Rally for Freedom of Expression

A new campaign for Freedom of Expression is holding a rally in Trafalgar Square between 2:00pm and 4:00pm on Saturday March 25th 2006.

Here's the statement of principle:

“The strength and survival of free society and the advance of human knowledge depend on the free exchange of ideas. All ideas are capable of giving offence, and some of the most powerful ideas in human history, such as those of Galileo and Darwin, have given profound religious offence in their time.

The free exchange of ideas depends on freedom of expression and this includes the right to criticise and mock.

We assert and uphold the right of freedom of expression and call on our elected representatives to do the same.

We abhor the fact that people throughout the world live under mortal threat simply for expressing ideas and we call on our elected representatives to protect them from attack and not to give comfort to the forces of intolerance that besiege them.”

See you there? Please forward details to like-minded friends.

http://marchforfreeexpression.blogspot.com

http://www.secularism.org.uk/marchforfreeexpressionwillyoubet.html

Bashing the Square

Another excellent article from Nick Cohen:

Bashing the Square

The Last Bus to Tehran

Here's a Nick Cohen piece about oppression in Tehran. It's an old article that came out around the time of the Danish Cartoon riots. However it's an interesting look at another news story that got lost in the media storm. I've cut and pasted some highlights but it's worth following the link and reading it in full.

The Last Bus To Tehran

'For three weeks, there have been demonstrations across the planet about a great injustice done to Muslims. After baton-wielding cops inflicted dozens of injuries, the fear of death is in the air. George W Bush’s State Department has warned of ’systematic oppression’, while secularists and fundamentalists have revealed their mutually incompatible values. Since you ask, I am not talking about the global menace of Scandinavian cartoonists that has so terrified our fearless free press, but mass arrests in Iran.'

'Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the US State Department and British Foreign Office have all protested. Trade unions, Iranian exiles and gay groups have demonstrated. Yet the media have barely noticed. The failure is due in part to my trade’s perennial inability to walk and chew gum at the same time: we consider stories one by one and today’s story is Muslim anger with cartoonists.'

'I’m not saying it isn’t newsworthy, but you shouldn’t forget that it was manufactured by hard-line Danish imams who hawked the cartoons round the Muslim world for four months (and, somewhat blasphemously, added obscene drawings of their own). The religious right and Syrian Baathists welcomed them and proved yet again that they need to incite frenzies to legitimise arbitrary power.'

The NHS's £900 million overdraft

So the crowning achievement of new Labour, the NHS, isn't in such great shape after all. Despite the absolutely unprecedented levels of investment latest figures suggest the National Health service may have overspent by a record breaking £900 million!

Incidently, the fact that the NHS boss is standing down has nothing to do with any of this according to the Government. hmm, just a coincidence then.
And if you want to get really depressed visit the NHS Blog Doctor's website for an inside view of the national health service from a working doctor. Here's an extract:

"I, Dr John Crippen, now publicly to admit to an action of gullibility, of the most credulous stupidity, an action which had the most dire consequence and an action for which I expect to spend many years in purgatory. I was not alone in this action. There were others. Several million others. This gives me comfort. It goes, perhaps, to mitigation, but it is no excuse.

In 1997 I voted for Tony Blair.

I believed him. I believed in him. He was a decent man, a man who was going to make a difference to the two things I care most about in this country. Healthcare and education. Well, he has certainly made a difference. But not in the way I hoped.

The standard of health care, despite all the millions poured in by Gordon Brown, is worse than it has ever been in my lifetime. When I started as a doctor, I could genuinely say to patients that they really did not need private health insurance. Better bed and breakfast perhaps, but the NHS still delivered. Now I tell people to keep up their BUPA payments whatever the cost. Sell your daughters into the slave trade if necessary, but do not forgo private medical insurance."

Why is there no grown up debate about the NHS among our Politicians. And why this terror at contemplating NOT making the NHS free at the point of entry. As the good doctor says in his blog:

"Healthcare “free at the point of entry” into the system. Why? Healthcare is important. But it is not as important as nutrition, as food. Why is food not “free at the point of entry” into the supermarket?"

Rebuttals welcome.

The dangers of political Islam

An interesting article on political Islam from the excellent New Republic. By the way, if you have time it's well worth reading the readers' comments in 'Discuss this article' section.

'The dangers of political Islam'

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

The New Republic

The muddled thinking over freedom of speech

An article by Melanie Phillips on the recent 'muddled' free speech debate over the Danish Cartoons, the Irving trial and Livingston's suspension. As someone who has found himself quite muddled and confused by this whole debate I admire her clarity and conviction on this issue.

Muddled thinking over freedom of speech

"In every case, the controversy has been defined as over where the line should be drawn between protecting freedom of speech and preventing the giving of offence. But other issues are at play here too. And it is the assumption that treating these cases differently means double standards which has caused the confusion.

If we think it was wrong to have tried to censor the Danish cartoons, then we must think it was wrong to jail Irving. Right? Wrong. If we think it was right to jail Irving, then we should have supported the law against incitement to religious hatred before it was all but neutered by a Commons revolt. Right? Wrong.

If we were against the law against incitement to religious hatred because it threatened to shut down democratic debate, then we must be against the ‘undemocratic’ suspension of Ken Livingstone. Right? Wrong."

'What America needs now...'

Here's a typically good piece on Bush by Niall Ferguson:

'What America needs now is a mighty blast of fire and Gladstone'

The strange silence of the archbishop

Another excellent must-read article from Nick Cohen in the Observer:

"Arson, rape, massacres ... and the strange silence of the archbishop"

Nick Cohen

The Observer

A fun day out in Westminster with Hizb ut-Tahrir...

An account of the Hizb ut-Tahrir Westminster 'open day', hosted by Clare Short can be found at Harry's Place. It's well worth a read.

...from pig to man, and from man to pig...

A perhaps unnecessarily oblique (and not entirely fair) heading for what is in fact a rather simple political quiz. There are twenty quotes - the goal is the identify the political party each one belongs to.

Whose line is it anyway?

David Cameron this week unveiled his statement of Tory beliefs. But can you tell which are his values, and which come from the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos?

Cultural Relativism (& Mental hygiene)

Excellent post on Cultural Relativism from the Daily Ablution (which now has a permanent link direct from our front page.)

Cultural Equivalence is Self-Hatred - Now We Must All Hate Ourselves

Several days ago, a (disapproving) commenter made a point that I've been mulling over ever since. I can't remember the exact wording, and I'm not going to take the trouble to scroll through all the comments to find it, but it was something to the effect that the bigotry that has in the past expressed itself as racism now takes the form of "culturism" - the evil, misguided view that some cultures are morally superior to others in an absolute sense - and that this new bigotry must be resisted, as racism was.

Of course, the leftist notion that "all cultures are equal" has been around for quite a while, but the commenter in question did provide a useful service in reminding us of the next step on the agenda of the arbiters of what's deemed proper thinking - having won the day with their altogether laudable stance against the social acceptability of racism (even the left is correct at times), they now seek to impose a stigma equivalent to that of "racist" upon those who argue that some cultures are inherently superior to others.

To my mind, the argument of cultural equivalence is rather easily rebutted, along the following lines:

• Every culture must surely consist of both good and bad characteristics; and,
• It is so unlikely as to be impossible that the proportion of good to bad in every culture on earth is precisely equal, given that they're so "diverse"; ergo, some cultures are superior to others.

Of course, this argument assumes a moral hierarchy, something that the relativists eschew. So the following approach might prove more productive:

• "Is your position really that the culture of present-day AmeriKKKa, based as it is on a noxious combination of rampant consumerism, environmental destruction and fascist cultural imperialism, comprises the moral equivalent of that of the blamelessly pure at-one-with-Gaia Native Americans? "

Any rebuttal along these lines is likely to bring to light the fact that the argument of cultural equivalence is actually acting as a sort of intellectual facade, as at this point its exponent is likely to change tack - and in so doing reveal their real stance; namely, that our (Western) culture is the evil one, to which almost (?) all others are superior.

"Coalition: Vast Majority of Iraqis Still Alive"

Another spoof article from Satirical American website The Onion:

Coalition: Vast Majority of Iraqis Still Alive

White House Had Prior Knowledge of Cheney Threat.

Cheney Threat

2006 Index of Economic Freedom

If this topic is your bag, please check it out. It's fascinating and surprising. (The clue is probably in the question, but who would you expect to rank higher, the UK or the US?) It's well worth reading the analysis - the list just gives you a snap shot of where we are now - the accompanying text gives some indication of where we are headed. Results go back to 1995 so there is a basis for comparison with previous administrations. It also provides raw data if you want to challenge their conclusions.

The index is published by a conservative think tank (the heritage foundation - you can read all about their history on the website) so it is not politically 'neutral'. However, that does not mean that their conclusions are invalid. Broadly they belive in a link between ecomic freedom and prosperity - however, it's not as simple as most free = most prosperous. There are other factors such as natural resources. e.g. Norway's oil reserves. Anyway, it's all there for you, if you want to explore it in more detail.

2006 Index of Economic Freedom

Beyond our ken...

So, the mayor has been suspended. Following the Danish cartoons and the Irving trial, this feels like another complicated free speech issue. Of course the situation is not exactly the same, but in the popular imagination it is very much about the personal consequences of saying something that is deemed unacceptable by a particular section of the community.

Personally, I do not think the mayor should have been suspended. We already have a mechanism for removing elected officials from office - it's called an election! I understand that there should be safeguards against corruption, but I am not convinced that making offensive remarks after (allegedly) a few glasses too many requires this particular measure. (A quick side note though - Ken's has said that his 'nazi' comment was to do with the Associated Press' record of anti-semitism and Moseley supporting in the 30s. He clearly didn't feel quite so strongly when he was the Standard's restaurant critic.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4749688.stm)

Lastly though, a quick question - what limits on speech should there be for people in or seeking public office. I'm wondering what sanctions we would feel would be appropriate if the Mayor (or any other elected official) started making inflammatory / racist remarks about any given group. Do we want a law that would prevent (say) a racist mayor from mobilising (for example) anti-immigrant sentiment? Genuine question. Interested in the answers.

English school plans lessons in English shock!

I think we're in 'you couldn't make it up' territory.

Critics hail English-only lessons

Education campaigners have welcomed a school's decision to scrap a disputed bilingual teaching scheme.

Turkish pupils at the north London secondary school were being taught GCSE science in their native tongue.

But the new head of White Hart Lane school in Tottenham said pupils must focus on learning English.

Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education, said: "I fully support this move back to all English lessons and would think it is very overdue."

political compass

Ever wondered just how left or right wing you are? Complete this test and find out political compass

My score - economic left/right:4.00 Social libertarian/authoritarian: -3.33

Plagued by teenagers? You'll like the sound of this

Oh joy! Do you think they'll be available for home use?

Plagued by teenagers? You'll like the sound of this
Telegraph
16/02/2006

As a form of revenge against disruptive youth, it is almost too sweet - a device that annoys teenagers so intensely they have to disperse and loiter somewhere else. Police have given their backing to a gadget that sends out an ultra high-pitched noise that can be heard only by those under 20 and is so distressing it forces them to clutch their ears in discomfort. Eventually they can stand it no longer and have to move on.

But because the body's natural ability to detect some frequency wave bands diminishes almost entirely after 20, adults are completely immune to the sounds.

And if a siren doesn't work, try this

Church of England apologises for slavery

Starting this thread:

Church of England votes to apologize for its role in the global slave trade
Canadian Press
February 08, 2006

....only so I can include this interesting thought:

Church of England Synod confused about blame for slavery
Telegraph Letters
10 February 2006

Sir - There is a serious moral and logical problem with the apology the Church of England Synod has offered to those descended from the slaves owned by bishops and the Church in the 18th century. If the religion of Christianity and Anglican institutions owe a moral apology for actions done centuries before by other individuals, then we have a theory of doctrinal and institutional guilt.

But when suicide bombings occur, we are assured by all authorities that these things are done by a "tiny minority" of Muslim extremists and have nothing to do with Islam. If the Synod is right, then all Muslims ought to share the blame for suicide bombings. Conversely, if the Muslim community has nothing to do with suicide bombing (since nearly all of them reject such actions) then the Anglican Church is merely confused in its understanding of moral issues.

Labour's Authoritarianism

In the last election Wembley posted that he felt Labour was most vunerable on their record of social authoritarianism. I read on another website that the Government wants to bring in a Bill to give them the right to enact legislation without the need for parliamentary debate and wondered if Wembley felt this qualified as authoritarianism or that some of the reaction to the bill (see Rozenberg "Henry VIII powers" below) is an over-reaction and that this is something more innocent?


Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill


Here's a report on the bill by the telegraph's legal correspondent Joshua Rozenberg.

Japan likes killing whales but not eating them

Japan likes killing whales but not eating them
Telegraph
10/02/2006

The enthusiasm of Japanese for whaling has surpassed their appetite for actually eating the mammals, leaving retailers with a glut of unsold whale meat.

...

Whale hunting was largely confined to a few coastal areas of Japan for most of its history. Only after the Second World War, when a hungry populace desperately needed protein, did it spread nationwide. Then it was seen as a tough and rather unpleasant source of nutrition, rather than a delicacy.

Japan's Lies to Justify Whaling

Political Nasdaq - Election 2008?

I'm starting a thread that hopefully will run up to the next election. The idea is to track the rise and fall in the fortunes of the three main parties all the way up to election night.

Here's a report on the surprise byelection victory from the LibDems. Perhaps everybody has been a bit rash in writing them off!

LidDem Byelection win stuns Labour

Also, coincidently, here's a link to a news report that Labour is considering scrapping next years local election. Hmmm.

Council polls could be scrapped

'Back-door nationalisation'

Interesting article about how the state pension fund envisaged in the Turner Report could lead to nationalisation through the 'back-door'. Maybe Labour could bring back Clause Four after all!

State pension fund 'could allow back-door nationalisation'

By the way Brown's criticisms and concerns over the workability of the proposals outlined in Turner's Report position him to the 'right' of the Tories (who enthusiastically expressed their support for the report). Personally, I believe
Brown's judgement is as right on this one as it was in refusing to adopt the Euro.

'Cut a deal with the mullahs' - Polly Toynbee

Here's an article from Polly Toynbee on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

No more fantasy diplomacy: Cut a deal with the mullahs

Israel & South Africa

Two countries of interest to a number of impdecers.

I haven't read this whole article yet, so can't vouch for its content, but have put it up for your collective perusal.


Worlds apart

Israelis have always been horrified at the idea of parallels between their country, a democracy risen from the ashes of genocide, and the racist system that ruled the old South Africa. Yet even within Israel itself, accusations persist that the web of controls affecting every aspect of Palestinian life bears a disturbing resemblance to apartheid. After four years reporting from Jerusalem and more than a decade from Johannesburg before that, the Guardian's award-winning Middle East correspondent Chris McGreal is exceptionally well placed to assess this explosive comparison. Here we publish the first part of his two-day special report

Monday February 6, 2006
The Guardian

Danes face fury over cartoons of Prophet

I'm sure you've all been following this story:

Danes face fury over cartoons of Prophet
Telegraph
31/01/2006

I've blogged my opinion of Jack Straw before, it hasn't changed with this:

Straw condemns cartoon row press
BBC News
3 February 2006

For me, I rank this with the Theo van Gogh murder as a key indicator of how (indeed, whether) the West will stand up for its own sacred principles in the face of the Islamist (note: IslamIST) threat. I wanted to post a lot more links, but work has intervened, so I thought it better just to get a thread going with a short posting.

Here are the cartoons themselves (thanks Dan):

Danish Imams Propose to End Cartoon Dispute

And just some food for thought:

Anti-Semitic Cartoons in the Arab Media

Major Anti-Semitic Motifs in Arab Cartoons

Inside the terrorist mind...

The following appeared in The New Republic online. I thought it was worth sharing as a reminder that not every voice from the Middle East is calling for jihad amd the destruction of the US. This piece by Egyptian playwright Ali Salem is a critical imagining of the terrorist mindset. (May require you to register in order to read it.)

IMAGINING THE INNER WORKINGS OF A TERRORIST'S MIND.
The War of the Hotels
by Ali Salem

In a culture of intellectual quiescence, the Egyptian playwright Ali Salem stands out for his courage, his willingness to break with the crowd. Born in 1936, in the time of the monarchy, he made his own way through life, and educated himself in the classics. Some years ago he provoked a storm by openly journeying to Israel and writing about his experience in that country. This led to virtual ostracism by his peers. But he stood his ground, and in the crucial years since September 11 he has written scathingly and satirically of the pathologies of the Arab world--the anti-Americanism, the animus toward modernism, the refusal of the Arab intellectual elites to face the burden of Arab history. Salem is fierce in his denunciation of radical Islamism, and of the evasions and denials that sustain it in mainstream Arab life. What follows is a piece occasioned by the terrorist attacks on the hotels in Amman that took place last November 9. It appeared in Al Hayat, the London-based pan-Arab daily, from which I have translated it.

--Fouad Ajami

TNR also offered a link to the trailer for 'Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World' - well worth a look, as is the accompanying interview with Albert Brooks. The film seems to be a variation on Victor Borge's old adage 'laughter is the shortest distance between two people.'

The shadow of the Shoah...

Excellent:

We want to step out of the Shoah shadow, but we run into obstacles
As the Holocaust goes from memory to history, Jews have tried to move forward. But the deniers haul us back again

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday January 25, 2006
The Guardian

[I was reminded also of Isaac Deutscher 'The Non-Jewish Jew' - hat tip, Alexis
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0850362741/026-7447200-1373263

From Wikipedia:

[Deutscher's] definition of his Jewishness was: "Religion? I am an atheist. Jewish nationalism? I am an internationalist. In neither sense am I therefore a Jew. I am, however, a Jew by force of my unconditional solidarity with the persecuted and exterminated. I am a Jew because I feel the pulse of Jewish history; because I should like to do all I can to assure the real, not spurious, security and self-respect of the Jews."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Deutscher]

The future is not Orange...

Remeber the SDP? Polly Toynbee does, and she argues that New Labour is now to the right of the old Gang of Four. She suggests that the answer for the Lib Dems is to stop facing both ways and mount an attack from the left. (She's no fan of the Orange Book stuff.)

Not sure I agree with her, but here it is:

New Labour is now to the right of the SDP we formed in 1981

The Liberal Democrats could be a force for good if they gave up fantasies of power and occupied the space to Labour's left

Polly Toynbee
Friday January 20, 2006

Genocidal Sudan awarded Chair of African Union

Outrage over the dictator poised to lead Africa
Telegraph
16/01/2006

Sudan's military dictator is likely to become chairman of the African Union and the continent's face to the world despite waging war in Darfur, it emerged yesterday. President Omar al-Bashir, who seized power in a coup and harboured Osama bin Laden for five years in the 1990s, will host a meeting of African leaders in Sudan next Monday. They are due in Khartoum for a summit of the African Union, an alliance of all 53 countries in the continent. They are likely to outrage human rights groups by electing Mr Bashir as their chairman and Africa's most prominent statesman for the next 12 months.

...

Mr Bashir is expected to be elected even though his Arab-dominated regime is conducting a brutal campaign against rebels in Sudan's western region of Darfur, where almost two million people have been forced into squalid refugee camps. ... Some 300,000 people, about five per cent of the population, are believed to have died in Darfur since the onset of war three years ago.

Will Jesus take the stand?

An interesting test of faith... [I've quoted a large chunk but it's really worth reading the whole thing.]


Prove Christ exists, judge orders priest
From Richard Owen in Rome

AN ITALIAN judge has ordered a priest to appear in court this month to prove that Jesus Christ existed.

The case against Father Enrico Righi has been brought in the town of Viterbo, north of Rome, by Luigi Cascioli, a retired agronomist who once studied for the priesthood but later became a militant atheist.

Signor Cascioli, author of a book called The Fable of Christ, began legal proceedings against Father Righi three years ago after the priest denounced Signor Cascioli in the parish newsletter for questioning Christ’s historical existence.

Yesterday Gaetano Mautone, a judge in Viterbo, set a preliminary hearing for the end of this month and ordered Father Righi to appear. The judge had earlier refused to take up the case, but was overruled last month by the Court of Appeal, which agreed that Signor Cascioli had a reasonable case for his accusation that Father Righi was “abusing popular credulity”.

Signor Cascioli’s contention — echoed in numerous atheist books and internet sites — is that there was no reliable evidence that Jesus lived and died in 1st-century Palestine apart from the Gospel accounts, which Christians took on faith. There is therefore no basis for Christianity, he claims.

Btw this article sits nicely alongside other faith related posts which you can find here.

Phone fun

I'm not sure if this is strictly within the remit of this blog, but it was too much fun not to share:

Predictive, yet unpredictable

James Meek
Friday January 13, 2006
The Guardian

[...] My 2005 Nokia won't recognise the words "Mozart" or "Beethoven", for instance. But it does recognise "Wagner" and "Strauss". It is familiar with "Nazi" and "communist"; but it hasn't heard of "haddock" or "avocado". It knows Picasso and Gaugin, but seems to be unacquainted with Raphael and Leonardo. Likes Elvis and Dylan; hasn't heard of the Beatles. Seattle, Quebec and Tampere (Finnish city, pop 200,000), yes; Newcastle, Cardiff and Sheffield (English city, pop half a million), no.

If you expect your Nokia to know what you're on about when you message your partner, "That shop in Bolton has the grout we need," it will begin grumpily demanding, "Spell?" If, however, you want to say: "Who's your favourite dictator, Stalin, Hitler, Franco or Napoleon?" the mobile understands exactly what you mean. My phone goes all talk-to-the-hand if I try to message somebody to remember to get the emulsion, and that Sainsbury's has guavas. But write: "Marxist dogma relies too heavily on the dialectical approach," and the Nokia begins, figuratively speaking, to nod in agreement.

On the basis of its vocabulary, in short, my 21st-century Nokia phone, if it were a person, would be a heavily bearded lecturer from the London School of Economics in 1975, smelling strongly of pipe smoke. And I'd be the last person to want that academic out of my mobile. I just wonder whether he might not be joined in there by someone a bit more UK 2006-specific.

Vote Hamas!

Well, not really, but I thought it would be eye-catching. Anyway, here's an interesting piece about Hamas' latest manifesto.

Hamas drops call for destruction of Israel from manifesto

Chris McGreal in Jerusalem
Thursday January 12, 2006
The Guardian

Hamas has dropped its call for the destruction of Israel from its manifesto for the Palestinian parliamentary election in a fortnight, a move that brings the group closer to the mainstream Palestinian position of building a state within the boundaries of the occupied territories.

The Islamist faction, responsible for a long campaign of suicide bombings and other attacks on Israelis, still calls for the maintenance of the armed struggle against occupation. But it steps back from Hamas's 1988 charter demanding Israel's eradication and the establishment of a Palestinian state in its place.

Saddam's Terror Training Camps

Saddam's Terror Training Camps
Weekly Standard
Jan 2006

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. ...

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. ...

The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million "exploitable items" captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. They include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs, and computer hard drives. Taken together, this collection could give U.S.intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq war.

The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator.

It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years. Nearly three years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, only 50,000 of these 2 million "exploitable items" have been thoroughly examined. That's 2.5 percent.

You couldn't make this up

I hope this will be an ongoing thread to which all will contribute. The spirit of Littlejohn lives on!

Schools alarmed over orange pips
Telegraph
09/01/2006
Orange pips and plum stones have become the latest concern for health and safety enthusiasts, a report reveals. Some schools, which are giving out free fruit to their pupils under a health initiative funded by the Scottish Executive, believe that fruits with pips are dangerous and so are avoiding them. "We tend not to use stone fruits because of the safety issues. Orange pips fall into that category," a respondent to the study said.


CENSORS have banned young children from buying the new series of Doctor Who on video or DVD on the grounds of “excessive cruelty” towards a Dalek.

Children have been banned from collecting chickens' eggs at the National Trust's showpiece farm because it is now deemed by health and safety advisers as too hazardous

I particularly appreciated the contribution from the gentleman who discovered, after his daughter grazed her knee in the playground, that even cotton wool is considered too dangerous to be held in the school office, lest it be left behind in the wound.

Long live the British Sergeant Major

Priceless.

Stand by your ironing boards
By John Keegan
Telegraph
09/01/2006

Accompanied by his father the Prince of Wales, Prince William, 23, was spared the traditional chore of carrying in his ironing board as he arrived at Sandhurst yesterday to begin his training as an Army officer. When I first knew Sandhurst, at the end of the Fifties, an ironing board was not one of a new cadet's necessities. Now it is.

The Army thinks that ironing improves an officer's character as well as appearance, just as polishing boots does. It is laborious and time-consuming work and incompetence provides a drill sergeant with many opportunities for criticism.

No doubt Prince William's colour sergeant has been rehearsing the line: "Mr Wales, Sir, idle trousers." Perhaps something wittier will emerge to pass into Sandhurst folklore, along with the unforgettable reproof: "Mr King of Jordan, Sir, you are an idle little monarch".

And the winner is...

Another good reason to register with TNR online - this article does just what it says on the tin:

TNR ONLINE'S DESPOT OF THE YEAR AWARD

Munich

Pasted below is a pretty critical review of Spielberg's film about the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre - Munich. Haven't seen the film yet so can't say whether it's an unfair review or not but there's some interesting stuff here.

The New Republic Online
TWO PROBLEMS WITH MUNICH.
Twin Pique
by Richard Just
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 12.24.05

Last week I attended a screening of Munich in Washington. The evening included testimonials to the film's cinematic power from former Clinton officials Mike McCurry and Dennis Ross, both serving as consultants to the movie's rollout, plus more praise from Princeton Professor Anne-Marie Slaughter and Foreign Policy Editor-In-Chief Moisés Naím. Slaughter commended the film--a fictionalized account of Israel's attempts to track down and assassinate the terrorists who planned the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre--for showing how, in responding to violence with violence, liberal societies "can lose the very values that we're fighting for." She also lauded the movie's main character, an Israeli assassin who is conflicted about the morality of his mission, for realizing that "we have to do this not as a war, but within the legal system." (Following these thoughts, the audience broke into spontaneous applause.) Naím called the movie "wonderful" and said it left him "speechless."

Part of me wondered if we had all watched the same film. For one thing, as Leon Wieseltier pointed out two weeks ago in TNR, Munich is a "tedious" movie, "soaked in the sweat of its idea of evenhandedness." But two additional aspects of the film struck me as problematic. First, events of recent history have rendered Spielberg's central argument questionable at best, empirically false at worse. And second, the film's last scene contains a particularly ugly suggestion about the relationship between Israel and September 11. Who knows whether Spielberg intended this suggestion. But it is there; and audiences will see it whether he intended it or not.

The evening's most awkward balancing act belonged to Dennis Ross whose attempt to fulfill his duties as a Munich promoter while also maintaining his political sanity more or less led him to claim that the film's message was something other than the film's message. Ross began by saying that the movie's perspective on counterterrorism was "that you have to respond--it's understandable that you respond--but when you respond, you're actually confronted with real dilemmas." Then he said, "And the choices are hard, and sometimes you pick the best of the bad alternatives." This sounded like a grudging endorsement of targeted assassinations. Perhaps misunderstanding Ross or perhaps seeking to steer his fellow panelist back to safer ideological turf, Naím, the group's moderator, said, "Yes, and in fact Steven Spielberg says that a response to a response is not, does not solve anything. It just creates a perpetual motion machine of hatred and revenge." At this point the game was up; Ross had been unmasked. (There would be no spontaneous applause for these comments.) He responded, "I think that is certainly a perspective that he brings to bear." Well, yes: It's the entire point of the movie; and Spielberg has said as much (in the director's own words, "a response to a response doesn't really solve anything"). Ross then went on to explain that he supported targeted assassinations but that the movie's message was that "you really have to craft your response with care." "I think it provokes a discussion about targeted killing, and not whether it's wrong or right, but maybe you ought to talk about it; maybe you ought to think about it," Ross said. So the message of this ambitious two-and-half-hour movie is that we should "think" about targeted assassination. But why "think" about a policy option that "doesn't really solve anything"?

Ross's contortions get to the heart of a major problem with Munich's argument. He is right that the movie entertains the debate about targeted killings largely on practical, rather than moral, grounds. The movie may hint that such assassinations are immoral, but it seeks to prove that they are ineffective. Unlike Ross, Spielberg believes that violent reprisals simply don't work. The problem is that the last three years of Israeli history have shown Spielberg to be wrong. According to The Jerusalem Post, the number of Israelis killed by terrorists has fallen steadily in recent years, from 453 in 2002 to 52 in 2005. It is true that targeted assassinations have been only one component of Israel's anti-terror activities; the construction of a security fence around the West Bank was probably the most important step. And it is also true that plenty of other developments--the death of Arafat, the pullout from Gaza, the reinvigoration of the Israeli center--have brought us to the current hopeful moment in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Still, it seems likely that targeted assassinations played a constructive role in weakening and demoralizing terrorist organizations. At the very least, Sharon has disproven the conventional wisdom that fighting terror with military measures only perpetuates the cycle of violence.

Because its thesis willfully fails to take account of recent Israeli history, Munich feels like a movie that was conceived four or five years ago and frozen in time. And in fact, it was. Speaking at last week's panel, the film's co-producer, Kathleen Kennedy, explained that "we began this process around the year 2000" but "tabled the project for about 8 or 9 months" after September 11. (She also said something revealing about the movie's origins. When they first considered the idea, "Steven and I ... were acutely aware of what had happened at the Olympics in 1972, but we had no idea about this story that unfolded after that." They had never heard of Israel's reprisals? These were not exactly a secret. Fortunately, they turned to an expert, Tony Kushner: "And Tony, some of you may know, has been steeped in the area of politics in the Middle East and really deeply understood the complexity of what it was we were embarking on, in terms of the politics of the story we were trying to tell.") If Munich had been made in 2000, it would still have been troubling to those of us who believe, like Dennis Ross, that killing terrorists is morally defensible. But one would have had to at least entertain the film's practical argument about the cycle of violence. Now, circumstances have changed--because while Spielberg was making a movie he calls a "prayer for peace," Ariel Sharon was doing some very unpeaceable things that have, finally and thankfully, made peace possible.

A dim argument about counterterrorism aside, the thing that bothered me most about Munich--and that has received little attention in the early round of reviews and commentary--was the film's final scene. The movie concludes in New York, and after the dialogue ends the camera pans away from the actors and towards the Manhattan skyline, where it comes to rest on a shot of the Twin Towers. There are many reasons why Spielberg might have chosen to end the film this way. The most obvious is to draw a connection between his movie and our politics: to say, in other words, that the questions raised by his film are not just historical but also contemporary. Fair enough. The other obvious reason to use the Twin Towers was as a cheap emotional prop: to ensure that viewers leave the theater with a lump in their throats that the movie hasn't really earned. This isn't an admirable moviemaking device. But given how common it has become to exploit September 11 in our culture and politics--not to mention how common it is for bad films to beg viewers for unearned emotion--it is hard to work up indignation on this count. Besides, Martin Scorcese ended Gangs of New York exactly the same way. So Spielberg's cheap emotional trick isn't even an original one.

No, the reason this final shot disturbed me was not because of the way Spielberg likely intended it but because of the way many viewers will likely see it: as a statement that Israel is somehow responsible for September 11 and therefore responsible for America's current geopolitical predicament. I do not mean "responsible for September 11" in the sense meant by the conspiracy theorists who maintain that the Mossad orchestrated the attacks or that Jews were warned to stay home from work the day of the strikes. Of course, there are plenty of people who believe such things, particularly in the Middle East, and perhaps they will see Munich and find their views implicitly reaffirmed in the movie's last frame; but Spielberg cannot be held responsible for the wild interpretations of conspiracy theorists. What he can be held responsible for is an interpretation of the last scene that he may not have intended but that he should have foreseen: One can view the last shot as drawing a loose but linear link between decades of Israeli counterterrorism and September 11. This false yet potent link already exists in the minds of some Americans and many Europeans. It is reasonable to fear that after millions see Munich, the link will exist in the minds of many more.

Consider the movie's ending in light of its larger argument that, from the 1970s on, Palestinian terrorism and Israeli counterterrorism have been locked in a violent cycle doomed to endlessly spiral forward into the future. What does a final shot of the Twin Towers mean in this context? Audiences could be forgiven for assuming Spielberg's point is that the cycle of violence Munich identifies spiraled forward and eventually hit American shores on September 11. In other words, if Israelis hadn't run around Europe assassinating Palestinian terrorists in the 1970s, the World Trade Center would still be standing today.

Needless to say, this is an inaccurate reading of history. It is also unfair to Israel: In a year that has seen liberal American churches denounce the Jewish State, a mass-market movie that seems in its final moments to hold Israel responsible for September 11, and that will be adored by liberal audiences (it has already been praised by liberal reviewers), will not do Israel any favors with American public opinion. The whole implication is also destructive to American politics. The idea that America's current situation on the world stage is primarily the result of our accidental involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian cycle of violence corrodes any chance of honest debate about our foreign policy.

Spielberg may be breaking new ground by drawing an implicit link between Israel's post-Munich operations and September 11; but he is hardly the first to intimate that on September 11 and since, America somehow became enmeshed in a fundamentally Israeli matter. "[T]his is not really the war of democracy versus terror that the world will be asked to believe in the coming days," wrote Robert Fisk in The Nation weeks after September 11. "It is also about U.S. missiles smashing into Palestinian homes and U.S. helicopters firing missiles into a Lebanese ambulance in 1996 and American shells crashing into a village called Qana and about a Lebanese militia--paid and uniformed by America's Israeli ally--hacking and raping and murdering their way through refugee camps." In the Los Angeles Times, Alexander Cockburn wrote, "I doubt the suicide bombers went to their deaths in the cause of forcing women to stay home and only go shopping when clad in blue tents or of having men never trim their beards. More likely they were moved to action by Bin Laden's main political themes as expressed on at least one tape in which he denounces Israel's occupation of Palestine and U.S. complicity with that occupation." What began in the days after September 11 would continue as America's response to September 11 widened to include the Iraq war: Elements of the left would seem to take special joy in trying to entangle Israel in these discussions. In 2002, I covered anti-Israel rallies that turned into antiwar rallies. Or were they antiwar rallies that turned into anti-Israel rallies? It was sometimes hard to tell. Even the respectable left played its part. Hence the oft-made point that one way to neutralize Al Qaeda would be to impose Israeli-Palestinian peace, as if September 11 was an act of protest against Barak's failure to cede enough territory at Camp David. This is exactly what the last scene in Munich more or less implies: that if only Israel had negotiated more and retaliated less, Muslim terrorism as we know it would have been stillborn years before the towers fell. Spielberg may not have intended this message. But it is the message many viewers will understand. Perhaps Dennis Ross can explain to these viewers why they are wrong.
Richard Just is editor of TNR Online.

German appeasers in hostage-for-terrorist swap

Posting this on JSL's lazy-ass behalf.

Chancellor Merkel Shakes up German Intelligence, Bids for Middle East Foothold
DEBKAfile
December 20, 2005

Ernst Uhrlau, Angela Merkel’s new head of the BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, is revealed by DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources as the man behind Berlin’s secret decision to trade German archeologist Susanne Osthoff kidnapped in Iraq on Nov. 25 for the jailed Hizballah terrorist wanted in America, Mohammad Ali Hammadi.

...

This hostage-for-terrorist swap will no doubt raise storms of protest in Washington and Jerusalem and cast a shadow on relations with the Bush administration which Schroeder was at pains to mend. ... It is the first time since al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks in America that a senior European ally in America’s global war on terror has succumbed to enemy pressure and bought a hostage’s release by freeing a convicted terrorist.

Borat

I've been looking at Russian sites as part of my job, and came across this at the BBC.

I asked Alexis what it was about, and he told me: you must have heard the news that the kazakh govt is trying to sue Borat - SERIOUSLY - well they have just shut down his website which had a kazakh domain name.

Further research has proved the point. Well worth a read, some of this is hysterical:

Borat - Wikipedia
Stop Borat
The Borat Doctrine

Back to the September 10 mentality? Daniel Pipes

My Gloom: Back to September 10
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
December 20, 2005

The attacks of September 11, 2001, made me feel more secure, unlike most Americans. Finally, the country was focused on issues that had long worried me.

...

But I agonized whether it would last. "Are Americans truly ready to sacrifice liberties and lives to prosecute seriously the war against militant Islam? I worry about US constancy and purpose." And right I was to worry, as the alarm, solidarity, and resolve of late 2001 have plummeted lately, returning us to a roughly pre-September 11 mentality. A number of recent developments leave me pessimistic. read on

Who should decide on Oxbridge admissions?

... is the question in this somewhat tongue in cheek article by Tom Utley in response to proposed changes to Oxford's admissions system..

So what if I fluked it into Cambridge?

However, beneath the jokey tone he does raise some serious questions, though some of the logic of the article escapes me:

[...] perhaps it is an injustice that the occasional underqualified Utley has managed to slip into Corpus, Cambridge. But that is none of the Government's business. The greatest injustice of all is that two whole generations of state-school pupils have been betrayed by Whitehall.

In the middle of the last century, the proportion of state-school pupils at Oxford and Cambridge was very much higher than it is today. That was before politicians had the stupid idea of closing down the grammar schools. Now, that really is the Government's business.

If making sure kids get a decent education IS the government's business then why should that responsibility not extend to University admissions? After all, what good does it do to bring back grammars (or whatever Utley proposes) if university places are handed out on the basis according to some kind of hereditary principle?

Nonetheless, I thought it was worth a quick post as part of our ongoing education discussion. What (if any) reforms would be happy to see instituted? Fast-tracking state gifted school pupils? "Social engineering" and quotas? [Note: the last couple of links date back over the past few years, but they give a general flavour of the debate.]

I'd be very intersted to hear everyone's views on this. (And to see if views differ depending on whether the person went to a state or private school.) Some members of this board may also be moved to share their own University admissions experiences .

If this topic is of particular interest you can work your way through some earlier posts here, here and here.

Hoist the white flag

Here is an article on Blair and the EU rebate by Anatole Kaletsky. There is so much hysterical coverage over the rebate in the British press that it is quite refreshing to hear somebody make the case for giving away the rebate because it is a distraction from the main issues of Europe.

Pausing for thought on the Nobel prize for Literature

I quite like old Harold Pinter myself, but here's Uncle Johann saying he shouldn't have been allowed near the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Harold Pinter does not deserve the Nobel Prize
Reflections on Samuel Beckett and Slobodan Milosevic

(The article was written before Pinter's acceptance speech, the text of which you can find here.)

Dianafication

I feel we should get a thread going on the Dianafication of Britain. A recent example is George Best. Can't find it on the net, but amongst the eulogies there was a letter to the Telegraph comparing the Best hysteria to Diana, and another saying that Best was virtually a murderer for taking a liver that someone else could have had and immediately hitting the bottle.

Here's a great Dianafication anecodote from Rod Liddle's piece on the 25th anniversary of Lennon's murder (an event which, in wiser times, was apparently not even the lead news story of the day):

All you need is self-love
Rod Liddle
The Sunday Times
December 11, 2005

The word “dianafication” was coined to describe the hideous and conspicuous writhing in grief in which we are all required to partake more and more frequently these days: the laying of the ubiquitous bouquets — in Liverpool, world capital of conspicuous grief, locals recently queued up to lay wreaths in an alleyway where a discarded foetus had been discovered, until the police put up a notice explaining that it was a chicken foetus.

Climate change - Saudis demand compensation

LOL, those poor Saudis! I say, compensate 'em! They obviously need the money, and who's to say they'd put it to bad use?

Climate Action Inches Forward Despite U.S., Saudi Obstructions
Environment News Service
28 Nov 2005

Greenpeace expressed disappointment at the outcome and anger at the United States and Saudi Arabia for "their deliberate tactics of obstruction and delay."

...

Saudi Arabia blocked progress by imposing conditions on making financial assistance available for adaptation in developing countries. Saudi negotiators demanded compensation for loss of oil revenues. "For Saudi Arabia to hold out a begging bowl whilst the least and poorest developed countries in the world struggle to cope with floods, droughts and extreme events, is obscene"

Goodbye Routemaster

Was talking about this the other day with Dan and Andy. The "dehumanised moron" doing the ridding is in the Today report. The only reason is the disability one, a point demolished in the Telegraph opinion piece.

Livingstone and the 'morons' have killed off the Routemaster
Telegraph
24/10/2005


----------------


Fans' farewell to Routemaster bus
This is London
9 December 2005

London Mayor Ken Livingstone offered a hostage to fortune in 2001 by saying that "only a ghastly dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster".


----------------

BBC Radio 4
Today Programme
09/12/05

0838 Today is the last day that the red double-decker buses known as the Routemaster will be on the streets of London. Stephen Pound, a Labour MP who used to be a bus conductor, contributes to our report.

Listen | Permalink

The Truth about Torture - Krauthammer

How can you not support someone with a name like "Krauthammer"?

The Truth about Torture
It's time to be honest about doing terrible things
Charles Krauthammer
The Weekly Standard
12/05/2005

Cameron - good or bad?

Two articles on David Cameron from the Guardian: one from Jonathan Freeland where he compares Cameron to Bush; the other from Simon Jenkins who sees him as the most exciting Tory leader since Thatcher. Both articles pay Cameron the compliment of taking him more seriously than the recent tory leaders. I'm curious to know what other bloggers feel about Cameron. Is he a real threat to Labour? Does the Tories' 'revival' have a real chance of getting them into power? Or will Cameron turn out to be as unsuccessful as his predecessors?

The First Step to Britishness Is Your Poppy

A thought-provoking opinion piece on identity and assimilation begins with the author's surprised observation that not one person on Edgware Road, the most densely Muslim section of London, was wearing a Rememberance Day poppy.

The First Step to Britishness Is Your Poppy
FrontPageMagazine.com
November 25, 2005

Dershowitz and Chomsky debate Israel-Palestine

Fascinating stuff, a Chomsky / Dershowitz head-to-head.

"Israel and Palestine after Disengagement: Where Do We Go From Here?"
November 29, 2005
Real video clip

This and other clips at: Forum Archive

Articles on the debate:
Prominent Profs Spar Over Israel
Dershowitz and Chomsky battle it out

Comments from a Dershowitz researcher:
Fact-checking Chomsky

What sort of Frenchmen are they? Alain Finkielkraut on the Paris riots

A French philosopher and leading 68-er has an interesting take on the riots and what they mean for France and the rest of us:

What sort of Frenchmen are they? Alain Finkielkraut on the Paris riots
Haaretz
November 17, 2005

"When an Arab torches a school, it's rebellion. When a white guy does it, it's fascism. I'm 'color blind.' Evil is evil, no matter what color it is. And this evil, for the Jew that I am, is completely intolerable."

---------------------

I should probably have posted this in the Paris when it sizzles thread, and the article is also relevant to the Why American Muslims haven't turned to terrorism thread & no doubt others too, but I thought it sufficiently challenging to merit a separate posting. Enjoy!

Why American Muslims haven't turned to terrorism

This article appeared in The New Republic (an american publication). It's a long article but deserves to be read in full. It examines whether Muslims feel more at home with America's pluralism and religiousity (the later exemplified in Mr Bush) than the secularism of Europe.

Why American Muslims haven't turned to terrorism
RELIGIOUS PROTECTION
by Spencer Ackerman


In September, the world watched the ringleader of the July 7 London terrorist attack, his voice inflected with a West Yorkshire accent, preach jihad in English. Al Jazeera aired the communiqué of 30-year-old Mohammad Sidique Khan, which Khan recorded to explain why he helped murder over 50 of his fellow Britons on a bus and in the Underground. "Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment, and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight," Khan declared. "We are at war. I am a soldier. And now, you, too, will taste the reality of this situation." When Khan spoke of "my people," he wasn't talking about his British countrymen. Rather, he was referring to the members of a global Islamic community, which he, like Osama bin Laden, believes is under siege by the rapacious Western world. The tape was all the more shocking because Khan was known in his Leeds hometown for mentoring neighborhood children at Hillside Primary School, which caters to a large number of immigrants. In a nightmare scenario for Great Britain--and for the West more generally--the man who helped foreign-born children assimilate into the fabric of British society had also resolved to rip it apart.

The significance of the London bombing is impossible to overstate. Although debate still rages over the degree to which Al Qaeda's increasingly disassociated leadership orchestrated the attack, the fact remains that the broader jihadist movement was able to draw upon radicalized Muslim citizens of a Western country, who then acted with relative autonomy. By contrast, the September 11 attacks required the insertion into the United States of foreign operatives, traveling on visas, whom bin Laden and his lieutenants directed and funded. If Al Qaeda can increasingly rely on "self-activated" terrorists like the London bombers, the implications for the West, and for Muslim citizens of Western countries, are profound and foreboding. "The fact that these young men were British-born Muslims creates a degree of a different kind of anxiety within the [U.S. Muslim] community," Edina Lekovic of the Muslim Public Affairs Council told Agence France-Presse. "If this could happen in the U.K., it is our worst nightmare that it could happen here."

Around the same time that Khan's video aired, a potential harbinger of Lekovic's nightmare surfaced. On September 11, 2005, the fourth anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington, ABC News broadcast a videotaped threat by an Al Qaeda jihadist known as Azzam the American. With his head turbaned and his face veiled, Azzam, like Khan, spoke in English. He vowed that, unless Westerners "rid yourself of your current leaders and governments and their anti-Islam, anti-Muslim policies," there would be a terrible reckoning: "Yesterday, London and Madrid. Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne, God willing." Azzam's message is not the only recent incident raising the specter of domestically produced jihadist violence. Shortly before its broadcast, the Justice Department indicted three American citizens and a Pakistani immigrant for hatching a plot in a California prison to attack nearby U.S. military, Israeli, and Jewish community targets. "We have a tendency to think of terrorism as something that is foreign," U.S. Attorney Debra W. Yang told reporters. "This is a stark reminder that it can be homegrown."

But the British and American cases are not the same. It's true that extremist messages exist in American Muslim communities, and there have been a few instances of American Muslims becoming terrorists. Those extremely rare cases, however, are far better explained by individual pathology than by rising Islamic militancy due to group disaffection. Europe's growing Muslim culture of alienation, marginalization, and jihad isn't taking root here. As a result, one senior administration official contends, "Al Qaeda finds greater support among European Muslim communities than in the U.S."--meaning that the self-activated jihadists that Europe is witnessing are less likely to appear in America. In part, the United States is protected because it offers better social and economic opportunities to its Muslim citizens, while Europe's inability to accommodate its growing Muslim underclass led to rioting that spread from the Paris suburbs across France. But economics alone can't explain the more fluid integration of Muslims into American life. That, in large part, is a function of America's ability to accommodate Islam itself.

French political theorist Olivier Roy argues that jihadism stems from a violent identity crisis felt acutely among Muslims in the West. But, ironically, that search for identity is far less of a crisis for Muslims in the United States--the supposed oppressor of Muslims, in bin Laden's telling--because of a fundamentally American attribute: the mutually reinforcing creeds of pluralism and religiosity. "When I go out to Bush Country," says Eboo Patel of Chicago's Interfaith Youth Core, "it is true that, for some people, the way I pray is peculiar. But they don't think I'm hallucinating when I say, 'It's prayer time.'" In other words, if the United States is looking for a way to win the hearts and minds of Muslims worldwide, it ought to first look at what it has accomplished at home.



Haitham "Danny" Bundakji had no idea who Azzam the American was until the California Muslim community leader's phone started to ring late last year. Reporters had tracked Bundakji to a hotel room in Jerusalem, where he was staying during a trip to the Holy Land. Suddenly, he was being asked to explain the psyche of a terrorist. His confusion quickly gave way to a horrible realization: Not only did Bundakji know this man called Azzam, he had ministered to him, even witnessing his conversion to Islam in the mid-'90s. "I'm so regretful," Bundakji says from his Orange County home, "that I didn't get to him first." But some believe that Bundakji, in some measure, did get to Azzam first. The questions put to him in Jerusalem were a prelude to a more incendiary accusation: that Bundakji was at least partially responsible for the creation of an American jihadist. The broader implication is that American Muslim leaders might well be incubating new terrorists, in the manner of London's notorious Finsbury Park Mosque or Maaseik, a tiny Flemish town Belgian investigators believe has become a hotbed of jihadism.

Azzam the American was born Adam Gadahn in 1978. He spent his childhood on a goat ranch in Riverside County, raised by non-Muslim parents who were far more influenced by the 1960s than by the Koran. By the mid-'90s, Gadahn was a pudgy, long-haired, occasional community college student who found Islam after an adolescent foray into the local death-metal music scene. Bundakji, the vice chairman of the Islamic Society of Orange County, witnessed his conversion and hired him as a mosque security guard. The two initially enjoyed a warm relationship. "But then a change took place," Bundakji recalls. Gadahn started spending more and more time with a group of Pakistani nationals who were "fundamentalists" and who were "criticizing us all the time, especially my affiliation with the interfaith community." A flyer circulated around the center giving Bundakji a noxious nickname: Danny the Jew.

Bundakji subsequently banned the fundamentalists from his mosque. Gadahn was infuriated. "Adam came charging into my office," Bundakji remembers. "I've never experienced someone who got physical, but he slapped me across my face. I didn't respond. He was very angry, saying we're not true Muslims [at the mosque]." Gadahn returned to pray only once more. According to his aunt, Nancy Pearlman, he traveled to Pakistan in 1998, only sporadically contacting his family thereafter. He had become nothing more than a bad memory for Bundakji until the reporters began calling last year, after the Justice Department announced its interest in the man now known as Azzam the American.

Although the FBI is seeking information on Gadahn--who is still at large--it has never shown any interest in Bundakji. Yet he recently found his mosque in a report that reflects persistent fears among Americans that extremist tendencies lurk within their Muslim neighbors. Earlier this year, Freedom House released a study titled "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Invade American Mosques," documenting the appearance of Saudi-funded literature in the libraries and textbooks of over a dozen major American mosques--including Bundakji's. The report attracted considerable attention--its findings were presented to a Senate panel last month--in large part because there haven't been many studies of what is taught in American mosques. And what Freedom House found was striking: The Saudi texts instruct Muslims to maintain a "wall of resentment" between believers and their Christian, Jewish, and even Shia compatriots. One booklet, distributed by the Saudi Embassy in Washington, warns ominously that embracing non-Muslims brings the specter of apostasy: "He who casts doubts about their infidelity leaves no doubt about his own infidelity."

Freedom House's report doesn't draw any explicit conclusions about Muslim extremism in the United States, and it emphasizes that it doesn't seek to stigmatize law-abiding Muslim citizens. But, according to Nina Shea, the report's director, imams in the mosques where the Saudi literature appears bear at least some blame for its presence, and she clearly fears its effect. "These mosque leaders have a responsibility to screen this literature and to set their congregants on the right path," Shea says. "The imam was saying, 'Gee, this kid [Gadahn] became radicalized from a study group in my mosque, then he calls me Danny the Jew.' I agree with the mosque leadership. We're not saying they're bad. They were turned on by the radicals in the mosque. But they should get rid of this stuff and replace it with materials teaching pluralism and toleration."

For Bundakji, who was physically assaulted by a future member of Al Qaeda, the idea that he might be in some measure responsible for the creation of a terrorist is perverse. "For many years, I've condemned terrorism and I say why it's against Islam," he says, as most American imams do. Indeed, at least one researcher doesn't think the Freedom House report illustrates trends within American Muslim communities. "I don't know what the Freedom House thing proves," says Peter Skerry, a Boston College political scientist currently studying American Muslims for a forthcoming book. "You can find evidence for lots of things. I grew up in Boston in the Catholic Church, and I'm sure that among the books in the parish library were any number of things that were offensive to people." Gulam Bakali of the Islamic Association of North Texas, one of the mosques cited in the report, challenged Freedom House's inferences at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last month. "Our mosque has neither been 'filled' or 'invaded' by the literature alluded to in the referenced report," Bakali told the panel. "Our library functions as a central storage and collection area for literature in the Southwest U.S. for academic research."

There's no doubt that, as Patel puts it, "extreme messages are out there." Earlier this year, for example, Ali Al Timimi, who lectured at the Dar Al Arqam Mosque in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia, was sentenced to life in prison for urging a group of congregants after September 11 to travel to Afghanistan to fight U.S. forces alongside the Taliban. Though hard evidence is difficult to come by, extremist-linked organizations, especially from Saudi Arabia, have poured money into U.S. mosques and Islamic cultural centers for years. Ever more virulent jihadist messages are accessible to any American Muslim with an Internet connection. Yet, from Skerry's perspective, the appropriate--if elusive--metric isn't the prevalence of such messages, but "the level of tolerance Muslims at a given mosque have, even at this point in time, for extremist statements." And Skerry's research indicates that there isn't much. "You don't see much--though you do see some--evidence of a kind of second- and third-generation Muslim Americans especially 'reclaiming' Islam, becoming preoccupied with issues in the Mideast, and criticizing America," he says. (The little evidence that Skerry does see, he explains, is the occasional diatribe by college students against American imperialism or Israel policy--the sort that left-wing students of any ethnic or religious background typically make. "I wouldn't ignore it, but I also wouldn't make too much of it," he says.)

Indeed, given the availability of extremist messages to American Muslims--who live in the country that's supposedly the premier enemy of Islam--it's startling how few American Muslim extremists there actually are. The Justice Department's record on counterterrorism post-September 11 suggests little appetite among American Muslims for the jihadist agenda. Though, in June, President Bush boasted of investigating more than 400 terrorism suspects and winning convictions of "more than half of those charged," an analysis by The Washington Post found that only 39 of the convictions could be considered at all terrorism-related, and only 14 of those prosecuted had links to Al Qaeda.

Some of the most publicized cases have been of questionable merit--or involve non-Americans. A much-touted arrest and trial of a Detroit "cell" featured so much prosecutorial misconduct that a grand jury may indict the U.S. attorney on the case. Uzair Paracha, convicted last week in New York of trying to help an Al Qaeda operative enter the country, isn't American, but Pakistani. Also last week, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, of Virginia, was convicted of conspiring to kill Bush. Yet the prosecution's case rested entirely on a confession--which Abu Ali claims was coerced--delivered during his 20 months in a Saudi prison, and he was charged only after a judge ordered the government to disclose its involvement in his extralegal overseas detention. And, even if Abu Ali is indeed a jihadist, a senior Bush administration official cautions that such cases hardly indicate "a trend" among a given American Muslim population.

What's more, despite intimations that Islamic preaching in the United States is breeding terrorism, evidence suggests that the few Americans who picked up jihadism in the United States were primed for violence by psychological disturbance or past criminal activity--not the call of an imam. Far from being brainwashed by anything at the Islamic Society of Orange County, Gadahn apparently harbored significant personal demons. Jon Konrath, a friendly acquaintance of Gadahn's from his metal years, considered him somewhat disgruntled. "He was into the 'sick' sort of horror-slasher death metal, like Cannibal Corpse," Konrath remembers. "So he was anti-social in the sort of Evil Dead-fan way, but nothing specific about America." In 1995, Gadahn posted an account online of his conversion to Islam that drips with self-loathing: "I eschewed personal cleanliness and let my room reach an unbelievable state of disarray. ... I am sorry even as I write this." Jose Padilla--whom the government termed the "dirty bomber" during his three years of extralegal detention (only to bring far less serious charges against him and four foreign Muslims last week)--was a violent gang member in his youth, and, like Gadahn, his adopted faith apparently provided him not comfort but an excuse to channel his old tendencies in a new direction. John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban" captured in Afghanistan shortly after the 2001 invasion, was an overprivileged teenager whose romantic view of militants led him to a bin Laden training camp. And, while it remains unclear whether the recent allegations against the California Muslim prison converts are substantial, convicted felons are, by definition, far outside the social mainstream.

Indeed, counterterrorism experts are taking notice of the relative absence of American Muslims in the global jihadist movement. In a September talk, former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke observed, "Al Qaeda's usual strategy is ... to rely on indigenous populations, and maybe bring in a few operatives, but that indigenous population may not be here in the numbers necessary." (Considering that September 11 was executed by only 19 men, that's quite a statement about millions of American Muslims.) Some in the Bush administration concur. "An Al Qaeda-like attack--well-coordinated, in sequence, causing significant casualties--is less likely to come from a native American Muslim population," says the senior official. "Countervailing factors make it less likely for sleeper cells to germinate among the native American Muslim population." Those factors, according to the official, are fundamental: "It's the American dream. American Muslims are living that dream." Even that may be an understatement. For a variety of reasons, the United States has successfully created the model for a Western Muslim identity.

The most obvious reasons for that success are social and economic. As the riots in France highlighted, Muslims in Europe face severe levels of unemployment, few professional prospects, and social isolation. When Eboo Patel studied at Oxford University in the late '90s, his American youth had left him thoroughly unprepared for what Muslims like himself had to endure in Britain. The economic options for his co-religionists were largely limited to working at "the fish and chips store, where racist insults were thrown at them by drunks on Friday nights." It was an alien experience: "In America, my dad would go off to a corporate office for his job, and my mom was in advertising." Patel's shock is as illuminating as it should be unsurprising. Since Muslims began coming to the United States in appreciable numbers after the immigration reforms of 1965--around the same time that an African American Muslim community began to flourish--they have found a socially and economically hospitable environment.

It's difficult to document trends among American Muslims, since census data do not track religion. Yet, in 2003, John R. Logan, a sociologist now affiliated with Brown University's American Communities Project, used ancestry and place-of-birth information to conduct perhaps the most comprehensive demographic study to date of the American Muslim population. (Accordingly, Logan couldn't track African American Muslims, believed to comprise one-third of all American Muslims.) That population increased by about 85 percent since 1990 and now totals nearly 3 million Americans, though some Muslim organizations claim the figure is too low. Even accepting the blurred edges of his report, Logan found several surprising facts about the American Muslim population: Unlike other recent immigrant groups, and distinctly unlike Muslims in Europe, American Muslims are solidly middle-class and solidly integrated with their non-Muslim neighbors.

American Muslims tend to live in a few population centers, along the coasts and around Midwestern and Southern cities like Detroit, Chicago, and Houston. But, inside those metropolitan areas, enclaves--homogenous population clusters historically favored by recent immigrant groups--are surprisingly few. The ten metropolitan regions with the greatest concentration of Muslims tend to be ethnically integrated. With Detroit as the only exception, in both 1990 and 2000, every neighborhood with notable concentrations of Muslims was at least 60 percent white and only around 5 percent Muslim.

Within those neighborhoods, American Muslims display healthy indications of upward social mobility. The median household income of American Muslims in 2000 was over $52,000, nearly the $53,000 reported by the median white household. Even the poorest households among American Muslim groups, North Africans, earned $40,000 on average in 2000--$6,000 more than blacks. The typical American Muslim in 2000 possessed 14 years of education (more than whites, Latinos, blacks, and Asians); and American Muslims of Middle Eastern descent, who possess the lowest levels of education, still record higher levels of education than whites, blacks, and Latinos. American Muslims are presently living in census tracts where nearly 60 percent of residents own their homes and over 35 percent of residents have college educations. "Overall," writes Logan, "the Muslim-origin population is characterized by high education and income with low unemployment."

An important contribution to Muslims' comfort with the United States comes not only from the diversity of the neighborhoods they live in, but from the diversity of the Muslims themselves within those neighborhoods. While Middle Easterners still constitute a plurality of foreign-origin American Muslims--at 49 percent of the American Muslim population--South Asians represent nearly 23 percent of the total American Muslim population, North Africans nearly 15 percent, and Iranians 13 percent. For Patel, the high levels of internal diversity within Muslim communities coupled with high levels of integration and have allowed American Muslims to avoid the theological and ethnic rigidities that often characterize Muslim discourse in the Middle East and South Asia. "There are no Muslim 'apostates' here," he says. "That's a huge thing."

The contrast with Europe couldn't be sharper. There, Muslim populations are heavily ghettoized, as becomes quickly apparent during a walk through Brussels or Amsterdam. Muslim immigration to Europe, like Mexican immigration to the American Southwest, is motivated chiefly by the pursuit of jobs--often any job, which frequently means menial employment with little prospect for advancement. A recent State Department study found that, in the most Muslim-populous European countries--Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands--the vast majority of Muslims have no access to higher education. Unemployment is disproportionately high: British Pakistani men have almost a 15 percent jobless rate, compared with 5 percent for white men; some French Muslim ghettos record 40 percent unemployment, compared with a national 10 percent. Muslim populations in Europe tend to be as homogenous as American Muslim communities are diverse: In the United Kingdom, most Muslims are South Asian; French and Spanish Muslims are overwhelmingly North African; German Muslims are predominantly Turkish. (Only in the Netherlands is there regional Muslim diversity, with relatively equal numbers of Turks and Moroccans.) Not surprisingly, most respondents told the State Department that they identify more as Muslim than with their European country of residence.

These parlous social and economic conditions persist after several generations of Muslim immigration to Europe and may assist those seeking to foment extremism: Mohammad Sidique Khan, for one, came from a working-class and socially stagnant background--making it significant that economic and social opportunities for American Muslims are vastly greater than those available to their European counterparts. But prosperity, or the lack thereof, can't fully explain receptivity to jihad: Indeed, Marc Sageman, a CIA case officer turned forensic psychiatrist, meticulously documented how most Al Qaeda adherents from Muslim countries come from privileged backgrounds in his groundbreaking book, Understanding Terror Networks. Clearly, the United States is doing something right beyond providing its Muslim citizens with jobs and good neighborhoods. And that something is the uniquely American interplay of religiosity and pluralism.



Most Americans would be horrified by the notion that they live in a country that abides by Islamic law. But some American Muslim leaders contend that U.S. society is harmonious with Koranic injunctions without even trying. "America is positively, unabashedly religious," enthuses Feisal Abdul Rauf, a New York-based imam. In his important 2004 book, titled What's Right With Islam, Abdul Rauf contends that space for religiosity is essentially inseparable from American liberalism, codified in both the U.S. political system and the broader U.S. social compact: "Fully in keeping with the principles of the Abrahamic ethic, American religious pluralism was not merely a historical or political fact; it became, in the mind of the American, the primordial condition of things, a self-evident and essential aspect of the American way of life and therefore in itself an aspect of the American creed." Drawing on hundreds of years of Islamic writings, Abdul Rauf makes the case that, by upholding the five conditions understood by Muslim legal scholars to constitute the good society--life, mental well-being, religion, property, and family--"the American political structure is Shariah compliant."

By contrast, strident secularism and a monocultural definition of integration have characterized cosmopolitan Europe for decades. Europe's weighty history of fratricidal wars, religious conflict, and colonialism have contributed tremendously to its deepening secularism, as has the historical conflict that European rationalism and liberalism experienced with the continent's religious institutions. As a result, European governing classes frequently view public expressions of religion, no matter how subtle or individualized, as subversive political statements. Both France and Turkey have made wearing a headscarf to a public school a punishable offense, to the consternation and confusion of their Muslim populations. One Parisian Muslim interviewed by The New York Times during the riots explained his frustration: "They say integrate, but I don't understand: I'm already French. What more do they want? They want me to drink alcohol?" That sentiment ensures that Ayman Al Zawahiri, bin Laden's lieutenant and chief ideologue, has at least some audience when he tells British Muslims that "British freedom is, in fact, the freedom to be hostile to Islam." For Mohammad Sidique Khan, that message was murderously compelling.

But it doesn't appear compelling to American Muslims. And that's largely because U.S. freedom, even after September 11, is the freedom to be inviting to Islam. For American Muslims, the opportunity for a publicly visible--and, more importantly, normative--expression of religion removes a tremendous source of frustration that exists in both European and Middle Eastern countries. Indeed, according to a recent poll, 96 percent of American Muslims consider Islam an important factor in their daily lives--something that, in a real success for the American social fabric, appears to be a nonissue to their non-Muslim neighbors. "Where's the heart of isna?" Patel asks, referring to the Islamic Society of North America. "Plainfield, Indiana! That place hasn't been bombed. It's not in the heart of cosmopolitan America. It's in rural Indiana!"

America's blend of liberalism and religiosity, in other words, has created perhaps the most potent weapon against Al Qaeda conceivable: a resolution to the identity crisis of Western Muslim life that bin Laden preys upon. When Abdul Rauf came to the United States from Egypt 40 years ago, Muslims were a curious unfamiliarity to most Americans, and the impact on his mental health was real. "Myself, I suffered for eight years from an identity crisis--not knowing who I was," he recalls. Back then, "when Muhammad Ali became a Muslim, he was seen as rejecting America." Yet, as Abdul Rauf explored both his faith and his new country, he recognized that reconciliation was not just possible, it was natural. His project now, like that of many other U.S. Muslim organizations, is straightforward: "We're looking to expedite the creation of an American Muslim identity in order to resolve the issues between the U.S. and the Muslim world." What Abdul Rauf means is a public identity seamlessly blending Islam and Americanism and reinforcing both. For Patel, this is the most important front in the war on terrorism. "The battlefield is identity, and the players are young people," he says. "When I first tell people about the Interfaith Youth Core, people say, 'Aw, what a sweet organization.' But there's another guy running a youth organization, and his name is Osama bin Laden."



America has a durable prophylactic to American Muslim radicalization. But the protections of American liberalism and American religiosity are not impenetrable. Obviously, Al Qaeda could once again place operatives in the U.S. homeland. But, more substantially, the greatest danger to the present U.S.-Muslim compact is the increasing suspicion of American Muslims. This suspicion has been fanned by opportunistic politicians like Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney--a 2008 presidential hopeful who, in a September speech, suggested widespread surveillance of U.S. mosques--and by hysterical pop culture offerings like "Sleeper Cell," a Showtime TV thriller premiering this week about a Muslim enemy within. An October 2004 Zogby poll found that a plurality of American Muslims believe "constitutional issues"--a proxy for the Patriot Act and immigration enforcement--are the most important challenge facing their community, with "bias/racism" coming a very close second. (The third, tellingly, was "becoming mainstream.") Post-September 11 suspicion of American Muslims may have been inevitable, but it's also "remarkably insulting and a moral disappointment," says Khaled Abou El Fadl, a law professor at ucla and a prominent liberal voice among American Muslims. Abou El Fadl is an excellent case in point: He has endured death threats for his supposed Islamic heterodoxies and has helped the FBI create profiles of terrorist cells. But even an unapologetically American and pious Muslim like himself is unable to escape innuendo about his membership in a fifth column: He was termed a "stealth Islamist" by a 2004 Middle East Quarterly article. For some, "it's not enough to prove once or twice your loyalties as an American," he wearily recounts. "There's this constant placement under the microscope that often produces a very distorted image. Someone with a hardly working knowledge of Arabic picks up a few buzzwords in a speech or a text, and then it's, 'Aha! I've got you!'"

Abdul Rauf is as blunt. "If I read something like [Harvard Professor Samuel] Huntington, who posits a clash between the West and Islam, it's very easy for a certain number of individuals to start internalizing that identity." Indeed, at least some already are. Zogby found an astonishingly high proportion--a plurality of 38 percent--of American Muslims believe that Washington is waging a war on Islam, not terrorism. U.S. foreign policy can't be held hostage to threats of domestic terrorism, but policymakers ignore such dissatisfaction at their peril. Indeed, this resentment is especially dangerous given that Logan found that, despite current high levels of integration among American Muslims, segregationist trends are beginning to emerge. "[Muslim] groups are clustering more over time and becoming more separated from whites," he writes. Coupled with the marginal disillusionment observed by Skerry among second- and third-generation American Muslims, the current lack of sensitivity to Islamic concerns could prove disastrous for U.S. national security and American liberalism.

Patel is more optimistic. Given the deportations, the Patriot Act, and the general suspicion that has followed American Muslims in the wake of September 11, it's hard to believe that a Shia Iraqi in Dearborn or a Sunni Pakistani in Brooklyn gained anything from the aftermath of the attacks. But Patel sees a silver lining. "The way most religious communities begin in America is by playing the insulation game, and Muslims were doing the same thing," he says. "But 9/11 killed that. Now, Muslims have to embrace a Muslim-American identity. And it came as a relief to American Muslim leaders." As Patel sees it, before the attacks, Muslims in the United States weren't vocal about either side of their identity in public, content to arouse as little attention as possible. "Now we have to say we're fully part of the American project, declaring ourselves American citizens. ... If you notice, with isna, their last several conventions have been about how Muslims can contribute to the broader theme of America; 9/11 allowed these elements integration with no apology." In essence, Patel's post-September 11 vision is about Muslims making a virtue out of a climate of fear.

There's nothing predetermined about the contours of an emerging, public American Muslim identity. But, to the great credit and for the mutual benefit of both American Muslims and the United States itself, there exist powerful structural forces, rooted deeply in both U.S. and Islamic history, that portend well. In the wake of the London bombings and the French riots, a great irony of the post-September 11 world is that one of the most urgent requirements of European stability is the emulation of the United States: a place where liberalism and religiosity support a viable and beneficial Western Muslim identity. And perhaps the greatest post- September 11 irony of all is that the comfort many American Muslims feel American life provides for them is best embodied by none other than the hated George W. Bush, for whom basic comfort with deeply held religious beliefs is perhaps the most reliable guide to a person's character. With these ironies in the background, Abdul Rauf promises, "An American Muslim identity is going to happen. No doubt." To which American Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists should say: inshallah.
Spencer Ackerman is an associate editor at TNR.