Senate Revises Freedom of Information Act

Good news for those seeking information about the activities of the federal government, according to this report from the National Security Archive:

Washington DC, August 4, 2007 - The United States Senate yesterday joined the House in passing bipartisan legislation that will fix several of the most glaring problems with the U.S. Freedom of Information Act that were identified in six government-wide audits of FOIA practice carried out by the National Security Archive. The legislation, authored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tx.), overcame a hold placed by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Az) on behalf of Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department. It passed late Friday evening by unanimous consent, on the last day of the Congressional session before the August recess.

After a conference to reconcile provisions between the House and Senate versions, the new law will mandate tracking numbers for FOIA requests that take longer than 10 days to process so they will no longer fall through the cracks, require agencies to report more accurately to Congress on their FOIA programs, create a new ombuds office at the National Archives to mediate conflicts between agencies and requesters, clarify the purpose of FOIA to encourage dissemination of government information, and provide incentives to agencies to avoid litigation and processing delays.

"These are commonsense reforms that will finally force agencies to fix egregious backlogs and reporting problems," said Archive staff counsel Kristin Adair. "But, remarkably, it took several congressional terms to get these straightforward adjustments into the law, with obstruction from the executive branch all along the way, including, ironically, a secret hold by a Senator acting at the behest of the Department of Justice."

Similar legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly during Sunshine Week in March 2007, but progress on the Senate bill has been halted for months by a hold placed by Sen. Kyl on behalf of the Justice Department. After multiple editorials, including several in Sen. Kyl's homestate Arizona Republic, assailed Kyl's position and nicknamed him "the Secrecy Senator," Kyl's staff negotiated new compromise language and allowed the bill to reach the floor today.

"This is a small step for open government, but a giant leap for the United States Senate," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. "We applaud Congress' action to fulfill the intent of the Freedom of Information Act. This legislation will correct many of the deficiencies in FOIA that the Archive's audits have revealed."

The most recent audit by the Archive, the Knight Open Government Survey released in July 2007, found that the oldest still-pending FOIA requests had languished in federal agencies for as long as 20 years.

The previous Knight Open Government Survey, released in March 2007, found that only one out of five federal agencies had complied fully with the last FOIA reform legislation, the Electronic FOIA Amendments passed in 1996, intended to post so much government information on the Web that many FOIA requests would become unnecessary.

The Archive's audits of federal government FOIA practice are supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Archive partners in the efforts to reform the FOIA include the OpenTheGovernment.org coalition, the Sunshine in Government Initiative, the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Public Citizen and Public Citizen Litigation Group, and dozens of other groups that signed on to support the House and Senate bills this year.

Inside the Scottish Parliament

After completing our Hadrian's Wall walk, we rented a car to visit Glasgow and Edinburgh. Glasgow made a strongly favorable impression, especially the lovely Argyll Hotel near Glasgow University--tartan carpeting and drapes, kippers for breakfast. Lots of culture nearby: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Glasgow School of Art, the Hunterian Museum, the Kelvingrove Museum, the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art. The town has definitely been "regenned," as the British say. Scotsman Gordon Brown probably was of some help in this.

Afterwards, we visited Edinburgh--where Gordon Brown went to University. We didn't go into the castle because they wanted 11 pounds per person ($22), but stayed outside. We did see the wonderful National Gallery of Scotland, which had some real masteripieces as well as a nice (though crowded) cafe--free admission--and the National Museum of Scotland (admission free). It had an incredible collection of ancient artifacts from Druids, Vikings, and Romans--including an actual leather Roman tent preserved in a peat bog, Roman fabrics, jewelery, and Viking graves. The Museum exhibits gave the story of Hadrian's wall from the other side of the wall--Romans were "alien invaders," who "oppressed" the natives in an "Imperial" power grab. For Romans, substitute "English" and you get the picture of what's going on. We had just seen Sir Trevor McDonald blast Gordon Brown on ITV's News Knight by saying he was "not democratically elected, too fat--and Scottish." So the Scots may have a point (one wonders if any of Sir Trevor's clan members among the McDonalds have had a word with him). No wonder that Scottish pound notes features a picture of Robert the Bruce instead of Queen Elizabeth.

Coincidentally, the British government had just approved construction of two aircraft carriers at Clydeside shipyards. The Scottish National Party minister in charge was asked on television how she could be in favor of aircraft carrier construction while opposed to the Iraq war and militarism. She seemed to answer that with devolution, not only would the ships provide jobs, but indicated the vessels might also become ships in a future Scottish Navy after full independence. After watching that interview on TV, we just had to see the Scottish Parliament. Also, free admission.

The building is covered in faux-wicker on the outside, and not much to look at. Inside, it is beautiful. One curious decorative element was a motif of silhouttes along the walls of debating chamber (you can see them in the left-hand photo above). A tour group told their guide that they thought the figures looked like "whisky bottles" on shelves. No, their tour guide answered, the shapes represent the people looking in on the transparent process of an open democracy--a reminder to parliamentarians.

That sounded reasonable--until we went into the Scottish Parliament's Holyrood gift shop and found a display case with souvenirs including "Scottish Parliament Whisky" described as "our 15 year old Member’s Pure Speyside Malt." Now I think the tour group may have been right--the Parliament decorations may be a tribute to the spirit of the Scottish bard Robert Burns, who wrote: "Freedom and whisky gang thegither..."

US Holocaust Museum to Feature Bergson Group

Jackie Trescott reports in the Washington Post that the US Holocaust Museum is planning to present an exhibit on the Bergson Group--featured in Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?, now available from Kino International on DVD--during World War II:

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has agreed to recast part of its permanent exhibition to include the story of the Bergson Group, a World War II citizens' group that called attention to the horrors facing European Jews and urged the American government to help.

The group was created in 1942 by a Lithuanian Jew who had immigrated to Palestine and taken the name Peter Bergson. He had come to Washington to represent a Zionist group and had visions of creating a Jewish army that would fight alongside the Allied armies. But on Nov. 25, 1942, he saw a story in The Washington Post reporting that the Nazis had killed 250,000 Polish Jews and planned the extermination of half of the Jewish population in that country by the end of the year.

From the Archives (pdf): On Nov. 25, 1942, Peter Bergson saw a story in The Washington Post that reported Nazis plans to kill 250,000 Polish Jews over the next year. The story ran on page 6. Bergson was so angry at the news and the placement of the story that he decided to start a massive lobbying effort. Read the full text of that story, headlined "Half of Jews Ordered Slain, Poles Report," here.

The story ran on Page 6.

Bergson was so angry at the news and the placement of the story that he decided to start a massive lobbying effort.

Some of his tactics were considered divisive and controversial at the time. The group, formally called the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, bought newspaper ads pointing to the failure of the government and other efforts to save the Jews. There were also demonstrations, including a march of 400 rabbis in Washington.

He enlisted celebrities, including writers Ben Hecht and Moss Hart and actors Edward G. Robinson and Paul Muni. They created a dramatic pageant called "We Will Never Die," with music by Kurt Weill and readings praising the achievements of Jews throughout history, as well as describing the horrific plight of victims of the Nazis. The pageant traveled the country, drawing 40,000 people to Madison Square Garden. When it was performed at Washington's Constitution Hall on April 12, 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt and dozens of politicians watched it. When Mrs. Roosevelt wrote her next newspaper column about the pageant, according to the Holocaust Museum, "it was the first time [millions of American newspaper readers] heard about the Nazi mass murders."

At one point, Bergson advocated the bombing of Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

Finally, the group won the support of Congress, which prepared resolutions asking President Roosevelt to take action. Before the vote, Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board in 1944.

Museum officials said yesterday that at the urging of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies they would revise the segment on the board, a federal agency formed in the waning months of the war to help people flee Nazi oppression. It helped finance Raoul Wallenberg's work and saved about 200,000 people. The materials, which will be introduced next spring, will include wall text and photo reproductions and a new case for artifacts on the Bergson efforts.

While the permanent exhibition is often updated, this is the most extensive revision of one subject to date.

More background here.

Back online...

In case anyone missed us during the last few weeks, someone I know and yours truly were off on a walking holiday along Hadrian's Wall. We made it the whole way from Wallsend to Bowness-on-Solway, covering some 84 miles in 8 days of walking along the route of an earlier "Clash of Civilizations". Along this line, someone I know sent me this Auden poem, which captures some drizzly feelings that arose out of the mist from time immemorial:

Roman Wall Blues

Over the heather the wet wind blows,
I've lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose.

The rain comes pattering out of the sky,
I'm a Wall soldier, I don't know why.

The mist creeps over the hard grey stone,
My girl's in Tungria; I sleep alone.

Aulus goes hanging around her place,
I don't like his manners, I don't like his face.

Piso's a Christian, he worships a fish;
There'd be no kissing if he had his wish.

She gave me a ring but I diced it away;
I want my girl and I want my pay.

When I'm a veteran with only one eye
I shall do nothing but look at the sky.

WH Auden

Bush's Libby Clemency Means He Must Fire Cheney to "Move On"

President Bush's press conference today is a reminder that the Scooter Libby commutation was not about Libby, but about Vice President Dick Cheney's role. Since the trial pretty much established that Libby did nothing without Cheney's permission--and certainly was not reprimanded or punished by Cheney--it means that in order for President Bush to restore his credibility, he must honor his pledge to fire any member of his administration involved in leaking information about the CIA--in this case, there is still one member of his administration who was pretty clearly involved: Dick Cheney.

So long as Cheney remains, the Libby cloud will hang over Bush. The media and the Democrats won't let Bush "move on." So, if he truly wants to move on, it is time to find a replacement for Dick Cheney, asap. At this point, someone like Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice might be hard for Democrats to block, as well as put down a marker for Republicans as champions of civil rights. In addition, she must surely pass the "loyalty test" that Bush believes in. It would also open up the State Department to someone new and dynamic. Someone like General Schwarzkopf, if he'd do it (as a George Marshall for our times) With the appointment of Dr. Rice, Bush might at least have a postitive entry in the history books for breaking the color barrier in the Executive Branch (presuming that Dr. Rice acknowledges the Vice-President is part of the Executive Branch).

I'd say the sooner Bush dumps Cheney the better, for both the President and the nation.

Ken Burns Surrenders Yet Again...

According to Lisa de Moraes in today's Washington Post:

Ken Burns is adding about 29 minutes of new material to his seven-part documentary about soldiers who fought in World War II, a response to pressure from a consortium of Hispanic organizations that demanded soldiers of their ethnic background be given prominent roles in the project.

Interviews with two Hispanic soldiers have been added to the first and sixth episodes of "The War," and the story of a Native American soldier has been added to the fifth episode, Burns told reporters here Wednesday at Summer TV Press Tour 2007.

The additional footage, which will be at the end of the episodes but before the end credits roll, may, or may not, end the war Latino groups have waged with Burns over "The War," which is set to debut Sept. 23 on PBS.

"It's been a kind of hot political battle, and we tried to rise above it and take the high road and respond as best we could," Burns said.

He said it had been "painful" to him that "people would misinterpret what the film is about" but added, "I think we found the right balance and the right compromise that permitted us not to alter our original vision and version of the film and at the same time honor what was legitimate about the concerns of people who for 500 years have had their story untold in American history."

Burns said the new material, which pushes the documentary's total length to around 15 hours, is "more than we were asked and expected to" add, calling it "our way of kind of honoring our own interest in doing this right."

In her opening remarks to TV critics and reporters Wednesday, PBS CEO Paula Kerger said the decision to make the changes was entirely Burns's.

"I applaud Ken for reaching an understanding with the Latino groups. . . . The concerns these groups raised remind us that public broadcasting will always be held to a higher standard. Americans demand a lot of us, and that's okay. That's how it should be. We welcome their interest and enthusiasm."

The "enthusiasm" of such groups as the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility -- an umbrella organization of 14 Latino groups -- extended to notifying Burn's underwriters, including General Motors, Anheuser-Busch and several nonprofit foundations, that they would hold those groups accountable if "The War" was not amended to insert interviews with Latino soldiers. They did so with the backing of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which voted in May to support their efforts to wring the additional material highlighting minority soldiers out of Burns.

Burns initially resisted making changes to his project, but in April he agreed to bring on a Latino producer to help produce the new material. But the kerfuffle didn't end there; some Hispanic groups demanded the already finished documentary be re-edited to include the new footage.

The War on Britain's Jews

Richard Littlejohn reports on the rise in anti-Semitism in the UK, for Britain's Channel Four (ht lgf):More video clips posted at Little Green Footballs.

Ed Lasky on Rudy Giuliani's Foreign Policy Gurus

From The American Thinker:

Giuliani's adroit choices for his foreign policy team are likely to enhance his popularity among members of the Republican Party. His campaign has announced the lineup (appropriately enough on the day of the All-Star game - because they are certainly stars) and will likely win praise from the right. Many of the foreign policy members come from the Hoover Institution, the esteemed think-tank located in on the campus of Stanford University. This will play well with many of the influential members of the Republican Party base. The Hoover Institution is one of the intellectual centers of conservativism in America. One of the most respected of our former Secretaries of State, George Schultz, who served under Ronald Reagan, has been long affiliated with Hoover.

Charles Hill is a legendary diplomat with experience derived from postings around the world. He has direct Middle Eastern experience - he was political counselor for the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and was director of Israel and Arab-Israeli affairs. He has also taught many members of our foreign policy elite. A biography of him was recently published by one of his students at Yale (The Man on Whom Nothing was Lost); he emerges in this portrait as one whose worldview is based on a "fundamental faith in the righteousness of American power, properly wielded" and a man who looks back fondly at the methods and success of the Reagan-era foreign policies.

Lassoing a foreign policy titan with Reagan-era credentials is a coup for Giuliani.

Norman Podhoretz has long been one of America's leading intellectuals; from his post as editor of Commentary magazine (he is now editor-at-large) he was able to enliven our public discourse and promote a diverse range of ideas that later became commonly accepted wisdom. He has argued for a forthright approach toward Iran and Islamic extremism. Republicans increasingly measure their leaders by this yardstick: will they appease Islamic extremists or defend America from them? Rudy already scores well in this area; Podhoretz will buttress his credibility.

Senator Bob Kasten was known as an outspoken conservative as Senator (1981-1993). His name is widely known and he is widely respected. He is a headliner.

Stephen Rosen is an expert on the military, serving as a professor of national Security and Military Affairs at Harvard University. He has a lengthy list of publications focusing on military affairs (ballistic missile defense, the American theory of limited war, and on the strategic implications of the AIDS epidemic.)

S. Enders Wimbush is also a Senior Fellow at a conservative think-tank: the Hudson Institute. He will be in charge of public diplomacy-an area the critics feel the Bush Administration has not been adequately addressing. Karen Hughes, Bush's czarina for public policy, has been heavily criticized for her faltering performance in the area of public diplomacy. Wimbush appears to have wide experience in this area: he spent 12 years as an expatriate in Europe and has traveled around the world for corporate and government clients. He also served as a director of Radio Liberty in Europe.

Martin Kramer is an Olin Institute Senior Fellow at Harvard. The Olin Institute has been one of the leading foundations promoting conservativism in America. He has vast experience in the Middle East and is an authority in Islam and Arab Politics. He is also the Wexler-Fromer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center. He is a strong supporter of the American-Israel relationship, which will help Rudy solidify support among supporters of Israel (many of whom are evangelical Christians who are influential in the GOP). He has also been a leader in exposing the increasing politicization in the Middle East Studies Departments on American campuses - a politicization that has led professors to teach from an anti-American and anti-Israel viewpoint.

Kim Holmes serves at The Heritage Foundation, a legendary conservative think-tank. Holmes has focuses on homeland security and has done research in areas such as improving border security and government response to disasters. Given the importance of border security, in particular, to conservatives this appointment may play very well under the GOP tent.

Peter Berkowitz is, like Hill, affiliated with the Hoover Institution and also teaches at George Mason University School of Law-both institutions highly regarded in Republican circles. Professors at George Mason School of Law have been pioneers in promoting the view that economics and the law often overlap and the government should consider economic impacts when developing and enforcing the laws. The school has become a nursery for hatching some of the most innovative (and conservative) legal theories in America. Berkowitz has written widely on the subject of conservatism in America; he has also taken up the subject of intelligence and legal issues dealing with terrorism.

Rod Dreher Jumps Ship

The Republicans seem to be running like Remy's family in Ratatouille. Last night, I saw Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher (whom I met when he worked for the Washington Times a decade ago) publicly denounce George Bush and the Iraq War on the PBS Newshour. The author of Crunchy Cons confessed that he was wrong to have supported the war and called for a US withdrawal. He seemed to be asking for absolution from Gwen Ifill. His "Hail Mary" pass seemed to work. Ifill appeared so pleased that she gave him the last word. Look for Dreher to appear more often in the mainstream media, now that he's been saved. IMHO, Reuben Navarette of the San Diego Tribune came across as more measured and reasonable. He said the US faced no good options and that a withdrawal could make matters worse--of course, I doubt Navarette was ever a Bush Republican...

No transcript yet, but you can download the mp3 here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/middle_east/iraq/index.html.

Where's the Outrage?

China executes the hapless corrupt official in charge of food and drug safety--but not a word to be found on the Human Rights Watch website. Didn't hear any condemnation from President Bush, either. Interestingly, The New York Times placed the story in its business section. Message: We don't care.

Here's the coverage from China Daily:

BEIJING _ China executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog for approving untested medicine for cash, a show of Beijing's seriousness about product safety, while officials announced moves Tuesday to safeguard food at next summer's Olympic Games.

During Zheng Xiaoyu's tenure as head of the State Food and Drug Administration from 1997 to 2006, the agency approved six medicines that turned out to be fake, and some drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to state media reports Tuesday. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.

"The few corrupt officials of the SFDA are the shame of the whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems," agency spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said at a news conference highlighting efforts to improve China's track record on food and drug safety.

Next year's Beijing Olympics, a great source of pride for China, has also been targeted in the crackdown on unsafe food. Sun Wenxu, an official with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, told reporters that athletes, coaches, officials and others can be assured of safe meals.

"All the procedures involving Olympic food, including production, processing, packaging, storing and transporting will be closely monitored," Sun said.

Organizers are also taking measures to ensure the athletes' food is free of substances that could trigger a positive result in tests for banned performance enhancing drugs. Many of China's recent food woes have been tied to the purity of ingredients, flavorings, artificial colors, and other additives.

Yan acknowledged that her agency's supervision of food and drug safety remains unsatisfactory and that it has been slow to tackle the problem.

"China is a developing country and our supervision of food and drugs started quite late and our foundation for this work is weak, so we are not optimistic about the current food and drug safety situation," she said.

Fears abroad over Chinese-made products were sparked last year by the deaths of dozens of people in Panama who took medicine contaminated with diethylene glycol imported from China. It was passed off as harmless glycerin.

Herbert E. Meyer: US Losing Iraq Because Bush "Splitting the Difference"

From The American Thinker

The 9-11 attacks did more than start a war; they started a war about the war. No sooner had the World Trade towers collapsed and the Pentagon burst into flames than two perceptions of the threat began competing for the public's support:

Perception One: We're at War

For the third time in history Islam - or, more precisely, its most radical element - has launched a war whose objective is the destruction of Western civilization. Our survival is at stake, and despite its imperfections we believe that Western civilization is worth defending to the death. Moreover, in the modern world - where a small number of people can so easily kill a large number of people - we cannot just play defense; sooner or later that strategy would bring another 9-11. This conflict really is a clash of civilizations whose root cause is Islam's incompatibility with the modern world. So we must fight with everything we've got against the terrorist groups and against those governments on whose support they rely. If the Cold War was "World War III," this is World War IV. We must win it, at whatever cost.

Perception Two: We're Reaping What We've Sowed

There are quite a few people in the world who just don't like the United States and some of our allies because of how we live and, more precisely, because of the policies we pursue in the Mideast and elsewhere in the world. Alas, a small percentage of these people express their opposition through acts of violence. While we sometimes share their opinion of our values and our policies, we cannot condone their methods. Our objective must be to bring the level of political violence down to an acceptable level. The only way to accomplish this will be to simultaneously adjust our values and our policies while protecting ourselves from these intermittent acts of violence; in doing so we must be careful never to allow the need for security to override our civil liberties.

There is no middle ground between these two perceptions. Of course, you can change a word here and there, or modify a phrase, but the result will be the same. Either we're at war, or we've entered a period of history in which the level of violence has risen to an unacceptable level. If we're at war, we're in a military conflict that will end with either our victory or our defeat. If we're in an era of unacceptable violence stemming from our values and our policies, we are faced with a difficult but manageable political problem.

Splitting the Difference

Since the 9-11 attacks, President Bush has been trying to split the difference. It's obvious that he, personally, subscribes to Perception One. Just read his formal speeches about the conflict, such as those he's given to Congress and at venues such as West Point. They are superb and often brilliant analyses of what he calls the War on Terror. Yet he hasn't done things that a president who truly believes that we're at war should have done. For instance, in the aftermath of 9-11 he didn't ask Congress for a declaration of war, didn't bring back the draft, and didn't put the US economy on a wartime footing. A president at war would have taken out Iran's government after overthrowing the Taliban in Afghanistan -- and then sent 500,000 troops into Iraq, rather than just enough troops to remove Saddam Hussein but not enough to stabilize that country. And a president at war would have long since disposed of Syria's murderous regime and helped the Israelis wipe out Hezbollah.

Study history, and you quickly learn that oftentimes events and the responses they generate look different a hundred years after they happen than they look at the time. It may be that history will judge that President Bush performed heroically, doing the very best that anyone could do given the two incompatible perceptions about the conflict that have divided public opinion and raised the level of partisanship in Washington to such a poisonous level. Or, it may be that history will judge the President to have been a failure because he responded to 9-11 as a politician rather than as a leader.

Either way, it is the ongoing war about the war that accounts for where we are today, nearly six years after the 9-11 attacks: We haven't lost, but we aren't winning; fewer of us have been killed by terrorists than we had feared would be killed, but we aren't safe.

While experts disagree about how "the war" is going, there isn't much disagreement over how the war about the war is going: those who subscribe to Perception Two are pulling ahead.

Here in the US, virtually every poll shows that a majority of Americans want us "out of Iraq" sooner rather than later, and regardless of what's actually happening on the ground in that country. Support for taking on Iran - that is, for separating the Mullahs from the nukes through either a military strike or by helping Iranians to overthrow them from within - is too low even to measure. There isn't one candidate for president in either party who's campaigning on a theme of "let's fight harder and win this thing whatever it takes." Indeed, the most hawkish position is merely to stay the course a while longer to give the current "surge" in Iraq a fair chance. Moreover, just chat with friends and neighbors - at barbeques, at the barbershop, over a cup of coffee - and you'll be hard-pressed to find a solid minority, let alone a majority, in favor of fighting-to-win.

However it's phrased, just about everyone is looking for a way out short of victory.

Ratatouille

Saw the new Disney picture yesterday and was reminded that a friend of mine from film school in the 90s had predicted that "synthespians" (computer generated characters) would someday replace actors in Hollywood movies. She later went to work for Disney, herself. Now I see what she was talking about. I laughed. I cried. I give it five stars:*****.

Youssef Ibrahim on "Weaponized" Islam

From the New York Sun (ht JihadWatch):

The bare facts are there for all to see: Over the past 40 years or so, Islam's millions of fanatical preachers and political operatives have represented the religion as one of an "oppressed" people, victimized for centuries by the multiple ogres of Christianity, Judaism, and secularism. Listen to many preachers, read several interpretations of the Muslim holy book, or go to a variety of madrassas from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia, and you will quickly learn that Islam's central value, bar none, is jihad.

Far from a religion of peace, these clerics have "weaponized" Islam's text and the Koran into a war manifesto against even fellow Muslims — as between Shiites and Sunnis.

Raising the bar further, most Muslim scholarship of today maintains the refrain that Islam is not meant to be another religion, but the most definitive of God's revelations to man. As Muslim children are told daily, the Prophet Muhammad is not only the last of God's prophets, but the most authoritative.

Thus, it follows that Muslims merit greater privilege. A Muslim, for example, may take any number of non-Muslim wives, but the reverse is illegal. Abandoning Islam is punishable by jail or death. No other religion is acceptable.

The next step in such a logical progression is clearly the necessity to force others to submit. Islam has become imbued with a kind of droit du seigneur — the extrajudicial, absolute rights of a lord of the manor — which cannot be argued with.

Saudis, for example — and this includes their most moderate and modernized leaders — feel it is perfectly natural to fund the building of hundreds of mosques in Europe, from London to Cologne, but cannot find a shred of logic in allowing the construction of a single church or Buddhist temple in Saudi Arabia, even though millions of Christian and Asian expatriates work there.

The scholarly journeys down such roads have served to legitimize the excessive aggression in hundreds of the religious edicts issued weekly by both legitimate and rogue Muslim scholars — including the charlatans of Al Qaeda, who decree that killing infidels is a Muslim duty.

A Saudi expert on Islamic movements, Mshari Al Zaydi, who is the opinion page editor of the Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat, went to the heart of the matter in a remarkable essay a few days ago, in which he pointedly noted that Saudi religious leaders have never issued an outright renunciation of the religious thinking of Osama bin Laden.

The most the Saudi religious establishment has done, Mr. Zaydi wrote, is to "mildly state that Mr. bin Laden was simply an ‘erroneous mujtahid,'" — a term referring to those qualified to issue juridical opinions and edicts such as fatwas — "as though this man was not responsible for setting the Muslim world ablaze, taking it back centuries and much farther than its original backwardness." In Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco, the Muslim Brotherhood contests for power based on a single slogan: "Islam is the solution." Could it be that their version of Islam is also the problem?

Julia Gorin on Kosovo

Julia Gorin has given permission to reprint the text of her recent article on Kosovo from the American Legion magazine:

The 'Successful War' we lost in Kosovo
America has itself to blame for giving terrorism a toehold in Europe

Until an Albanian plot to massacre American soldiers at Fort Dix was foiled in May, most eyes would glaze over at the mention of the obscure, forgotten war zone of Kosovo, currently a UN protectorate whose 90%-plus Albanian-Muslim majority is about to be handed independence from Serbia by the international community. Few Americans understand that, between Kosovo gaining independence and not, America’s soul hangs in the balance.

Nor is it widely known that the explosives used in the Madrid and London bombings, as well as those used in the recent attack on the U.S. embassy in Greece, came from Kosovo, a state-in-progress led by the violent, jihadist, narco-terrorist mafiosos of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA was supposed to have disbanded and disarmed after the 1999 conflict. Instead, it has continued arming itself in the event that the province isn’t granted independence this year. It is a bin Laden-trained army of local clansmen, Marxists, university students and jihadists with whom the United States allied itself in 1999 against Serbia, an ally both in World War I and World War II.

“Balkan “blowback” is a term often used today to frame a problem that has not gone away but has grown more threatening and complex, with an independent Kosovo looming darkly on the horizon of the global war on terrorism. The blowback includes the Fort Dix plot, Madrid and the 2005 London Tube attack that was coordinated in Bosnia. It also includes the fact that Kosovo, like Bosnia, has become a one-stop terror shop, a haven and thoroughfare for wanted terror suspects, a source of “white al Qaeda” volunteers, and a world capital in drug and slave traffic. This would be reason enough to deny the majority-Muslim Albanians independence, which they’ve threatened to seize by force in any case.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that a Serb a day is killed in Kosovo. Amid two million Albanians, the 100,000 Kosovo Serbs who haven’t yet fled, or have fled and returned, live in barbed-wire-enclosed, KFOR-guarded perimeters of a few kilometers—beyond which they dare not venture. When shot at by Albanians, NATO troops are directed to flee rather than return fire, which would draw attention to the province as unstable, exposing that there is the threat of violence should Albanians not get what they want. It all leads to the question, “Why are the people we went to war for shooting at us?”

NATO troops in Kosovo, to which a contingent of 1,500 National Guardsmen was added in November, know to avoid doing any real policing that could result in a firefight. This is how Serbian nuns continue to be killed and how Serbian property continues to be seized by Albanian squatters, how churches and monasteries continue to be destroyed, as Saudi-financed mosques take their place. In Kosovo, we didn’t fight to end racism and ethnic cleansing, as we were told. We enabled it.

Advocates for rewarding the violence with statehood tout the Kosovo Albanians as being “the most pro-American lot” there is. It’s a dubious endorsement for America if ever there were one.

When good will is acquired by doing someone’s bidding, pro-Americanism is won for the wrong reasons, and the gratitude will turn on a dime the moment we stop furthering that party’s agenda. In Kosovo, that began happening as early as 2000, when the Albanians started calling for the UN and NATO “occupiers” to get out.

When the architects of our Kosovo war brag that not a single American life was lost in what they describe as a “successful” war, the appropriate response is “Not yet.” The Albanian strategy in Kosovo has in fact been a replay of the Oslo Accords: accept the infidel’s help as long as it furthers your territorial ambitions, once the West is no longer willing to carry you to the next stage, turn on it. Our continued courtship of the “Kosovars” has been a mere postponement of inevitable enmity.

Albanians argue that their fight for Kosovo is not an Islamic movement but a national one. Palestinians make the same claim. But the big picture is the same: jihad. The day that Kosovo becomes “Kosova” – an invented pronunciation used by the Muslims, nationalists and vested politicians – is the day we’ve lost a key battle in the war on terror.

Meanwhile, reports have come one after the other raising questions about what really happened in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Spanish forensic pathologist Emilio Perez Pujol went there in 1999 to report on the claims of genocide. He told London’s Sunday Times, Spain’s El Pais newspaper and other media afterward, “We did not find one – not one –mass grave…There never was a genocide in Kosovo.”

In a 2000 Washington Post article titled “Was It a Mistake? We Were Suckers for the KLA,” Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz wrote:

The KLA's guerrilla campaign was a deliberate attempt to provoke Belgrade into reprisals that would attract the West's attention. Knowing it could not defeat Yugoslavia without NATO's military support, the KLA waged a nasty insurgency that included assassinations of Serbian political and military officials…Although U.S. intelligence warned the Clinton administration of the KLA's intentions, Clinton and his advisers took the bait: Washington placed the blame for events in Kosovo on Belgrade and absolved the KLA.
…
To date, according to U.N. reports, forensic specialists working under U.N. auspices have exhumed 2,108 bodies. It is far from certain that all of these victims perished as a result of Yugoslav atrocities; some may have been combatants, others may have been civilians caught in the cross-fire between the Yugoslav army and the KLA. Still others may have been civilians killed by NATO bombs.
…
[D]espite the presence of U.S. and NATO peacekeepers, once Yugoslav forces left Kosovo the KLA began a new campaign of terror, this time targeting the province's Serbian and Gypsy populations. This campaign of ethnic cleansing continues unabated…Meanwhile, across the border from Kosovo in Serbia proper, the KLA – as part of its effort to carve out a greater Albania – is waging guerrilla war in the Presevo Valley region…

The Balkans remain a taboo subject for discussion in the context of the war on terror – even after 9/11, and even as the nightmarish security fallout from our interventions there unfolds on an almost daily basis, with grave implications for the West.

In December, 1999, the late Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl wrote that the “allegations – indiscriminate mass murder, rape camps, crematoriums, mutilation of the dead – haven’t been borne out in the six months since NATO troops entered Kosovo. Ethnic-Albanian militants, humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off each other to give genocide rumors credibility. Now, a different picture is emerging.”

In the 1990s, the Albanian, Bosnian-Muslim and Croatian hordes found that by hiring public-relations firms, they could market their ethnic rivalries and blood feuds to the United States, which would join their civil wars against the Serbs. When we bought into the PR, we repeated an ugly history, one in which we betrayed a man whose Serbian anti-Axis guerrillas during WWII rescued 500 downed U.S. airmen – a man whom a May 1942 issue of TIME Magazine featured on its cover and called “one of the most amazing commanders of World War II.” It was Draza Mihailovic, whose resistance to the Nazi forces played a significant part in the defeat of Hitler. The United States, however, bought into communist propaganda that convinced the Allies that Mihailovic was fighting the communist partisans as a Nazi collaborator. Abandoned by the United States and England, Mihailovich was executed in 1946 by the Stalin-aligned Yugoslavia. He was posthumously awarded a long-concealed Legion of Merit, as recommended by Dwight Eisenhower.

Western leaders acted on misinformation and rumor that would help plunge Yugoslavia into half a century of communist darkness that outlived the Soviet Union itself, leaving it vulnerable as a Cold War holdover. That’s precisely what happened in the 1990s, when the United States bought into separatist/Islamist propaganda and facilitated Europe’s jihadist nightmare. The Balkans would become al-Qaeda’s corridor into Europe.

In Kosovo and Bosnia, we have compounded our to-do list in the war on terrorism, according to the 9/11 Commission, by laying the groundwork for al-Qaeda’s global ambitions. A 2005 Guardian article titled “It’s Not Only About Iraq” echoed this finding: “Tellingly, those who monitor Islamism in Britain say the big surge in growth of extremist groups came not after 9/11 or Iraq but in the mid-1990s, with Bosnia serving as the recruiting sergeant.”

At least two of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were veterans of the Bosnian jihad, as Muslims openly call it. Similarly, when an al-Qaeda recruiting center was raided in Afghanistan soon after the invasion there, it yielded an application from a Kosovo Albanian who boasted experience fighting against Serb and U.S. forces, and recommended suicide operations “against parks like Disney.”

Policies and rhetoric out of Washington contradict reality on the ground in Kosovo. U.S. soldiers serving there say it’s not Albanians they have to protect from the Serbs, but vice versa. A KLA haven that extends to the United States has been created, as the Fort Dix plot made visible. “Even worse,” says American Council for Kosovo director Jim Jatras, “KLA supporters in the United States have operated with virtual impunity, collecting money and weapons to support KLA operations not only in Kosovo, but in the neighboring areas of southern Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and northern Greece.”

Bosnia and Kosovo have been part of Islam’s current divide-and-conquer approach. Israeli Col. Shaul Shay, author of Islamic Terror and the Balkans, explains the significance of Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia: “In the eyes of the radical Islamic circles, the establishment of an independent Islamic territory including Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania along the Adriatic Coast, is one of the most prominent achievements of Islam since the siege of Vienna in 1683.”

And yet the U.S. seems committed to reward violence and impunity, believing that this will somehow lead lead to a normal, democratic state. In reality, statehood will merely institutionalize the gangsterism. Meanwhile, all the cynicism is reserved for Serbia, which has been denied by the international community any say in its fate or about the terrorist neighbor being foisted upon it.

When Serbia objects, it is accused of nationalism and told to start being reasonable. The side that’s willing to compromise – for example offering “more than autonomy and less than independence” – is the intransigent one, while the side that won’t discuss anything short of full independence while alternately threatening war is our partner for peace. U.N. mediator Martti Ahtisaari has been repeating that independence is “the only viable option” and warning that anything else would invite “violent opposition.”

In late March, Reuters reported that the United States, NATO and the EU hope “the U.N. Security Council will adopt a resolution endorsing Ahtisaari's document by the summer. Delaying the move, they fear, might spark Albanian extremist violence against Serbs and the U.N. mission in Kosovo.”

During a February mission to Brussels, after getting the usual empty assurances of protections for Kosovo’s non-Albanian minority, Jatras pointedly asked a Hungarian member of the European parliament, “Isn’t all this talk of protections for Serbs a tacit admission that among the Kosovo Albanians are a lot of violent and intolerant people? Why would you reward their violence with state power?”

Looking Jatras in the eye, the parliamentarian replied, “Because we’re afraid of them.”

We didn't just sell the Serbs down the river; we sold ourselves. Hard-won American values – like religious freedom, rule of law, civil rights, equal justice – have been sold out. Serbia is the closest thing the former Yugoslavia had to a Western society, but we have allied ourselves with the region's most primitive elements at the same time fortifying our enemies in the global war on terrorism.

Disingenuous politicians continue to bring up the “successful war” in Kosovo in contrast to Iraq. It’s easy to have a “successful war” when you’re fighting for the enemy.

Julia Gorin is a widely published writer who covers a variety of issues, including the Balkans. She is an unpaid advisory member of the American Council for Kosovo. Read more of her work online. www.juliagorin.com or www.politicalmavens.com .

Vote Early, Vote Often...

The mother of someone I know has a friend whose daughter has a video competing in an online contest. I couldn't figure out how to vote for her, myself--but thought some readers of this blog might be more tech-savvy than I am. So, with that in mind--and no obligation--here's the information on how to watch the video and vote, from the mother of one contestant:

Here are some easier instructions for voting. But if you have an old computer, it may not work. We went to the library to vote and some worked and some of the older ones didn't. It you feel like giving it another try, you can try this.

Go to www.vuze.com
on the bottom left side of the main page, there is a button that says download. Click on that and follow the prompts as it does its own thing to download.

Once you hit finized, you have to close the web site and go to your start menu. Start...programs....and look for azureus vuze, Click on that program to open.

On the main page choose the button called 'featured' on the bar on the left side of the page. You will then get another page with a couple of rows of little buttons. Click on the one that says ITVF. Another page will open and you click on the little button that says "Vote on pilots" Another page will open and you will see your choices. Dayna's is the one called "In the meantime" If you put your mouse pointer over the picture, you will get a little menu that says "view details" Click on that and another page will come up. On the right side of this page you will see a little box that has ratings and under that two thumbs. One up and one down. Click on the one up and you will have voted.

Didn't I say that was easy. If you wanted to actually see her sitcom, you would have to download it from that page. But again you may not be able to do that if you have an older computer.

After you are all done playing around on the site, you can go to your control panel and delete the downloaded program if you like.

MEMRI:$5 Million Ransom Paid for BBC Reporter Alan Johnston

Plus a million bullets, according to this report from Al-Hayat Al-Jadida in the Palestinian Authority (ht LGF):

Sources close to Jaysh Al-Islam have revealed that the organization received $5 million and a million Kalashnikov rifle bullets in a deal for the release of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston.

According to Palestinian sources, Jaysh Al-Islam commander Mumtaz Daghmoush received a guarantee from Hamas that he would not stand trial for crimes he was suspected of carrying out, and that Hamas would release Jaysh Al-Islam's spokesman, whom it was holding.

Further, Hamas and Jaysh Al-Islam agreed not to reveal which operations they had carried out jointly.

Dismissed Palestinian prime minister Isma'il Haniya denied that there had been a deal or preconditions in the matter of Johnston's release.

As I've said in an earlier post, Disraeli's Tancred explains this age-old tradition of hostage-taking and ransom of captives in the Middle East.

Paris Hilton--Beer-Budget Living on a Champagne Budget

Someone I know has explained the continuing interest in Paris Hilton's adventures to me. It's beer-budget living on a champagne budget. Sex tape with a boyfriend, check. Drunk driving, check. Driving without a license, check. She breaks the rules, gets caught, and is repeatedly humiliated. Basically, she makes dumb mistakes that any beer-drinking 17-year-old high-school student might make. In other words, despite her millions and family pedigree, she suffers like someone from a trailer park--a living example of the basic American egalitarian proposition: "All men are created equal."Here's a link to her official website on MySpace.

Biased BBC

Melanie Phillips: Britain Must Ban Hizb ut-Tahrir

From MelaniePhillips.com:

Whether or not the two events were connected, having raised eyebrows by appointing the deeply inappropriate Sayeeda Warsi as the Tories’ shadow minister for community cohesion (see my post here), David Cameron then went some way towards redeeming himself by challenging Gordon Brown three times at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday over the government’s refusal to outlaw Hizb ut Tahrir. The papers this morning were full of the fact that Cameron spectacularly wrong-footed Brown who was unable to cope with this question. But it was the substance of what Cameron said which was notable:

The Prime Minister said that we need evidence about Hizb ut-Tahrir. That organisation says that Jews should be killed wherever they are found. What more evidence do we need before we ban that organisation? It is poisoning the minds of young people. Two years ago, the Government said that it should be banned. I ask again: when will this be done?… But there has been a lapse of two years since the Government said that they would ban the organisation. People will find it hard to understand why an organisation that urges people to kill Jews has not been banned.

In the current desperate climate of denial, censorship and appeasement in Britain, this was a bold move indeed. Few are prepared to stand up in public and demand that Hizb ut Tahrir be banned, because few are prepared to acknowledge the lethal contribution it is making towards the recruitment to sedition and violence of so many of our young Muslims, who are intensely vulnerable to its seductive combination of intellectuality and austere religious purpose.

Paris' Museum of Smoking

From Arnie Cooper's article in today's Wall Street Journal:

The current exhibition, "Caricatures de Fumeurs," which runs through the end of the year, features pen-and-ink drawings from the 17th century to the present. The often humorous artwork shows individuals from all walks of life--students, casino devotees, artists and even children--inhaling and exhaling as they go about their day.
Focusing on all these images of Europeans' puffed-out cheeks, it's easy to forget that smoking is an American invention. As Michka, a co-founder of the museum, likes to say, it was the Native Americans who actually first smoked tobacco--an endeavor that didn't really become a hit in Europe until more than a century after Columbus brought the stuff to these shores. The idea of ingesting smoke was originally a hard sell.

"Hell," says Michka, "was very much on people's minds. So when they saw someone taking something burning at the end to their mouth and blowing smoke, it really seemed to be for them a picture of hell." Eventually, the odd practice caught on, and within a couple of centuries a huge smoke ring enveloped the world along with a burgeoning smoking "culture."

Throughout the museum you'll find various tools of the trade: a scale, bronze and heather pipes, hookahs from the Middle East and the Orient, "le bong" from Southeast Asia, as well as a sculpture of a hollowed-out head for storing loose tobacco.

The "art" of smoking, though, is best demonstrated by a collection of Frédéric Dagain's tobacco-leaf paintings. But perhaps more compelling than the unique canvases are the words that accompany each of the artist's "Divinités Mayas" (Mayan Gods). Surrounding the multihued image of Mictlantecihtl, for example, are the words "Mictlantecihtl, you smoke and you smile. You are the god of death. Take good care of our bodies." More on this later.

Meanwhile, across the corridor you'll see the real deal--huge caramel-colored leaves drying in a makeshift sechoir, or "dryer." "I love the smell," Michka says with a chuckle as we walk by. But tabac is not the only smell Michka appreciates. A few feet away, you'll see a mint sheet of Canadian stamps with a portrait of a young Michka superimposed over a marijuana leaf. (Remember, this is the museum of smoking--not just tobacco.) Surprisingly, Michka, who prefers the single appellation (it's more "convenient," she says), is not a cigarette smoker. After smoking a few menthols as a teenager, she never lit one again.

"Many times I've had this feeling that the fact that I am not a cigarette smoker has given me a kind of virginity in relation to tobacco, and so it's easier for me to have a bit of objectivity."