:
Thurs/Fri - Nov 5 -

A CALIPH CHAT POSTSCRIPT -

I had wanted to comment further on Bin Ladin's video address, but the hour grew late, and I grew too tired, so I gave up.

I think Bin Ladin's "explanation" for how and why the WTC Twin Towers were selected as targets was disingenuous. I don't mean that he was lying. I mean that I don't "buy" his version of the process which he gave us. I had a much different sense of it because: I know what I saw. And regardless of what Bin Ladin says now, there is very little possibility that he could persuade me that I didn't see what I know I saw.

When I witnessed the second jumbo jet bash into the WTC building (on live TV), my immediate reaction was that Muslims must have done this. I initially attributed the act to the group which had demonstrated in Manhattan against Salman Rushdie, burning him in effigy and rioting in the streets. I was wrong about which specific Muslim group had done it. But my visceral sense that Muslims had done this was correct. What was it based on?

The event intensely evoked the image for me of a religious ritual central to Islam: stoning the Devil, although I realized that this behavior could not be of a religious nature. What, then, was it?

I was convinced from first sight of it that I was witnessing the commission of an act of Ritual Magic. And, I knew, the FBI has an established profile of those who commit crimes involving acts of Ritual Magic. What does this profile tell us?

The subjects tend to be, predominantly, adolescent or post-adolescent boys. And they tend to come from chaotic and unstable home environments which are out of their control. Part of the cause for this genre of behavior, the experts tell us, is a misguided but desperate attempt to gain control over their world.

Do the perpetrators of this atrocity match the already established profile? Yes, they do.

But if this act was supposed to "bankrupt the US," this magic could not be effective. It simply shows a complete lack of understanding of the American system. The mysterious "magic" of American prosperity is not in the buildings here. Its source is in the Freedom here.

Then Bin Ladin made a point of saying that he and his pals do not hate Freedom. Maybe not directly. But they obviously hate what that Freedom produces: Creativity, Abundance, and Prosperity.

And this is their fatal character flaw-- this twisted envy. Because it is an acknowledgement of their own inadequacy. What do they produce? In this act they are admitting that they produce nothing. But whose fault is that?

Do you think that Atta was suppressed? Or that he lacked opportunity? He could have designed and built beautiful buildings in the Middle East. Unfortunately, he was just too screwed up to accomplish that. And then he fell in love with Bin Ladin who gave him an excuse and rationalization for destroying instead of building. It was a sick chemistry Atta became addicted to so that he could avoid responsibility for his own life.

What a pathetic waste he turned his life into! All his cultivated potential was ultimately scraped from the streets and gutters in bits and shreds.

And you know the rest.

...

:
Wed/Thurs - Nov 4 -

CALIPH FROM A DISTANT PLANET -

Saturday Night Live TV Show did a satirical spoof "translation" of Osama Bin Ladin's little "fireside chat" with us, which, I can only hope, gets circulated around the souks in the Gulf and around the Khyber Pass because I wish I could see Osama's reaction to it :-)

His narrative about the American Election, I thought, showed only a very simple-minded understanding of it.

And his use of a term which I associate with the Ottoman Empire made me feel like he regarded me as one of his subjects :-(

:: Uncle Osama's chatty-poo ::

* * *

Did the Arab Terrorist Factor have any influence in this set of elections? Locally in Florida, TV commercials used in a Senate race may have played a role in the contest.

*More importantly, Martinez's victory comes after achieving two major campaign accomplishments: He made his own life story a central theme, and he used harshly negative attack ads to derail Castor's campaign for months...

While the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee launched blistering attacks on Castor's handling of an alleged terrorist at a state university she headed, Martinez spent millions of dollars from his own campaign account focusing on his storybook biography, which included his flight from Fidel Castro's Cuba at age 15 and his early years in this country with foster parents in Orlando...*

:: Martinez Victory ::

...

:
Mon/Tues - Nov 2 -

G. GOES TO SCHOOL IN SADR CITY -

*He says the madrasas help the kids in these huge slums. They stop them becoming street waifs...

'From religion comes all knowledge,' the schoolmaster adds while fiddling with his beard.*


:: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad - Tigris Tales ::
-- At The UK Guardian --

...

:
Mon/Tues - Nov 2 -

DISTAFF MIDDLE EAST -

Would-Be Masterminds -

*Over 2,500 Muslim intellectuals from 23 countries have signed a petition to the United Nations calling for an international treaty to ban the use of religion for incitement to violence. It also calls on the Security Council to set up a tribunal to try "the theologians of terror."*

:: From a Qatari Gal ::

* * *

Another Baghdad Diary -

*In August CJR asked Farnaz Fassihi, The Wall Street Journal’s Middle East correspondent, to keep a journal of her life in Iraq, where she had been since before the war, and where reporters were finding it difficult to do their job.*

:: From CJR ::

...

:
Sat - Oct 30 -

"WE WILL CHOP THEM UP" -

*Parties were cancelled and the restaurants were deserted in Kabul this weekend. The Delhi Durbar, usually heaving on a Friday night with aid workers, United Nations staff, diplomats, and international consultants, looked cavernous with just a couple of Afghans eating in a corner. Its regular clientele were elsewhere, cooped up in safe houses with strict instructions not to go out, forced to watch DVDs to take their minds off worrying that the Afghan capital is becoming the new Baghdad...*

Nick Meo reports in an atmospheric dispatch from Kabul at the Sunday Herald which will enhance Osama's popularity even more. Oh, yeah!

:: Taliban group claims hostages ::

...

:
Sat - Oct 30 -

AL-ARABIYA TV BAGHDAD BOMBED -

An Internet group calling itself the National Islamic Resistance - 1920 Revolution Brigades called the TV station a 'treacherous network' and 'the mouthpiece of the American occupation in Iraq'...

An observer on the scene said the first floor of the office had collapsed on the employees inside...

:: Arab TV network bombed ::

...

:
Sat - Oct 30 -

OBL RESOURCE -

This is a :: resource page ::

concerning the video of Osama bin Laden
that surfaced on October 29, 2004.


Posted by Mike

:: at Rantburg ::


...

:
Thurs - Oct 28 -

AZZAM THE ANIMATRONIC ?

Is this guy a real human bean or

computer-generated ???


You decide!


*A man wearing dark glasses and an Arab headdress wrapped around his face claims to be an American member of Al Qaeda and promises attacks that will make the streets of America 'run red with blood' in a video aired Thursday night by FOX News.*


I don't like to send people to the ABCNews website which I have found to be horribly assaultive, so I'm leaving a link to FOXNews instead. There is a video link there, too.

A good Blog source often for this type of information is Rantburg which is listed on my Left Sidebar.


:: FOXNews - Azzam the American Threatens US ::

...

:
Thurs - Oct 28 -

BAHRAIN HIGHWAY DEMONSTRATION -

Chan'ad Bahraini Blog has more
information about the arrests.

And photos, too.


:: Chan'ad Bahraini ::

...

:
Thurs - Oct 28 -

TV -- HOT OR NOT ???

Issandr El Amrani reports some disaffection rumbling around the Al Hurra TV channel where *...most of the staff are Lebanese Maronites who come from the MBC channel in Lebanon, which was closed by the authorities for being critical of Syria... They also have a tendency to promote Arab and Arab-American reporters who have a history in Arab Christian activist movements, not only Maronite but Coptic too...*

I found his comments illuminating, but a bit
puzzling, too.

First, it's interesting that it turned out to be a
Christian station.

But second, what's wrong with that? Why can't the Christian Arabs have a TV station, too? I mean, what's the problem with that? I guess I just don't get it.

The classic solution is: if you don't like what a station is presenting, switch the dial to another station you prefer.

Now, here's the kicker: When I first heard the name Al Hurra or Free Spirit, I expected that maybe they were going to be the new Gay TV channel for the Middle East. Was I so wrong? Yeah, obviously, I was. LOL !


:: The Arabist Network - TV agit-prop ::

...

:
Thurs - Oct 28 -

PRODIGAL IQ PROGRESSIVE -

Al-Mashriq reports that Mithal al-Alousi,
who visited Israel for a terrorism conference, is forming a new political party.

:: IWPR compilation ::


Omar at IRAQ THE MODEL reports
:: further information :: about this today.

...

:
Thurs - Oct 28 -

~~ BAHRAIN - FROM TICKER ~~

Haaretz is currently reporting:

*00:51 - Police in Bahrain arrest 30 anti-government demonstrators protesting the imprisonment of a human rights activist.*


:: Haaretz Flash News ::

...

:
Thurs - Oct 28 -

MOSUL - VIOLENCE AND HIJAB -

Azzaman in English reports that the Interim Iraqi Government has sent two commando units into Mosul which is violently deteriorating into anomy.

*...many of the city’s nearly 1.8 million inhabitants are fleeing, particularly members of Christian and other faith minorities...

The city and its suburbs have a sizeable Kurdish minority and are home to more than 100,000 Iraqi Christians and almost the same number of a secretive sect known as Yazidis.*

Military operations are currently underway.

:: AZZAMAN on MOSUL ::


Meanwhile, Dr Zeyad at the Healing Iraq Blog reports that triumphal elements represented by Ansar Al-Sunni are attempting to dominate thousands of female Christian students at Mosul U by requiring them to wear headscarves starting this Ramadan.

He then explores some of the recent assassinations.

And, turning to Baghdad Metro news, he reports:

*Fundamentalists in Baghdad have been touring several coffee shops (which usually prosper during Ramadan after the Iftar) around the city warning customers from playing dominoes, backgammon or cards because that is 'haram'...*

+ Sounds like tons of fun for the holiday.

:: HEALING IRAQ blog ::

...

:
Wed/Thurs - Oct 28 -

IRAQI TV GAL WHACKED -

Leqaa Abdul Razzaq, an anchorwoman for Al-Sharqiyah television, was killed about 6 p.m. en route to the Dora district...

:: From WTOPNEWS :: via Rantburg

...

:
Wed/Thurs - Oct 28 -

SEPARATIST CLERICS -

Eighty Shiite clerics in Bahrain have set up their own council in a country run by a Sunni clan.

*But the Islamic affairs minister has said the council was unconstitutional and sanctioning it would 'undermine national unity and (negatively) affect inter-denominational rapprochement'.*

:: From AFP via YahooNews ::

...

:
Tues/Wed - Oct 27 -

KURIAN AFFAIR FOLLOW-UP -

Has Duke faculty faked Jim Crow?

From The Scrapbook at The Weekly Standard -

*Chronicle editor Karen Hauptman: ... "even if the Chronicle had rejected the column, the ideas Kurian expressed would still exist."

They would? Assuming Karen Hauptman is correct about this-- that some significant body of Duke opinion shares Philip Kurian's disapproval of the "exorbitant Jewish privilege in the United States"-- isn't that kind of a problem?*


Somewhere between sleep and wakefulness last night the Kurian piece kept nagging at me. And then it occurred to me that something was very wrong with Kurian's picture of the social caste or class system in the U.S.

Jim Crow is the nickname for it.
And a little rhyme went with it:

If you're White, you're alright;
If you're Brown, stick around;
And if you're Black, get back!

It finally dawned on me that Kurian manifested no awareness whatsoever of the second category of "Colored" People.

A careful rereading of his piece will bear this out, I feel confident.

But how could Kurian have developed such a cockeyed and revisionist view? Since he is a student at Duke, I have to attribute his malformed education in this regard to his college.

Then, which department or professor is disseminating such Revisionist American History?

I think Duke University owes us an explanation for this.


+ Yeah, there is kind of a problem here.


:: The Scrapbook :: Scroll down to MID-page ::

...

:
Mon - Oct 25 -

THE ELUSIVE PARTITIVE -

Catching up with . . .

Philip Kurian has begrudged us a belated partitive. In a reply to Blogger ISRAELLYCOOL, he has reconsidered the now-notorious reprobation he issued in his campus newspaper.

*My main contention is that SOME Jews worked very hard to suppress the free speech of others at Duke...*

Oh. Well, better late than never.

Good luck in your education, Philip.


:: The Kurian/IsraellyCool Papers ::

:: Phil's Campus Profile ::

...

:
Mon - Oct 25 -

THE PASSING BUCK -

The Road to Kabul ends in a murky conspiracy.

Hmmm . . .


:: albawaba ::


...

:
Mon - Oct 25 -

THE HASSAN DEBATE -

*The kidnapping of British aid worker Margaret Hassan has generated a debate on Islamist Web sites, with many contributors urging the kidnappers to spare her life...

On Sunday, the hardline clerics who run the Sunni insurgent bastion Fallujah called on Hassan's kidnappers to release her unless they can prove she was collaborating with the occupation...

"Are you crying for one who is after making Muslims convert to Christianity?'' he asked. "Do you think they were doing this out of love for the Muslims?"*

:: Excerpts from an article by Rawya Rageh
-- AP via The (UK) Guardian --

:: READ THE REST HERE ::

...

:
Mon - Oct 25 -

YOU CAN'T SAY THAT ! -

On the weekend I would mostly prefer to post entries with a change of pace like the latest crop circle (an intriguing mystery to me) or a tabloid story or something literary. But this weekend there has been a spate of very un-PC things going on, some of which are noted here.

+ First, Mahmood in Bahrain has a hilarious rant about those Ramadan "Sweeps" TV series which had me ROTFLMAO. I thought I'd found a couple of interesting presentations. The one about the Egyptian millionaire looked like it might be entertaining. And then there's the one the Taliban don't want anyone to see. But what do I know. Mahmood is much more of an expert on such matters.

:: Mahmood's TV Rant ::


+ The UK Guardian has inexplicably "dumped" an entire week's worth of Salam Pax's Washington Diary entries all at once upon us this weekend. His narrative this time forth is missing that bumpy, breathless, staccato rush he used to evince before the US Army arrived on his doorstep, which was a quality he once attributed to too much coffee. Salam is now turning into a more fluid writer; his text flows, it moves forward and carries the reader with it; it's got readability. Of course his personal observations are filtered through his quirky sensibility-- but as Suzy (a famous jet set gossip columnist) used to say... 'who else would tell you these things?'

:: Salam's Washington Week Diary ::


+ Ian Mayes, The Guardian reader's editor, gives a sober wrap-up of the Clark County Affair. Oh, something about unforeseen blowback. But I, for one, was happy to discover that G2 Feature Editor, Ian Katz, has a good sense of humour. And, more importantly, I would not want to discourage him just because of the hubub about this project. His willingness to try new things helps give The Guardian a fresher quality than that found in many other newspapers. The result is, when you summon it up, you never know what surprises may be there. It isn't as stale and predictable as many of their American cohorts' Just-Us publications.

:: Trust me, I'm a Guardian reader ::


+ Lastly, an op-ed that ensued from the recent PLO Conference at Duke was published in a campus newspaper there. And it has raised some cries of anti-Semitism.

The young writer expressed his disapproval of students trying to silence other people they disagree with. I don't approve of that either. As long as the the speakers comport themselves like ladies and gentlemen without violence, vandalism or other illegal acts, they should be allowed to speak. But their FA/FOE rights do not include a license to incite riot or murder or other criminal acts.

The writer, Philip Kurian, then criticizes those Jewish students, because he feels that they aren't acting like responsible American adults; instead they're whining like spoiled children. According to Mr. Kurian's thinking, their grandparents or parents may have landed in the U.S. poor and uneducated, but over the past two or three generations their families have been able to succeed, yet these students now persist in claiming they are being oppressed.

Unfortunately, the thrust of Mr. Kurian's criticism, however debatable, may never be taken seriously, because it is couched in a context of sophmoric and crackpot cant.

His failure to use the partitive for the title of his essay alone is a real howler.

And he has made several serious polemic mistakes which severely flaw his credibility.

Moreover, some of his fantasies about "Jewish privileges" are both fictive and obnoxious.

When I graduated high school in 1960, there were still quotas for Jews in place at the admissions offices of American colleges. And, during my freshman year, I actually had an authentic Nazi German professor for one of my classes.

One of my pet peeves is when people try to contradict my life experiences with their imaginations. Don't try to tell me I haven't lived through and experienced what I have been through.

Kurian tosses all kinds of labels around that are intellectual constructs and contends that these labels are actualities.

There is no such thing as "The Jews." Jewish people do not constitute a soccer club like Manchester United or a corporation like the IBM company. And to contend that they do is the height of insanity. There are many diverse enclaves of Jewish people. There are Moroccan Jews in Queens, some Syrian Jews in Brooklyn, German Jews in Washington Heights. And there are numerous Jewish denominations. The Young Israel denomination is quite different from the Satmar denomination. Jewish people do not constitute a monolith.

Nor is there such a thing as "Whites" in the United States. Southern Europeans have never been accepted as "White." Italian people were never regarded as "White." Nor were Eastern Europeans accepted as "Whites." The term "Whites" has been historically used as a code word for WASPS and Northern Europeans only.

These labels are only intellectual constructs; they do not exist in reality.

Kurian even childishly tries to throw in esoteric Jewish philosophy. He seems to believe that the stewardship of this world means that humans are expected to perfect God's creation. Yeah, maybe next week we could get that accomplished!

In the end, whatever sincere attempt Kurian may have made at posing some serious, thought-provoking discussion is buried in there and lost in the swill.

Read it if you must. But try to be thoughtful about it. And try to control any urge to hysterics.

:: KURIAN'S JOOOZ ::

:: Printable Version ::


+ Wattah a weekend!

Hope these entries don't ruin it for ya.

...