[Note by Tom Gross]

Below are some of the recent items I have written for the National Review’s Media Blog. For space reasons, I have split the dispatch into two.

These are the items relating to the Middle East, and to U.S. and U.K. politics. By separate dispatch, I am sending items connected to media and society in general.

I would like to draw your attention to the Sderot video linked to at the end of the second item below. I think it is worth watching as you are unlikely to fully understand the situation there from regular news reports.

 

ITEMS ON THE MIDEAST:

MUHAMMAD AL-DURA COURT CASE CONTINUES

To see an update to the previous dispatches and pieces on this list concerning the Muhammad al-Dura controversy, you can listen to my comments here and read them here.

 

Friday, November 9, 2007

UN SEC.-GEN. ORDERS PROBE OF ROCKET LAUNCHING FROM UN-RUN SCHOOL IN GAZA

Palestinian terrorists launched rockets aiming to kill Israeli civilians over the border, from a school in Gaza run by the U.N. And yet you have to scroll down this page (relevant part copied below) to find an admission:

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NOON BRIEFING
BY MARIE OKABE
DEPUTY SPOKESPERSON FOR SECRETARY-GENERAL BAN KI-MOON

* In response to questions at briefings over the past two days about reports that Palestinian militants last week launched rockets at Israel from a school run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the UNRWA Commissioner-General spoke about this yesterday, and the Secretary-General has asked that UNRWA fully investigate this incident.

* According to their inquiry, the school had been evacuated at the time of the incident to ensure the safety of the staff and children during an Israeli military incursion. While the school was empty, militants entered the compound and fired rockets at Israel.

* The Secretary-General condemns this abuse of UN facilities, which is a serious violation of the UN’s privileges and immunities.

* He calls on all involved in this conflict to avoid actions that endanger the lives of civilians, especially children, and that put at risk UNRWA’s ability to carry out its humanitarian mission.

Tom Gross adds:

Reuters picked up the news here although many newspapers haven’t bothered to run the Reuters story.

And despite attacks from its facilities, this UN agency responsible today requested more funds.

If you want to see what happens when those Palestinian rockets hit Israel you should spend 7 minutes of your time to watch this video from the Israeli working class town of Sderot. It will remind you that each time an American or European journalist dismiss the “harmless home made Kassam rockets from Gaza” they are misleading the public.

 

Sunday, November 18, 2007

PALESTINIAN OLIGARCH TO THE RESCUE?

The Associated Press reports that billionaire Palestinian businessman Munib al-Masri, 73, has launched a new political movement called the “Palestine Forum”. The Forum, which held meetings in Ramallah and Gaza on Thursday linked by video conference, reflects the growing disillusionment with Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.

Hundreds of Palestinian business people and professionals, fed up with the endemic corruption and wastefulness in Fatah, have pledged support for the new movement.

Supporters said that the U.S.-educated al-Masri would convert the new group into a political party and may field candidates in the next Palestinian election.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr. Ahmad Subuh has announced that EU donations to the PA this year have now surpassed $1 billion, and total $1,080 million thus far. Last year the EU gave $980 million and in 2005, $880 million. (Details here.)

At the same time, unreported by virtually the entire world media, Palestinian Kassam rockets continue to be fired daily from Gaza at homes in Israel. Yesterday, for example, three rockets disrupted the tranquil Jewish Sabbath atmosphere in the working class town of Sderot, setting five cars on fire and resulting in one woman being treated by paramedics.

 

Thursday, November 8, 2007

SAUDI CLERIC EXPLAINS WIFE-BEATING IN ISLAM TO YOUNG MUSLIMS

Extracts from a special Ramadan TV show, as translated yesterday by MEMRI:

Sheikh Muhammad Al-’Arifi: “If neither [admonishing nor refusing to share your bed] works with her, what is the third option?”

Guest: “Beat them.”

Al-’Arifi: “That’s right. How is this beating performed? What do you think?”

Guest: “Light beatings.”

Al-’Arifi: “Light beatings in what way?”

Guest:” For example, I wouldn’t beat her in the face...”

Al-’Arifi: “…If you beat her with a toothpick, or if you beat her lightly with your hand, and so on, it is meant to convey: ‘Woman, it has gone too far. I can’t bear it anymore.’ If he beats her, the beatings must be light and must not make her face ugly. He must beat her where it will not leave marks...”

You can view this clip here, and others views on wife beating in the Middle East here.

 

Monday, November 12, 2007

IRAN POLICE UNVEIL “VICE LIST”

The latest from AFP’s Tehran bureau:

Iranian police have unveiled a list of “vices” – including makeup, un-Islamic dress and decadent movies – being targeted in an ongoing moral crackdown, a conservative newspaper reported today.

The list was published in the Jomhuri Eslami newspaper as part of a police drive launched in April which has seen the arrest of “thugs”, raids on underground parties, seizures of satellite dishes, and street checks of improperly dressed individuals.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week urged police to keep up its crackdown on social vices, saying they must “fulfill their duties regardless of some opposition and propaganda.”

… Thousands of women have been warned for wearing tight, short coats and skimpy head scarves and for flouting the Islamic dress code, which requires every post-pubescent woman to cover their hair and body contours.

 

Monday, November 19, 2007

BALLET A LEAP OF FAITH FOR A PALESTINIAN BILLY ELLIOT

An unusual story from today’s Globe and Mail in Canada. An 81-year-old Auschwitz survivor teaches a young Palestinian boy how to dance ballet at an Israeli kibbutz:

KIBBUTZ GAATON, ISRAEL — The story could have been drawn straight from the Billy Elliot movie script: A young boy who was first transfixed by ballet on television, and would dance secretly in his room at night, practicing what he learned from films and Internet videos.

But Ayman Saffah is a young Palestinian-Israeli – as he prefers to be known – from a small village in the Galilee, and young men in traditional Arab Muslim villages don’t dance ballet, at least not publicly. And so Mr. Saffah’s path to a remote ballet school at Kibbutz Gaaton, the preparatory school for Israel’s prestigious Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company, has been riddled with stops and starts.

“I always wanted to dance,” says the young-looking 17-year-old, wearing jeans and sneakers, a pair of sunglasses dangling at his neck. “[But] when I saw it on the TV or Internet, I saw many, many girls dance, but I never saw boys. So I thought I couldn’t do it.”

… At 14, he mustered the courage to ask his mother for money to buy his first pair of simple black ballet shoes.

… “As far as this thing does no harm to him or to others he can do what he likes,” says his father, Khaled Hashem Saffah. “He loves what he’s doing, I cannot stop him from doing it.”

The younger Mr. Saffah’s friends were not so forgiving. Tortured by classmates who said ballet was for girls and sissies, he lasted just four months in the class.

… He was recruited by the kibbutz school a short time later and here, after a year of study, he has found acceptance.

… “With hard work, he can succeed,” says Yehudit Arnon, the 81-year-old founder of the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company and its preparatory school, who has taken him on as her protégé and is bemused by growing references to Mr. Saffah as an Arab Billy Elliot.

Ms. Arnon, who swore she would devote her life to dance after nearly perishing at Auschwitz for refusing to dance for Nazi officers at a Christmas party, founded her company in 1970 after years of developing dance in Israel.

… Ayman Saffah dreams of performing on stages across Israel and around the world. But more than that, he dreams of returning to his village a success.

“I would like to be famous. I would like to be the first Palestinian Arab ballet dancer,” he says…

 

ITEMS ON U.S. (& U.K.) POLITICS:

Saturday, November 17, 2007

INCONVENIENT TRUTH: GORE WON A NOBEL, AND BUSH WILL HOST THE WINNERS

Former vice president Al Gore plans to return to the White House after Thanksgiving, apparently for the first time since leaving office, to be honored by the man who beat him seven years ago, reports today’s Washington Post.

President Bush regularly invites Nobel laureates for a handshake and photograph and decided this year would be no different.

Bush will host the five American winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes in the Oval Office on Nov. 26, including the winner of the Peace Prize, who fell 538 votes short of hosting the event himself. No word on whether the Supreme Court will be on hand to mediate in case of trouble.

 

Thursday, November 15, 2007

LOU DOBBS FOR PRESIDENT? DON’T LAUGH

CNN host Lou Dobbs posted a commentary on his website last week predicting a surprise new presidential candidate in 2008. The mystery candidate is an “independent populist ... who understands the genius of this country lies in the hearts and minds of its people and not in the prerogatives and power of its elites.”

Friends say Dobbs is seriously contemplating a race for the first time, although it’s still unlikely, reports The Wall Street Journal.

 

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

THE NEW REPUBLIC: HILLARY’S STRATEGY FOR “CRUSHING THE MEDIA”

Michael Crowley, a senior editor at The New Republic, reports the following:

The Clinton machine, say reporters and pro-Hillary Democrats, is emulating nothing less than the model of the Bush White House, which has treated the press with thinly veiled contempt and minimal cooperation. “The Bush administration changed the rules,” as one scribe puts it – and the Clintonites like the way they look.

 

Saturday, November 10, 2007

“YES, THE VEGETABLES WILL HAVE BEEF TOO.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan explains why she believes “Mrs. Clinton will be no Iron Lady,” has an amusing account of the former, outstanding British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher:

The story as I was told it is that in the early years of her prime ministership, Margaret Thatcher held a meeting with her aides and staff, all of whom were dominated by her, even awed. When it was over she invited her cabinet chiefs to join her at dinner in a nearby restaurant. They went, arrayed themselves around the table, jockeyed for her attention. A young waiter came and asked if they’d like to hear the specials. Mrs. Thatcher said, “I will have beef.”

Yes, said the waiter. “And the vegetables?”

“They will have beef too.”

Too good to check, as they say. It is certainly apocryphal, but I don’t want it to be. It captured her singular leadership style, which might be characterized as “unafraid.”

She was a leader.

(Peggy Noonan is a subscriber to this email list.)

[Note by Tom Gross]

Below are some of the recent items I have written for the National Review’s Media Blog. For space reasons, I have split the dispatch into two.

These are the items relating to media and society in general. By separate dispatch, I am sending items connected to the Middle East, and to U.S. and U.K. politics.

 

ITEMS ON THE MEDIA:

Sunday, November 18, 2007

CNN PLANS WORLDWIDE EXPANSION

While the BBC is soon to reduce its substantial staff of foreign correspondents, CNN International has just announced plans to increase its number of foreign reporters by 10 percent.

CNN International, which is owned by Time Warner, said it would invest almost $10 million to add 15 or 16 correspondents to its staff of 150.

The centerpiece of the investment, says CNN, will be the expansion of its bureau in the United Arab Emirates. CNN will also hire staff or stringers in Afghanistan, Belgium, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, and Vietnam.

The move comes as part of a multimillion-dollar investment to increase its ability to produce its own international reports, and not to rely so much on reproducing reports from other organizations such as Britain’s ITN and Channel 4 news.

The announcement comes two months after CNN said it would not renew its contract to receive news from Reuters.

Even after its forthcoming cuts, the BBC, with its distinct anti-American and anti-Israel tilt, will remain the world’s largest broadcaster.

 

Monday, November 19, 2007

LATEST WRITER FOR THE ECONOMIST: ANGELINA JOLIE

Has the high-minded economic and political weekly started to follow the rest of the British media downmarket?

Hollywood starlet Angelina Jolie (otherwise known as Brad Pitt’s other half) is the newest contributor to The Economist’s “The World in 2008,” which is published this week and contains predictions for the next year.

Jolie’s piece on the atrocities in Darfur runs alongside contributions from several presidents, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other senior politicians.

Jolie’s byline describes her as a goodwill ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The annual spin-off to The Economist is now in its 22nd year. It is sold internationally and remains on newsstands for the whole year.

Despite The Economist’s “know-it-all style” of reporting and prediction, if one looks back at past issues one can see that the magazine has often been wrong on critical international issues.

 

Sunday, November 18, 2007

CHINA DEFENDS ITS PLAN TO CREATE DATABASES ON FOREIGN JOURNALISTS

Chinese officials have defended their intention to collect information on journalists visiting the country to cover next year’s Beijing Olympics. The authorities claimed such databases would be used to help the media at Beijing 2008, not to create blacklists or hinder reporting.

The comments came after the state-run China Daily said last week that authorities were building a database on about 30,000 foreign journalists accredited to cover next year’s Olympics.

China, whose own media is strictly controlled, had previously promised greater freedoms for foreign journalists to report on the Games, and as of January 1 eased rules governing their ability to report outside major cities.

Earlier this month, Yahoo was severely criticized in the U.S. Congress for giving Chinese authorities the email addresses of Chinese journalists and bloggers who were then sentenced to 10 years in prison for mentioning the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen square massacre. See this report from AlJazeeraEnglish (which incidentally is much fairer than AlJazeeraArabic, and less anti-western than organizations like BBC and CNN).

 

Monday, November 19, 2007

THE MOST DANGEROUS WAR IN THE HISTORY OF JOURNALISM?

So claims The Independent, the leftwing British daily, in a lengthy report today:

“The Iraq conflict has become the deadliest by far for the media trying to cover it, with more than 200 journalists killed to date. To put this in perspective, two were killed in the First World War, 68 in the Second, 77 in Vietnam and 36 in the Balkans. And the toll in Iraq shows no sign of declining. It is, if anything, rising. Five journalists were killed in separate attacks in just one day last month.”

Is this perhaps a belated recognition that the Islamic terror groups and militias deliberately targeting journalists are not as open to reason as some in the leftist western media would have us believe?

The Independent, who many have accused of hitherto being somewhat soft on terrorism, continues:

“Some famous journalists have lost their lives reporting conflicts – Robert Capa in the first Indochina war; Ernie Pyle on the island of Okinawa in the Second World War; Larry Burrows in Vietnam. But what makes Iraq more dangerous than the others is that the deaths are not accidental collateral damage from stray shells or from reporters being caught up in the fighting. Instead, many have been specifically targeted because of what they had reported or because they came from the wrong side of the sectarian divide. They are killed in drive-by shootings or abducted and executed, often after being tortured. There are little or no investigations into the attacks, creating impunity for the killers from the Shia or Sunni militant groups or government run death squads.”

 

ITEMS ON SOCIETY:

Thursday, November 8, 2007

ALL STARBUCKED OUT

From the consistently interesting and lively book pages of The Wall Street Journal:

Starbucks, the Onion once reported, “continued its rapid expansion Tuesday, opening its newest location in the men’s room of an existing Starbucks.”

In real life, it hasn’t come to that – yet. But Starbucks has seemingly caffeinated the U.S. and the world. There are now 10,000 stores spread across North America (more than 170 in Manhattan alone) and an additional 4,000 in more than 40 countries, stretching from Bahrain to Brazil.

Starbucks stores have become a retail icon, a daily habit and a late-night punchline. “The only way the oil companies could make more money,” Jay Leno quipped a couple of years ago, “would be if they were drilling for oil and struck Starbucks coffee.”

Read the rest in your coffee break.

 

Thursday, November 15, 2007

CHINA NOW HAS 18 MILLION MORE YOUNG MEN THAN WOMEN

Traditionally, of course, such demographic imbalance leads to war…

China now has 18 million more young men than women
Agence France Presse, Beijing bureau

Men of marriageable age now outnumber women by 18 million in China and the sex ratio is set to become more skewed because rural families prefer boys, state press reported.

Sex-selective abortions, a direct result of the nation’s one-child policy, have boosted the number of boys born in China in recent years.

By 2020 there will be 30 million more men than women aged between 20 and 45 in China, news agency Xinhua said, quoting the head of the country’s National Population and Family Planning Commission.

China’s birth ratio averaged 119.58 boys to every 100 girls, while in rural areas the ratio was 122.85 males to 100 females, Zhang Wiqing said at a symposium on rural population.

* Tom Gross adds: The “bachelor bomb” has long been attributed to laws that for nearly 25 years have limited urban families to one child and rural families to two, providing that the first is a girl. Beijing this year began drafting special regulations that would specify punishments for parents and doctors who abort fetuses after discovering they are female. But it is believed they will be too late to stop the demographic timebomb.

 

Saturday, November 10, 2007

BRITISH HAIRDRESSER SUED OVER MUSLIM HEADSCARF BAN

The (London) Daily Telegraph reports:

A hair salon owner is being sued for religious discrimination after refusing a Muslim teenager a job as a stylist because she wore a headscarf.

Sarah Desrosiers said she refused 19-year-old Bushra Noah the position because it was an “absolutely basic” requirement that customers could see their stylist’s hair.

The 32-year-old, whose “alternative” salon in London specialises in “urban, funky punky” cuts, has already spent £1,000 fighting the case. Miss Noah wants £15,000 ($31,000) for injury to her feelings plus an unspecified amount for lost earnings.

Miss Desrosiers, who denies any discrimination, said: “The essence of my line of work is the display of hair.

“To me, it’s absolutely basic that people should be able to see the stylist’s hair.” … She added: “I now feel like I have been branded a racist.

“My accountant is Muslim. I have never discriminated against Muslims. My name is being dragged through the mud and I feel victimised.

“This girl is suing me for more than I earn in a year. I am a small business and have only had my salon a year and a half.”

 

Friday, November 9, 2007

WEATHER CHANNEL BOSS CALLS GLOBAL WARMING “THE GREATEST SCAM IN HISTORY”

Something for the Nobel Prize Committee and the Oscar judges to ponder?

Many news media have been accused of using “man-made global warming” articles and comment pieces to promote anti-Bush, anti-American, anti-capitalism or anti-globalization views.

So it comes as little surprise that only those media which haven’t followed this politically correct line are reporting these remarks by the head of The Weather Channel.

Among them is the (London) Daily Telegraph:

The founder of The Weather Channel in the U.S. has described the concept of global warming as “the greatest scam in history” and accused global media of colluding with “environmental extremists” to alarm the public.

“It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM,” John Coleman wrote in an article published on ICECAP, the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, which is known for challenging widely published theories on global warming.

Coleman continued:

“Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens.

“Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.”

He added: “I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct.

“There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril.”

***

The Daily Telegraph’s sister paper, The Sunday Telegraph, last Sunday also ran a lengthy piece titled “The deceit behind global warming”.

 

ITEMS ON THE MEDIA CRACKDOWN IN PAKISTAN:

Saturday, November 17, 2007

SOME TV STATIONS RETURN IN PAKISTAN AS NEGROPONTE VISITS

The Pakistani authorities have allowed at least two private television channels to resume broadcasting, despite the state of emergency that remains in place.

As I reported earlier in the week (items below), virtually all private electronic media was shut down when President Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule.

The small change in policy came after U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte arrived in Islamabad yesterday.

However, Pakistan’s largest private television network, Geo, is still having its transmissions from the United Arab Emirates blocked, after it refused to pledge that it would no longer criticize Musharraf. It has been broadcasting via satellite from the UAE since emergency rule was imposed earlier this month.

Negroponte meets with Musharraf today. He is expected to call for the release of thousands of lawyers and political prisoners and an end to emergency rule as a pre-requisite for a fair election.

 

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

PAKISTAN EXPELS BRITISH JOURNALISTS

Following up my item on Saturday (below) about Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s domestic press crackdown, the Pakistani government has now expelled three journalists from Britain’s Telegraph group.

The Daily Telegraph’s Isambard Wilkinson and Damien McElroy, and The Sunday Telegraph’s Colin Freeman were given 72 hours to leave the country, after The Daily Telegraph published an editorial criticizing President Musharraf.

A spokeswoman for the Telegraph Group confirmed the journalists had left safely but declined to comment further.

 

Saturday, November 10, 2007

NEWS MEDIA FEELS FORCE OF MUSHARRAF CRACKDOWN

The Guardian reports from Islamabad:

Last Tuesday the owner of Geo, Pakistan’s largest television station, sent an email to his senior editors. “I have received [a] threatening telephone call last night from ISI,” wrote Mir Shakil ur Rahman, referring to the powerful Inter Services Intelligence agency. “They have taken me to a house in Islamabad.”

Mr Rahman did not describe what happened at the spy safe house, but the following sentence suggested it was not pleasant. “I would like to advise you to please follow the laws specially [sic] the newly promulgated law.”

He also attached an email from “Sabir”. “Pakistan Army is the backbone of Pakistan, don’t try to damage it, if u do, u and your family who have looted billions would be hunted down like rats,” it read. “It will just take a few hundred people to smash ur studios, offices, vans.”

As General Musharraf’s emergency rule slides towards a second week, Pakistan’s media barons are coming under intense pressure from his heavy-handed security forces – officially and unofficially.

Private TV channels have been pulled off air, stringent new laws prohibit stories that “ridicule” the president, and many journalists are wondering if the country’s television revolution is over.

… Journalists and proprietors complain of threatening calls and emails, some by people claiming to be the Taliban. They are continuing to broadcast, sending stories by satellite and high-speed internet to a minority of wealthy viewers.

… “The government’s goal is to consolidate their position in the courts and not to allow protests grow,” said veteran journalist Zaffar Abbas. “At the moment they seem pretty satisfied.”

Film, cartoon and sports channels are allowed, as is Pakistan Television, the state news station, which presents an alternate reality. The channel airs Musharraf speeches, anti-Indian propaganda and chat shows hosted by regime loyalists.

[Notes below by Tom Gross]

WHO WILL PROTECT THE YAZIDIS?

Three months have passed since the worst terror attacks since Sept. 11, 2001. Yet the world’s media have remained virtually silent.

There have been almost no penetrative investigative pieces or outraged editorials. There have been no solidarity rallies or candlelit vigils in Western capitals. There have been no in-depth reports from human rights groups. And there has been next to no condemnation by the Muslim world, in whose midst this act of mass murder occurred.

By far* the deadliest terror bombing in Iraq since the fall of Saddam was not the result of the Sunni-Shia divide. It was not over oil fields, and it did not target Americans.

When two tons of explosives detonated in four coordinated explosions in the northern Iraqi villages of Qahtaniya and Jazeera on August 14, 2007, the target was Iraq’s Yazidi ethnic and religious minority.

796 people died and over 1,500 were wounded as a fireball led to the collapse of mud and stone buildings on families trapped inside; many were then burned alive. The terror attack was the deadliest since the World Trade Center was sent crashing down in Manhattan six years ago, killing almost 3,000 persons.

The Yazidi wounded, needless to say, received considerably less medical care than those injured by bombings in Manhattan, Madrid, London, Bali and elsewhere.

(*The second biggest bombing in Iraq since 2003 was the one that killed 155 people in the northern town of Amerli.)

 

GENOCIDAL INTENT

The four bombings were coordinated – the suicide bombers shared explosives and released their devices simultaneously – and they were aimed against a particular group, not for political motives but for reasons of pure hate.

In general, civilian suicide bomb victims in Iraq and elsewhere have been randomly selected, or have been a political target. But unlike in Bali, unlike in Madrid, there was nothing remotely political about this – it was ethnic hatred with genocidal intent. The Yazidis have no political power base to challenge; they have no claims on land, no army or police, and no country looking after their interests (as the Saudis support Iraq’s Sunnis, and Iran helps the Shi’ites).

The bombers that day, and those behind them, were the Muslim Sunni supremacists of al-Qaeda in Iraq. And they openly say that the moment they get the chance (i.e. when the Americans leave) they will wipe out every last Yazidi man, woman and child.

On September 3, the U.S. military killed the mastermind of the bombings, Abu Mohammed al-Afri. But Islamist websites have since vowed that they will “finish al-Afri’s job.”

A force of 600 Kurdish peshmerga have since been deployed to the area, and ditches have been dug around Yazidi villages by Kurdish and American forces trying to prevent further attacks.

 

“GOING AFTER THE DEVIL-WORSHIPERS”

Who are the Yazidis?

Many of their Muslim and Christian neighbors dismiss them as “devil-worshipers,” but in fact they are monotheists, who worship the “Peacock Angel,” whom they believe to be “the chief angel of God.”

Their theology predates Islam and Christianity, but incorporates some Muslim and Christian influences. One of the key creationist beliefs of Yazidism is that all Yazidis are descendants of Adam rather than Eve.

They are not considered Arabs. The Yazidis are Kurdish-speaking, but do not consider themselves fully Kurdish. Yazidi clans do not intermarry even with other Kurds and (like the Druze) accept no converts.

Their numbers are uncertain because they are very secretive and frightened to discuss their beliefs with strangers, having felt the full force of persecution under Muslim rule, including invading missionary armies throughout their history and, more recently, Saddam Hussein’s brutal “Arabization” policy. But it is estimated that they may number as many as 700,000.

The majority of Yazidis inhabit the mountainous Kurdish regions of Northern Iraq. But sizeable Yazidi communities also exist in Syria, Armenia and Germany. (For example, as the second article attached below points out, 7,000 Yazidis live in the north German town of Celle alone.) According to the 2001 Armenian census, there are 40,000 Yazidis there, and the 2002 Russian census cites 31,273 in Russia. In fact there are probably many more who won’t admit their ethnicity to outsiders.

There are very small Yazidi communities in Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, France, Switzerland, the U.K, the U.S., Canada and Australia.

 

EGYPTIAN COLUMNIST: “WE HAVE FAILED THE TEST OF FREEDOM”

Virtually alone amid the silence is a critique by Egyptian columnist Abd Al-Mun’im Sa’id, director of the Center for Political and Strategic Studies of the Al-Ahram publishing house, who wrote of the Yazidis recently in the London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.

In his article (extracts of which are attached as the third full article below) he writes in general of the plight of minorities under Muslim Arab rule: Kurds, Baha’i, Christians, (though he omits the plight of Jews) and then specifies the attacks on the Yazidis:

“The Yazidis were massacred by extremist Sunni groups, while the Arab public watched from a safe distance, concocting tales that portrayed the Yazidi community as Satan worshippers.”

The attack showed “the extent to which these people have become a testing ground for freedom of religion in the Arab world,” a test, he says, that the Arabs have failed so far.

 

50 PERCENT OF CHRISTIANS THOUGHT TO HAVE FLED

Iraq’s large and ancient Jewish population has already been driven from the country, and most now live in Israel. Now the Christian population may be on the way out too. Already, as many as 50% of the country’s Christians are thought to have fled.

Iraq’s Shi’ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has promised to defend Iraqi Christians and stem the tide of Christians fleeing Iraq because of ongoing violence directed at them by Muslim groups.

The violence places Christian clergy in particular peril. Two senior Chaldaean priests who were abducted at gunpoint out of their car during a funeral in September remain in captivity. The Syrian Catholic Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa, who has criticized the Iraqi government for not working for their release, was himself kidnapped briefly in 2005.

 

IRAQI TURKMEN THREATEN TO GO IT ALONE

A recent non-binding resolution in the U.S. Senate recommended dividing Iraq into ethnic territories loosely stitched together by a weak central government. In the wake of this, another minority, not as helpless as the Yazidis, are contemplating taking their future into their own hands.

The Iraqi Turkmen Front, which claims that Turkmen are the third-largest ethnic group in Iraq after the Arabs and Kurds, have threatened to establish a separate Turkmen province should the U.S. split up the country. Considering the various ethnic massacres, it is not surprising that the Turkmen are unwilling to live in an ethnic autonomy not their own.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the Bush administration have criticized the nonbinding U.S. Senate resolution. “Attempts to partition or divide Iraq by intimidation, force or other means into three separate states would produce extraordinary suffering and bloodshed,” said an embassy statement.

I attach six pieces below.

-- Tom Gross

[Note by Tom Gross]

Below are some of the items I have written for the National Review’s Media Blog in recent days. For once, in order to start off with something “lighter,” I am placing the non-Middle East items before those specifically concerning the Middle East.

 

ON U.S. POLITICS:

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

FRENCH FRIES ARE BACK IN FASHION

French President Nicholas Sarkozy is likely to be feted today when he arrives in a Washington appreciative of his pro-American views.

The Financial Times comments that it will “probably be the warmest American welcome granted a Frenchman since Lafayette landed in 1777 to join forces with George Washington against the British.”

How times have changed, as this front page I found from the (London) Sun newspaper from 2003 shows: scroll down here to see the front page.

 

Sunday, November 4, 2007

EIGHT 9/11 HIJACKERS WERE REGISTERED TO VOTE

This information has been out there for some time, but only right-of-center journalists such as Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe and John Fund at the Wall Street Journal have mentioned it.

There has been remarkably little reference to it in the so-called mainstream media.

“Now, in the context of the current debate over the granting of driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, will there be renewed focus on this chilling reality?” asks Mark Finkelstein of NewsBusters.org.

 

Friday, November 2, 2007

THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL U.S. CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS

The (London) Daily Telegraph – Britain’s highest circulation quality daily – today publishes its top 100 lists of people of influence in American political life.

On the most influential conservatives list, the president only makes number 21 slot, but Dick Cheney is in 6th place. Rudy leads the pack.

And on the 100 most influential U.S. liberals, would-be First Gentleman Bill Clinton occupies top spot, followed by Al Gore.

Might not the Daily Telegraph be a little out of date on that one?

Joe Lieberman makes both lists!

And Governor Schwarzenegger, a Republican, comes in number 8th on the liberal list.

 

ON THE MEDIA:

Monday, November 5, 2007

LARRY KING AND JERRY SEINFELD: TWO EGOS CLASH

Jerry Seinfeld pulled the plug on his television sitcom in 1998. His most substantial project since then, the new film Bee Movie, opens this week. But Jerry finds the promotion tough going, as The King of Comedy comes face to face with The King of Talk.

 

Monday, November 5, 2007

LONDON AND ISLAMABAD, ONLY 7 HOURS 45 MINUTES FLIGHT AWAY (IF YOU FLY NON-STOP, THAT IS)

Jane Perlez is a busy lady.

At the top of Page 1 of my International Herald Tribune this morning, I read:

“Pakistan rounds up opposition, By Jane Perlez, Islamabad”

And then I turn to Page 3, and at the top the headline reads:

“London mosque plans mired in controversy: Britons fight to save a Christian skyline, By Jane Perlez, London”

The Herald Tribune is now wholly owned by The New York Times and is largely based on Times copy. Is the Times so short of foreign correspondents these days?

 

Monday, November 5, 2007

U.K. TIMES EDITOR “TO BE APPOINTED WSJ PUBLISHER”

Rupert Murdoch plans to install Times of London editor Robert Thomson as publisher of The Wall Street Journal early next year, according to The Guardian, which cites an unnamed “senior US media executive” in a story posted on its website this morning.

Thomson has edited The Times, which Murdoch also owns, for five years. Thomson is credited with doing a good job at the paper. The Times recently announced that it is set to move into profit next year for the first time in its modern history.

Before his appointment as Times editor in 2002, Thomson ran the Financial Times office in the U.S. for four years, increasing its circulation from 32,000 to more than 123,000.

The Guardian also reports that The Wall Street Journal Europe is likely to transfer from its Brussels headquarters, founded when the paper was established in 1983, to London in the next three years.

Murdoch has also announced that he plans to add “major coverage of the arts, fashion and culture” in order to take on The New York Times and other mainstream papers.

When asked at a conference in San Francisco recently whether he was aiming to kill The New York Times, Murdoch replied simply: “That would be nice.”

 

ON THE MIDEAST:

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

HAMAS PLANS TO BUILD $200M. HOLLYWOOD-STYLE MEDIA CITY

Scarcely a day goes by without Hamas’s American and European apologists claiming that there is now no money in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Not only are tens of millions of dollars being taken into Gaza every month, as Ha’aretz revealed yesterday, but now the Associated Press reports today that:

Hamas plans to build $200m. Hollywood-style media city

(AP, Nov. 7, 2007)

It’s a tale worthy of its own movie script: The Gaza Strip’s isolated and cash-strapped Hamas rulers plan to build a $200 million media city and movie production house that will be part tourist attraction and part effort to cement control of the territory it seized by force in June.

… Hamas envisions a glittering facility with production and graphics studios, satellite technology, gardens, water ponds, a children’s entertainment area and an array of cafes and restaurants, said the Felasteen daily, a Hamas paper.

… Hamas launched a satellite channel last year, offering bearded young men reading the news, and Islamic music layered over footage of masked militants firing rockets into Israel. Hamas loyalists also run at least five news Web sites, two newspapers and a radio station.

Some previous Hamas productions have generated unflattering headlines. In one show last year, a high-pitched Mickey Mouse lookalike called Farfour preached Islamic domination to children.

… Talal Okal, a Palestinian political writer close to Hamas, said the announcement was an important first step toward obtaining full control over the media. “Hamas realizes the importance of the media,” Okal said.

Under Hamas, press freedom is limited in Gaza. On Tuesday, Hamas police stormed the house of reporter Hisham Sakallah, an editor of a local news Web site [which does not follow the Hamas line], and confiscated his computer and archives.

***

Tom Gross adds:

Of course the Palestinian authorities have long had production facilities in Gaza for fooling gullible western journalists. Watch here.

 

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

PALESTINIANS CHOOSE ISRAEL

Reports that the division of Jerusalem may be announced later this month at the big Middle East conference being organized by Condoleezza Rice in Annapolis, Maryland, have prompted Palestinian residents of the city to make a move once considered the ultimate treason.

There has been a staggering growth in Israeli citizenship requests in recent weeks as thousands of east Jerusalem Palestinians scramble to obtain Israeli passports, fearful that Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem will be handed over to Palestinian Authority rule, Ynet reports today.

Some 250,000 Palestinians currently reside in Jerusalem. Only 12,000 of them have sought to obtain an Israeli passport since 1967, an average of about 300 new citizens a year.

 

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO UN: HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL’S ACTIVITY “ABHORRENT”

About time.

Ynet reports:

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, today slammed the UN Human Rights Council, saying that its “ritualistic and virulent campaign against Israel is abhorrent and intolerable.”

“Countless others suffering around the globe, living under tyrannical rule and oppression and violated by human rights abusers, do not gain this Council’s attention,” he said.

“According to Freedom House, more than half of the Council’s 47 members are considered ‘not-free’ or only ‘partially free’ countries. More importantly and most flagrantly, many of these same countries share a political agenda that precludes the State of Israel, and utterly dismiss our inherent right to live in peace and security in our homeland.”

* Tom Gross adds:

But Gillerman’s speech at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York was cut short, after the building’s emergency alarm sounded. All those present in the Assembly hall were ordered to vacate the premises immediately. The cause of the alarm has yet to be determined, but it is suspected that opponents of Israel deliberately sounded the alarm.

 

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

WORLD BANK AIDING THE IRANIAN REGIME

Barely a day goes by without a major publication running a comment piece arguing that non-military measures are (in the words of the Financial Times’s main op-ed yesterday) “the only hope on Iran.” These op-ed writers then invariably go on to blame the Bush administration for not doing much more on this front.

In fact, the Bush administration are virtually the only ones presently exerting serious non-military pressure to try and persuade the Iranian regime to give up its quest for nuclear weapons and thereby avoid the need to later use military means to achieve the same result.

Why, one wonders, don’t these editorial writers criticize countries like Germany and Italy, who are continuing to increase their already substantial business dealings with Iran, or write about the unhelpful role of the World Bank?

World Bank Vows a Big Loan to Iran
$900 Million for Mullahs, as Zoellick Snubs Inquiry
By Eli Lake
The New York Sun
November 5, 2007

WASHINGTON – The World Bank is defying requests from an influential congressman to stall nearly $900 million in loans to Iran.

Earlier this year, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, who before taking that office served in a top Bush administration foreign policy post, declined a privately made request from Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, to suspend the loans. World Bank spokesmen told The New York Sun that the bank will go ahead with the loans.

Mr. Kirk, who serves on the subcommittee that approves America’s share of the World Bank’s funds, is warning that the loans will undermine recent American and Western moves to exert pressure on Iran. American sanctions on Iran’s largest banks and largest branch of its military are designed to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons and to punish Tehran for its support for terrorism and attacks on American soldiers in Iraq.

Mr. Kirk said that senior National Security Council staff told him that they did not think the World Bank loans were helpful to the American strategy of applying economic pressure to Iran to persuade the mullahs to end their enrichment of uranium in Natanz…

 

Sunday, November 4, 2007

A HOSTAGE SITUATION WITH A POSITIVE OUTCOME

Tom Gross writes (based partially on exclusive information):

A reporter for the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Iraq has today been released after a brutal 10 day kidnapping ordeal in Baghdad which, for security reasons, was kept out of the media.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was personally involved in the process that led to her release, as well as officials from the Iraqi government and armed forces.

Jumana Al-Obaidi, age 29, had been kidnapped by a criminal gang that initially said it was a Shia militia and then switched to call itself the “Sunni fighters for freedom.” Their real identity is not yet known.

Al-Obaidi, a non-practicing Sunni, was severely beaten during her kidnapping sustaining among other injuries two black eyes, and is presently on her way to see a medical team. Her driver was executed by her abductors at the time of her kidnapping.

Radio Free Iraq is part of the Prague-based Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which despite its name, today focuses on doing very important work broadcasting in Arabic, Persian, Pashto and 25 other languages to the peoples of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere. (The network has also branched out from radio into television and internet.)

Two other RFE/RL correspondents in Baghdad (mother-of-three Khamail Khalaf, and a young man, Nazar Al-Radh) have already been murdered this year.

The remaining seven Baghdad bureau staff have been offered relocation but all have refused saying they are determined not to give in to the terrorists and to continue reporting fully and frankly what is happening in Iraq to other Iraqis. The station has a wide audience in Iraq.

A correspondent on the Uzbek language service of RFE/RL was murdered last week, almost certainly by the Uzbek security services. And last year, a 58-year-old female correspondent for the RFE/RL Turkmen service, Ogulsapar Muradova, was found dead in prison.

[Note by Tom Gross]

Below are some of the items I have written for the National Review’s Media Blog in recent days. These are the ones relating to the media itself, to Arab views of the Holocaust, and to politics and society in general, as well as to the Sept. 6 raid on Syria.

By separate dispatch yesterday, I attached items relating to Iran, Pakistan, Syria and Egypt.

 

Friday, November 2, 2007

AL-JAZEERA: “U.S. AIR FORCE, CARRYING TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS, FLEW WITH ISRAEL DURING RAID ON SYRIAN NUCLEAR SITE”

The mystery deepens around the air raid on September 6 on what was said to be a Syrian nuclear site.

Israeli and Arab sources have been quoted on Al-Jazeera this morning as saying that Israeli Air Force jets provided cover for the American planes that were armed with tactical nuclear weapons.

This is from Al-Jazeera – so it may not be true, of course.

It is also possible that Syria is behind the story on Al-Jazeera. The Baath party can clean up the site as much as possible but traces of radiation will remain. The regime needs an alibi for their activities there, so why not blame it on the Americans?

The Syrian propaganda machine may also be trying to suggest that Israel is not capable of defending itself without American help.

“Al-Jazeera”: US Air Force carried out raid on Syrian nuke site
Nov. 2, 2007, The Jerusalem Post

The September 6 raid over Syria was carried out by the US Air Force, the Al-Jazeera Web site reported Friday morning. The Web site quoted Israeli and Arab sources as saying that two strategic US jets carrying tactical nuclear weapons carried out an attack on a nuclear site under construction.

The sources were quoted as saying that Israeli F-15 and F-16 jets provided cover for the US planes.

The sources added that each US plane carried one tactical nuclear weapon and that the site was hit by one bomb and was totally destroyed.

The statement seemed to be in line with previous remarks by a Syrian source that six planes had participated in the strike in the area of Dir a-Zur. The Syrian source had claimed that Syrian radars picked up six planes that took part in the raid, in addition to 25 planes that flew over Cypriot airspace at the time of the attack.

***

Tom Gross adds: The Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan reported last month that “U.S. jets provided aerial cover for Israeli strike aircraft during the attack on Syria,” without giving details. For more background, see here.

For “before and after” photos of the Syrian site, see here.

 

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

LEBANESE TV: “JEWS ARE ANNIHILATING THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD USING DRUGS”

Lebanon’s NBN TV channel – which is affiliated with the influential Pro-Syrian Lebanese Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Beri – has just aired a program stating that “Jews use drug trafficking to control the world and subjugate other nations.”

The program’s narrator continues: “Drugs were also the Jews’ method of wearing down the German people, which led to the Nazi extremism, in which the Jews themselves played a role. In addition, they carried out widespread drug dealing in Czarist Russia, from the 17th century. This was in accordance with the Jewish Talmud.”

The program, based on the notorious anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (which, as a new report yesterday found, is also being distributed using Saudi money in mosques in London and elsewhere in western Europe) was shown on Lebanon’s NBN TV on October 22, 2007.

Among other excerpts that MEMRI has translated:

* “Isn’t it true that these Jewish plots to corrupt the peoples were described by American ‘plot-disrupters,’ such as Benjamin Franklin and Henry Ford, and even by some Jews, like Alfred Lilienthal, and even Karl Marx, who, more than 150 years ago, exposed in his book On the Jewish Question that there was an instinct within the Jewish individual that drives him to take control of the world, by means of illegal money – which is known today as ‘money laundering?’”

* “The Koran said about them: ‘They strive to spread corruption throughout the land.’ Spreading corruption throughout the land is the declared goal of the Zionist hands of evil, which are infiltrating the world. The Zionists have summarized their destructive principles in what has become known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which contains their secret plan to subjugate the entire world by spreading chaos and promiscuity among the nations, by imposing corrupt and depraved ideologies on human minds, and by destroying the foundations of religion, nationalism, and morality.”

* “Moreover, the third Zionist protocol states that other nations must be left sick, poor, and lacking any determination or strength. Naturally, drugs are the most effective means to accomplish this goal. The American thinker Benjamin Franklin, in his famous 1789 manifesto, the American industrialist Henry Ford, who wrote The International Jew, and others like them warned of the danger posed by the Jews, who destroy morals.”

* “I believe this is true, we [the Lebanese] must consider our responsibility – what we should do to overcome this plague, which is killing our society.”

(You can view a fuller clip of the program from Lebanese TV here.)

Equally worrying is the way in which some western media are playing a role in this increased anti-Semitism. Yesterday BBC World Service Radio interviewed an American woman who stated that there was “no problem with anti-Jewish or anti-gay discrimination in countries like Saudi Arabia”. It was, she said, all merely “propaganda that American Jews had made up”. True to form, the BBC presenter didn’t challenge her on her remarks but merely thanked her for her insights.

 

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

THE GUARDIAN’S CARTOON TODAY AGAIN SHOWS PRESIDENT BUSH HAVING SEX WITH A GOAT

People outside the U.K. sometimes wonder how the BBC became so viciously anti-Israel.

One important factor is that the BBC news staff’s daily paper of choice is The Guardian, whose coverage of Israel has on more than one occasion verged on spilling over into outright anti-Semitism.

The Guardian doesn’t have a particularly high circulation (it attracts considerably fewer readers than The Times and The Daily Telegraph, for example) but Britain’s liberal elites at the BBC and in higher education, view it as something of a bible. (That explains, for example, why it is in Britain rather than in other countries that misinformed university lecturers are constantly arguing for a boycott of Israeli students.)

Among the daily dose of anti-Israel invective in The Guardian, the following letter therefore comes as a welcome surprise:

“Colin Green claims lawyers threatened to bankrupt anyone who criticises Israeli policy. In fact Alan Dershowitz threatened to sue anyone who initiated an exclusion of scholars who work in Israel from British campuses. Anthony Lester confirmed that such an exclusion would violate British anti-discrimination law.

“Criticising policy is not the same as setting up a racist exclusion. The Guardian should not print self-evident falsehoods. The Guardian should be extra careful when the falsehoods it prints constitute part of an antisemitic narrative of global Jewish conspiracy. The incurables will read this letter as a threat from the “Israel lobby” against a paper which “courageously” allows criticism of Israel. Others will read it as a warning, from someone who is, himself, a critic of Israeli policy, against the accelerating contemporary danger of anti-Jewish racism. If the left can’t recognise the threat, then we are in trouble, because nobody else can be relied upon to oppose racism. The Guardian needs to stop hosting a debate between antisemitic and antiracist points of view. It is time to take sides.

David Hirsh, University of London

***

Tom Gross adds: The Guardian – like the BBC – is trying to increase its audience in the U.S. This is partly for commercial reasons but it is also, say the editors, because it wants to influence U.S. politics and society which they believe (wrongly, of course) to be in the grip of “Zionists” and “neo-Conservatives”.

To further this aim The Guardian last week launched an American edition, with an initial team of eight journalists based in Washington.

But if you want to know just how nasty The Guardian can get, consider the paper’s cartoon strip today when for the second time in three days, The Guardian’s award-winning cartoonist Steve Bell draws President Bush having sex with a goat. (To see them on The Guardian’s site, scroll back to the cartoons of Oct. 29 and 31. You can also see one of the cartoons directly here.)

 

Sunday, October 28, 2007

PLO’S AMBASSADOR TO POLAND VISITS AUSCHWITZ

This is an extremely rare move, given the Holocaust denial pervasive throughout the Arab world, along with all kinds of other conspiracy theories ranging from what happened on 9/11 to a belief that Israeli melons have AIDS.

Until Arab societies rid themselves of these kinds of conspiracy theories, they will not fully integrate into the modern world. Khaled Soufan’s visit is a welcome start. Lets hope other Arab and Islamic leaders don’t condemn him for it.

The following article is from Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s best selling newspaper:

PLO’s ambassador to Poland visits Auschwitz
By Roee Nahmias

The PLO’s ambassador to Poland, Khaled Soufan, has visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

He was accompanied by David Peleg, the Israeli ambassador to Poland. The two spent some two and a half hours in the camp, during which Soufan told Peleg that only when one visits Auschwitz, can one grasp the scope of the Holocaust.

Soufan, a former PLO ambassador to Hungary, befriended the Israeli ambassador in Budapest and expressed his interest in visiting the concentration camp.

After signing the camp’s visitors’ journal, Soufan told reporters he was there to convey his solidarity with the Jewish people’s suffering during World War II.

The PLO ambassador is not the only unlikely visitor to the camp: The Pakistani ambassador to Poland visited Auschwitz earlier in October and several of the Pakistani military officials are scheduled to visit it in the next few weeks.

 

Thursday, November 1, 2007

ANNAPOLIS: “THIS MEETING IS GOING TO BE A QUICKIE”

Yoel Marcus, like other columnists at the liberal Tel Aviv daily, Ha’aretz, is usually very encouraging when he sees any sign of a prospect for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

So his column today is a reminder of just how low expectations are of any real breakthrough at the big peace conference Condoleezza Rice has called in Maryland scheduled for November 26.

Among the points Yoel Marcus makes in Ha’aretz today:

* The Annapolis meeting is the private initiative of U.S. Secretary of State Rice. She wants to give Bush a farewell gift, a little something from our neighborhood.

* This meeting is going to be a quickie. An international brief encounter, not an international conference. It will be a forum not for negotiations, but for speeches, as well as a summarizing declaration of principles that will serve as a guideline for talks on the establishment of two states for two peoples.

* The trouble is that, in practice, any agreement that Olmert and Abbas sign at Annapolis will obligate only half of the Palestinians. Abbas will be stronger in the eyes of the world, but not in the eyes of most of his people. The Israeli public does not have the strength, emotional or otherwise, for another dummy compromise with the Palestinians.

* What happened after the withdrawal from Gaza, with its removal of settlers by force, has left us deeply wounded and disappointed over the outcome. Sderot and other towns near Gaza have not enjoyed a moment’s peace. It is hard to believe that a country as powerful as Israel is just sitting there and watching its cities being pounded by rockets day after day, year after year.

* Intelligence sources in Israel are shocked at the transformation of Hamas gangs into a genuine military force in Gaza, complete with uniforms, arms, instructors and Iranian ideology that may soon seep into the West Bank, whose control could fall into Hamas’ hands.

* Olmert must go to Annapolis as Mr. Peace, but play Mr. Security when he gets there. Annapolis is good, but not at any price.

 

... AND SOME STORIES AWAY FROM THE MIDDLE EAST

Friday, October 26, 2007

HUMAN SPECIES MAY SPLIT INTO TWO

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry produced this remarkable report for the British men’s satellite TV channel “Bravo,” as reported here by the BBC.

Human species may split into two
BBC Online
October 25, 2007

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years’ time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said – before a decline due to dependence on technology. People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.

Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws and deeper voices.

Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.

However, Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology. Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals.

Social skills, such as communicating and interacting with others, could be lost, along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect. People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams.

 

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

THE CLASSIC SWEDISH WELFARE MODEL AT WORK

As reported in today’s Financial Times:

System comes under scrutiny as welfare net frays
By David Ibison in Stockholm
October 30, 2007

To say Roger Tullgren likes heavy metal would be an understatement. The committed headbanger used to take time off work whether his boss liked it or not, to go to gigs; he also listened to music the entire time he was at work. “My friends used to ask me to say anything – just one thing – that was not to do with heavy metal, and I couldn’t,” he admitted.

The situation got so bad that, with the backing of his boss, he consulted a psychologist who concluded that Mr Tullgren was not just an ardent rock fan but was in fact addicted to heavy metal – and signed an official diagnosis stating as much.

It was a finding that allowed Sweden’s famously generous welfare system to craft a unique and illustrative solution: as Mr Tullgren was suffering from a medical problem, he qualified for income support.

The government now pays 20 per cent of his salary and he is permitted to listen to heavy metal at work and go to any gigs he likes, as long as he makes up the time later. “For me, it’s great,” said the genial and tattooed rocker.

… Stefan Fölster of the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise said: “The welfare system is generous and that gives people a greater incentive to abuse it. Swedes are much more prone to cheat today than they were 30 years ago.”

 

Thursday, October 25, 2007

MAFIA “PLOTTED TO WHACK GIULIANI”

From today’s (London) Daily Telegraph:

NY mafia “planned to assassinate Rudy Giuliani”
By Sally Peck and agencies
October 25, 2007

New York mafia bosses plotted to assassinate Rudy Giuliani in 1986, when he was a mob-busting federal prosecutor, according to testimony in the murder trial of a former FBI agent.

Mr Giuliani narrowly escaped death after bosses from the city’s five mafia families voted on a 3-2 margin not to hit the future mayor.

Details of the plot – which never took shape – were given to ex-FBI agent Roy Lindley DeVecchio by the late Gregory Scarpa Sr., an FBI informant known as the Grim Reaper, according to the testimony of FBI agent William Bolinder in Brooklyn supreme court.

DeVecchio, 67, faces life in prison for allegedly arranging at least four killings by leaking information to his own informant.

… In the same year mobsters purportedly discussed the hit, the future Republican presidential candidate indicted the heads of the five families in the celebrated “Commission” trial.

 

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

JANE’S: RUSSIAN SECURITY AGENCIES BEGIN TO FALL OUT WITH EACH OTHER

Jane’s, the knowledgeable security and intelligence publication, reports today that:

Russia’s Byzantine security community, so long united in their mistrust of the West and support for President Vladimir Putin, are increasingly parading their rivalries more openly as the prospect of political change opens up new opportunities for empire building and the settling of personal and institutional scores.

On 1 October, three officers of the Federal Drug Control Service (Federalnaya Sluzhba Narkokontrolya Rossii: FSNK), including operational support department head General Alexander Bulbov, were arrested at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport by a joint team from the Federal Security Service (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti: FSB) and the General Prosecutor’s Investigations Committee.

Accused of illegal wire-tapping, protection racketeering and bribe taking, they were quickly arraigned and placed in pre-trial detention. They are awaiting trial and have denied the charges. Viktor Cherkesov, director of the FSNK, promptly wrote a lengthy article for the respected newspaper Kommersant in which he suggested the arrests were actually part of a struggle between security agencies, especially intended to discredit investigators working on the so-called “Three Whales” smuggling case.

This Three Whales scandal first broke in 2000, but was reopened in 2006, with FSNK investigators involved simply because it had become a jurisdictional battleground between police, prosecutors, the FSB and the Customs Service. In Cherkesov’s final confidential report, he claimed several senior FSB officers were involved in smuggling.

Whatever the outcome of the Domodedovo case, it has attracted unprecedented attention to fault-lines within the security apparatus.

 

Thursday, November 1, 2007

JOURNALISM: THE LOVE OF THE GAME

John Robinson responds to a recent report from Forbes that lists journalism as one of the 21st century’s worst jobs:

“What a crock. The report ignores the two reasons that everyone I’ve ever met in print journalism got into the business: they love the work and they want to change the world.

“I’ve been in newspapers for 30 years, and the pay has always been lousy to mediocre, the hours long and the pressures intense.

“No one gets into it to get rich. It’s tough on the home life. You’re on call 24/7. Does it have to be that way? No, and when I win the Powerball and start a news company, I will change it, but meanwhile, it is what it is. Still...

“You get into it to do something different and exciting every day, to meet fascinating people and to write about intriguing things, and to make a difference by telling people things that are important. It’s a damned exciting way to make a living.”

[Note by Tom Gross]

Below are some of the items I have written for the National Review’s Media Blog in recent days. These are the ones relating to Iran, Pakistan, Syria and Egypt. By separate dispatch, I am sending items I wrote connected to the media itself, to Arab views of the Holocaust, and to politics and society in general.

 

Thursday, October 25, 2007

ISLAMIC REGIME’S NEW PIN-UP GIRL: MAUREEN DOWD

This is how it works.

First Maureen Dowd writes a piece of agit-prop against the American government, and it is published in The New York Times yesterday under the title Madness as Method.

Then today, the Islamic Republic News Agency – one of the propaganda arms of the Iranian regime, and an outlet that has helped Ahmadinejad deny the Holocaust – repeats much of Dowd’s column almost verbatim (although without Dowd’s byline) here: Madness as Method, Oct. 24, IRNA.

 

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

52% OF AMERICANS SUPPORT MILITARY STRIKE AGAINST IRAN

It seems that most Americans are coming round to the view that the world cannot afford to allow the Islamic Republic of Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

Messianic Iran is not the Soviet Union. If the Islamic fundamentalists of Iran get nuclear weapons, they may very well use them – either directly or by giving a dirty bomb to one of the terror groups they sponsor, such as Hizbullah or Hamas.

This report is from one of Japan’s leading papers:

52% of Americans support military strike against Iran
By Takeo Miyazaki, Yomiuri Shimbun
October 31, 2007

www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/world/20071031TDY06308.htm

More than half of likely voters in the United States would support a U.S. military strike against Iran to prevent it from building a nuclear weapon, according to a poll released Monday.

The poll found 53 percent of Americans believe it is likely the United States will be involved in a military strike against Iran before the November 2008 presidential election.

The nationwide telephone survey, conducted by polling firm Zogby International*, found 52 percent of U.S. adults interviewed would support such a strike.

In the months leading up to the United States’ imposition of fresh sanctions against Iran on Oct. 25, top officials of the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney, have issued a series of harsh remarks. Cheney said last week Iran will face “serious consequences,” if “it stays on its present course.”

***

Tom Gross adds: Zogby, for those who don’t know, is one of America’s most trusted polling organizations.

This is a relatively high figure considering that the “experts” on CNN, The New York Times and elsewhere, repeatedly tell us that Americans would strongly oppose any action against Iran, given the reported unpopularity of the Iraq War.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Times (of London) reports:

“The [British] Foreign Office has cleared dozens of Iranians to enter British universities to study advanced nuclear physics and other subjects with the potential to be applied to weapons of mass destruction.

“In the past nine months about 60 Iranians have been admitted to study postgraduate courses deemed ‘proliferation-sensitive’ by the security services. The disciplines range from nuclear physics to some areas of electrical and chemical engineering and microbiology.

“Additionally, figures obtained by David Willetts, the shadow secretary for innovation, universities and skills, show that in 2005-6, 30 Iranians were doing postgraduate degrees in subjects covering nuclear physics and nuclear engineering.”

So while the British government claims to be concerned about the Iranian nuclear threat, are they actually going to do anything to stop it?

 

Monday, October 29, 2007

FRANCE STRONGLY REJECTS EL BARADEI’S CLAIMS ON CNN ABOUT IRAN

Agence France Presse’s Abu Dhabi bureau reports this morning:

French Defence Minister Herve Morin on Monday dismissed comments by the head of the UN atomic watchdog that there was no evidence Iran is building nuclear weapons, saying Paris has evidence to the contrary.

“Our information, matching those of other countries, gives us the opposite feeling,” Morin told a news conference in Abu Dhabi at the end of a short visit to the United Arab Emirates.

Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN atomic watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview with CNN on Sunday that he had no evidence that Iran is building nuclear weapons and accused US leaders of adding “fuel to the fire” with their bellicose rhetoric.

***

Tom Gross adds: El Baradei made the remarks to Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “Late Edition” yesterday. Blitzer took what El Baradei said at face value and failed to challenge him.

Separately this morning, an Israeli government minister blasted El Baradei for his CNN interview. “Mohamed El Baradei is, simply, instead of fighting against Iran’s nuclear program, looking for all the reasons to whitewash and justify it,” Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel radio.

Lieberman said El Baradei had now started covering up for the Iranian regime “for ideological reasons, for a commitment to the Islamic world.”

“Why does Iran need ballistic missiles?” Lieberman asked. “The proof El Baradei is looking for is probably that nuclear mushroom everyone will be able to see in the sky. Before that, no proof would satisfy him.”

He went on to accuse the IAEA chief of obstructing US-led efforts to pass a new round of sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council. There is no doubt that the role El Baradei and the IAEA are playing today is a very, very negative role in the process that is currently under way in the Security Council,” Lieberman said.

 

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS COMMANDER CITES 13-YEAR-OLD SUICIDE BOMBER AS MODEL FOR TROOPS

This just in from Iran’s Fars News Agency:

Commander Stresses IRGC Readiness to Combat Enemy Troops in PG

TEHRAN (Fars News Agency) – An Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commander underlined preparedness of his troops to fight enemy forces in the Persian Gulf, saying that Iran can stun enemies due to its geographical advantages in the strait of Hormoz.

“Even small operations can produce huge effects in the strategic strait of Hormoz and the Persian Gulf,” lieutenant commander of the IRGC’s naval force said on Monday.

General Ali Fadavi… declined to provide any further details on the specific role of the Basiji troops in possible engagement with enemy forces in the Persian Gulf, but said that each of them can play the role of martyr Fahmideh.

Hossein Fahmideh was a 13-year-old volunteer who blew up an enemy tank during a martyrdom-seeking operation in the midst of the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-1988)…

 

Friday, October 26, 2007

EGYPT: RUMOR-MONGERS “MUST BE FLOGGED”

In a dispatch earlier this month I mentioned that the editors of four Egyptian newspapers have been sentenced to one-year prison terms for “defaming” President Hosni Mubarak after they mentioned that he had been in ill health.

Now in the latest move to stem the rumors about the president’s continuing poor condition, today’s Gulf News reports that “rumor-mongers [in Egypt] will be flogged 80 times in compliance with Sharia law”:

Rumor-mongers “must be flogged”
By Ramadan Al Sherbini
Gulf News, October 26, 2007

Cairo: A top cleric has drawn fire from journalists for demanding that rumor-mongers be flogged 80 times in compliance with the Sharia. Mohammad Saeed Tantawi, Grand Shaikh of Al Azhar, made the suggestion during a recent function attended by President Hosni Mubarak.

Tantawi’s fatwa would have passed unnoticed had it not been made a few weeks after journalists were prosecuted on charges of publishing “false reports” about Mubarak’s health.

… “I did not have journalists on my mind when I talked about flogging people who spread false rumors,” Tantawi said in a statement. He added that he had based his fatwa on a verse from the Quran that says those who accuse women of adultery without proof should receive 80 lashes.

… Some 11 Egyptian journalists, including five chief editors, have recently been sentenced to jail, guilty of slandering senior officials in the ruling National Democratic Party.

 

Monday, October 29, 2007

SAUDI KING ACCUSES THE WEST OF NOT DOING ENOUGH TO FIGHT TERRORISM

The Saudi Arabian dictator, King Abdullah, has accused the British and other western nations of not doing enough to fight terrorism.

In an interview with the BBC in advance of his first state visit to the United Kingdom, which begins later today, Abdullah charged that had Britain acted on information the Saudis supplied, the July 7, 2005 London bombings could have been averted.

He told his BBC: “We sent information to Great Britain before the terrorist attacks in Britain, but, unfortunately, no action was taken. And it may have been able to maybe avert the tragedy.”

The 83-year-old Abdullah is the fifth of the 37 sons of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz, to rule the kingdom.

Lets hope that Abdullah’s harsh criticism won’t intimidate the British government into not properly raising Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record – or the fact that the Saudi regime is doing next to nothing to prevent Saudi suicide bombers crossing into Iraq to murder Iraqis.

* For more on this, see Saudi gang-rape victim gets 90 lashes for International Women’s Day
* and Time to face up to Mecca: Why wasn’t Saudi Arabia on Bush’s Axis of Evil?

 

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

INDEPENDENT EXPERTS SAY SATELLITE IMAGERY SHOWS SYRIAN NUCLEAR SITE TARGETED BY ISRAEL

The Washington Post’s story this morning is being picked up in the Middle East.

See, for example, this report from the website of Gulf News (which is an English-language paper published in the UAE):

Israeli targeted reactor in Syria: experts
October 24, 2007
Gulf News

www.gulf-news.com/region/Middle_East/10162426.html

Independent experts have satellite imagery of what they believe to be a Syrian nuclear site targeted in an Israeli air strike last month, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said the photographs taken before the Israeli attack show buildings under construction similar in design to a North Korean reactor, the newspaper reported.

They also show what could have been a pumping station used to supply cooling water for a reactor, the Post said, citing experts David Albright and Paul Brannan of ISIS, a research group that tracks nuclear weapons and stockpiles.

Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector, said the size of the structures suggested that Syria might have been building a gas-graphite reactor similar to the one North Korea built at Yongbyon, the paper reported.

For more background stories on this issue, see here.

 

Sunday, October 28, 2007

“PAKISTAN WAS PREPARING TO USE NUCLEAR MISSILES AGAINST INDIA DURING KARGIL WAR”

The following is a report from The Times of India this morning. Whether it is true or not, it serves as a useful reminder that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons remain a source of concern, especially as Islamic militancy is growing stronger in the country, and many radical groups would like to seize power.

“Pak was preparing to use nuke missiles during Kargil war”
The Times of India
October 28, 2007

Pakistan was preparing to use nuclear missiles against India during the Kargil war, a new book has claimed, citing a conversation between US President Bill Clinton and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif eight years back.

“When President Clinton met Sharif at Blair House (in July 1999), Clinton asked Sharif if he knew how advanced the threat of nuclear war really was? Did he know, for example that his military was preparing to use nuclear missiles?” the book “Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy” says.

Answering Clinton’s query, Sharif shook his head implying he was unaware of his military’s moves, investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark have claimed in their 586-page book.

Warning Sharif, the President said he had a statement ready for release that would pin all the blame for Kargil on Pakistan if the Prime Minister refused to pull his forces back.

Clinton further questioned Sharif on whether the Pakistani leader could be trusted on anything.

The US President reminded Sharif that despite his promise to help bring Osama bin Laden to justice, the ISI had continued to work with bin Laden and the Taliban to foment terrorism and the Americans knew that.

The Americans were unsure as to who was really in control in Islamabad, the authors said, as confusion prevailed over whether Sharif was in reality pushed into a war by General Pervez Musharraf, or he attempted to diminish his role in the crisis.

 

FOLLOW-UP: IRAN’S POLICE TAKE AIM AT POPULAR “BOOK-CAFES”

In the dispatch on October 24, I revealed that “In an effort to stop intellectuals gathering, Iran announced today that all Teheran bookstores with coffee shops attached are to be closed in 48 hours.”

This week the mainstream media began reporting this news too. The first to do so was the French news agency Agence France Presse on October 29 (article below). Other western media followed later.

Iran’s police take aim at popular “book-cafes”
Monday, 29 October 2007

TEHRAN (AFP) – Iranian police have ordered shut and sealed several Tehran bookshops which also provide coffee and snacks to their customers, because of what one officer termed “a clash of professions.”

“Based on the [bookseller’s] union law, owners of one type of business are not allowed to practice two different professions at the same time,” head of Tehran police information, Colonel Mehdi Ahmadi, said Saturday.

According to the state IRNA news agency, six book-cafes have been sealed.

“It is not possible that they open a cafe-restaurant and give such services beyond their union’s job description,” Ahmadi said, referring to what have become known as “book-cafes” where people borrow books, relax with a coffee and read.

But Farid Moradi, of the publisher Saales, said that many other businesses in Iran had coffee shops besides their primary profession.

“Many other places such as cinemas, swimming pools and sports clubs have a space for people to hang out and drink coffee ... it seems that [the police] are adopting a different approach” for bookshops, Moradi said.

“We received a notice to close our book-cafe and we did so within the given deadline,” said Moradi, adding that they reported the closure to the union on Wednesday but that police still sealed the shop on Thursday.

He said the four-year-old publishing company was now trying to have the seal removed.

Alireza Elmi, director of the publisher Badragheh Javidan, said that after they shut down their coffee operation they were able to reopen, but the process took two weeks.

“The person who had come to seal the bookshop responded to my objection by saying ‘all the corruption in the country comes out of these book-cafes,’” he was quoted as saying in the Sarmayeh newspaper.

Besides offering a pleasant atmosphere for book lovers, the book-cafes in Tehran also hosted cultural events.

Since April, Iran has been pressing ahead with one of its toughest crackdowns in years, warning women about dressing immodestly, targeting “immoral” cafes and seizing illegal satellite dishes.