Sunday, December 25, 2005

German appeasers in hostage-for-terrorist swap

Posting this on JSL's lazy-ass behalf.

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

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

...

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

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Borat

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

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

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

Borat - Wikipedia
Stop Borat
The Borat Doctrine

Back to the September 10 mentality? Daniel Pipes

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

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

...

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

Friday, December 16, 2005

Who should decide on Oxbridge admissions?

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

So what if I fluked it into Cambridge?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Hoist the white flag

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

Monday, December 12, 2005

Pausing for thought on the Nobel prize for Literature

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

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


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

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Dianafication

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

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

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

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

Friday, December 09, 2005

Climate change - Saudis demand compensation

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

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

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

...

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

Goodbye Routemaster

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

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


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


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

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


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

BBC Radio 4
Today Programme
09/12/05

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

Listen | Permalink

Thursday, December 08, 2005

The Truth about Torture - Krauthammer

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

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

Cameron - good or bad?

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

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

The First Step to Britishness Is Your Poppy

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

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

Dershowitz and Chomsky debate Israel-Palestine

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

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

This and other clips at: Forum Archive

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

Comments from a Dershowitz researcher:
Fact-checking Chomsky

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Why American Muslims haven't turned to terrorism

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

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


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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

How China treats its Muslim population

This has been going on for years. No doubt the next meeting of the Arab League will focus on condemning China's treatment of its Muslims, and will probably forget to even mention Israel.

China's grip on Xinjiang Muslims
BBC News
29 November 2005

Friday, November 25, 2005

Critical Thinking - type C and type M arguments

An article on Critical Thinking:

An Open Letter to Paul Krugman
By Arnold Kling
10/07/2003

You might remember me from graduate school at MIT. I would like to ask you a question about what constitutes a reasonable argument.

For example, suppose I were to say, "We should abolish the minimum wage. That would increase employment and enable more people to climb out of poverty."

There are two types of arguments you might make in response. I call these Type C and Type M.

A hypothetical example of a Type C argument would be, "Well, Arnold, studies actually show that the minimum wage does not cost jobs. If you read the work of Krueger and Card, you would see that the minimum wage probably reduces poverty."

A hypothetical example of a Type M argument would be, "People who want to get rid of the minimum wage are just trying to help the corporate plutocrats."

Paul, my question for you is this: Do you see any differences between those two types of arguments?

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

Wise comments from the friend of mine who put me on to this:

I have done a lot of thinking about this article.

One my discoveries is that Karl Popper, not a household name unfortunately, anticipated this argument in Open Societies and Its Enemies Volume 2, Chapter 24- Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt Against Reason. In this passage, he comments on what he calls the "Rationalist Attitude": "The fact that the rationalist attitude considers the argument rather than the person arguing is of far reaching importance. It leads to the view that we must recognize everybody with whom we communicate as a potential source of argument and of reasonable information..."

I believe Popper's "rationalist attitude" to be the same as the Type M argument referred to in the above link. This has been a Rosetta Stone for me in unlocking the unending trouble I have in communicate with so many people about politics and current events. Some examples:

Type C: I comment that the Kyoto Treaty is flawed in that even if one accepts the science, it will not lead to any noticeable reduction in global warming.
Type M: I am met with the response that the U.S government is controlled by Big Business that only cares about profits and not about the well.being of humanity.

Type C: I say that the Iraq War defeated Saddam's intent to acquire WMD and that sanctions were breaking down.
Type M: I am met with the response that the Iraq war was all about oil and enriching Dicky Cheny's corporate friends.

Type C: I argue that German "labor-protection" laws actually increase unemployment and work to protect those with jobs against those without jobs
Type M: The response is that I am a neo-liberal who only wants to defend the U.S model

In each case, I am making an argument about the consequences of policies where as the response is based on an attack on either the motivations of the policy-makers or on myself and my objectivity. The actual argument is therefore ignored and the discussion transformed into a debate about moral goodness.

I believe that the Type M arguments appeal to the human inclination to discern threat and identify "enemies" and to reduce complexity to manageable simplicity whereas Type C arguments are the product of disciplined tthinking which must be trained overtime to think thorough the logical consequences of actions.

The entire Popper chapter on this should be read. For me, I will never approach political discussion the same way again. The moment I get a Type M response, I will try to immediately stop and attempt to point out the issue to whomeever I am speaking with.

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


Follow-up article

Why People Hate Economics
By Arnold Kling
11/21/2005

Pub opening hours and a lack of critical thinking

Hi All,

Have been musing on the change to Britain's pub opening hours and the pathetic level of media debate accompanying it.

It strikes me that the media coverage in general has been overwhelmingly critical of the change, often hysterically so. In the course of what passes for argument, stats are often produced to show that trends in Britain's alcohol consumption and associated poor behaviour have been rocketing uncontrollably upwards in recent years.

Dan, Andy & I were talking about the importance of critical thinking the other day, and the lack of CT here is driving me nuts. It is no argument *against* change that the status quo is (a) unacceptable and (b) getting rapidly worse - in fact, quite the opposite.

Of course the unacceptability of the status quo may be an argument for a *different* change, but I have yet to see any serious discussion of what alternatives to the govt's plans should be (let me know if you have see good debates on this). Furthermore, although I have seen the following argument made plenty of times:

PREMISE Antisocial behaviour is related to drinking hours and alcohol availability.
CONCLUSION We should not be extending opening hours

... I have so far not once seen anyone advocate the other obvious conclusion, that opening hours should in fact be further restricted eg by closing pubs at lunch hours as they did a decade ago, or by bringing closing time forward to 10 or 9 o'clock.

Be interested in people's thoughts on the matter.

J

PS The lack of CT clearly hasn't finished. Here an article declares the matter closed a matter of hours after the law changed. So that's all right then.
Britain awakes to minimal hangover

PPS My own two cents. Britain clearly has a cultural problem with drinking, and there is no such thing as an overnight fix. But while things may be different in the provinces (Wembley?), in Central London an 11pm closing time for normal pubs is just ridiculous. Not long ago I was at a big restaurant meal near Trafalgar Square which finished at 10.50. We wanted one quick drink for the road. Yet no pub would let us in that near closing time, and every other place wanted a fiver a head to get in. There were some foreigners in the group, and it was frankly cringingly embarrassing that in such a supposedly cosmopolitan city you couldn't go into a bar for a drink without paying just to cross the bloody door.

Great geography game

European countries Drag and Drop - level 3

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Guardian Readers FOR ID cards

Here's a pro-ID card argument from Home Office Minister Andy Burnham in which he says "I doubt I am the only Guardian reader who has always supported a British ID card in line with our European counterparts."

A few impdecers know this particular minister personally (I'm looking at you Wemb). Is now the time to use such personal links to argue for (or against) the preservation of our civil liberties?

Anyway, here's the article.

The other side of the ID cards story

We need to help people secure their identity in the modern world, argues Andy Burnham

Hooray for the middle classes

Pip Pip!

After all the sneering, at last someone is sticking up for the middle classes

Alice Miles

IS IT POSSIBLE that the middle classes are achieving some sort of a renaissance? With Sir Ian Blair and Lord Rogers of Riverside both pleading, in effect, for more not less middle classness over the past week, I begin to wonder. Sir Ian pleaded with the middle and upper classes to join the police, while Lord Rogers said that cities need the middle classes to live in them if they are to flourish.

[...]

[T]he whole and honourable purpose of the White Paper [on Education] is to try to harness the enthusiasm and commitment of the middle classes to improving schools for everybody. Shame that Labour is ashamed of that. At some point, after the Ds and Es have been offered a choice of schools, or the chance to improve their local school, and special advisers to help them to make the choices, and free buses to the better schools, and they still don’t use the opportunities, a middle-class mum is entitled to stop worrying about “selfishly” bettering her own kids’ lot.

See also:

http://impdec.blogspot.com/2005/11/coursework-in-exams-favours-middle.html

http://impdec.blogspot.com/2005/10/faith-no-more.html

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Londonistan alive and well

Absolutely unfuckingbelievable:

Official bungle may let al-Qaeda suspect go free
The Times
November 18, 2005

AN ALLEGED al-Qaeda ringleader may have to be freed after the Home Office accepted the blame for bungling his extradition to Italy.

MPs are demanding that Charles Clarke explain how the Government took so long to deal with Farj Hassan Faraj that time ran out for the Italians to put the 24-year-old Libyan on trial for plotting bomb attacks in Europe.

...

Massimo Meroni, a senior Italian prosecutor, said: “The whole thing has been a waste and I’m surprised at Britain. This man is a big player in international terrorism.”

...

France is losing patience with Britain over the fate of Rachid Ramda, who has been fighting extradition to Paris for ten years. Mr Ramda, 35, is accused of taking part in bombings on the Paris Métro. Two High Court judges threw out yesterday his claim that moves to deport him are legally flawed. His lawyers are considering taking the case to the House of Lords, which will cause months of further delay.

In a separate case a judge ordered that Moutaz Almallah Dabas, 39, a Spaniard wanted for the bombings of Madrid commuter trains in March last year, should be extradited to Spain within ten days under Britain’s new fast-track extradition laws. The deadline is unlikely to be met as Señor Dabas’s lawyers are expected to appeal.

...

Britain has failed to extradite a major terrorist suspect since the September 11 attacks. Legal battles have cost the taxpayer an estimated £10 million.


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

Just as absolutely unfuckingbelievable:

Blair’s ban fails to silence Muslim preachers of hate
The Sunday Times
November 20, 2005

ISLAMIC extremists are targeting British Muslims with violent Al-Qaeda propaganda, in defiance of Tony Blair’s announcement four months ago that he would clamp down on preachers of hate.

London-based foreign extremists are using websites to post video footage of suicide operations and attacks by insurgents against coalition forces in Iraq. There are also postings of the execution of Russian soldiers by mujaheddin rebels in Chechnya.

...

There is growing exasperation among the Saudi authorities about the government’s apparent reluctance to tackle two Saudi citizens who are responsible for some of the most blatant incitement.


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

Some background on the main characters.

Controversial imams
Telegraph
20/07/2005


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

This article is the only one to shed any light on what might be going on behind the scenes. Also, I was amused by the impassioned comment from the Islamic Human Rights Commission.

Clarke outlines moves to expel troublemakers who back terror
Telegraph
25/08/2005

American Hate Crimes against Jews and Muslims

Some interesting stats here.

American Hate Crimes against Jews and Muslims
Daniel Pipes
Weblog
October 17, 2005

The Federal Bureau of Investigation today issued statistics for Crime in the United States 2004. One section deals with hate crimes concerning religion... 69 percent of the hate crimes are directed against Jews, 11 percent against Muslims, and 7 percent against Christians.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Livingstone is jewish?! And other (more important) revelations

... well, maybe.

This and other revelations to be found in an interview with somethingjewish.co.uk

There’s no evidence of where my maternal grandmother came from, she was called Zona. And I remember a couple of times when I was a kid, she would say to me, “Don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re Jewish.”
Which made me think we must be, otherwise why would she raise this? And I remember chatting to Greville Janner about this, saying it sounds like a middle European name. So I might be Jewish. Not that I want anyone to feel mortified about this at the Board of Deputies. I mean, because it runs through the maternal line if it turned out to be true I could go and stand for the Knesset, couldn’t I? In Israel I could be elected, no problem.

The interview also covers KL's views on Israel, Zionism, and the Evening Standard. Definitely worth a read whether you're a Ken fan or not.

The bigger revelation is that Oct 31st saw the 350th anniversary of jews being allowed back into England after a 350 year expulsion.

Think that the Nazis came up with the idea of making jews wear a special symbol to identify them as jews? Nope, another English invention.

In March 1218 the Royal Council, under pressure from Papal legate ordered that all adult Jews wear the cloth "badge of shame". It was a yellow felt or taffeta shape representing the two tablets of the Law, 2 fingers wide by 4 long.

Can't vouch for the provenance of all the websites cited, but interesting stuff all the same. (At least to me, as I didn't know all this before.)

First spotted the Livingstone interview on harry's Place btw.

How to be offensive...

Results of a survey into offensive words on TV.

TV's most offensive words

Extract from Language and Sexual Imagery in Broadcasting: A Contextual Investigation. Offensive words followed by summary of respondents' reaction.

(Note: you may have to register to read the full article, but it's free and worth it. Otherwise how would you know that 'papist' still has the power to raise a few eyebrows.)

Friday, November 18, 2005

New group replaces al-Muhajiroun

I expect we'll be hearing more of these guys...

New group replaces al-Muhajiroun
BBC News
18 November 2005

Anew group has been formed to replace radical Islamic cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed's al-Muhajiroun group, which was disbanded last year. Ahl ul-Sunnah Wa al-Jamma was launched in a north London charity shop, with leading member, Simon Sulayman Keeler, calling the Queen "an enemy of Islam".

David Irving arrested in Austria for Holocaust Denial

Austria Arrests David Irving, Writer Known as a Holocaust Denier
New York Times
November 18, 2005

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Suicide bombings in Amman, Jordan

The combative title of the article belies its reasonable contents:

Palestinians Taste a Dose of Their Own Medicine
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
November 15, 2005

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

EU accounts fail to clear watchdog for 11th year

This really is an appalling scandal that doesn't get the coverage it deserves. If the EU were a private company, its directors would be in jail.

BBC Radio 4 Today Programme
15 Nov 2005

0810 For eleven years running the EU auditors have looked at the European Union's account books and refused to approve the accounts. Why is so little being done about it?
Listen | Permalink


(Here in full as the Indie annoyingly pulls its articles from freeview)

EU accounts fail to clear watchdog for 11th year
Independent
15 November 2005

The European Union's financial watchdog has refused to give the annual euro-accounts the all-clear - for the 11th year running.

A report from the European Court of Auditors today repeats familiar concerns about the accuracy of the books on the 2004 budget totalling nearly £70 billion. And it points the finger at member states themselves more than Brussels - because about 80% of EU spending is conducted by national and regional authorities.

The auditors have acknowledged European Commission efforts to improve the situation by bringing in accounting reforms to answer complaints that lax procedures could be wide open to fraud and mismanagement. But yet again this year they say they cannot give a formal "Statement of Assurance" about the validity of the annual accounts.

Conservative MEP James Elles warned that the accountants' refusal to clear the books was in danger of becoming a permanent feature of the EU unless member states faced up to their responsibility to ensure euro-funds channelled through them were better accounted for. And he said Britain's EU presidency had been a missed opportunity to tackle the problem.

Last week Chancellor Gordon Brown, chairing talks between EU finance ministers, made clear it was for the auditors to set out ways to improve the procedures for clearing the accounts. Ministers said the system of verification needed updating and rejected Commission calls for national authorities to take more responsibility. They insist the auditors' failure year after year to endorse the budget is because of the technical rules governing the delivery of a "Statement of Assurance" rather than a result of widespread fraud.

But Mr Elles, Tory spokesman on budgetary control in the European Parliament, said the blame rested with EU governments. "The commission always gets the blame but the situation is more complicated than that. Eighty per cent of EU money is spent at national level. Member states should not be passing the buck. "The British presidency of the EU has had a good opportunity to grasp this problem. But Gordon Brown is yet again saying one thing and doing another. He says he wants everyone to do their bit to improve the situation but he's not prepared to take the lead himself."

Mr Elles added: "Faced with an opportunity to take the lead in ensuring member states are held responsible for funds disbursed at national level, the UK government has dodged the issue."

Chris Davies, leader of the British Liberal Democrat MEPs and a member of the European Parliament's Budget Control Committee, said: "The finger of blame should be pointed towards Gordon Brown and his fellow finance ministers who have refused to accept responsibility for the money spent by their own administrations.

"The public will assume that fraud is widespread and the Brussels bureaucracy incompetent but in fact the EU administration is now subjected to greater scrutiny than that of any government in Europe." He added: "Despite many improvements made in accounting procedures the auditors have refused to specify what steps must be taken if the EU accounts are to be given a clean bill of health. It's like telling an athlete to run a race without announcing the distance."

Monday, November 14, 2005

Media biased against Muslims

Was going to add this as a comment on some of our ongoing threads, but it's probably relevant to about half of them...

(Note: the report seems to be about the US.)

Media has anti-Muslim bias, claims report

Monday November 14, 2005

The portrayal of Arab and Muslim people in the western media is "typically stereotypical and negative", according to a new study of perceptions of Islam.
The report, commissioned by the Kuwaiti government and based on a surveys and interviews with media experts, claims that terrorism, anti-Americanism and the Iraq occupation dominate TV news coverage of the Middle East.

"In the past 30 years of thousands of TV show series, there have been less than 10 characters who have been Arab-Americans," the report claims.

"In print stereotypes are not so obvious, except in cartoon caricatures, but they still occur and anti-Muslim bias is more insidious. The terms Islamic or Muslim are linked to extremism, militant, jihads, as if they belonged together inextricably and naturally (Muslim extremist, Islamic terror, Islamic war, Muslim time bomb).

"In many cases, the press talks and writes about Muslims in ways that would not be acceptable if the reference were to Jewish, black or fundamentalist Christians."

Friday, November 11, 2005

Breaking the cycle?

In case you missed it, here's the story of a Palestinian boy who was shot by the Israeli army, but whose organs were donated to save others, regardless or whether they were Jewish or Muslim, Israeli or Palestinian.

Ahmed's gift of life

Ahmed Khatib's death was tragically unexceptional: the 12-year-old Palestinian was shot by Israeli soldiers while holding a toy gun. But what happened next was not. The boy's parents donated his organs to six Israelis. They tell Chris McGreal why their decision was a gesture of both peace and resistance

What happens when a Himmler marries a Jew?

Thanks to JSL for alerting me to this one.

Katrin's choice: how do I tell my son about great-uncle Heinrich. . .?
The Times
November 11, 2005

KATRIN HIMMLER’S son is a bright, curious six-year-old. “I’m dreading the moment,” she says, “when I have to tell him that one half of his family tried to kill the other half.”

Frau Himmler, a political scientist, is the great-niece of Heinrich Himmler, head of Hitler’s SS and mastermind of the concentration camp system that murdered millions of Jews.

She is married to an Israeli whose family was confined to the Warsaw ghetto, which was burned to the ground by troopers acting on her great-uncle’s orders.

Sometime soon her son will have to be told of the 20th-century tragedy that is part of his heritage. Katrin Himmler, 38, has tackled the problem by writing an account of the family which she will give to her son as soon as he is old enough to read.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Remove Hitler poem from book, says MP

09/11/2005

Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, has been asked to force the withdrawal of a poem for schoolchildren written from the viewpoint of Adolf Hitler.

...

The poem's author, Gideon Taylor, writes: "Jews are here, Jews are there, Jews are almost everywhere, filling up the darkest places, evil looks upon their faces. "Make them take many paces for being one of the worst races, on their way to a gas chamber, where they will sleep in their manger."

One line of the poem states "Adolf Hitler is my name," and ends with the words: "And for what price? World domination." It was published in an anthology called Great Minds by the Forward Press group, which said 452 copies had been printed.

Palestinian Friday Service - Jews Are a Virus Resembling AIDS

This has to be seen to be believed. Goebbels would be so proud.

Palestinian Friday Service by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris - film clip
Palestinian Authority TV
May 13, 2005

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

The transcript just doesn't have the same impact. But for anyone without sound on their machine:

Palestinian Friday Service by Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris - transcript

Allah has tormented us with "the people most hostile to the believers" – the Jews. "Thou shalt find that the people most hostile to the believers to be the Jews and the polytheists." Allah warned His beloved Prophet Muhammad about the Jews, who had killed their prophets, forged their Torah, and sowed corruption throughout their history.

With the establishment of the state of Israel, the entire Islamic nation was lost, because Israel is a cancer spreading through the body of the Islamic nation, and because the Jews are a virus resembling AIDS, from which the entire world suffers.

You will find that the Jews were behind all the civil strife in this world. The Jews are behind the suffering of the nations.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Nazi war criminal dies in Britain

My italics. No tears.

Nazi war criminal dies in Britain
BBC
7 November 2005

The only man to have been convicted in Britain of Nazi war crimes has died in Norwich prison. Anthony Sawoniuk, 84, was serving two life sentences after being found guilty of murdering 18 Jews in the UK's first war crimes trial.

...

Sawoniuk was born on 7 March 1921, in the harsh climate of Domachevo. As a boy he would have starved if it were not for the generosity of local wealthy Jewish families. But when the Germans arrived in 1941, he took up with the Nazi police force to help with the suppression and genocide of local Jews.

During his trial, the jury heard from an eyewitness how he watched Sawoniuk tell two men and a woman to strip beside an open grave and then shot them. The court also heard how he mowed down 15 people with a submachine gun and pushed their bodies into an open grave.

Coursework in exams favours the middle classes. Discuss.

Uncle Johann confirms what I always suspected to be the case. I knew standards were slipping!

Coursework: a charter for cheats

It's yet another way the British middle class rig the education system in favour of their coddled children

If Britain’s coursework system were submitted for examination, it would be lucky to scrape an E grade and a place doing Golf Course Studies at De Montford University. This week, the AQA exam board warned (again) that teachers are routinely waving through material that had been “blatantly copied from the internet”, and another GCSE exam authority, Edexcel, warned that schools were now offering so much “help” to students that it amounted to “a kind of mass plagiarism”.

Paris when it sizzles...

Riots in Paris and beyond have been in the news as of late.

Here's an interesting leader from the Telegraph:

Broken contract

France has had a week and a half of rioting. It is spreading, there is no end in sight and the government appears powerless to stop it. We are witnessing the breakdown of the contract between the state and Europe's largest immigrant population. That, as the Bill banning the hijab in schools reminded us, is on one side the acceptance by newcomers of a strictly lay entity in which no exception is made for different religious communities. In return, they are supposed to enjoy the benefits of a republic based on the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Despite much controversy at the time, the Bill has been implemented with remarkably little fuss. It is not the hijab that lies at the heart of the present trouble. It is, rather, the failure of the state to fulfil its side of the bargain. The first generation of immigrants came to France to meet a demand for foreign labour. The second and third generations find themselves trapped without work in the estates or cités built for their parents and grandparents. To compound matters, the unemployed have become dependent on welfare. These two factors produce a feeling of helplessness, which in turn engenders a hatred of the state.

The Telegraph goes on to argue that the solution is "the creation of conditions for enterprise that will allow those stuck in the cités to break out of drear desperation through work."

I thought it was an interesting (right of centre) argument. Leaving aside certain cultural variables (violent protest is more common in France than here) I was wondering if there were any useful parallels. There are claims that we too in Britain have a 'dependency culture' (at least in certain sections of society) - is there anything we can learn from what's happening in France? France is generally perceived as having much greater social protection, but if the Telegraph argument holds sway that is precisely the problem. However, it is worth remembering that we have had race riots here too, under both the Conservatives and New Labour, both of whom seem quite keen on 'enterprise'. (Though this does not automatically mean that the Telegraph's analysis does not apply - the deprived areas that rioted in the UK would still have had a high proportion of people on benefits.)

So my question - is the Telegraph right to see social funding as (a major) part of the problem, or is the solution more funding for deprived areas?

Looking forward to Wemb on this one. For my own part I think the dependency culture argument has some validity.


Sunday, November 06, 2005

Iraq battle stress worse than WWII / Iraq Paras trial

Disgusting the way the British govt is treating its soldiers in Iraq.

Iraq battle stress worse than WWII
The Sunday Times
November 06, 2005

Senior army doctors have warned that troops in Iraq are suffering levels of battle stress not experienced since the second world war because of fears that if they shoot an insurgent, they will end up in court. The two senior Royal Army Medical Corps officers, one of whom is a psychologist, have recently returned from Basra, where they said they counselled young soldiers who feared a military police investigation as much as they did the insurgents. The revelations follow the collapse last week of the court martial of seven paratroopers accused of murdering an Iraqi who died near al- Amarah just after the war and amid signs of a dramatic drop in morale among frontline infantry soldiers.

The doctors’ warnings came in post-operational reports submitted by senior officers to their formation commanders after serving in a battle zone. They are exceptional because of their content. One source said: “There doesn’t appear to be any overt consideration or understanding of the pressures that our soldiers are under. “The unpopularity of the war at home and a belief that firing their rifles in virtually any circumstances is likely to see them end up in court are sapping morale.”

One corporal said that troops arriving in Basra were confronted by warnings from the Royal Military Police. “They make it clear that any and every incident will be investigated. It is also made clear that if you shoot someone, you will face an inquiry that could take up to a year. “The faces of the young lads straight out of training drop as the fear of being investigated strikes home and many ask whose side the RMP are on.”

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

It's so bad that even the anti-war Rod Liddle had this to say:

Sod this game of soldiers
Rod Liddle
The Sunday Times
November 06, 2005

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

Some background in case anyone missed it:

The Iraqi lies that put the Paras in court
Telegraph
04/11/2005

A blatant attempt to extract money from the British Army had been made by the Marsh Arabs of Ferkah, the court martial heard. They had colluded, lied and frequently spoke of "fasil" - bloody money - and compensation when they appeared to give evidence.

The Judge Advocate General, Jeff Blackett, said they had made specious claims of improper behaviour including allegations that a baby and an old man had been killed by the British soldiers. Three women witnesses had admitted making up claims that they were assaulted by the soldiers and the family of the dead man, 18-year-old Nadhem Abdullah, had encouraged other villagers to tell lies about the incident.

Fourteen witnesses had been brought from their homes in Iraq to give evidence to the court but much of their evidence was "too inherently weak or vague for any sensible person to rely on it" and it had been based on "a corporate recollection discussed by the family or tribe", said Judge Blackett.

Paras cleared as Iraq trial collapses in £8m fiasco
Telegraph
04/11/2005

The court martial of seven paratroopers accused of murdering an Iraqi teenager collapsed yesterday after the Royal Military Police investigation was condemned as "inadequate" and riddled with "serious omissions".

The hearing, which cost up to £8 million, came to an abrupt halt after the most senior judge in the Army courts directed that the defendants be found not guilty. Jeff Blackett, the Judge Advocate General, described the evidence presented by the prosecution as "too inherently weak or vague for any sensible person to rely on".

He strongly condemned the Special Investigations Branch of the RMP for making significant errors during its inquiry.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Indefatigable opposition to terror bill

As you're undoubtedly aware the government won a vote on their terror bill by one vote.

It's not unreasonable to assume that civil liberties minded opposition parties like the LibDems and Respect would have made sure they voted against it. However, 2 LibDems missed the vote as well as the indefatigable MP for Bow & Bethnal Green, George Galloway. The LibDems had fairly valid excuses. George, however, was at 'an "uncancelleable" speaking event'; towit 'an Audience with George Galloway'. You will be shocked to learn that this is a commercial event.

Read more here.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Interview with a terrorist

Seems like 72 virgins is not the only motivation:

Egyptian mercenary

Mahmoud Hassan, an Egyptian terrorist captured in Iraq explains his training and inspiration: primarily money from foreign sources. Al-Iraqiya TV aired this interview on February 24, 2005.

Full transcript available at: memritv.org

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Twin pop stars with angelic looks are new face of racism

Be honest - what's your first reaction when you look at the pic of these young Nazis?

Twin pop stars with angelic looks are new face of racism
Telegraph
25/10/2005

America's white supremacist movement has an angelic new face: twin teenage pop stars whose songs preach messages of racial hatred.

Prussian Blue, a "white power" band now recording its second album, is described as a sinister version of the Olsen Twins, the squeaky clean child actresses of the 1990s. It is attracting more and more fans among young white nationalists.Lamb and Lynx Gaede, blonde, blue-eyed 13-year-olds from Bakersfield, California, have been entertaining all-white crowds with their music since the age of nine. Lamb plays the guitar and Lynx the violin.

Their songs have titles such as Sacrifice, a tribute to Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, that praises him as a "man of peace who wouldn't give up".

Performing for such groups as the neo-Nazi National Alliance at Holocaust-denial events and festivals entitled Folk the System, the girls execute Sieg Heil salutes while belting out lyrics such as "Strike force! White survival. Strike force! Yeah.""We are proud of being white," Lynx told ABC News. "We want our people to stay white…we don't want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."

Australia: police advised to treat Muslim domestic violence differently

Police told to respect traditions
Herald Sun
25/10/05

POLICE are being advised to treat Muslim domestic violence cases differently out of respect for Islamic traditions and habits. Officers are also being urged to work with Muslim leaders, who will try to keep the families together. Women's groups are concerned the politically correct policing could give comfort to wife bashers and keep their victims in a cycle of violence. The instructions come in a religious diversity handbook given to Victorian police officers.

Anti-terror Ramadan TV drama stirs the Arab world

Not often I get to blog any good news in the world of Islam....

Anti-terror Ramadan TV drama stirs the Arab world
Telegraph
02/11/2005

A blockbuster Ramadan television drama broadcast across the Arab world has broken new ground by daring to question the motives of terrorism committed in the name of Allah.

The plotline of al-Hur al-Ayn (Beautiful Maidens), has proved enormously controversial with its makers denounced by an angry fundamentalist minority. But it has also been hugely popular with an Arabic-speaking public fed up with the cliched portrayal of all Muslims as gun-toting fanatics.

Monday, October 31, 2005

Chomsky interview & the Left Revisionists

Chomsky just came top of the Public Intellectuals poll I blogged separately, so a couple of links to old Chommers from an erstwhile fan (moi).

First, an interview with him in the Guardian:

Emma Brockes interview: Noam Chomsky
Monday October 31, 2005
The Guardian

Then a comment on the interview:

Oliver Kamm on Brockes' interview with Chomsky
Blog
Oct 2005

Then something from a current fave of mine, Paul Berman, on Chomsky:

Paul Berman on Noam Chomsky

and then a longer article on Chomsky and the "Left Revisionists" in general, about the left's hypocritical attitude, especially in regard to Bosnia:

The Left Revisionists
Marko Attila Hoare
November 2003

And all of that started by a recent comment from Dan in this thread, which referred me here.

Top public intellectuals - Prospect Poll result

Bit of harmless fun - the Prospect/FP Global public intellectuals poll. Here are my current faves from their list of 100:

5. Christopher Hitchens
9. Jared Diamond
21. Francis Fukuyama
26. Steven Pinker
28. Samuel Huntington
33. Peter Singer
34. Bernard Lewis
35. Fareed Zakaria
44. Niall Ferguson

Comfortably in last position for me - Al-Qaradawi, natch... Anyone else want to weigh in?

Friday, October 28, 2005

Skinning Galloway

Amusing account of a visit to see George Galloway on The Frank Skinner show. (Found this via Harry's Place btw.)

More Galloway posts here and here.

Faith no more...

The always interesting Uncle Johann on the subject of faith schools.

Key quote:

"[...] the Government believes faith schools achieve better results. At first glance, this seems true: look at a league table of the highest GCSE and A-Level scores in the state sector and you'll overdose on Saint this and Holy that. So, Blair says, would you really have me dismantle some of the best state schools in Britain?

But look again. The right-wing think tank Civitas - expected to back faith schools with table-thumping vigour - decided to study the figures, and found something surprising. Faith schools get better results for one simple reason: they use selection to cream off middle-class children - all kids bright and beautiful - and to weed out difficult, poor or unmotivated students who would require more work. They gave the game away last year when the Government suggested church schools educate more children who are in care, and they recoiled in horror. John Hicks, governor of St Barnabas' Church of England school in Pimlico, snapped: "We know children in care must be educated but it can be detrimental in schools that are oversubscribed." Or, not on our league tables, baby.

Civitas found that actually - once you factor in the fact they take brighter kids with far fewer problems - it turns out faith schools underperform compared to other schools. This is hardly surprising since they dedicate hours of school time to non-academic religious pursuits. The Welsh National Assembly commissioned a study that found the same thing. So the sole credible argument for faith schools is as mythical as the Christian belief that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and burped out, alive and well, a month later."

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Iranian president calls for destruction of Israel

Iran president: Wipe Israel off map
The Scotsman
27 Oct 2005

Iran's ultra-conservative new president has broken his silence on Israel and declared the Jewish state was a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map".

"Anybody who recognises Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury; any (Islamic leader) who recognises the Zionist regime is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world," state-run television quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

On Wednesday Ahmadinejad said "there is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world. As the Imam (Khomeini) said, Israel must be wiped off the map."

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

Iran leader's comments condemned
BBC
27 Oct 2005

The US said the comment highlighted concerns about Iran's nuclear programme, which Washington suspects is being used to develop weapons. Iran says its programme is for peaceful purposes only.

This is not believed to be the first time a senior Iranian leader has made such comments. In 2001, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani called for a Muslim state to annihilate Israel with a nuclear strike. Such calls are though regular slogans at anti-Israeli or anti-US rallies.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Islamophobia myth

Islamophobia myth
Kenan Malik
Prospect
Feb 2005

[D]oes Islamophobia really exist? Or is the hatred and abuse of Muslims being exaggerated to suit politicians' needs and silence the critics of Islam? The trouble with Islamophobia is that it is an irrational concept. It confuses hatred of, and discrimination against, Muslims on the one hand with criticism of Islam on the other. The charge of 'Islamophobia' is all too often used not to highlight racism but to stifle criticism. And in reality discrimination against Muslims is not as great as is often perceived - but criticism of Islam should be greater.

In making a film on Islamophobia for Channel 4 what became clear is the gap between perception and reality. Islamophobia driven by what people want to believe is true, rather than what really is true.

...

A total of 21,577 [people] had been stopped and searched under the terror laws. The vast majority of these - 14,429 - were in fact white. Yet when I interviewed Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britainhe insisted that '95-98 per cent of those stopped and searched under the anti-terror laws are Muslim'. The real figure is actually 15 per cent. But however many times I showed him the true statistics he refused to budge. I am sure he was sincere in his belief. But there is no basis for his claim that virtually all those stopped and searched were Muslim - the figures appear to have been simply plucked out of the sky.

...

Every year, the Islamic Human Rights Commission organises a mock awards ceremony for its 'Islamophobe of the Year'. Last year there were two British winners. One was the BNP's Nick Griffin. The other? Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. Toynbee’s defence of secularism and women’s rights, and criticism of Islam, was, it declared, unacceptable. Isn't it absurd, I asked the IHRC's Massoud Shadjareh, to equate a liberal anti-racist like Polly Toynbee with the leader of a neo-fascist party. Not at all, he suggested. 'There is a difference between disagreeing and actually dismissing certain ideologies and certain principles. We need to engage and discuss. But there’s a limit to that.' It is difficult to know what engagement and discussion could mean when leading Muslim figures seem unable to distinguish between liberal criticism and neo-fascist attacks.

...

[W]e already live in a culture of growing self-censorship. A decade ago, the Independent asked me to write an essay on Tom Paine, the eighteenth century English revolutionary and freethinker. It was the 200th anniversary of his great polemic, The Age of Reason. I began the article with a quote from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses to show the continuing relevance of Paine's battle against religious authority. The quote was cut out because it was deemed too offensive to Muslims. The irony of censoring an essay in celebration of freethinking seemed to elude the editor.

Friday, October 21, 2005

Old Man & Rivers...

or 'Come to the Darcus side...'

If you missed Joan Rivers v Darcus Howe, hear the argument here.

Read a transcript (and many entertaining comments) here.