Putin's Zubkov Gambit

Nabi Abdullaev reports in the Moscow Times on the meaning of Putin's choice of Russia's new prime minister, Viktor Zubkov:

Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who tracks Kremlin politics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Zubkov had already become the frontrunner, surpassing acting First Prime Ministers Sergei Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev, who have been intensely groomed for months as potential presidential successors.

Putin might be opting for a scenario in which he would not anoint a single successor to avoid charges of trampling on democratic procedures, but instead would offer voters the choice between three or four loyal followers instead, said Sergei Mikheyev, of the Center for Political Technologies.

"And it is possible that after eight years of an active and relatively young Putin, Russia's cautious voters would prefer aged and conservative Zubkov over the younger and dynamic Medvedev and Ivanov," said Dmitry Orlov, an analyst at the Agency for Political and Economic Communications. "Dispersing support behind such different candidates would be rational for Putin at the moment."

Interestingly, this took place shortly after a meeting of the Valdai discussion club, a group of international opinion leaders who get together with the Russian president from time-to-time to discuss Russia's role in global affairs. At the meeting, CSIS expert Andrew Kuchins questioned Putin about growing anti-Americanism in Russia:

ANDREW KUCHINS: ...I want to ask you a question about Russian-American relations. I am worried about our relations and their long-term development prospects. I had the opportunity to meet with President Bush. Marshall Goldman and several others were also there. I know that President Bush is worried about the increase of anti-Americanism in Russia and especially among young people. Of course, anti-Americanism is increasing in many countries in the world.

I lived in Moscow for two and a half years and when I came back to the States at the end of last year I was also very upset with the biased and negative image that Russia has in the American media.

But my question refers to the representation of the USA in Russian media, especially on Russian national television. When I lived here for two and a half years I often watched television and it left a strong impression on me. If Russian national television had been my only source of information I would have concluded that the USA is a hostile country and perhaps even an enemy.

But I know that this is not your policy and that you support improving our relations and making them more constructive. And during our meeting I told our President this in a very frank and direct way.

But it seems to me that there is a certain contradiction between the image of the USA as presented on Russian television and Russia’s foreign policy. Can you explain to me why this exists and how we can correct or improve the situation?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: I can. The media reflects the realities of the present life and mood of Russian society. And independently of whether or not the media is state-owned or independent, if it doesn’t reflect society’s mood then it will not be interesting and people won’t trust the media. And they say what people want to hear. The media reflects real life. And the Russian government’s foreign policy is pragmatic and designed to improve Russian-American relations.

While the press does not need to look at the future of international relations, international life and Russian-American relations it is part of my task to do so. For that reason there is really a marked difference between the mood among society, in the media and our concrete policies. I am only chagrined and confused by those who, unlike you, sometimes pretend not to notice the fact that we are increasing our efforts to not only maintain but also to improve Russian-American relations.

I think that our colleagues’ main problem is that they are not inclined to search for compromises. They almost always insist that we accept certain decisions that they consider optimal. But of course this does not happen 100 percent of the time. Sometimes we engage in joint work and in these cases, as a rule, we are able to achieve viable results.

I would very much like for this practice to take hold in our relations with our American partners. This will only happen in the event that they acknowledge our national interests and take them into consideration.

I repeat that we don’t intend to work against American interests, nor do we intend to neglect our own interests in favour of our partners’ interests.

I repeat that this work will be effective if they acknowledge our national interests.

We have really developed very good relations with President Bush. And without any undue exaggeration I think that this is a very important factor in intergovernmental relations. Recently this element became even more obvious because there are a lot of various small problems. In any case, we value this. It seems to me that President Bush also values this. We shall continue to rely on this in the future. And of course we are going to expand this base.

For instance, in accordance with American legislation we wanted to conclude contracts with various lobbying groups that officially operate in Congress. You know what they told us? And this is normal, this is in accordance with American laws. But the people we contacted told us that state department employees did not support such relations with Russian partners. That is strange. It is true that in direct dialogue with our American colleagues they did not admit this. They said: ‘No, that can’t be true, we did not do this’. But this means that someone – either the representatives of the lobbies or of the state department – is giving us the wrong information.

But such trifles prevent us from establishing a constructive dialogue. Why should this be possible for all other countries and not for Russia? We are not doing this underground, with the help of the FSB or the Foreign Intelligence Service. We are doing this openly and as it should be done with a view to engaging in a meaningful dialogue with legislators. What is wrong here? They say: ‘No, that is not possible’. Why is it impossible? It is a trifle, a detail. It is simply evidence of how they automatically applied the presumption of the Soviet Union’s guilt to Russia. This is not right, it is harmful and it bothers us.

For example, I believe that Europe will grow to become a political entity and that European statehood will be strengthened, and that both will inevitably occur because they are product of life’s basic needs and global economic development. During these processes political forces in the United States that are interested in the existence of a strong viable Russia and in developing intergovernmental ties will also grow. We will put emphasis on precisely this part of American society and of the American political establishment.

Thank you.

An Email From Rudy Giuliani About The New York Times

Found this in my inbox:

Dear Friend,

MoveOn.org, well-known for its character assassinations on Republicans, decided to participate in a character assassination on an American General.

Before General David Petraeus could give his testimony to Congress about our brave men and women in uniform overseas in Iraq, MoveOn.org, aided by an enormous discount at the New York Times, ambushed an American hero with baseless attacks on his integrity. Senator Clinton furthered the slander by saying that General Petraeus required "the willing suspension of disbelief."

The way forward in Iraq requires proven leadership. The American people demand more than Democratic Presidential candidates who refuse to denounce extremist liberal organizations. These candidates and a do-nothing Democratic Congress undermine our troops' service. These times call for statesmanship, not politicians spewing political venom. Join me in telling MoveOn.org that there is no place in American politics for these kinds of attacks. Please review my ad here and make a contribution to set the record straight.

Sincerely,

Rudy Giuliani

Iraq Blog Count

А friend told us about IraqBlogCount, a 'blog of blogs' about Iraq. There's something for everyone...

John T. Reed on the Petraeus-Crocker Report on Iraq

John T. Reed watched the Petraeus testimony, and posted a detailed critique on his blog, here. An excerpt:

Bloodbath if we leave

We are repeatedly told that there will be a bloodbath if we leave.

We were told that in Vietnam as well. It was correct in Vietnam. There was a blood bath known as the Killing Fields in Cambodia and another known as the boat people in Vietnam after we left.

But the embarrassing fact is that while the American people regret the post-pull-out civilian deaths in Southeast Asia, we would do the exact same thing only sooner if we had it to do over again. Simply stated, the American people did not care about the deaths of the Cambodian and Vietnamese civilians at the hands of the Communists in Southeast Asia nor do they care about the likely future deaths of Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. Sure, they care enough to wring their hands and make statements against it, but they do not care enough to spend another 600 billion dollars or another 5,000 U.S. military lives.

Most Americans probably think that a civil war in Iraq could not happen to a nicer bunch of ungrateful, religious nut cakes. Nobody, not Petraeus or anyone else, is talking about that elephant in the room...

A Shofar Blast for Rosh Hashana

When I was growing up in New York City, The New York Times would usually publish a photo of a rabbi blowing a shofar to welcome the New Year, from a congregation somewhere in the city, or sometimes elsewhere in the world, with a caption reading something like "Jewish New Year welcomed in Brooklyn." In fact, the paper used to carry little ads at the bottom of page one listing candle-lighting times, two lines intended for Orthodox readers. In vain did I search my national edition over the past couple of days. So, I googled to find a Shofar blast to post on this blog. Here it is, thanks to YouTube--L'Shanah Tovah! A Happy New Year to all our Jewish readers--and all the readers of The New York Times who remember when the paper still considered news of Jewish Holidays "fit to print."

Top British Think Tank: Stop Appeasing Islamists!

With traditional British understatement, Strategic Survey 2007, a publication of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Britain's top foreign policy think-tank, responds to the growth of Al Qaeda after 9/11. Former MI6 civil servant Dr. John Chipman's report finally begins to admit that Western leaders made a mistake by humoring outrageous Islamist "grievances" (perhaps blinded by oil money from Islamist regimes like Saudi Arabia) rather than unite with secularists to decisively crush aspirations for Islamic supremacy over non-believers:

Islamist Terrorism

There is increasing evidence, Strategic Survey argues, that ‘core’ al-Qaeda is proving adaptable and resilient, and has retained the ability to plan and coordinate large-scale attacks in the Western world. Regional jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia and al-Qaeda in the Maghreb have sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda and have begun to show ambitions beyond parochial concerns in support of al-Qaeda’s global objectives. Plots that have come to light in Europe and elsewhere point to a growing trend of Islamic radicalisation.

The long-term challenge is to confront the extremist ideology which gives rise to terrorism and which al-Qaeda has shown great skill and ingenuity in propagating. That challenge is of a different kind in different parts of the world and needs to be met in specific contexts. Overall, what is referred to as the ‘single narrative’, that sees Muslims as victims of non-Muslim aggression, needs to be addressed, both in the Islamic world and elsewhere. In the Islamic world, governments with de-radicalisation programmes tend not to contest the propositions of the single narrative but rather to encourage individuals to contemplate non-violent responses to perceived injustices affecting their co-religionists. Over time, that approach may not be sufficient, and there will be a need to build political cultures that encourage aspirations for the fruits of modernity and success, something best done by leaders able to establish their political legitimacy.

Western governments tend to meet the Muslim ‘single narrative’ by way of rebuttal, arguing against its basis in fact. But this too is an approach with limited effects. While there is a consensus among all European elites that the war on terror cannot be fought by military means alone, there is a less overt acceptance that defending the largely liberal and secular nature of the ‘public space’ in Europe will require a more assertive application of the ‘political science’ of that liberal-secular tradition. That means looking again at issues as complex as the relative balance between individual and community rights and between secular and religious visions of social organisation. On this basis, it may become possible to find more fluid ways to achieve the effective integration of Muslim minorities into European societies and obtain the national cohesion necessary to meet the wide range of security challenges the modern world poses.

Raoul Wallenberg Exhibit Opens in Moscow

At the Sakharov Center. Co-sponsored by the Embassy of Sweden and the Swedish Institute.

Wallenberg's mission to save Hungarian Jews, including now-US Congressman Tom Lantos, was sponsored by the War Refugee Board that resulted from Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook) and Ben Hecht's agitation. Wallenberg was taken prisoner by the Soviets and never heard from again. The mystery of his fate has never been resolved--by Russia, Sweden, or the US.

Melanie Phillips on France's New Dreyfus Affair

It's the Karsenty case, now on appeal in a Paris courtroom, of a libel judgement against Karsenty's complaint that French television staged anti-Israel propaganda:

This scandal has many layers of evil. It reveals the wickedness of the Palestinians who so cynically stage hoaxes like this, as a result of which murderous hatred and mass hysteria are exponentially spread and innocent people are attacked and butchered in a rising spiral of terrorist atrocities. It reveals the wickedness of western journalists who transmit footage they know is a fraud as a matter of routine, becoming as a result active collaborators in the deaths of innocents. As someone from France 2 remarked during this affair, ‘It happens all the time’. Sure it does — we saw it last year in the Lebanon war when ‘atrocities’ that had been faked by Hezbollah were transmitted as true accounts by broadcasting organisations which turned a blind eye to the evidence of journalistic fraud because the story they told fitted the broadcasters’ own prejudices. And it reveals the intellectual corruption of the French judiciary, which perpetrates a transparent injustice and in turn helps further promulgate a murderous lie because, instead of holding power to account, the French judiciary is in its pocket.

To my knowledge, there has been no coverage whatsoever of these revelations about the al Durah footage, let alone the Karsenty case, in the British media. That says it all. They are so resistant to the suggestion that the story in which they so fervently believe — that Israel is the evil aggressor in the Middle East and the Palestinians are their innocent victims —might be wrong, that they simply do not register any evidence which bears that out. How can it possibly be the case, they think, that fashionable progressive French journalists (like themselves) could deliberately make themselves party to a lie? Since in their own eyes progressive people are by definition the unique repository of moral virtue, anyone who challenges that position is by definition evil. It is therefore impossible that the Palestinians staged a theatrical hoax, impossible that France 2 deliberately transmitted such a fraud, impossible that the Israelis could be the innocent victims of such a deception. The image of the killing of Mohammed al Durah exists; and the image is all. Nothing else has any reality. The fact that the ‘corpse’ moved and peered behind its hand to see if the cameras were still filming is irrelevant. The terrible thing about so many western journalists is that they really do deeply and sincerely believe their own lies.

The trial of Philippe Karsenty is an event of the greatest political and cultural significance. It may well come to define the relationship of Europe to Israel and the Jews as devastatingly as the 19th century Drefyus affair — in which the false accusation of treason against a patriotic Jewish French army captain produced an outpouring of virulent anti-Jewish prejudice — once convinced an assimilated French journalist by the name of Theodor Herzl that there could be no future for the Jews unless they had their own country. But now the French are determined to traduce and defame that country, too.

The Karsenty appeal is a very big story indeed. Let’s see how many journalists, in these degraded times, are able to recognise it.

Maajid Nawaz's Anti-Hizb ut-Tahrir Blog

For some strange reason, Jane Perlez's profile in today's New York Times of Maajid Nawaz failed to provide a link to his anti-Hizb ut-Tahrir blog (although it did provide a link to the official Hizb ut-Tahrir website). Since Nawaz is a former leader of the group--a recruiter, no less--I thought it might be helpful to be able to read what he has to say. Here's what Perlez reported:

Now, more than a year after his return to Britain, Mr. Nawaz, 29, has defected from Hizb ut-Tahrir, saying that he learned from scholars he met in jail that the ideology he so fervently espoused ran counter to the true meaning of his religion.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, or Party of Liberation, also calls for the end of Israel and the withdrawal of Western interests from the Middle East, though it says it wants to achieve those goals through nonviolent means. There have been calls in Britain to ban the group, but the government has always stopped short of doing so.

Mr. Nawaz’s departure from the group, which he announced on his personal blog several days ago and in an interview shown on BBC television on Tuesday night, is considered significant because he was such a highly valued member of Hizb ut-Tahrir — one of a handful of men on its executive committee in Britain.

Before being imprisoned in Egypt, Mr. Nawaz played a central role in recruiting new members for Hizb ut-Tahrir at home and abroad. Over and over again, he said, he spread the belief that the dictatorships of the Muslim world must be replaced by a caliphate similar to that which held sway after the death of the Prophet Muhammad.

But for the past year, he has felt nothing but regret, he said in an interview with The New York Times in a Bayswater Road coffee shop on Tuesday before his BBC appearance.

“I gave talks in Pakistan, Britain and Denmark,” he said. “Wherever I’ve been I’ve left people who joined Hizb ut-Tahrir. I have to make amends. What I did was damaging to British society and the world at large.”

Here's a link to his blog: http://www.maajidnawaz.blogspot.com.

Little Green Footballs: Poland Remembers 9/11

Impressive:

Candles will burn again on the symbolic graves of those from the Podlasie Region in Poland who perished in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre six years ago.

Among them were Lukasz Milewski from Suwalki and Dorota Kopiczko from Augustow.

In the Suwalki cementary, there is a tombstone dedicated to the two who died, which resembles the Twin Towers joined by a crucifix, where candles are lit up on every September 11.

The Christ the King Chapel in Suwalki is dedicated to Lukasz and the church bell is named after him.

A mass is held in his honour Suwalki on every anniversary of the tragedy. Lukasz Milewski was 21 years old.

His body was one of many never identified.

Ali Alyami on Democracy in Saudi Arabia

Ali Alyami recently sent us this email message:

In an interview with the Associated Press on 9/4/07, Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz, who does not hold an official position, but known to be a confidant of King Abdullah, declared that he will form a political party inside Saudi Arabia and invite Saudi reformers who have been imprisoned for calling for constitutional monarchy to join him. This is the most promising hope for any sharing of power in Saudi Arabia, if in fact the prince could or is allowed to carry out what he said he would do.

In an interview with the Washington Post on May 14, 2007, Talal lashed at his autocratic family openly "Here, the family is the master and the ruler," he said of his brothers and cousins, as he sat at Fakhariya Palace. "This style can't continue the same way. There has to be change in the nature of authority, if things are going to change in the kingdom itself."

In addition, Talal, for the first time any family member has ever done, accused the staunch opposition to reform by powerful family members which the Saudi people know to be Defense Minister Prince Sultan, Interior Minister Prince Naif and governor of Riyadh, Prince Salman. None of these men has ever mentioned political reform let alone supported it.

The Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, located in Washington, call on the US officials to issue a statement to support Prince Talal move, because peaceful reform can only happen now if the Saudi ruling dynasty allows it. This is an opportunity that the Bush Administration and members of US Congress should support publicly and immediately.

Both Rosh Hashanah & Ramadan Start Tonight

Happy holidays to all our readers! (Yes, we have them in both Israel and the Muslim world).

From the Pioneer-Press:

Sundown today marks the beginning of two important Muslim and Jewish holidays: Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, and Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year observance that starts a 10-day period of reflection and renewal.

Doron Rosenblum on Israel in 5768

From Ha'aretz:

To try to understand the spirit of the times, we need to go back a generation, to the War of Attrition, when Moshe Dayan delivered his "fear not, my servant Jacob" speech to the Command and Staff College: "Jacob, do not be fearful, do not be cowardly, you are fated to live in constant struggle, and heaven forbid you fail by cowardice," he said. Many were shocked that just two years after the great victory of the Six-Day War, Dayan could say "constant struggle." Yet, in the years since then we have known wars, peace treaties, a sea of terror and unilateral withdrawals, but never has the hope for rest been abandoned, never have the wishes and the yearnings stopped: if not for a catharsis of full peace, then at least for a type of tension-relaxing settlement.

Barak's return to the Defense Ministry is more significant than it looks. He is "corresponding" in a certain sense with Dayan's period as both chief of staff and defense minister: in personal courage, spirit of adventure and pessimism. From now on, then, we are going to have many murky operations about which silence is golden, many smart-aleck tricks and thrilling stratagems, a lot of action, abductions and counter-abductions, reprisals and painful counter-reprisals. Sometimes things will be happy, at other times the opposite. But that is what "living by the sword" looks like, in case you were wondering.

Sophia Tolstoy's Photo Album

On a happier note, someone I know and I had a wonderful time with a friend Saturday night at a party for Song Without Words: The Photographs of Countess Sophia Tolstoy at the Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen Museum at American University. It was just terrrific, in a beautiful building, with an outstanding companion show of works by American University alumni. Great, great, great. Cyrus and Myrtle Katzen may be the new Medicis of Washington...

Ann Applebaum on Bin Laden's Recruiting Video

From today's Washington Post:

Al-Qaeda's long-term goal is to convert Americans and other Westerners to its extreme version of Islam.

Before you fall over laughing, think again. It would only take a very few such converts to do a lot of damage. The results of the Soviet Union's massive propaganda campaign on behalf of world Marxist revolution were also numerically small but at the time were considered quite effective: the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Italian Red Brigades, the Weather Underground. There are always disaffected young people -- Gadahn himself is a former fan of "death metal" rock bands -- and they're always looking for a cause. Conversion in general is increasingly common across Europe. Some 4,000 Germans were recently found to convert annually, and if only 0.1 percent of them choose the militant version of Islam, that would be enough to cause trouble.

For, as news from Germany well illustrates, there is no one quite so passionate as a recent convert. At least two of the men recently arrested and accused of plotting to bomb American interests in Germany were converts. So were Richard Reid, the failed shoe-bomber, and Jose Padilla, the U.S. citizen who was suspected of planning to construct a dirty bomb.

It is legitimate to ask whether it matters what is said by a man who is no longer thought to be in control of his organization, even if he still has access to a video camera inside his cave. Yet that's precisely the point. Bin Laden will sooner or later die or be captured. But he, or someone close to him, is trying to ensure that his ideology lives on. And he, or someone else, wants it to survive in a form that will appeal to Americans and other Westerners disillusioned with their own political systems.

To put it bluntly, someone with an Irish or Hispanic name could have a better chance of slipping past the FBI, or through airport security, than someone named Mohammed. In a world in which counterintelligence and security procedures will slowly, slowly improve -- that's the future.

Another Bin Laden Video

The last one was apparently aimed at Western audiences. On the 6th anniversary of 9/11, Bin Laden aims his latest video message at Muslims. From Al Jazeera:

The video begins with a photograph of bin Laden in front of a brown backdrop.

In a voiceover, he is heard saying: "His talk of mine consists of some reflections on the will of a young man who personally penetrated the most extreme degrees of danger and is a rarity among men: one of the 19 champions, may Allah have mercy on them all."

"We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left," al-Shehri said in the tape, asserting that the US would suffer the same fate as the former Soviet Union.

In the tape, al-Shehri also praised the losses the United States suffered in Somalia in the late 1990s.

"As for our own fortune, it is not in this world," he said. "And we are not competing with you for this world, because it does not equal in Allah's eyes the wing of a mosquito."

In a tape released on Friday, bin Laden had mocked the US as "weak" and threatened to escalate the war in Iraq.

News of the latest video emerged before the US was to hold ceremonies to remember the dead from New York's Twin Towers, the US defence department headquarters in Washington and a hijacked jet that crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

More from the Associated Press:

In the tape, bin Laden praised al-Shehri, saying he "recognized the truth" that Arab rulers were "vassals" of the West and had "abandoned the balance of (Islamic) revelation."

"It is true that this young man was little in years, but the faith in his heart was big," he said.

"So there is a huge difference between the path of the kings, presidents and hypocritical Ulama (Islamic scholars) and the path of these noble young men," like al-Shehri, bin Laden said. "The formers' lot is to spoil and enjoy themselves whereas the latters' lot is to destroy themselves for Allah's Word to be Supreme."

"It remains for us to do our part. So I tell every young man among the youth of Islam: It is your duty to join the caravan (of martyrs) until the sufficiency is complete and the march to aid the High and Omnipotent continues," he said.

At the end of his speech, bin Laden also mentions the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in an U.S. air strike there. Al-Zarqawi followed in the footsteps of al-Shehri and his brothers who "fulfilled their promises to God."

"And now it is our turn," bin Laden says.

After bin Laden speaks, the video of al-Shehri appears. Al-Shehri — one of the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11, which hit the World Trade Center — is seen wearing a white robe and headscarf, with a full black beard, speaking in front of a backdrop with images of the burning World Trade Center.

On General Petraeus' Testimony...

Looking at General Petraeus' PowerPoint presentation after hearing his Congressional testimony on C-Span radio while driving in the car, I was reminded of Fouad Ajami's description of a visit to Iraq:

"PowerPoint meets Heart of Darkness."

Personally, I'd feel a little better if Petraeus did not have his Ivy League Ph.D....

Judith Miller: US "Buying Time"

After hearing some of Petraeus on C-Span, I thought it sounded like American strategy was to buy time until Bush left the White House, then dump the Iraq mess in the lap of the next President (hopefully, Giuliani, who I believe can clean it up). Now, it appears that "buying time" is also US strategy in the war against Bin Laden. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Judith Miller reports.

Complacency would indeed be dangerous. There will be no "mission accomplished" banners in this war - a campaign unlikely to end in my lifetime. American intelligence and counter-terrorism officials can only do their jobs, buy time, and hope that the wave of militancy that has engulfed so many Islamic communities ebbs.

Osama bin Laden marked the September 11 anniversary not by conducting another devastating strike but by releasing a videotape, his first in three years. His continued freedom is a triumph of sorts. It also shows how challenging a task defeating such an enemy has become.

A recent National Intelligence Estimate warned Americans that al-Qa'eda remains the single greatest terrorist threat to the US. Other assessments share its gloomy findings that the number of jihadis is increasing.

Personally, contra Judith Miller and US intelligence and counter-terrorism officials, I would prefer the war on terror to end in my lifetime, if not sooner. I think Miller's article provides evidence that we need a military draft and mobilization of the entire American people to get this job done as soon as possible. It's manifestly become bogged down in bureaucracy and careerism at the highest levels of government...unforgivable six years after attacks on New York and Washington, DC.

As Bob Dole used to ask: "Where's the outrage?"

The MINERVA September 11th Web Archive

Trying to remember what happened on September 11th, 2001?

Here's a link to the US Library of Congress MINERVA September 11th Web Archive, which has catalogued thousands of websites from that day, and the months following, from around the world:

The Library of Congress, in partnership with the Internet Archive, WebArchivist.org and the Pew Internet & American Life Project, has created a collection of digital materials known as the September 11 Web Archive.

The September 11 Web Archive preserves the web expressions of individuals, groups, the press and institutions in the United States and from around the world in the aftermath of the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001.

The Web Archive is important because it contributes to the historical record, capturing information that could otherwise be lost. With the growing role of the Web as an influential medium, records of historic events could be considered incomplete without materials that were "born digital" and never printed on paper.

The September 11 Web Archive consists of over 30,000 selected Web sites archived from September 11, 2001 through December 1, 2001.

Approximately 2,300 Web sites were identified for further processing and were cataloged using MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema), an XML schema for a bibliographic element set which enables the creation of original resource description records.

The collection uses the Wayback Machine interface, a display designed to display Web sites captured over time, which was pioneered by the Internet Archive. Web sites in the collection can be discovered through browsable and searchable interfaces. Please review the Technical Architecture for more information on these interfaces.

More on the MINERVA project at this link.

NY Times Magazine on Rudy Giuliani

Author Matt Bai writes on Hizzoner in an article headlined "Crusader."

The logic of Giuliani’s pitch to voters on terrorism will feel familiar to anyone who paid close attention to his political ascent. When he first won office in 1993, New York was widely considered a city beyond governance, an uncontrollable metropolis where violent crime, entrenched bureaucracy and swollen welfare rolls were accepted as the grim but unshakable realities of urban decline. Rudy ran as a real S.O.B., the guy who had the steel to restore order and sanity where no one else could or would. Whatever you think of Giuliani personally, it’s hard to argue that he didn’t succeed; crime and the welfare rolls plummeted for the first time in decades, while jobs and neighborhoods came back. Giuliani maintained an uneasy détente with the overwhelmingly liberal pool of voters who had chosen him for the job. He did the dirty work that made their city, at long last, livable and safe, the things their political correctness would never allow them to openly countenance. For their part, New Yorkers made a show of disdaining him at dinner parties for his bullying ways and pitiless programs, but they slept better knowing that Rudy was wrestling the city’s myriad demons.

Now Giuliani is running to become that same kind of president. In Giuliani’s view, we live in a dark time, caught up in the opening stages of a war with Islamic radicals that may span a few decades and several continents before it’s won. A president has to be willing to be the bad guy, to do the things that may make even his allies uncomfortable, and to do them with ruthless efficiency. So you wouldn’t want to have a beer with me, Rudy seems to be saying. So even my own kids don’t want to have a beer with me. But whom do you really want staring down the terrorists — me, or one of these other guys? Do you want someone squeezable, or would you rather hire the single-minded enforcer who had the testicular fortitude to tame New York?

Giuliani’s presidential campaign brings to mind that famous scene from “A Few Good Men,” in which Jack Nicholson lectures a boyish Tom Cruise on the practical realities inherent in protecting freedom. In Giuliani’s telling, only a thin wall separates innocent Americans from the violent apostles of a brutal and repressive ideology. You want me on that wall, Rudy would have us believe. You need me on that wall.

Inevitably, presidential campaigns take on the peculiar personalities of the candidates themselves. Bill Clinton’s aides worked without sleep and always behind schedule. George W. Bush’s team couldn’t conceal their Texan arrogance. Giuliani’s campaign staff is remarkably — almost unnervingly — disciplined. His campaign appearances inevitably begin and end on time. Each day of campaigning has a theme (“trial lawyers are bad,” “adoption is good,” etc.), to which the candidate lashes himself without fail, while high-powered surrogates back in Washington issue carefully timed statements backing him up. The campaign is unusually guarded with routine information, giving out only Giuliani’s public schedule, and almost no one associated with the campaign will talk to a reporter without a press aide listening in on the line.

When I first managed to track down Giuliani on the western edge of Iowa in mid-July, I was more impressed than I expected to be. In the abstract, after all, it’s hard to imagine the slashing mayor of New York getting on famously with the people of Sloan, Iowa, a one-strip farming town of about 1,000 people. (Motto: “A Good Place to Grow.”) But Rudy out of his element turns out to be a surprisingly deft campaigner. Ever the prosecutor, he retains a talent for explaining complex concepts, flipping his round spectacles on and off his face for emphasis and rubbing his forehead as if deep in thought. He has a penchant for talking to voters as if he were their tough-love therapist, frequently invoking words like “reality” and “denial.” Vowing to end illegal immigration during one town-hall meeting in Iowa, Giuliani told the crowd, “Every other country does it, and we can do it.” Then he clutched his heart and spoke softly. “It’s O.K. to do it.” You could almost hear a collective sigh among the Iowans, who didn’t consider themselves bigots just because they wanted to seal the borders, and who now felt validated by America’s mayor. They lined up for autographs.