fonda shows up. John McIntyre is Doc McCord, whose character represents what little goodness was left in the town before Fonda's arrival. The other players are all excellent, especially the cowardly and weak town elders--business leaders who mean to do the right thing, but when the going gets tough, cut and run. In keeping with Howard Suber's theme of American individualism in Hollywood movies, eventually Tony Perkins stands up to the town bully, and Henry Fonda rides off into the sunset, with his faith in himself restored, as well...

Will James Wolfensohn Move to Kazakhstan?

Shades of German Chancellor Schroeder working for Gazprom, the former World Bank chief has been offered a job in Almaty by Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbaev, according to RIAN.ru:

Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev has offered the post of advisor in a project to develop a regional financial center to the World Bank's former president James Wolfensohn, a financial expert said Thursday.

The Kazakh government is implementing the project in Almaty, the country's financial capital, to attract foreign investors and help Kazakh business enter world stock markets.

"The former president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, met with the Kazakh president yesterday to discuss plans for the development of the center, and Wolfensohn was offered the post of advisor for financial development of the center in Almaty," said Arken Arystanov, chairman of the center's regulatory agency.

Russian Central Banker Murdered in Moscow

Andrei Kozlov, 41, who investigated money-laundering for Russia's Central Bank, was gunned down in the street yesterday, in what looked like a mob rubout. RIAN.ru has the latest news updates:

Kozlov first joined the Soviet Union's central bank and rose to become the first deputy chairman of the Bank of Russia in 1997 before quitting for the private sector in 1999. He held several senior positions, including as chairman of Russian Standard Bank in 1999-2000, before returning to the Bank of Russia in April 2002.

The Central Bank said in a statement posted on its Web site, "He made a huge contribution to the reform of the country's banking system, making it more effective, transparent and stable."

And members of the banking community also praised Kozlov's efforts to ensure stability and clean up a system that was rocked by a default in 1998 that saw confidence plunge.

"He did a great deal to improve Russia's banking system, make it more transparent and conformant with international banking standards," said Mikhail Zadornov, a former finance minister and head of Vneshtorgbank 24, a subsidiary of the state-owned foreign trade bank Vneshtorgbank.

Daily Kommersant cited banking sources as saying Kozlov's activities had also targeted "gray schemes" used by importers to minimize customs duties and value-added tax payments, as well as by criminal and shadow groups to launder money.

Contract killings in Russia were frequent in the 1990s as gangsters sought to take control of lucrative assets in various fields, but a banking figure as senior as Kozlov has never been murdered before.

Ann Coulter on The Path to 9/11

From AnnCoulter.com:

Islamic jihadists attacked America year after year throughout the Clinton administration. They did everything but blow up his proverbial "bridge to the 21st century." Every year but one, Clinton found an excuse not to fight back.

The first month Clinton was in office, Islamic terrorists with suspected links to al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein bombed the World Trade Center.

For the first time ever, a terrorist act against America was treated not as a matter of national security, but exclusively as a simple criminal offense. The individual bombers were tried in a criminal court. (The one plotter who got away fled to Iraq, that peaceful haven of kite-flying children until Bush invaded and turned it into a nation of dangerous lunatics.)

In 1995 and 1996, various branches of the Religion of Peace — al-Qaida, Hezbollah and the Iranian "Party of God" — staged car bomb attacks on American servicemen in Saudi Arabia, killing 24 members of our military in all. Each time, the Clinton administration came up with an excuse to do nothing.

Despite the Democrats' current claim that only the capture of Osama bin Laden will magically end terrorism forever, Clinton turned down Sudan's offer to hand us bin Laden in 1996. That year, Mohammed Atta proposed the 9/11 attack to bin Laden.

Clinton refused the handover of bin Laden because — he said in taped remarks on Feb. 15, 2002 — "(bin Laden) had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him." Luckily, after 9/11, we can get him on that trespassing charge.

Although Clinton made the criminal justice system the entire U.S. counterterrorism strategy, there was not even an indictment filed after the bombing of either Khobar Towers (1996) or the USS Cole (2000). Indictments were not filed until after Bush/Ashcroft came into office.

Only in 1998 did the Clinton-haters ("normal people") force Clinton into a military response. Solely because of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton finally lobbed a few bombs in the general direction of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

In August 1998, three days after Clinton admitted to the nation that he did in fact have "sex with that woman," he bombed Afghanistan and Sudan, doing about as much damage as another Clinton fusillade did to a blue Gap dress.

The day of Clinton's scheduled impeachment, Dec. 18, 1998, he bombed Iraq. This accomplished two things: (1) It delayed his impeachment for one day, and (2) it got a lot of Democrats on record about the monumental danger of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.

Tony Blair on A Global Alliance for Global Values

The British Prime Minister's recent condemnation of "anti-American...madness" has made headlines around the world. We searched for the source, and found it in this pamphlet published by the UK Foreign Policy Centre, that you can download as PDF file,for free, by clicking this link. This excerpt indicates that Prime Minister Blair (or his speechwriters) may be on the same wavelength as Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, or even Vladimir Putin:

But by the early 20th century, after renaissance, reformation and enlightenment had swept over the Western world, the Muslim and Arab world was uncertain, insecure and on the defensive. Some countries like Turkey went for a muscular move to secularism. Others found themselves caught between colonisation, nascent nationalism, political oppression and religious radicalism. Muslims began to see the sorry state of Muslim countries as symptomatic of the sorry state of Islam. Political radicals became religious radicals and vice versa.

Those in power tried to accommodate the resurgent Islamic radicalism by incorporating some of its leaders and some of its ideology. The result was nearly always disastrous. The religious radicalism was made respectable; the political radicalism suppressed and so in the minds of many, the cause of the two came together to symbolise the need for change. So many came to believe that the way of restoring the confidence and stability of Islam was the combination of religious extremism and populist politics. The true enemies became "the West" and those Islamic leaders who co-operated with them.

The extremism may have started through religious doctrine and thought. But soon, in offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, supported by Wahhabi extremists and taught in some of the Madrassas of the Middle East and Asia, an ideology was born and exported around the world.

On 9/11 2001, 3,000 people were murdered. But this terrorism did not begin on the streets of New York. Many more had already died, not just in acts of terrorism against western interests, but in political insurrection and turmoil round the world.

Christopher Hitchens on the CIA's Responsibility for 9/11

Speaking on Australian television's Lateline, Hitchens called for the CIA to be abolished and its officials put on trial for their criminal negligence on 9/11:

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: The CIA has never got anything right. Actually, I think I know it's a trillion-dollar intelligence budget. Unconstitutionally, the CIA, which I agree with Senator Moynihan, should have been closed and abolished some years before now, doesn't have to reveal how much money it spends. But let's say it's a trillion dollars. The only American who was able to infiltrate the Taliban in that entire period was John Walker Lyndh, an al-Qaeda fancier from Marin County, California, and a drifter. The CIA has recently fired two or three dozen of its very few translators into a Arabic and Persian because they're homosexual. It is famously incompetent, corrupt and viral and it has never got anything right by either Iraq, Afghanistan or al-Qaeda. George Tenet on - this time, exactly this time five years ago, was watching the smoke with Senator David Boren, formerly of Oklahoma, and is quoted directly by Robert Woodward as having said, "Gee, I hope it's nothing to do with those guys in the flight schools in the mid-west," who the CIA knew about that and did nothing about. It's remarkable that the leaders of the CIA have not been impeached and put on trial for criminal and culpable negligence and this contribution to this fantastically mediocre Senate report is only the latest of their many failures. That's what I think about the CIA.

Individualism--Hollywood's True Religion

That's the argument made by Howard Suber, my former UCLA professor and author of the Power of Film, in a Huffington Post article entitled "Why They Hate Our Movies":

Societies that deny the power of the individual ironically tend to gravitate towards a single all-powerful individual who is allowed to hold the power of the nation in his hands. When this happens, there is no need to create heroic individuals in fiction because public squares, news broadcasts, postage stamps and flags all emblazon the image of the same hero on them.

Paradoxically, societies such as our own that trumpet a belief in the power of the individual seldom allow any single individual to acquire much power in real life. As popular culture in America demonstrates, there is an inverse rule that dictates that, the more power someone in real life has, the more there seems an urgent necessity to cut him or her down to size.

Individualist societies are uncomfortable with heroes in real life, and often don't know what to do with them. Perhaps, as a compensation, they produce a multitude of heroes in their movies and other popular media.

Everyone knows that American Individualism means that each person is expected to "look out for #1" -- himself. And yet, no memorable popular American film gives us a protagonist who is only concerned with himself throughout the film.

At the beginning of Casablanca, Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) utters that famous line, "I stick my neck out for nobody" but by the end, he's given up the only person he's ever truly loved for "The Cause." In Gone With the Wind, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), makes it clear early in the film that, "I'm the only cause I believe in," but he becomes a hero by running the Northern blockade to aid his countrymen, and joins the army even though he knows the Confederacy is doomed.

Early in It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey (James Stewart) tells his father that he wants to get out of the small town he lives in and scorns, but then he devotes his whole life to it. Early in On the Waterfront, Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) says, "Me? I'm with Me" and he advises Edie (Eva Marie Saint) that his philosophy is "Do it to them before they do it to you." By the end of the film, however, he is beaten nearly to death fighting on behalf of his fellow workers. Finally, early in The Godfather, Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) says of the story he has just told his girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), "That's my family, Kay -- it's not me." But Michael then joins his family's violent business in order to save his father's life.

The pattern here is clear: characters often begin their story being concerned only with themselves; but by the end, they sacrifice themselves for their family, community, or cause. This is not that different from those with orthodox religious or political faiths, who also believe in the importance of sacrifice.

The difference lies in where each thinks the most important power lies. When Orthodox Muslims talk about their plans, they usually say, Inshallah, just as Orthodox Jews say, "God Willing." For the religious, the power to make something happen lies outside individual will or control. But where in America's memorable movies, aside from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ - about as orthodox a film as has ever been made - does a central character rely on God, Jesus, Mohammad, or some other force outside himself?

The sad fact is that, throughout history, and in much of the world today - even in so-called advanced societies - people do not feel they have power as individuals. It is no wonder, then, that they hunger for films that tell them that a single individual can matter, can be in control of his or her own destiny.

It is not surprising that those who believe the most important power lies in a deity, the state, or some idea should hate American movies. They are correct to see in them a competing belief system. What is surprising is that so many people who share the belief in the power of the individual fail to realize how powerful it is.

You can buy Howard Suber's book from Amazon.com here:

Darfur--Not Genocide?

That's the argument of Gerald Prunier's book, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, reviewed by Yehudit Ronen in Middle East Quarterly. Instead, it is more accurate to call the situation mass murder in the midst of civil war:

Prunier claims that the killing in Darfur should not be seen as genocide, since the aims of the Sudanese government were not to eradicate a people but rather to carry out the brutal suppression of what was seen as an existential threat. Whatever term one uses, however, the carnage and misery unleashed by Khartoum and its Janjaweed cohorts remains just as horrific.

Washington's New Mayor

Councilman Adrian Fenty won the Democratic primary for Mayor yesterday. Since Washington, DC has essentially a one-party system (Democratic), that means he'll be elected Mayor come November. Since I'm a registered independent, I couldn't vote for him in the primary. But I'll do so in the election. I met him about a year ago at a crosswalk on Connecticut Avenue near the Chevy Chase Circle Safeway, where the city put in a flag system to protect pedestrians. It doesn't really work and he told me he'd try to get money for a stoplight (I think he said it costs $100,000). Now that Fenty's the new mayor, I hope it happens. His primary campaign was very well-organized. The student precinct walkers (one from DC and one from Connecticut, via Oberlin College) had Blackberrys, clipboards, and all sorts of organizational tools. They asked us if there was anything that needed doing. Then, Councilman Fenty took care of a dead tree on our street very quickly. He's promised to be the kind of mayor who gets things done. Hope he lives up to his promises...

Bloggerheads.tv

My friend from New York Magazine recommended this link to Bloggerheads.tv, starring Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus talking about current events.

The First Published Profile of John O'Neill

My friend told me over the phone today today, after seeing The Path to 9/11, that he assigned the first story ever published about former FBI agent John O'Neill while working as an editor at New York Magazine. He pointed out the irony that Osama killed both Massoud in Afghanistan, and O'Neill, who was working in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Meanwhile, Osama is still at large. Robert Kolker's article, titled "O'Neill v. Osama," is available online, here:

Most of the victims of the September 11 attack seemed tragically random -- they were just going to work. Not John O'Neill. Until last August, he'd been the FBI's top expert on Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, a lead investigator of the USS Cole and African embassy bombings. Leaving the Bureau in frustration, he'd taken a job he thought of as retirement: World Trade Center security chief. But when he died it became clear: His own life contained as many mysteries as his enemy's.

David Horowitz Denies Path to 9/11 Conspiracy Charge

He responds to Max Blumenthal's accusations at Frontpagemag.com

I've been amused over the past few days to see how powerful I am and to see how rapidly a fiction can be concocted and travel around the leftwing web, but not actually surprised. The author of this fiction, along with many others is little Max, whose posts begin on his blog but don't end there. Huffington Post, Yahoo News, Indymedia and a rash of others spread each and every fantasy he comes up with . . . In fact, I never heard of David Cunningham or his group before reading about them in Max's hilarious column. I didn't know about "Path to 9/11" until after it was made. In the 18 or so years I have been active in the Hollywood community I have never attempted to "discredit mainstream film and TV production" and in fact formed coalitions with liberals in the industry to defend films against censoship attempts like the V-Chip and critics like Joe Lieberman, Tipper Gore and many conservatives along with them.

This is just one of many of attempts by the left to create a right-wing caricature they can attack. Apparently the real David Horowitz -- a free speech liberal, a supporter of artistic freedom in Hollywood and academic freedom in the university -- is too much of a challenge for their feeble minds to handle.

A Swing and a Miss, for President Bush

President Bush interrupted ABC's broadcast of The Path to 9/11 last night. Despite what sounded like some phrases by Peggy Noonan (words like "cherish"), and what a friend of mine pointed out were self-conscious imitations of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address ("rededicate"), Bush had nothing new to say. He couldn't name the enemy America is fighting. He couldn't explain the link between Iraq and Bin Laden (Hint: if UBL could get away with 9/11, why wouldn't Saddam try something, too?). He was wrong on the "clash of civilizations" argument--what's the point of dissing Samuel Huntington when you clearly don't have anything better to offer. His "war for civilization" didn't tell us who was fighting on which side. How can Americans recognize those fighting "against civilization"?

Lest this seem nitpicking, I'll note that the overall context served to make Bush's speech look like a scene in The Path to 9/11, so that when the final grades from the 9/11 commission appeared in the end titles--giving the Bush administration several D's and an F--they also read like Bush's grade card for the President's Address to the Nation....

Was David Horowitz Behind The Path to9/11?

The Nation's Max Blumenthal claims there was a Christian conspiracy headed by ex-communist David Horowitz to get The Path to 9/11 broadcast on ABC:

Iger now bears ultimate responsibility for authorizing the product of a well-honed propaganda operation--a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far-right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, a secretive evangelical religious right group long associated with Horowitz, founded by The Path to 9/11's director, David Cunningham, that aims to "transform Hollywood" in line with its messianic vision, has taken the lead.

BTW, the worst part of the broadcast here in DC were CYA notices from WJLA crawling across the top of the screen saying that the station was not responsible for the views aired in the program. The second worst were the title cards explaining that the dramatization was a dramatization. It looked legalistic, bureaucratic, and cowardly--just like something those bureaucrats responsbible for 9/11 depicted in the film would come up with. America can't win until the nation stops apologizing for trying to do so.

IMHO, Although not bad--and admittedly, David Cunningham is no Frank Capra--the show really pulled its punches on both Bush and Clinton. The second episode didn't depict Bush flying all over the country, obviously not knowing what the heck had happened. This didn't exactly please those of us who lived in Washington, DC at the time. On the other hand, the show did a pretty good job of making the point that overpaid nitwits in suits with lots of fancy toys simply cannot defeat highly motivated fanatics, that the US betrayed Massoud, that the immigrant customs officer in Florida who turned back one hijacker--despite being told to lay off the Saudis (and which office in Washington did that come from?)--as well as the wife of the Flight 93 passenger who told him what was going on, did more for the US than all of the CIA, FBI, and National Security staffs put together. The media came out OK, not surprisingly, given that it was based in part on ABC News correspondent John Miller's book, The Cell. One good point in the film: that when the going gets tough in Washington, all they can think of is to call a meeting, or a videoconference. Cheney looked helpless, Rice looked hapless, Richard Clarke seemed to be a phony blowhard, etc.

Tellingly, CIA chief George Tenet, the villian of Act I, was still around working for Bush in Act II--how come?

Subtext: We're still in deep trouble.

The only politician who came off well in this story was my favorite: New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who wouldn't let the FBI shut down New Year's 2000 celebrations. Good call.

Now, can we survive as a nation until 2008?