BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
The Taliban--who even before the war started had killed lots more Afghan civilians than America is likely to kill--seem to be pursuing a strategy aimed at maximizing Afghan civilian deaths. The Washington Post reports from Aingari, Afghanistan that "Taliban forces are taking cover among the civilian population of Kabul and stashing their military equipment in mosques and schools to avoid U.S. airstrikes, according to refugees who have fled the capital in recent days." Even Susan Sontag might agree that's a cowardly tactic.
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
In Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper, Ibrahim Nafie weighs in with the following denunciation of America's humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan: "The US has gone to lengths to show that its military action is not intended to target the Afghani people. It has air-dropped humanitarian and food relief packages as planes and missiles bombarded other areas of the country. Unfortunately, these packages are being dropped on the most heavily mined country on earth."
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY SETH LIPSKY WSJ Opinion On-Line
This week, the New York Times finally got around to reporting some explosive remarks attributed to the imam of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. The remarks--posted on the Internet in Arabic Oct. 4 and translated to English week ago--were made by Sheik Muhammad Al-Gamei'a, according to an unofficial Web site of Egypt's Al-Azhar University. The sheik was the representative of the university in America as well the imam of the Islamic Cultural Center, a large mosque on Manhattan's Upper East Side built with money from Kuwait and several other Arab countries.
So what did Sheik Gamei'a say? He began by complaining, in response to a question, of the negative impact of the events of Sept. 11 on Muslims in America, asserting that all commercial activity with "anyone found to be a Muslim or an Arab" was "immediately halted." Following the incident, he said, Muslims and Arabs stopped feeling it was safe to leave their homes, to send their wives to the market or their children to schools. "Muslims do not feel safe even going to the hospitals, because some Jewish doctors in one of the hospitals poisoned sick Muslim children, who then died."
His interlocutor then asked: "The media has reported firing on mosques and harassment of Muslim women, and the situation has gotten so bad that Arabs are murdered in the streets. What about harassment you and your family have suffered?" "It's true," the imam replied. "The Muslims are being persecuted by the people and the federal government. This is the result of the bad image of Muslims created by the Zionist media, and of their presenting Islam as a religion of terrorism. That is why the Americans have linked the recent incidents to Islam."
The imam reported that he had personally suffered, when his home was attacked and his daughters harassed. He said he went out to question those who were attacking his home. "During my conversations with this group, it became clear to me that they knew very well that the Jews were behind these ugly acts, while we, the Arabs, were innocent, and that someone from among their people was disseminating corruption in the land. Although the Americans suspect that the Zionists are behind the act, none has the courage to talk about it in public." (The Kuwaiti ambassador told the Times that Imam Gamei'a was never seriously threatened.)
Why can't Americans talk about the supposed Zionist plot? the interviewer inquired. After all, "it's their country, and the Jews are a minority."
"When I asked them whether they had the courage to talk about it openly, they said: 'We can't,' " said the imam. "I asked why, and they said: 'You know very well that the Zionists control everything and that they also control political decision-making, the big media organizations, and the financial and economic institutions. Anyone daring to say a word is considered an anti-Semite.' "
At this point he was asked whether "the Jewish element played a role in igniting the flame of fitna (internal strife)." He replied: "The Jewish element is as Allah described it when he said: 'They disseminate corruption in the land.' We know that they have always broken agreements, unjustly murdered the prophets, and betrayed the faith. Can they be expected to live up to their contracts with us? These people murdered the prophets; do you think they will stop spilling our blood? No.
"You see these people (i.e. the Jews) all the time, everywhere, disseminating corruption, heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs. [Because of them] there are strip clubs, homosexuals, and lesbians everywhere. They do this to impose their hegemony and colonialism on the world. Now, they are riding on the back of the world powers. These people always seek out the superpower of the generation and develop coexistence with it. Before this, they rode on the back of England and on the back of the French empire. After that, they rode on the back of Germany. But Hitler annihilated them because they betrayed him and violated their contract with him."
The imam then spelled out his Jewish-conspiracy theory about the Sept. 11 attack: "They used Arabs to carry it out." Proof? "All the signs indicate that the Jews have the most to gain from an explosion like that. They are the only ones capable of planning such acts. . . . Jews control decision making in the airports and sensitive centers in the White House and the Pentagon." America, he added, has presented "no proof incriminating Osama bin Laden and Al-Qa'ida."
Further along, Sheik Gamei'a said: "I advise every Arab and every Muslim leader not to offer any aid whatsoever to the oppressing superpower [to help it] attack Muslims, because this is a betrayal of Allah and his Prophets"
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
Here are the views of "outspoken Hawaiian studies professor Haunani-Kay Trask," as reported in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin: "The United States is angry because somebody came back and blew up their World Trade Center," said the University of Hawaii professor and sovereignty activist. "I would be angry, too. But what made them do that? It is the history of terrorism that the United States unleashes against native people all over the world." . . . "Everywhere, the United States has overthrown leftist government. Everywhere, the United States has overthrown native governments," she said. "Why should we support the United States, whose hands in history are soaked in blood?"
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
Someone claiming to represent the creeps who last week burned a flag at Amherst College has posted an essay on a local Web site called the Daily Jolt. Sample: The United States of America is built upon a history of violence and repression. This began with the genocide of Native Americans who inhabited this land before the arrival of European colonizers and it continued as Black people were brought here as slaves to provide the labor necessary for the country's development. Still today, Mexicans living in the West are regarded as "illegal aliens" in a land that was their home long before it was conquered by the U.S. in 1848, and immigrants continue to arrive every day to this country sold on the "American dream", only to be forced into menial work deemed unfit for "real Americans." The construction and maintenance of America depends on the marginalization and exploitation of those excluded.
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
Dixie Hollins High School in St. Petersburg, Fla., will go ahead with its plan to drop eggs on a poster of Osama bin Laden. Principal Jeffrey Haynes reversed the decision of Ron Stone, a "culturally sensitive" Pinellas County Schools official, who, as we noted yesterday, had nixed the event.
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
The Washington Times notes that while women are among the pilots dropping bombs on Taliban targets, the Special Forces teams on the ground are all-male, pursuant to American law. That's probably as it should be, though InstaPundit.com, borrowing from an old Bill Murray gag, makes a clever argument for women in combat: "Beating the Taliban is nice. But beating them with girls will be a humiliation that will take the wind out of Islamist militancy for years. I think we should be saturating the mideast with television footage of female soldiers and pilots."
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
Michigan's Rep. David Bonior, angling for Arab-American votes in the governor's race, is attacking the FBI over a Michigan State Police report on alleged terrorist activity in the Wolverine State. (Newsweek obtained a copy of the report, and we noted it Monday.) Says Bonior: "I'm often skeptical of the FBI pointing fingers. They have a history of doing this and not being correct. This insinuation, this kind of character assassination of a community, is the kind of thing that went on during the McCarthy era." Ah well, national unity was nice while it lasted.
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO
WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
The FBI releases images of the anthrax-laden envelopes and letters sent to Tom Daschle, Tom Brokaw and the New York Post. The Brokaw and Post letters have an identical message:
THIS IS NEXT
TAKE PENACILIN [sic] NOW
DEATH TO AMERICA
DEATH TO ISRAEL
ALLAH IS GREAT
Not only the wording but also the handwriting is identical, suggesting that the terrorists have access to Western photocopier technology, with which they could produce hundreds, if not thousands, more letters.
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
So where does Osama get his money? Well, how about the United Nations? The BBC reports that a bin Laden front group called Muwafaq--Arabic for "blessed relief"--was part of a consortium of "charities" that collected a cool $1.4 million from the Nobel Peace Prize-winning international organization in 1997. Muwafaq's founder, Yasin al-Qadi, is on a list of alleged terrorist supporters whose assets the U.S. Treasury blocked in the wake of Sept. 11.
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
British police have arrested Yasser al-Sirri, described as "the mouthpiece of al Qaeda in Britain," the Times of London reports. Al-Sirri, who now runs an outfit called the Islamic Observation Centre, was convicted in Egypt and sentenced to death for a bomb attack that killed a 12-year-old girl, but he fled to Britain and has been seeking asylum. "He denies any involvement with any terrorist groups and describes himself as a journalist with good contacts in Afghanistan," the Times reports. "But his IOC website, which is decorated with missiles and dripping blood, carried the latest threat from one of bin Laden's closest aides, Muhammad Atef, who is al-Qaeda's military commander and is believed to be in hiding with his leader in the Afghan mountains."
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
The foreign minister of Qatar, purportedly one of the more pro-American Arab countries, says U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan are "unacceptable." Sheikh Hamad bin-Jassem bin-Jabr al-Thani adds: "We think that the Afghan people should not be the victims of these attacks." What would you accept?
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10/24/2001 ||
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The Times of London
A follower of Osama bin Laden has claimed that the suspected terror mastermind bought anthrax spores and other deadly bacteria, it emerged today. The claim came from Ahmad Ibrahim al-Najjar, a convicted follower of bin Laden, who told authorities in Egypt that the al-Qaeda chief openly bought the bacteria from laboratories in eastern Europe and Asia. Al-Najjar was convicted in Egypt of trying to overthrow the countryâs government in favour of a fundamentalist Islamic regime and jailed for life last year.
He has become an informer on the activities of al-Qaeda and the New York Post reported that translations of his evidence to Egyptian authorities showed the germ warfare purchases. Al-Najjar claimed that bin Laden was quite open in his operations, attempting to buy germ warfare agents including anthrax, e-coli and salmonella. His group ordered the bacteria to be sent by mail, and as long as it paid £5,000 up front to the biological plants selling the agents, the identities of the purchasers were not checked. So-called factories in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in eastern Europe, were used to provide e-coli and salmonella, while a facility in south-east Asia sold the group anthrax.
It was supplied to the Indonesia-based Islamic Moro Front, which is linked to bin Laden and also to Abu Sayaf, the terrorist group trying to establish a breakaway fundamentalist Muslim regime in the Philippines. Bin Ladenâs agents paid just £2,585 plus shipping costs for the anthrax spores, al-Najjar told Egyptian intelligence. The claims came after mounting suspicion that bin Laden was connected to the anthrax attacks which have killed three people and infected at least ten more in America. However, No link has been established between the September 11 and anthrax attacks, Robert Mueller, the FBI Director said today.
The claim from al-Najjar coincided with a report that American investigators have found magazines relating to germ warfare at the home of two men arrested soon after the suicide hijackings. Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan, were arrested on September 12 after being found on a train in Texas with boxcutters, thousands of dollars in cash and black hair dye. The New York Times reported that the FBI is checking documents found in their apartment for traces of anthrax after discovering two magazines with cover stories about poison gas and biological weapons. Neither man is cooperating with investigators.
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10/24/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Opinion On-Line Best of the Web Today
The Times also reports on Khalid al-Fawwaz, whom America is asking Britain to extradite so he can face terrorism charges here. Al-Fawwaz, "who was allegedly placed in charge of the Advice and Reformation Committee by bin Laden," claims the Ladenite group is "a perfectly lawful and peaceful reform group."
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10/24/2001 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
