By Priscilla Cheung Associated Press Writer
UNITED NATIONS ââ Taliban soldiers executed Afghan civilians indiscriminately after taking over the strategic Yakoalong district this year, according to a U.N. report released Friday. Kamal Hossain, author of the report, said about 130 civilians were executed â most of them by firing squad â during three days of carnage after the Taliban took over Yakoalong from opposition forces in January.
Hossain's report is one of the most detailed accounts yet of alleged Taliban atrocities. He is investigating rights abuses in Afghanistan for the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Fifty more people were reported killed later in January. "Most of the killing at this stage seems to have been indiscriminate, in the sense that all adult males in areas searched were rounded up and taken for execution," Hossain said.
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda "have acquired nuclear materials for possible use in their terrorism war against the West," the Times of London reports. "Western sources say that the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks on America does not have the capability to mount a nuclear attack but fear he would do so if he could." The Times' sources think bin Laden acquired the materials from Pakistan--where, the (Delhi, India) Hindustan Times reports, officials have arrested two retired atomic scientists "after the FBI provided evidence of their links to jehadi outfits." The Indian paper adds that "the West is reportedly also concerned about A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb. . . . Because he had publicly expressed sympathy for the jehad movement, it was rumoured he was joining the fundamentalists."
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
America's efforts to divide the Taliban leadership have thus far failed, the Washington Post reports. The problem: "a combination of poor intelligence contacts and powerful religious and cultural bonds between even the most marginal commanders and the Taliban leadership": Part of the problem stems from an abrupt shift last month in the agenda of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), which helped to create the Taliban in 1994 and has sustained it since. Under pressure from Washington to purge his government of Taliban sympathizers, Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, revamped the ISI leadership and ordered the agency to switch almost overnight from overt operations supporting the Taliban to covert attempts to overthrow it.
As a result, the Taliban and its supporters developed an immediate distrust of their former patrons. ISI operatives who previously had worked openly in Afghanistan had to be pulled out of Taliban territory for their safety, leaving Washington and Islamabad with a human intelligence vacuum in a place where they had hoped to be active, authorities here said.
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
Jill Nelson, who is something of a left-wing Ann Coulter, pens a whole column arguing that America's government, not Osama bin Laden (a mere "poster boy," in her view) is the enemy. She too suggests that the dead mailmen were victims of malevolent upper-class elites: Joseph P. Curseen and Thomas L. Morris, workers at the Brentwood postal facility in Washington, D.C., died of anthrax infection; a number of their colleagues are sick and hospitalized. It's too late to ask either one of these men what they thought of the US government, or the Centers for Disease Control, or the Postmaster General's assurances that they were not in harm's way--even while the rich, the famous, even the Capitol police dogs--were tested for anthrax and dosed with Cipro.
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10/26/2001 ||
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Victor Davis Hanson National Review On-Line
There is a growing class division in this country over the war. Of course, 90 percent of us, of all classes, at least for now profess support for strong military action. Yet at least a tenth of the country â a very influential tenth in the media, the university, politics, foundations, churches, and the arts â is adamantly and vocally at odds with most Americans. Why is this so?
It is often not a divide between Democrats and Republicans. Nor does the abyss always separate the wealthy from the poor. Most strikingly, the fault line pits a utopian cultural elite against the working middle class. On campuses, especially public universities such as the California State University system, one feels the tension constantly. The tenured, well educated, and relatively affluent among the faculty are adamantly against the military response in Afghanistan. Yet the students â mostly children of the working-class of every conceivable ethnic background â almost uniformly support our troops.
The usual explanations about the sociology of dissent do not quite make sense any more. So far, those who are fighting in Afghanistan â mostly highly trained pilots and special-forces operatives â are not from among the unwashed poor. The affluent Left, then, is not opposed to action because the less-privileged are dying in droves. Is it because the better educated are more sensitive to world opinion? To the nuances of Islam? To the "Other" in Afghanistan, who are not male WASPs? To the vagaries of the European press? Perhaps.
Perhaps not. Rather, I think fashionable anti-Americanism and pacifism have now become completely aristocratic pursuits, the dividends of limited experience with the muscular classes and the indulgence such studied distance breeds. Our pampered critics may be as clever as Odysseus, but they have lost his nerve, strength, and sense of morality. And so they have neither the ability nor desire to ram a hot stake into the eye of the savage Cyclops to save their comrades.
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10/26/2001 ||
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Drudge Report
Hollywood wunderkind Aaron Sorkin says America's surge in patriotism has a dark side: It has unleashed a "Blacklist" against those who dissent! "It's happening all over again," the WEST WING creatorexecutiveproducerwriter said this week in Los Angeles during a jam session "Post Terror America: Hollywood Reacts" at the Occidental Policy Forum.
Sorkin: "What is important is dissent... Bill Maher has been getting a pounding because on his television program he said something that some found controversial. It was a conservative talk show host in Houston that got the ball rolling down the mountain, and then sponsors began removing their advertising from the show, and now ABC, the network that heâs on, is saying that they may not do the show. Weâve heard this song before, right? In the fifties there was a blacklist, and it ruined lives. If youâre anything like me, when you watch any of the dozens of films that have been made about the blacklist, you look at that and think, my God, if I could only transport myself back in time to this period and knock a couple of heads together and say, are you out of your mind?"
Sorkin continued: "Well, weâre there, right now. Itâs happening all over again. I think itâs right now when itâs most important that there be dissent. When the patriotism police should be kept at bay and that people understand that Bill Maher is every bit as much an American as you or I and letâs remember the values that we are protecting in the first place. My feeling is that those us who arenât going to be driving the tanks in Afghanistan really what we can do for the war effort is to make sure that if you donât like what Bill Maher has to say, change the channel. Write him a letter. But he shouldnât be taken off the air. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer should not get up and say Americans need to watch what they say..." Well, actually what's important is the government defending the country and citizens supporting the government unless it's wrong. Dissent for dissent's sake is another name for reflexive stupidity.
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
Columnist Matt Miller argues that Democrats should be more aggressive in pushing for liberal economic policies. That's fine, but he starts his column with an awfully cheap shot: I know we're all flying the same flag from our car windows, but the closer you look, the clearer it is that all Americans are not created equal. Depressing new evidence piles up daily. If you work in the House or Senate and there's an anthrax scare, you get tested and treated out of an excess of caution. If you work in the post office where Congress' mail gets sorted, you don't get tested and treated until your colleagues start to die.
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
The New York Times reports on the dwindling World Trade Center death toll. Counting the official tallies of firemen who perished, the dead at companies that suffered major losses, 165 diners and staffers at the Windows on the World restaurant and "unofficial and single-digit losses suffered by 135 other companies," the Times comes up with a tally of 2,950, "about 1,800 fewer than the list of the dead and missing kept and updated daily by the city, which as of Tuesday stood at 4,764." That number itself had dropped by some 500 in recent weeks.
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes reports on a series of guidelines the Society of Professional Journalists issued on Oct. 6 on "countering racial, ethnic and religious profiling." Examples:
5. When writing about terrorism, remember to include white supremacist, radical anti-abortionists and other groups with a history of such activity. . . .
9. Avoid using terms such as "jihad" unless you are certain of their precise meaning and include the context when they are used in quotations. The basic meaning of "jihad" is to exert oneself for the good of Islam and to better oneself.
10. . . . Use spellings preferred by the American Muslim Council, including "Muhammad," "Quran," and "Makkah ," not "Mecca." . . .
12. Ask men and women from within targeted communities to review your coverage and make suggestions.
No. 12 is particularly egregious. As Hayes points out: "Imagine the outcry if a newspaper editor permitted a Catholic priest to revise--before publication--a reporter's story about a pro-life rally. Or if a columnist called in a tobacco executive to edit an article about the hazards of smoking. Or if a publisher gave an advertiser the opportunity to rework a piece about his industry."
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY NAOMI SCHAEFER WSJ Opinion On-Line
"We can't kill innocent children in Afghanistan to say we've responded to terrorism." So said Jessica Hiemenz, a junior at Virginia Tech, to a Baltimore Sun reporter during an antiwar demonstration in Washington late last month. "We need to look at what we've done wrong in the world--if we don't, then more of our buildings will keep blowing up in our face."
When asked what he thinks about U.S. retaliation for the terrorist attacks, Christopher McGowan replies: "Tom Paine was pretty much on the money: 'Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.' " Mr. McGowan, a student at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., speaks with some experience. Before coming to the Catholic school, he served five years in the National Guard.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the divide between religious and secular colleges has become ever more evident. Harvard still bans ROTC from its campus; Wesleyan students have held teach-ins on "Cultures of Masculinity and Militarism in the U.S."; and some Berkeley students formed a "Stop the War" coalition. Meanwhile, at evangelical Christian Bob Jones University three students have left to join the military; several students at Southern Virginia University, a new Mormon college, are seriously considering enlisting; and ROTC students at Brigham Young University are wearing their uniforms even when not training.
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10/26/2001 ||
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By Lisa de Moraes The Washington Post
John Edward, the medium who hosts the chat-with-the-dead show "Crossing Over," has taped segments in which he purports to contact victims of the World Trade Center attacks. But America may never get to hear what they have to say because yesterday afternoon production house Studios USA axed the whole idea after reporters and station execs -- the two least queasy segments of society -- actually cringed.
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10/26/2001 ||
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Andrew Baker NY PRESS
If every society gets the Oz it deserves, then ours, currently, is John Edward. Edward, for the cable-free, is a tv medium/psychic who, through the miracle of his clairvoyant gifts, connects hopeful American rubes with their dearly rube departed. Edward has gone ahead and taped segments for his show Crossing Over in which he brings dead WTC attack victims into contact with their surviving family members. Now, as relates to shameless exploitation, inconceivably bad taste and the dreary fact that our culture really does feed on this dross, there's no shortage of things to be said. News reports, while covering the process side of the storyâand Studios USA boss Barry Dillerâs putting the kibosh on the whole dealâdid a decent job in the tsk-tsking department, to be sure. My only question, then, is the one I suspect every nine-year-old weisenheimer's gonna need to have answered at some point: If Edward's so psychic, why didn't he speak up on Sept. 10? Huh John Edward, why didn't ya?
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan, who were arrested Sept. 12 on an Amtrak train in Texas, had shaved their body hair, as the previous day's hijackers had been instructed to do in a letter found in Mohammed Atta's luggage. The men, who were also carrying box cutters and thousands of dollars in cash, are still being held as material witnesses.
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10/26/2001 ||
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Jim Knipfel NY PRESS
With the Secretary of Defense telling USA Today that the idea of catching or killing Osama bin Laden is a useless and futile pipe dream, and an estimated 10,000 nervous nellies gobbling the Cipro, itâs good to know that thereâs still at least one red-blooded American out there with some backbone left.
Dan Rather, CBSâ own mad prophet of the airwaves, announced yesterday that, despite the fact that traces of anthrax were found in his office, heâs not going to be tested for it, and heâs not going to start taking precautionary doses of antibiotics. Itâs his way of giving a mighty Fuck You to whoever was responsible.
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10/26/2001 ||
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By David Plotz
For the first time anyone can recall, Putin has acted with his gut and without any guarantee of reward. A purely rational analysis would have convinced Putin to equivocate post-Sept. 11. The Russian public, after all, doesnât care about helping the United States against al-Qaida. Polls find a majority of Russians believe they should remain neutral. And Putinâs generals and spooks hate the idea of American troops occupying old Soviet bases.
But Putin has ignored cold good sense because he seems to have a âvisceral and psychological and bloodyminded feeling about terrorism and the Taliban.â says Andrew Weiss, the chief Russia hand for President Clintonâs National Security Council. Putin is from St. Petersburg, the most European Russian city, and has always been oriented west. Russians, including Putin, are infatuated with Samuel Huntingtonâs âclash of civilizationsâ thesis, and Putin thinks that Russia is the civilized worldâs first line of defense against Muslim extremist hordes (âThe Talibs at the gates,â as Weiss puts it). Putin loathes Islamic extremism and doesnât much like any Muslimsâeven though they comprise one-sixth of the Russian population. He has waged war so brutally in Chechnya because he really believesâmostly incorrectlyâthat the Chechen rebellion is first and foremost an Islamist terror operation.
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
Andrew Sullivan has a nice essay in The New Republic on the West's failure to confront Arab anti-Semitism: "We in the West simply do not want to believe that this kind of hatred still exists; and when it emerges, we feel uncomfortable. We do everything we can to change the subject. Why the denial, I ask myself? What is it about this sickness that we do not understand by now? And what possible excuse do we have not to expose and confront it with all the might we have?"
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
The Middle East Media and Research Institute, meanwhile, picks up the following response to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's refusal to accept a $10 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed: Mahmoud bin Abd Al-Ghani Sabbagh, columnist for the Saudi paper Al-Riyadh, wrote a column headlined: "Al-Walid's check, the homosexual governor [sic], and the propaganda war": "The words of [Prince Al-Walid] did not, of course, please the Jewish lobby in the home of the largest Jewish community in the world. Because the governor [sic] of the Big Apple is a Jew, he refused [to accept the donation] and caused a storm... Giuliani said: 'The Prince's declarations are grievous and irresponsible; these Arabs have lost the right to dictate [to us what to do]. What we (America) must do is kill 6,000 innocent people.'"
"By Allah, I am amazed at your act, you Jew; everything Prince Al-Walid said was true . . . What happened proves beyond any doubt the public insolence, the open hatred, and the collapse of American democratic theory. If democracy means a governor who is a homosexual in a city in which dance clubs, prostitution, homosexuality, and stripping proliferate--the U.S. can keep its democracy."
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
A State Department foreign-media briefing picks up the following item from the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan, which the State Department describes as "moderate": Since the Zionist terrorism is being inflicted on the U.S. daily, it blocks the improvement of American-Arab-Muslim relationships. We know quite well that the American media is the first target of Zionist terrorism. This influence on the media sometimes even works against American interests. Therefore, we are not surprised by the current American media campaign against the Kingdom . . . but for this campaign to reach Congress, the source of American domestic and foreign policy, indicates that the Zionist Anthrax has penetrated the American body to the bone.
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
Britain's Tony Blair has been eloquent and steadfast in his support for America and civilization. London's Telegraph has a full transcript of an interview with Blair; here are some highlights:
Interviewer: People have attributed to you a certain sort of calming role. How worried were you that there would be an instant and inappropriate reaction by the United States because they were so understandably angry? Did it require something in those early days . . .
Prime Minister: No, I never had to exercise a moderating influence because George Bush, right from the beginning, and in part because of the sheer enormity of what had happened, realised that it had to be got right, rather than be done quickly and I found from the very first conversation that we had that he was shocked, but utterly focused and knew that in a sense, simply to retaliate for effect would neither be right or sensible. . . .
Interviewer: You only say that we may have a vote in the Commons. Not that we will.
Prime Minister: This is something we can keep under review, but there is no harm whatever in it being clear that some people are opposed. I think that is the strength of a democracy. I have never had a difficulty with it. I have always taken the view that the strength of your argument should be able to carry the day.
And, as I say, I think that sometimes in these situations people are desperate to get into the situation of saying we've been gagged because they find that in fact when their arguments about the issue are put under scrutiny, they don't quite stack up. And I honestly don't know in this situation what the argument against us taking action is. What are we supposed to do? When 6,000 are killed in the United States of America by an act of terrorism and we are expected to do what, exactly, if not take action. I keep asking for the answer to this, but I don't ever seem to get one apart from that we should negotiate with the Taliban or bin Laden. Or we should bring him before the International Court of Justice, or something.
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10/26/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
The Christian Science Monitor features an interview with one of its own reporters, Dan Murphy, who reports from Southeast Asia: "Conceptually, it's cool to be against US policies, but practically speaking, they love the West," says Dan. "People in Thailand buy Osama T-shirts but wear Levis jeans. Two days ago, I was interviewing Iraqi and Afghan refugees. They were all upset about US policy in Afghanistan. But when I asked them where they wanted to go, every one said, 'Australia, the US, Europe, or Canada.' When I asked if they wanted to go to a Muslim nation, they said, 'No way.' " Fits right in. We're at war with a society which doesn't recognize cause and effect.
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10/26/2001 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
