SATIRE BECOMING REALITY

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ith increasing frequency, I find myself reading news reports these days that cause a strange disoriented sensation. I want to grab hold of something solid as reassurance that the space - time continuum hasn't been rent asunder, transporting me in reverse for 35 minutes, or some such bizarre phenomenon. I shake my head thinking, "I could have sworn I was reading an AFP news report on Burma just now, how in the hell did I wind up on Scrappleface?"

The disorientation is fleeting though, as it usually turns out that I am indeed reading actual news, and not parody. Joan Baez singing "Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing....?" at Crawfordstock Nation? Where am I, and when will they ever learn? Learning that Mother Sheehan has a personal hero in the form of Lynn Stewart, the "radical" lawyer of Omar Abdul Rahman (the 'Blind Sheik' convicted in the 1993 WTC bombing), who was herself recently convicted on terrorism charges (aiding Mr. Rahman by passing communications and orders to his jihadist footsoldiers) -- that one didn't cause me any confusion at all... at first. Then I learned that her admiration was such that she actually likens Stewart (who worked for and conspired with terrorists who wish to kill infidels - and most especially Jews) to Atticus Finch, the principled lawyer in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' who defends an innocent black man in 1932 Alabama.

Now, Atticus Finch became the young Agam's hero at about the age of 12, when both the classic movie, and later Harper Lee's book, became enduring touchstones in his life. Atticus Finch and Lynn Stewart -- surely no one but Scott Ott could put those together into a pot of boiling sarcasm, right? Garnished with something about hooded religious fanatics who terrorise innocent people of the wrong ethnic or religious group by use of rope or sword or homemade bomb? It might work as a dark parody in the right hands -- Abdul Rahman, the terror master, sitting in place of Tom Robinson, the young black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman. But it would only work to show how stupid it could be, for anyone to claim the slightest similarity between the fictitious Finch and the all too non-fictious Stewart. By the way, that's Brock Peters (who played Tom Robinson) pictured alongside Gregory Peck in the photo link above. Brock Peters passed away yesterday at the age of 78. He was a wonderful actor, never to be forgotten.

WHEN DEALING WITH THUGGISH DICTATORS, FIRST THINGS FIRST

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s I said, I was reading news about Burma the other day, concerning the visit of an envoy from Kofi Annan to the junta of thuggish brutes who still rule the place. The SecGen had another special envoy to the military dictatorship, who has been trying for several years to help broker some type of political reform, but lately the generals and their government ministers have refused even to see him -- a Malaysian diplomat named Razali Ismail. This time I see that the SecGen's envoy is Ali Alatas, a former and long serving foreign minister of Indonesia.

But wait! There isn't anything about the massive problems of Burma or its long-promised political reform, nor about the ongoing genocidal wars they conduct against the Karen, the Shan, the Rohingya and other minorities. Nothing about encouraging actual progress in the "constitutional drafting process" -- which has been going on for almost 15 years already. No sir:

Alatas is the first UN envoy admitted into the military-run country since March 2004, when Malaysian Razali Ismail visited.

Asda Jayanama, Thailand's former ambassador to the United Nations who also served in Myanmar, said in Bangkok that Alatas' visit signalled changing relations between the United Nations and Yangon.

"It means more or less that Kofi Annan's given up on Razali, because obviously Razali didn't speak about UN reform," Asda told AFP.

"Burma's (Myanmar's former name) a very small player on UN reform."

I just love that biting sarcasm there, the point at which I did my double-take to check which website I was on. Kofi gave up on Razali, because he didn't talk to Burma's Senior Dictator Than Shwe about UN reform! Precious....

Alatas later confirmed that the subjects of Burma's domestic situation, human rights, and especially Aung San Suu Kyi, did not arise in his talks. This is the way the thugs of SPADCO (State Peace and Development Council, formerly known by SLORC, the State Law and Order Restoration Council) has had the United Nations wrapped around its pinky finger for most of the 15 years since their political surrogate party lost a landslide election to Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, and refused to honour the result.

I wonder if Ali got any really good ideas from Than Shwe on UN reforms.

INSIDE THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS

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alk of the 'sphere these past few days has been the National Geographic Channel's four hour special, "Inside 9/11." Somehow though, the "progessive" blogs seem to have not noticed it much. It sounds terrific by the discussion I've read from those who did watch it this week, and it even referred briefly to the ABLE DANGER revelations discussed here previously. I have heard that the NGC special will also air on their Asian broadcast channel in September, and I'll sure be watching for it if it does.

A comment on lgf pointed me to some video clips from the program. Here is part of the intro, and here is part of an interview with Steven Emerson from the program. Over here is an interview with Michael Scheuer about the program, and about those days when the Clinton administration ignored warnings, and multiple chances to deal with bin Laden.

LTC Anthony Shaffer, who worked with the ABLE DANGER team, was on C-SPAN's Washington Journal last weekend. You can watch the half hour interview by going to this page and picking the video marked "8/21/2005: WASHINGTON, DC: 30 min." While you're there, why not also watch the appearance of Christopher Hitchens from the same program a few days earlier? From this page, pick out the video marked "8/18/2005: WASHINGTON, DC: 40 min." Hitchens is in fine form here, particularly when he straightens out some unbelievably ignorant callers.

IN STEVEN VINCENT'S MEMORY

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t the beginning of the month I wrote a little about Steven Vincent, the journalist who was killed in Basra by the enemies of Iraq ("freedom fighters" -- yeah, in the sense of fighting against freedom). Steven's companion and translator, a young Shia woman he referred to on his blog as "Layla", was also shot several times in the back but survived. I noticed in some news and blog writing at the time, that some people were passing around the rumour that they were having an affair. I thought this was strange, as his blog entries were always written as letters to his wife back in New York. The love he had for Lisa always came through in those missives, and it seemed to me that this innuendo about the Iraqi woman must be wrong. He clearly loved her as well, but from his writing it was an entirely different sort of love. I think that few people who read Steven regularly, would fail to fall in love just a little bit with "Layla" -- she just sounded like such a wonderful woman.

One of those who latched on to this innuendo in a most despicable manner, was the tenured professor of Middle Eastern studies, Juan Cole. Cole basically blamed Steven for his own death, asserting the extramarital affair as undisputed fact, and ridiculing Steven's ignorance of "Mediterranean culture". Mediterranean? This is par for the course with Cole, who constantly gets even simple stuff wrong and will never admit to it. How he ever got a tenured chair will remain a mystery I'm sure, but I sure wish PBS' News Hour would stop using him for an "expert source" on the program.

Well, the mystery gets cleared up once and for all by Steven's wife Lisa. Understandably offended by Cole's slander of her husband's name, she wrote a long email to the "professor", and also sent a copy to Murdoc Online as a comment to a discussion there about Steven's death. If you are curious about the sort of man Steven Vincent was -- I consider him a journalist hero, and there sure aren't too many like that anymore -- then please read Lisa's letter: 'It's called courage'. The creep Cole has yet to mention anything more about it, but then he never admits when he's wrong. He owes Lisa (as well as Steven and Nour) a very sincere apology. But he won't, because he simply doesn't have the honour in him to do it.

On a totally different subject, Agam has a VIP guest here in the Big Mango for the next few weeks, so I'll have even less time than usual available for writing. I'll try to post a bit now and then when possible.
- posted by Agam @ 8:10 PM 0 comments

 
DANGER ENABLED

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verybody getting up to speed on the ABLE DANGER kerfuffle? No? Don't feel badly -- a big part of our legacy information services just want to get everything just exactly right before actually, you know, reporting on such sensitive issues which might, potentially, make a certain previous US administration look like slackers on terror threats and stuff. The story did break through the wall to some extent this week, when the New York Times ran a story featuring a military intel officer involved in the highly classified Defence Department project. Until his appearance there and in a few tv and radio broadcast interviews, the skepticism toward the story being put forward by congressman Curt Weldon and his anonymous sources dictated that the "honourable and credible" media outlets would treat it as flimsy, unverified rumours.

Unless of course, the failure could have been placed at the feet of a particular smirking cowboy, in which case they would have been all over it from Day One (which was, like, two and a half weeks ago, eh?). Funny how that "untrustworthiness of anonymous sources" thing works, isn't it? Even now, when real people having real names are telling the story of this highly successful anti-terror military intel operation having identified part of the Mohammed Atta team in New York (including, as it now seems likely, Atta himself) fully one year before September 11, 2001, much if not most of the media landscape still hasn't heard of it (or if they have, they're not telling).

ABLE DANGER was apparently a "data mining" operation run out of the Defence Department's Special Operations Command, a kind of "pilot project" to see how far such info-tech methods could go in unravelling terror networks. It seems that much of the defence establishment was not even aware of its existence -- a team of around 11 individuals working through databases of every description (some public, some not), and applying the newest data mining techniques to filter and aggregate information. The team had gained a lot of data on several terror cells around the world, including one they referred to as the "Brooklyn cell" -- which we now know included Mohammed Atta and several associates who would later pull off September 11. As an aside, two others of the "Brooklyn cell" were Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar, who both passed through Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok at end 1999 / beginning of 2000 for planning meetings prior to entering the US via Los Angeles. Their meeting in KL was arranged by an Iraqi "handler" there.

The first officer to come forward publicly on this, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, says that he was on the verge of insubordination with his desire to see the information passed over to domestic law enforcement, so that the cell could be monitored and dealt with effectively at the time (remember, a year before the coordinated attacks took place). Defence Dept. lawyers would not allow the information to be passed to the Justice Dept. due to rules protecting citizens' privacy and preventing the sharing of information between domestic and international intel services, of which the Gorelick Wall was only one notorious part. The result was that the FBI had no idea about the Atta group. Hazmi and Mihdhar had gotten lost in Bangkok (easy to do!) and it appears nobody knew they were in the US until the ABLE DANGER unit located them with Atta in Brooklyn -- and they were not allowed to tell anybody!

But that's only the half of it. Congressman Weldon had maintained for some months that members of ABLE DANGER gave briefings to the September 11 Commission in 2004, yet none of the information made it into the much ballyhooed Commission report. The Commission denied this, saying they'd never even heard of the program, much less the explosive information it had found prior to 911. Then they walked back on it a bit, saying that their staff had interviewed some members of the unit, but that it wasn't seen as very important.

Remember last year when Commission member Ben Veniste bullied Condi Rice into stating the title of a briefing paper President Bush had been given before September 11? Something along the lines of "Al Qaeda wants to hijack airplanes in the US". I say "bullied" because he tried to prevent her from elaborating that the brief was a consolidation of old intelligence reports, there was nothing new in it, and it certainly was not a new "threat warning". It was a briefing paper that Bush had requested, an amalgamation of known intel on al Qaeda, and it was not some sort of ignored warning of imminent attack. Yet for weeks, those were the headlines. "Bush Warned of Attacks Five Months Before Sept. 11" and so on and so forth.

Now we have the Atta group, the nucleus of the cells who would pull off those very attacks, identified by an obviously very effective intel project a year before they actually took place, which tried to get the information to the proper domestic authorities, and they were prevented from doing so. Then the blue-ribbon commission which supposedly has provided the definitive story of how the attacks happened, and exactly where all the tragic failings of intelligence services took place, completely ignored the amazing success of one of those services because it wasn't very important? Where are the screaming headlines day after day after day? When the title of a briefing paper can be coaxed out of Ms. Rice's lips, separated from its contents and context, and fashioned into finger-pointing headlines in various permutations for weeks on end until everybody finally realises that there's no smirking, smoking gun there after all -- there's politicking going on. But this summer when someone involved in actually finding Atta and his mass murdering cohorts comes forward -- ruining his own career for good, I might add -- and says, "I tried to warn them, I did everything to get the info to the proper people but there was this wall you see, and I even told the Sept. 11 Commission about it but they weren't interested," and it's a big hairy deal just to get anyone to pay attention -- there's also politicking going on.

The difference in result seems to point to only one thing. The prescient title of a briefing paper which carried no specific warning of any kind and contained no actionable intelligence, could be nailed to the smirking chimp who stole the 2000 election -- at least for people who only read the carefully phrased headlines for their news intake. A solid example of extremely excellent intel work, foiled by an overly "legalistic" approach to fighting international terrorist groups (epitomised by Jamie Gorelick's Wall of Separation but going much deeper), can only tarnish the reputation of somebody else's pre-Chimpy administration. But don't worry, I'm sure he'll feel your pain however it all shakes out.

It appears much clearer now that there was far too much political grandstanding by some of the Sept. 11 Commissioners last year. It did seem obvious to me at the time, as I watched the "star" testimonies in March and April, and grew more disgusted with the obvious agenda being driven by three of them in particular without mentioning any names [COUGH COUGHkerreygorelickbenvenisteCOUGH COUGH]. It also appears now that the commission consciously steered away from certain areas by means of investigative staff not even telling commissioners about this amazing pre-911 intel success story, much less the colossal failure of the administration to pick up a clue. Let's not forget that Commission member Jamie Gorelick was the senior Clinton official in the Justice Dept. who shored up the notorious Wall of Separation with her memos and directives. And it ain't Separation of Church and State either, it was the impermeable barrier (heh heh) between foreign and domestic intelligence sharing -- terrorist or no terrorist. Jamie Gorelick really ought to have been -- and I said this repeatedly at the time to whoever was listening -- a witness before the Commission, and not sitting on it.

Would it have made a difference, had the Atta cell been rolled up in 2000 or early 2001? You can certainly come up with credible scenarios that the attacks, without the chief planner and organiser, might have become impossible to carry out for the remaining members -- or at least might need to be put off until they could be reorganised under new guidance. That might have given time for agencies to tune in even more closely to the threat, especially if they then realised the scale of a catastrophe so narrowly averted. On the other hand, different scenarios can also lead to even worse outcomes (Wai Daily Demarche).

But there are so many strange things that this story might just have a bearing on, and the word is that it's about to get hotter as several other participants in the ABLE DANGER unit prepare to come forward. There are signs from within certain oversight committees of congress, that autumn hearings into the whole ABLE DANGER kerfuffle might be in the cards. It may even widen out (it should, in my opinion) to look at the shortcomings and possible cover-up of inconvenient pieces by the Sept. 11 Commission staff (and/or commissioners?COUGHCOUGH) How about a Sept. 11 Omission Commission Commission? Does any of this lead back to whatever it was that Sandy Berg(l)er stuffed into his pants and socks, took to his private office and now admits to having cut into teeny tiny pieces with his personal scissors (and didn't accidentally "lose" or "misplace" as previously stated)? Mark Steyn had more questions. Questions, questions.....

Once again the citizen journalists of the blogosphere are propelling the story forward more than the legacy media (which, make no mistake, is still essential for the blogosphere to do its job). I don't include myself in that -- this is all old stuff already for those who read blogs regularly. See for example the excellent work being done by Captain's Quarters, AJ Strata, Dr. Sanity and TKS.

It hasn't been a good week for Mr. Clinton, though. Not only had his administration's law enforcement approach to al Qaeda (epitomised by the Wall of Separation) stymied an amazingly successful intelligence unit and enabled Atta's team to continue planning and preparing unmolested by pesky gumshoes, another official in his Justice Dept. actually warned him years earlier of the extreme danger to such an approach. Mary Jo White's memo is quoted by Deborah Orin in the New York Post (Wai to Captain Ed):

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton's team ignored dire warnings that its approach to terrorism was "very dangerous" and could have "deadly results," according to a blistering memo just obtained by The Post. ...

"This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities," wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee.

"The single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism is to insulate the criminal side of the house from the intelligence side of the house, unless such insulation is absolutely necessary. Excessive conservatism . . . can have deadly results."

She added: "We must face the reality that the way we are proceeding now is inherently and in actuality very dangerous."

Yes. It was. The fact that Atta's cell was known about, that intel analysts had piles of information on them -- names, photographs and various bits of data-mined records -- while an overly legalistic approach dictated that nobody empowered to watch them could actually be given this crucial information, seems to readily demonstrate that Ms. White was absolutely correct -- prophetic, even -- in her warnings. She was, like the obviously effective intel unit known as ABLE DANGER would later be, disregarded. These are important parts of the answers that the Sept. 11 Commission was charged to provide for the public. A "definitive report" would certainly not disregard this stuff as "unimportant". The conclusion then, has to be that the "definitive report on Sept. 11 attacks" has yet to be written.

THE MOTHER'S CRUSADE

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had planned to avoid writing about Mother Sheehan, not feeling it proper to judge people by the ways that extreme emotional trauma, such as the severe grief of a mother of a fallen soldier, will make them behave. But really now. The Crawfordstock Nation spectacle is just getting sillier by the day. Anyone who dares to rebut any of Mother Sheehan's loonier outbursts is immediately castigated for being a heartless brute, insensitive to Mother's grief. It doesn't matter what she says or how demonstrably ignorant (or hateful) it is. Her son was killed in Iraq, and that (according to one Bush-despising columnist) gives her "absolute moral authority."

No I'm sorry, it does no such thing. All of the things Mother Sheehan has been quoted or filmed having said, are the exact same things that I have ridiculed the reactionary "left" for spewing since I started writing this obscure, unnoticed blog. Now that the MoveOns, CodePinks, International ANSWERS, and other associated coalitions of reactionary "progressives" have hitched their wagons to this "absolute moral authority" while she brings shame upon what her son was willingly fighting for and believed in, she has put herself in the position of chief lightning rod and principle messiah of the second coming of the anti-war movement (it's actually the anti-Bush movement when you really look carefully, but what's in a name?). How could she possibly be considered untouchable, except by those who understandably have extreme difficulties giving sensible or logical foundation to her more extreme outbursts?

Mother Sheehan -- I use this terminology in deference to the directives of some of her opportunistic hangers on in the Democratic Underground / Daily Kossack mold, who decided that this would emphasise her timeless presence as the eternal mother of all children..... er, or something like that -- is the only known Gold Star Mother of this or any war to have demanded ("You get that imbecile out here right now...!") two grief meetings with a wartime president. Most accounts bury that fact -- the BBC has never mentioned it that I've heard. She and her family met with Mr. Bush last year, and there are a few news accounts from the time (before she was, like famous, eh?) which quoted her as having been satisfied with President Bush's empathy and sincerity and understanding of their tragic loss. Indeed he has met with almost 1000 family members of fallen soldiers, and by all accounts he spends as much time with them as they wish (they are not screened for pro-OIF attitudes). The families report that he grieves openly and honestly with them, and nearly all are impressed by the father-like or brother-like comfort he embraces them with. I don't think there is a president in history who has gone as far as this one in sharing the hurt of fallen soldiers' families. By his spending so much time at this, every time he visits a different military base or installation, grieving with each and every family that wishes to do so with him, he comes closer than anyone else possibly can to feeling the full weight of what those families feel.

But once was not enough for Mother Sheehan. She wants two. She must feel she squandered the first chance to shout in his face, "Why did you lie, and why did you kill my son?! Why did my son die so you could make your Texas cronies rich on Iraqi oil!? Why did my son die so your PNAC neo-con cabal can do Israel's bidding and massacre the Palestinians?! Why did my son die when this country isn't worth fighting for anyway, cause if it weren't for the internet we'd already be in fascism!?" Or words very much to that effect, which for anyone paying attention to Mother's attributed quotes, will agree are representative of her position.

I feel worst for Casey of course. A brave and committed man taken too soon from his family and comrades, who like the best freedom fighters through the ages, died fighting for someone else's freedom to live as a human being rather than ground underfoot the boot of tyrants. He can't tell his mother what he thinks anymore, although she seems sure on his behalf. He volunteered for service, served a tour of duty in Iraq, and then re-enlisted. On the face of it, it appears he believed in the mission very much. When there was an emergency with his unit, he volunteered further to join with a rescue team -- and when told it wasn't necessary for him as a mechanic to go, he said no to that. He was going for his brothers, and the terrorists killed him. Now his Mother stands with Michael Moore at her side, with a message that boils down to this: Casey was participating in an aggressive illegal war against the helpless unarmed Iraqi people, and his killers are the legitimate freedom fighters defending their country (although his killers didn't actually kill him remember, Bush did). It's a position of astonishing ignorance, but it's more than that: it's sick. And while she does this to the memory of her dead son, her still living son is begging her to please come home. In her crusade for messiah status among the repression-loving progressives, Bush haters still fighting the "stolen" election(s) and Hamas-admiring "revolutionaries" for Palestine, on the grave of her brave and honourable lost son, she has apparently virtually destroyed what's left of her living family. (Wai to Jeff for the cheese sandwich)

But the media love her that's for sure, even if most other military families (and it seems quite clear now, most families of other fallen service men and women) while understanding the trauma and often sharing an equal amount of grief, are saying, "she doesn't speak for me." Hey, how about "Not in Our Name" -- there's a catchy title! Watch for these folks to make their own voices heard over the next week or so. Some other folks directly involved in all this, people who live in the danger zone which neither I nor you nor Mother Sheehan inhabit, have had something to say to Mother Sheehan about what Casey died for. Mohammed in Baghdad is as straight and eloquent as ever, with a straight from the heart answer to her main question. Do yourself a favour and read it all. He's a lot nicer to her than I can manage, but if someone would read his letter to her, I suspect she would sneer something about Bush's Iraqi brainwashing contract tendered out to Kellog, Brown and Root. But I hope I'd be wrong.

Hitchens knows the reactionary left from the inside out, and also has some pertinent thoughts. I find no fault with his argument.

BOLTON AT TURTLE BAY

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t's great to see John Bolton settling in well to his new job at the United Nations. The man credited with turning back the despicable resolution a couple of years ago, in which the world's most authoritative body was seeking to equate Zionism with racism (and of course the corollary, anti-Zionism with happy politically correct anti-racism) is living up to expectations. By the way, take a look at James Lileks' humourous essay on Bolton's taking up of his new duties. Wai to Drink-soaked Trotskyite Popinjays For WAR (I love that blog title, taken verbatim from a Galloway tirade against Chris Hitchens....)

Anyway, a few days ago every sane person following current events was absolutely shocked (well ok, not so shocked, but perhaps more like outraged with a dash of mild surprise) to learn that the UN Development Program had given huge amounts of money to the Palestinian Authority to produce leaflets, banners, posters and the like to celebrate Israel's defeat, and its shamed retreat from the Gaza Strip at the hands of the valiant forces of, um, itself and Hamas -- most of which touted "Today Gaza, tomorrow Jerusalem!" Lots of other really inflamatory stuff too, all produced on the UN's dime and bearing the UN logo as sponsor. John Bolton, true to form, isn't standing for any of that guff:

The response from the UNDP was not sufficient, Mr. Bolton said yesterday. "Funding this kind of activity is inappropriate and unacceptable. We plan to raise the issue with UNDP and with others," he said in a statement to The New York Sun. In effect, Mr. Bolton expressed to the UNDP that the most serious problem for his office was not the logo, but the fact that the agency supported that message with its checkbook.

William Orme, a spokesman for the UNDP, told the Sun by telephone yesterday evening, "We've seen Ambassador Bolton's comments, and we are taking this matter seriously."

Yes. Good. I think you had better take this seriously. You now have a US ambassador who isn't shy about stating the obvious about this kind of junk, and you'd better get used to it. Wai to Dr. Sanity

A SIGNAL EVENT FOR IRAQ'S FUTURE

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nother great pointer to progress across Iraq's sectarian "divide" surfaced last week, and it wasn't even brought to our attention by Arthur Chrenkoff's Good News series (now featuring issue 33)! No sir, as if by miracle, it appeared in the Washington Post.

The leaders of four of Iraq's Sunni tribes had rallied their fighters in response to warnings posted in mosques by followers of Zarqawi. The postings ordered Ramadi's roughly 3,000 Shiites to leave the city of more than 200,000 in the area called the Sunni Triangle. The order to leave within 48 hours came in retaliation for alleged expulsions by Shiite militias of Sunnis living in predominantly Shiite southern Iraq.

"We have had enough of his nonsense," said Sheik Ahmad Khanjar, leader of the Albu Ali clan, referring to Zarqawi. "We don't accept that a non-Iraqi should try to enforce his control over Iraqis, regardless of their sect -- whether Sunnis, Shiites, Arabs or Kurds.''

But... but... one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Isn't he? Hold on. If a freedom fighter declares that every Iraqi -- Shia, Kurd, Sunni or other -- is the enemy of jihad, then for whose freedom exactly is he fighting? Is it a trick question? Do Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky have an answer for me? Maybe they need to think about it for a while first.

The various terror groups in Iraq have been fighting among themselves recently, now we have Sunni Arabs defending their Shia neighbours in areas where the Shia are a vulnerable minority. While there have been increasing reports of Sunni Arabs fighting against these vile death cultists in trying to protect their own peace and security, this is the first incident that I'm aware of that has them doing so in defence of their Shia countrymen and women. Bill Roggio has comments on the story, wai to Sister Toldjah.

Speaking of Good News from Iraq, the undauntable Arthur Chrenkoff is hanging up his blogging shoes to take a straight job. He's a bit coy as to the work he'll be doing, but it sounds like there's a political component, and a condition that he will not continue blogging while in his new position. Too bad, another blogger who will be missed. But I'm sure Arthur will continue making a difference in this world whatever he does. Congratulations Arthur, it's been a pleasure to read your work over the past year and a half, and to link to your work frequently. All the best in your future endeavours.
- posted by Agam @ 8:56 PM 0 comments

 
THIS DAY IN HISTORY

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n the day that representatives of the Republic of Indonesia sit at a table in Finland with representatives of the Aceh Freedom Movement (GAM) to formally sign a comprehensive peace agreement, on a day that sees the start of Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, moving toward its final handing over to the post-Arafat Palestinian Authority, and on a day in which Iraqi democrats are striving very hard to complete the constitutional framework for their new country through concilliation and compromise, it seems that important things are happening all around us. Add to these, the recent decision by the Irish Republican Army to, at long last, repudiate their terror-based struggle and accept that the democratic process is the only way to realise their aims. Today also happens to be the national Freedom and Independence Day of India -- which is by far the world's largest democracy.

I'm presently watching a "live event" on Indonesia's MetroTV, with satellite links simultaneously showing the happenings in Helsinki, at Merdeka (Freedom) Palace in Jakarta, and at the Great Mosque Baturaihman in Banda Aceh. It looks set to be an interesting afternoon (morning in Finland), and most Indonesian networks are offering live coverage. I'll stick with good old MetroTV which as usual, looks to have the most comprehensive reporting -- under the title "Welcome to Peace in Aceh" (Amen!). Lead negotiators of each delegation are seated on either side of the former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who was a major impetus in keeping the long negotiating process going, and indeed maintained optimism for a mutually agreeable solution when the chances were looking pretty dismal from the outside.

The documents have now been signed, and following brief remarks by Mr. Ahtisaari, the chief GAM negotiator Malik Mahmud has read his prepared statement. Focussing on the "leap of faith" by the Acehnese in placing their trust in the Indonesian government and especially the TNI (Indonesian military), he made several statements about the past decades of violence which cannot have gone down very easily with the Indonesian side, particularly with the assembled political leadership listening in from Merdeka Palace in Jakarta -- president, vice-president and cabinet members. He cautioned about the seemingly large number of "organic" TNI troops to be left in Aceh (for "external defense"), which he said would be roughly double the amount of such troops stationed in any other region (that is, after the withdrawal of the "non-organic" forces sent in to do battle over the past several years). He also drew attention to the government sponsored "militias" which remain, and which he says have been heard to claim that once the non-Aceh based TNI troops are out, they (the militias) will embark on a campaign to kill GAM members. Mr. Mahmud stated that if GAM would defend themselves against this type of militia campaign, that the TNI would take this as a reason to re-enter the region and resume the war against GAM supporters.

Evidently this talk was a little bit too blunt for some TV producers, because Metro abruptly cut away from Mr. Mahmud's address, for a commercial break! I switch over to SCTV which continues to cover the speech, and then they too cut away before it's finished! Well, let's try the state broadcaster TVRI.... and they stick with it until the end. Now it's the Indonesian lead negotiator's turn, Mr. Sofyan Djalil, who makes a much shorter address of mainly generalities about peace and democracy, and full of praise for Mr. Ahtisaari's tireless efforts to shepherd an agreement through. A few further comments from a westerner sitting on the GAM side of the table, regarding process and the involvement of EU and ASEAN observers. President Yudhoyono then struggles with some communication problems with Helsinki as he tries to address his comments and thanks to all those present at the signing ceremony (he can't hear them, but they can hear him). He gives a lot of praise to Mr. Mahmud and the GAM negotiating team, as well as for the Finnish government and Mr. Ahtisaari. Very good words from SBY, and let's hope all officials of his government (and the TNI) heard them well.

There is a massive crowd of people surrounding the Great Mosque in Banda Aceh, and I presume there is some facility for them to at least hear, if not also view the proceedings. I hope they're getting more consistent coverage than I'm seeing from the Jakarta networks though. State broadcaster TVRI seems to be sticking with things the best, but even they didn't stay with the post-official event press conference for more than a few minutes before going back to in-studio discussion. Well ok, questions were mostly in English, but they missed an Indonesian language question, and likewise answered by the Aceh delegate Mr. Mahmud. I had moved over to my source of last resort (also useful whenever BBC decides an important event isn't gripping enough to stay with), which is to say the APTN live news feed. APTN stayed with the press conference through to the end.

There was a question about the involvement of the "Qadaffi Foundation" (Libyan leader Muamar Qadaffi, eh?) in the peace agreement, however Mr. Ahtisaari said while he'd heard these rumours, he didn't know of any such involvement. Mr. Mahmud was asked if he planned to return to Aceh, something which would have landed him in prison until now, but he was non-committal saying he hadn't decided yet. I hear now that the promised release of the five GAM negotiators who had been arrested back in 2003 while on their way to Tokyo for that other series of peace talks sponsored by the Henri Dunant Centre, and which marked the resumption of hostilities by the Megawati government, has still not occurred. The five GAM negotiators remain in jail, somewhere. So I can certainly understand Mr. Mahmud's reluctance.

In two more days, it is the 60th anniversary of the declaration by Sukarno and Mohammed Hatta of Indonesia's independence, August 17, 1945. I wish Indonesians all the best and every success in building a truly democratic nation. I believe President Yudhoyono is a good man at the helm for the country in this period, and I believe he has a true committment to democratic values and pluralism for this vast and incredibly diverse country. Independence Day will have a special significance this year, not only for the nice round number of 60, but for the success in reaching this compromise keeping Aceh within the republic, after so many years when this eventuality -- or any sort of peaceful solution at all -- seemed like a hopeless dream. Of course I also wish the best for the people of Aceh, who have suffered so long and hard in the conflict, not to mention the catastrophic natural disaster which brought a further, almost unfathomable destruction barely eight months ago. Far too many of your people did not make it to see this day.

APOLOGIA-ISM

N

orm Geras has received a lot of flack for his recent article, Apologists among us, which I linked to a couple of weeks ago (and which was also published, in edited form, in one of the London daily papers). In that article, he examined some of the responses from the British wing of the anti-Iraq-liberation "Left" following the London bombings -- mainly their very determined explorations toward gaining understanding and empathy with the righteous anger among British Muslims toward their country's involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, the attendant humiliation of Islam at the hands of a "cowboy" and his "poodle", and so on and so forth.

Norm had been taking onboard these arguments from his critics -- mainly along the lines of, "to understand is not to condone...," and wrote a careful and logical reply to the critics in Apology and its modes 2. If you took the time to read the first piece, you really ought to read the follow-up lesson in logic for the "understanding != condoning" crowd. While it is true that attempting to understand this anger (and the ensuing mass murder which was, in many eyes, the inevitable product of it) is not always or necessarily the same as condoning it -- it certainly can be so, and evidently has been provably so in very many instances in the British discourse since July 7. And we're not simply talking about the modern world's Lord Haw Haw here either -- although he could undoubtedly be proposed as exhibit "A" apologist for terror and tyranny, for sure.

Norm's conclusion at the end of a seriously sensible examination of these issues? An even more solid case that, as he showed quite well in the first piece, there are indeed many apologists for terrorism amongst us.

In fact, and it's encouraging to make note of this, some of the best illuminations into the underlying factors of this "British Muslim anger" following July 7 & 21 has come, not from the intellectual "Left" of (most) Guardian opinion writers and their fellow travellers, but from some previously silent Muslims living in the democratic west, Arab intellectuals writing in the Arab press, and indeed other non-Muslim British immigrants who are now at some risk of having difficulties in the new environment of heightened awareness in their adopted country. One of Norm Geras' readers, named Jay, writes to him:

It is disconcerting to think that people may have suspicion towards me because of the colour of my skin, it is strange to think that as a Sikh (non-practising) I could be thought of as a Muslim...

[...]

...the instinct to proclaim that a stop and search policy based on scrutiny of those who match intelligence reports of a specific nature - to describe that as being a result of a form of latent (racism) is wicked in its implications and mischievousness.

[...]

This needs some moral clarity and this relativism has to stop. Have you noticed why they hardly ever focus on British Indians in the questions of multi-culturalism? Because Indians have on the whole succeeded and integrated whilst maintaining our cultural and religious identity - we are a poke in the eye of those who claim that British society is intrinsically to blame for the 'marginalisation' felt by Muslim youth - and that is a fact that many people do not want to face up to.

Also see this piece by Tunku Varadarajan in the WSJ's Opinion Journal on racism and profiling, and whether these are necessarily (there's that important little word again!) the same thing.

And before anybody gets excited about my poking (once again) of the so-called "Left" in this article, let me leave you with another example (one of many, and I hope, many more to come) of what I consider to be the still honourable left, with this piece by Nick Cohen: I still fight oppression. Nick is the exception that proves the rule, as far as al Grauniad's opinion pages are concerned -- a man of the left with his ethical senses still intact. Also see Wretchard's commentary on Cohen's piece. Nick Cohen ends his article with a call to his former comrades to, once and for all, doff their straight-jackets and get back over to the right (not as in "un-left" but as in "un-wrong") side of the barricades.
- posted by Agam @ 6:20 PM 0 comments

 
STEVEN VINCENT

T

errible news just emanated from my television set. Steven Vincent, author of one of my favourite weblogs, In the Red Zone, has been found murdered in Basra today.

Steven had made several trips as a freelance writer to Iraq, working out in the country and avoiding the protected Baghdad "Green Zone" where most international journalists keep themselves. He had been doing a lot of writing from Basra area in recent months, and had his writing published in Christian Science Monitor and New York Times. He lived and breathed and searched for the real Iraqi stories always "In the Red Zone" -- also the title of his book.

I had just got caught up with Steven's latest few missives on his blog, just yesterday before settling into my all night writing session posted this morning. His site was always an informative read on the situation, with lots of insight offered by way of encounters and interviews with local personalities -- politicians, civil servants, religious figures, port managers and the like. Always prominent in his stories was his companion, guide and translator -- a young Shia Muslim woman who sounded like one of the hipper members of that community. In the news stories reporting on his death, his translator was said to have been abducted together with him last night, and was reportedly seriously wounded herself. Steven never referred to her by name, but protected her identity by simply calling her "Layla" on his blog.

In the Red Zone was the first weblog written by a non-Iraqi that I included in the "Iraqi Blogs" section of my sidebar, because I felt that's where he belonged. I linked to his writing from time to time, and remember warning readers that no matter what your stance on the Iraq issue, prepare to have your preconceptions altered. Steven was no partisan on one side or the other. He was after the real story outside the Green Zone.

Steven was also the first widely read blog writer who put Agam's Gecko on his blog roll, something I did not expect and did not ask for. I hate it when some folks beg for links, something I've never done and will never do. I hadn't communicated with him, but Steven evidently knew I'd written about him and pointed readers to his articles, and he put us on his list. It felt like an honour to see our name on his page.

Go well, Steven. I for one will surely miss you.

Damn. Just, damn.

UPDATE: Please read Arthur Chrenkoff's wonderful reminiscence about his friend, with much insight into the kind of man he was. Chrenk had done a blog interview last year with Steven, and Steven had done a guest post a few months back on Chrenkoff's site. Of Steven's book (full title In the Red Zone: A Journey into the Soul of Iraq), Arthur writes that it is "a wonderful work, not uncritical of both the liberated and the liberators, but nevertheless infused with deep sympathy for the long suffering of the Iraqi people, as well as love of freedom, and hope for a better future."

More thoughts from PoliPundit.
- posted by Agam @ 3:50 PM 0 comments

 
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

T

hus spake Marshall McLuhan many years ago. I wonder what he would have made of the global internet, and especially of the developing blogosphere and its impact on the discourse of the commons. These technological and social advances would not likely have been a surprise to the Canadian philosopher who originated the concept of the world as "a global village."

I recall the period of my own questioning of many long trusted political convictions, after September 11, and unconsciously resorting to McLuhan's paradigm -- trying to make sense of an apparently changed world. What is really going on here, on this blue-green ball of life? What is the United States as the most powerful actor in the story? And what are the other actors doing, in their various shifting alliances and groupings pulling every which way? What to do about the Taliban, not to mention the growing talk of taking out Saddam Hussein. My mind just naturally wanted to put all the actors in a town, reduce the global reality to a situation where everybody lived as actual neighbours.

Now play out what was going on, using any analogies you wish. There is no independent town police force to enforce any laws. Laws themselves barely exist apart from a lot of handshake agreements between residents, but many of these are accepted and honoured by most of the townspeople. They do have a mayor, but he can't give orders to anyone (no matter how much trouble they might be causing), and while he sits on city council meetings, he doesn't even get a vote. Every house in town sends its own city councillor to the meetings, which are grand affairs that accomplish very little toward the well being of the townsfolk.

This is because this town is terribly divided, and families have drifted into competing groups -- many of the heads of households are serious followers of one or another ideology, and this results in competing alliances and conflict. Yet the households themselves are prone to change at times, and will periodically reform and alter their internal operating system. Ever since the one big family (at that time the most powerful competitor to the massive mansion of United States) abruptly gave up its tightly held ideology and its leadership of a large clique in the town, many of the smaller houses have followed suit. Now there's only a handful of homes run under that system, a few small and medium sized ones and of course the big one out in the east end with the most kids. Most of the shifts have been in the direction of the "democracy neighbourhood" as some of the household heads begin to see the benefits of this kind of system.

But yet the town itself remains virtually lawless, because as we all know, there are always some bad guys around wherever you go. Some guys actually beat their kids black and blue, or attack their neighbours and move the fence over. Sometimes they even kill the neighbours' kids, or hold them for ransom, or even kill their own kids. A few even starve their own family practically to death, and Dear Father in the basement mixing up some vile poisonous concoction in a bathtub so he can take on the entire town -- or at least his own cul-de-sac.

Now a new thing has come to town. A fascistic religious cult has taken hold within one of the traditions, a tradition which itself is followed peacefully in much of the town. When the cult was still little noticed, it had already declared war on the "democracy neighbourhood" and much of the rest of town as well. Nobody really noticed much, even after this group had detonated themselves in plenty of other people's houses. Most of the town cooperated in trying to catch and stop these fanatics, a lot of others didn't care one way or another. Years after the cultists had declared war, directed all the peaceful followers (of the tradition they claim to lead) to become new warriors, and decreed that they must kill residents of particular houses wherever they might find them, the townspeople still generally did not think of the situation as a war of any kind.

USA House selected a new head of household and made minor adjustments to its internal operating system, a regular occurence for them. Nine months later, on orders from cult headquarters (located within a small, poor home now run as the town's newest medieval theocracy), a large attack on Mansion USA was launched from within, a clear attempt to decapitate the town's most powerful member. With this event, the town realised the threat, widely accepted the state of war declared years before by the enemy, and pledged resistance and defeat for this new adversary.

And what then?

You can't call out the cops to #3 Theocracy Crescent, there are no police in this village. There are trouble-making houses scattered all over town, some who've already given help to the killers holed up inside #3, but what can you do? Out in the east end, Dear Father is still brewing stuff in his basement, over in mid-town Papa Saddam has been running Iraq House like a brute, even after a coalition of responsible residents kicked him out of his neighbour's place -- and he keeps paying for these cultists' "sacred explosions" at one particular neighbour's home. Now he really hates the neighbourhood democracy association, many of whom cooperated to take away his coveted prize and made him lose face. And like Dear Father, he has plenty of bathtubs on the go -- and he's tested a lot of them out on his own kids, and those of his next door neighbour, with horrific results. Virtually the whole town is convinced that he still has it, and knows how to use it.

Several streams of serious danger are perceived by the townsfolk at large, or at least a lot of the more responsible ones. The streams seem to be converging -- or very close to converging -- and decisions must be made for survival before the convergence is accomplished. Does one keep to oneself, not make any noise, avoid offending the cult, and hope for the best? Bring it up at the next city council meeting? Quite a few of the councillors would seem to wish for the Mansion (and many of its democratic partners) to be levelled -- even a few jealous "friends." So City Hall can't ever really decide on anything, especially if it concerns Mansion USA. The Mansion has a lot of enemies among the more oppressive houses in town, but it also has a lot of friends. Good and loyal friends who can see what is at stake in the present situation.

So volunteers are gathered, numbering a substantial portion of the town's residents -- but not most. About a quarter of the houses, maybe a little less than that, join in the ad hoc citizens' policing effort. The immensely wealthy, powerful and advanced USA House carries the bulk of the load as expected, but all contributions are welcome and appreciated. It's widely accepted, even by most of those not participating in the posse, that the medieval situation at #3 Theocracy Cres. will be changed, and that this will be a good thing. But the streams do not only converge there, the danger is much wider and deeper than that. Papa Saddam has had the entire town wrapped around his little finger for a dozen years, one of the streams that shows no inclination of changing its course. He puts up with occasional visits from social workers, gets them running around in confused circles looking in this cupboard and that, and thumbs his nose as they walk back to the car. He continues to beat and torment and even kill his own family behind closed doors (his immediate neighbours couldn't care less), and everybody knows he has a lot of foul bathtub concoctions on the go -- for some future eventuality.

Alright, I'm going to leave it there. Of course my analogies are not precise, nor can they be. But I find that when considering what choices are available, choices that must be weighed by the leaders we entrust to make difficult decisions in defense of civilised society, scaling the problem down to a more approachable situation can make the right course of action more apparent. The hypothetical town I've imagined would certainly be a fearsome place to live one's day to day life. It must be tempting to just stay behind one's door, never go outside (if one is lucky enough to be born in a house of relative freedom), and pretend that it's not a jungle out there -- since it isn't a jungle "in here." But the jungle remains, and some of your neighbours still want to kill you anyway, just on general principle. Yet strangely, many of them are keen to join the "democracy neighbourhood" even while their chieftains veto the idea. On occasions when they do manage to change, mischief levels go way down and they become much less likely to, for example, shoot your wife over the back fence. When seemingly insurmountable barriers to the change are taken away suddenly, we see the people in these houses taking to the new ways like ducks to water, as though it was the most natural thing in the world for them.

Violet stained fingers comprised only one recent manifestation of this; the Iraqi people showed, once the sickness was removed, which direction they choose to advance. Hyper-reactionary forces are fighting against this advance with everything at their disposal, for when it succeeds, these forces are doomed. I continue to cringe at every single car-bomb, IED and exploding jihadist which take dozens of innocent lives daily. And I thank the Great Spirit, the universe and anything else that might be responsible for putting those other men and women among us; those who are now very far from their safe homes and those they love, doing everything humanly possible to help tip the balance in the right direction. The only option remaining to the terror masters for preventing this tipping point being reached, is to manufacture a communal war within the house. They are getting very close to accomplishing that.

I believe Iraqis will achieve their aspirations. They are paying a terrible price for their tenacity, and their incredible resistance to being drawn into warring with each other. Good men and women from all over town are helping, defending freedom alongside them, and frequently dying with them too. All inside somebody else's house, which when it is all over, will remain somebody else's house.

Some call these men and women the evil ones, the aggressive ones, the imperialist ones. Hungry for blood and brown people to kill, their oil to drink, these say. They call the mass killers of children (who then the next day, attack the grieving parents with more "sacred explosions") as "freedom fighters" and "patriotic heroes". There must be some psychological reason for this type of inversion, that makes liberation and freedom into a bad thing, and violent fascism into a good thing. I have no doubt whatsoever which side in this struggle is the good, and which is the evil one. I mean really. This is not really a tricky question here.

Believe it or not (heh, you'll believe it I'm sure), this isn't the article I set out to write at the top. The headline has nothing to do with where I ended up going with this. The whole article is a side-track! Hey, the story of my life! But wait: if the headline bears no relation to the contents, then that means.... oh no! I'm spontaneously becoming a stuffy old lefty newspaper! Well. Let's remedy that if there's still time.

THE MASSAGE OF THE MEDIA

H

ow's that for a self-correcting double flip? Yes, it's one of my issues since starting to write here all those months ago -- the way the staid, old, hidebound, legacy news media likes to massage things in a particular way before feeding it to the consumer.

I could have just called this one "Funny Headlines" or something, because it started with my jotting down a couple of choice examples of those that I've seen in the last while. Then some things came along which I didn't find so funny, so that title's out.

A few days after posting my last effort (too many days ago, sorry for the long radio silence...), I was watching Washington Journal on C-SPAN, which I normally like to do if possible on weekends, which is the only time the satellite over here carries it. The Journal, like C-SPAN generally, is admirably balanced overall. It's basically, for those who don't know it, a televised phone-in news-oriented talk show. The hosts will have guests in the studio to discuss some particular issue or event, callers can phone to ask questions or debate with the guest while the host alternates between several phone-lines dedicated to either the "pro-whatever", the "anti-whatever" and "others". Usually it's "support the president" on one line, "support Democrats" on another, and "support others" on a third. They do everything possible to balance not only the views expressed by callers, but give equal time to studio guests on both (or more) sides of an issue. The views of the host (moderator might be a better term) remain entirely a mystery, which I also like. Some parts of the three hour program are given to open topics, and the hosts intersperse everything with selected highlighted stories from the morning's mainstream newspapers. It did seem quite odd at first exposure to this program, to see people on TV reading from the newspapers, an over-desk camera doing a close-up on the story, following it down as he or she reads. Hey, I'm reading the newspaper on television -- what the heck is this all about? (McLuhan would have loved it, what's the medium here anyway?)

OK, so it sounds ridiculous, but it works in a strange sort of way. And that night, President Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court was still the top issue for the papers. Stories on how Democrats were expected to react, would there be a filibuster, is John Roberts a "radical conservative" (kind of an oxymoron if you ask me) that would trigger a huge brawl over his confirmation, and so on. The host had read selections from several papers, when my eyes noticed the headline of what he was reading:

Roberts has tried for 50 years to keep his politics secret

Wow. I knew from other readings that this fellow is a 50 year old man. In what seems awfully much like a headline writer gone completely bonkers trying to subtley convey something vaguely sinister, a man who keeps his politics private becomes a man with something to hide. Obviously, eh? I mean, trying for 50 bloody years to keep this stuff secret, and doing so ever since birth.... as a baby, as a toddler, and as a child, this John Roberts "character" has been keeping his politics secret, in a very determined manner! Imagine the people who get their take on events from only scanning the headlines, and don't read the stories at all. I didn't notice which paper that was from, but more than likely either the WaPo or NYT. Often they can provide actual, real time parody of their own earnest partisanship.

Later in the same program, with a guest at the table, a caller was taken on the Democrat line. She launched into the standard tirade about Bush lied for Halliburton to steal Iraqi oil and get all his buddies rich, and so on (everybody knows how it goes). I thought here may be an example of a person who probably assembles her perception of what's happening in the world by just noticing the cleverly worded headlines, which she stitches together to make the narrative that she believes is true. There was absolutely no depth of knowledge, no details, she spoke only in headlines. Talking with the guest about freedom of expression -- which of course the "far right fascists" with Bush at the head are working day and night to eliminate for all time, along with the constitution, Bill of Rights, and probably apple pie too. I burst out laughing when she said something like, "Oh yeah? Well here's proof for you. The Dixie Chicks said Bush lied, and they lost their jobs! That's what happens when you speak out in this country!" The guest patiently explained that they hadn't actually "lost their jobs" since nobody was in any position to fire them. But that many people had felt disgust with some extreme statements that one or two of the Chicks had made, and that many people had also decided to stop buying their music. So their sales went down abruptly, but this is also freedom of expression, and nobody actually lost their jobs. I'm sure the woman continues to be convinced that somebody fired the Dixie Chicks from their jobs because they spoke the truth to power, and because the PATRIOT Act has now eliminated all the rights and freedoms that Americans used to pretend they still had, or something like that.

Trusting that the headline faithfully corresponds with the story following it, can often be a misplaced trust for sure. Try this one on for size, spotted by Tim Blair last week in the Melbourne Age. "More innocents could be shot: UK police" went the headline. After reading the story, one might wonder who might be doing the actual shooting...... perhaps the public telephone box. The tenth paragraph reads:

On July 7 three trains and a bus in London killed 56 people - including the four suspected suicide bombers - and wounded 700.

I wonder what the motive might have been.

The Guardian newspaper has seemed lately, especially on its opinion pages, determined to live up to the alternate name which has been growing in popularity in some circles, that of al Grauniad. The paper had employed a known member of the radical islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir to write hard hitting editorial comment. Dilpazier Aslam wrote immediately after the July 7 London bombings, that his generation of British Muslims were not so polite as their parent's generation. No no, they were the "sassy" generation, expressing themselves in creative, "sassy" ways, so get used to it. "Sassy" is now Dilpazier's middle name. A blogger, Scott Burgess decided to go googling and find some other writings, and he sure found some. The Guardian opinion maker had written screeds for extremist islamist websites devoted to the ideology of Hizb ut Tahrir. He confronted the Guardian editors with this, who eventually were embarrassed enough to let poor Sassy go. He could belong to an extremist group which advocates the killing of Jews, among other illiberal things, or he could be employed by the progressive newspaper in the vanguard of social justice, but he could not do both. He left the paper.

But al Grauniad was mighty damned pissed at being so embarrassed, and published an anonymously penned article entitled "Aslam targeted by bloggers":

"Rightwing bloggers from the US, where the Guardian has a large online following, were behind the targeting last week of a trainee Guardian journalist who wrote a comment piece which they did not care for about the London bombings."

Hmm. A left-leaning British blog known as Harry's Place played at least as much of a role as Burgess' The Daily Ablution, but y'know, American imperialist redneck cowboy aggressors, and all that. And Mr. Burgess, while admitting to "blogging while American", confirms that he has lived in London now for six years. Here is his response to the anonymous article (apparently a rare abberation for this paper). And in a recent development to this story, Guardian staff seem to have become rather polarised over the sacking of Sassy Aslam, resulting in some sort of infighting and taking sides over the issue, which culminated last Friday with the further sacking of the paper's executive news editor. Good grief, all this fuss over an ordinary, garden variety, Joo-hating islamist fanatic working at the "progressive" paper of socialist goodness and vanguard of anti-imperialist justice for all.

Speaking of which, the BBC's Kabul operation might just be causing some similar embarassment for the global mother Corp -- also sometimes known as "Guardian-On-Air". A Kabul blogger has been receiving explicit threats by email recently, seemingly from someone who knows his identity (he writes with a nom de plume, like Agam). The blogger was just reading and deleting them, but they kept on coming with more overt threats of harm and/or outing of his identity which could equally endanger him. Finally the blogger kept a few of these messages, traced the originating IP number, and found that it belonged to the BBC Kabul operation. Read about it here.

After confronting the BBC with the evidence and logs, the Corp conducted an investigation of sorts. They do not condone this type of activity of course, and I believe them. But their response is one of the creepiest evasions of responsibility I've ever seen. In a roundabout way and after itemising the evidence collected, the Head of Media Relations implied that the blogger might have come to the BBC office (which he has done) and sent himself the threatening emails from the BBC's computer. Or if that didn't happen, maybe he altered the emails himself after receipt. Or if that didn't happen... read the BBC response here. I certainly have no idea what really happened, but either an Afghan blogger who wishes to write anonymously staged an elaborate hoax by threatening himself with identity outing and various physical harm, or the BBC has some "sassy" staff members of her own. Wai to InstaPundit for that one.

SHOULDER TO SHOULDER

S

hortly after the second, thankfully failed, attacks on the London transportation system -- which was first being reported just as I was about to post my previous set of articles all those days ago -- BBC World switched over from their ongoing breaking news coverage of the event (the national broadcast having taken the place of the international one on BBC World), to bring the live news conference of Tony Blair and John Howard. There were some preliminary statements first, and then Blair fielded some questions from journalists. As soon as Howard, in response to a question, mentioned the word "terrorism", the crack news team down in the studio decided that was enough of that, and it was time to go back to various reporters standing out in the streets with nothing much to report on. "Damn them," I thought. "What is the matter with these bozos, I was listening to that!" I quickly moved the dish over to AsiaSat, hoping that the APTN (Associated Press Television Network) feed might be carrying it. They were. And I heard John Howard give the most concise description of the current state of affairs in the terror war, as well as his dedication to the values of civilised humanity and determination to confront and defeat these enemies of freedom. I hope the people of Britain had a chance to see this part of the conference later on tape, because it was a powerful and moving declaration.

But some producer decided that since Tony wasn't talking, only the Australian, it was time for more exciting empty street scenes. You can see the entire 22 minute event by picking the correct Real Media file from this page (hint: it's the top one). The video might not be available for much longer, so check it out. If you have no time to spare for the 22 minutes, move it ahead to 16:30, and watch. And listen. If it's gone by the time you get there, a shorter clip containing Howard's masterful answer to one of his own country's journalists, can also be found on Jackson's Junction.

But whether readers choose to view and listen or not, you're going to get the memorable quotation here anyway. Lifted from Melanie Phillips' Diary (Big Wai to Melanie), here are the objective facts as seen by brother John Howard. In answer to the Australian journalist's supposition that the "propaganda war was being lost" and that Western governments may have brought on such attacks by their actions in Iraq and elsewhere....

PRIME MIN. HOWARD: 'Can I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government and indeed the policies of the British and American governments on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it's given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

'Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq.

'And I remind you that the 11th of September occurred before the operation in Iraq.

'Can I also remind you that the very first occasion that bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor. Are people by implication suggesting we shouldn't have done that?

'When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on the 7th of July, they talked about British policy not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan?

'When Sergio de Mello was murdered in Iraq -- a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, a person immensely respected for his work in the United Nations -- when al Qaeda gloated about that, they referred specifically to the role that de Mello had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor.

'Now I don't know the mind of the terrorists. By definition, you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber. I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I've cited. The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq. And indeed, all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggests to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of principles of the great world religion that, at its root, preaches peace and cooperation. And I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.'

PRIME MIN. BLAIR: 'And I agree 100 percent with that'. (Laughter.)

In the Weekend Australian this past Saturday, was this glowing description of Mr. Howard's recent international trip. Greg Sheridan writes that it must have been the most successful Prime Ministerial trip ever, and that Mr. Howard was probably seen and heard by more people around the globe than any other Australian leader in history. From Washington, to London, on to Baghdad for a surprise visit with the new democratically elected Prime Minister of that country, and thence down to Al Muthanna province to spend time with the Diggers there.

The Anchoress illustrates John Howard's argument with a few pictures of some things that actually happened before the, er, you know, that war for oil and stuff that Chimpy started for his cronies, and caused all our terrorism and everything.

UN-CENSORED?

I

t seems that some United Nations members, which coincidentally are also Islamic states, view any criticism of suicide / homicide / "sacred explosions" type martyrs as an affront to Islam as a whole. The International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), the World Union of Humanist, Secular and Rationalist organisations had attempted to have the concept of slaughtering of innocents in the name of (any) religion, as a general principle, condemned by the UN Sub Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Good try, IHEU, but don't you know that such resolutions are "un-Islamic"? Criticism of suicide bombers censored at the UN:

The Islamic members of the Sub-Commission objected to the speech as an attack on Islam. The text however is a report on recent critical comment on Islamist extremism by a number of notable Muslim writers and is a call to the UN Human Rights Commission by the NGOs "to condemn calls to kill, to terrorise or to use violence in the name of God or any religion".

The text referred to recent decisions by high-ranking Muslim clerics confirming that those who carry out suicide bombings cannot be treated as apostates and remain Muslims(1), a fatwa by a Saudi cleric that innocent Britons were a legitimate target for terrorist action(2), and remarks by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, dean of the College of Sharia and Islamic Studies at Qatar University who has visited Britain, that terror attacks are permissible.

[...]

These actions follow the refusal of the Islamic states at the meeting of the Commission in April to condemn those who kill in the name of religion, and to categorise their attempts to criticise Islamic terrorists as "defamation of religion".

Wai littlegreenfootballs.

al-Qaradawi is of course the charming Islamic scholar that London mayor Ken Livingston has been so keen on praising and playing host to, in his fair city. And I've heard he's due to bless London with another visit soon. I'm sure Ken will be the ever-polite host, and wouldn't dream of saying anything untoward about terrorists and thus defaming the great world religion itself. Especially to such an esteemed scholar and peaceful man of moderation and tolerance, for whom such activities are entirely permissible.
- posted by Agam @ 7:04 AM 0 comments