They were just regular folks back when I knew them
Andreas Schaefer announced a while back that a group of German bloggers has produced a book: BLOGS! Blogbar -- Text und Form im Internet (text and form on the Internet).

I'd skimmed over the sidebar image the last several times I checked on Andreas' blog, thinking it was just another ad. But it turns out Andreas is a co-author, as is "siebenviertel." Congratulations to both! I profiled Andreas and "siebenviertel" last year on this blog -- both were then living in the United States, Andreas has moved back to Germany since then. That gets me some kind of finder's fee, I assume.

The book also features writing by a number of other German bloggers: @lles wird gut, andrea diener, anke groener, argh!, elfengleich, emilybeat, freakshow, jetzt.de, kutter, ligne claire, luna_lu, miss.understood, spackonauten, wo+man, dotcomtod, dogfood. A lot of these blogs and people are new to me. Should be interesting.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:38:19 AM --

 
A pod of whales, a murder of crows, a Panda's Thumb of blogging evolutionists
A quick introduction to a really good blog:

The Panda's Thumb is dedicated to explaining the theory of evolution, critiquing the claims of the anti-evolution movement, and defending the integrity of science and science education in America and around the world.

Very good and prolific writing -- and no wonder: it's a group blog by 23 people, most with graduate degrees in the biological sciences. Unabashedly esoteric at times; skip those posts -- or see if you can learn something new.

As a "mysteries of the Internet" aside, I have to admit I wouldn't know about them except that they're showing up on my referer list, for no reason I can see. Whatever. As a marketing notion, let me suggest CafePress: I'd buy a coffee mug or a t-shirt with their logo for a gift or just for the hell of it. (That goes for you, too, Gary -- once you develop a logo. But that should be fairly easy.) I've added this and a few other "narrow focus" blogs I like to a separate blogroll: specialty blogs.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:52:24 AM --

 
Bad joke
Others have mentioned this already, Southknoxbubba and Josh Marshall among them. David Corn of The Nation was there, and writes about this Bush "joke" at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association Dinner:

But at one point, Bush showed a photo of himself looking for something out a window in the Oval Office, and he said, 'Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere.'

The audience laughed. I grimaced. But that wasn't the end of it. After a few more slides, there was a shot of Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. 'Nope,' he said. 'No weapons over there.' More laughter. Then another picture of Bush searching in his office: 'Maybe under here.' Laughter again.

Not the kind of thing a president should joke about: a missing reason -- the missing main reason -- to start a war. This was breathtakingly arrogant and feckless.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:44:18 PM --

 
"Who won the elections?"
In December 2003, two Norwegian researchers, Brynjar Lia and Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets forskningsinstitutt, FFI) found a 42 page document on the Internet titled "Jihadi Iraq, Hopes and Dangers" (Arabic, PDF). They now argue that it "served as ideological inspiration and policy guidance for the terrorist attacks in Madrid", quoting the anonymous author:

...It is necessary to make utmost use of the upcoming general election in Spain in March next year.

We think that the Spanish government could not tolerate more than two, maximum three blows, after which it will have to withdraw as a result of popular pressure. If its troops still remain in Iraq after these blows, then the victory of the Socialist Party is almost secured, and the withdrawal of the Spanish forces will be on its electoral programme.
(via a Bjorn Staerk 3/24/04 quicklink; emphasis and underlining from the Arabic original)

Beyond the obvious fact that the Madrid bombers did as the document proposed, Lia and Hegghammer point out that the "nom de terror" chosen by an alleged Al Qaeda video spokesman after the attack -- Abu Dujana, a warrior and contemporary of Mohammed -- matches one mentioned in the "Hopes and Dangers" document.

The authors see a more pragmatic, cool variety of Islamist in the pages of this document. Yassin Musharbath, writing for the German weekly SPIEGEL, agrees:

The message is clear: the jihadists should spend their resources carefully, not at random.[...]

The Jihad handbook of December 2003, whose authenticity is much more certain* and which was probably written in the summer of 2003, is very different from most of the Al Qaeda publications seen until now. For one, it's less nuts and bolts than the pure bombmaking manuals out of the Afghan training camps, but simultaneously much more intellectual and analytical than the usual propaganda material. [...]

In any case it's an example of the professionalization of Al Qaeda in military tactics. The mujaheddin are reminded again and again in the text not to act spontaneously and rashly: the authors send their pupils off with "Preparation and planning are the foundations for success of every project," the authors remind their pupils. "Only that guarantees (...) great capability, shortens the (required) time and removes the confrontation with danger."
(via A Fistful of Euros)

The behavior of an alleged ringleader of the Madrid attacks bears out that this is not your 1990s Al Qaeda any more. A cell phone on an unexploded bomb led Spanish police to Jamal Zougam within a day of the bombings. The next time he was seen in public, he wasn't declaiming "God is great" or "Death to the crusaders." As the New York Times reports:

When Mr. Zougam arrived in court after five days incommunicado, he reportedly asked the clerks, "Who won the elections?"
(via Regnum Crucis)

=====
*EDIT, 3/27: The comparison is with a message purportedly written by Abu Musab al-Zarkawi and released before the election, in which he comments on the Spanish government's theory that ETA was responsible for the bombing.



Take away the dumb ones and the rest look smarter
SPIEGEL author Musharbash calls the new Al Qaeda a "learning organization." But it could be simpler than that: for all its haphazardness -- the "unconnected dots" before 9/11, the Great Tora Bora Escape -- the war on terror may have exerted some strong selection pressure on terrorists. That is to say, despite it all, maybe a lot of the gung-ho hothead types are dead or in custody by now. True, that would still leave the colder, smarter, more cunning ones. But it would also still leave them on the run.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:21:05 PM --

 
Robert Mugabe: child abuser, rape and torture trainer
I don't ordinarily quote a report in its entirety. I hope the BBC won't mind. If you see a picture of Mugabe to the right, I've just ripped off a little more of the government of Zimbabwe's bandwidth. I'd be pleased if they did mind. (It might be fun to see if more blogger-mosquito bites like this annoyed them.)

February 27, 2004: BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Zimbabwe's torture training camps, Hilary Andersson:

President Robert Mugabe's government has set up secret camps across the country in which thousands of youths are taught how to torture and kill, the BBC has learned.

The Zimbabwean government says the camps are job training centres, but those who have escaped say they are part of a brutal plan to keep Mugabe in power.

Former recruits to the camps have spoken to the BBC's Panorama programme about a horrific training programme that breaks young teenagers down before encouraging them to commit atrocities.

Members of the youth militia are warned never to tell of their experiences inside the camps, and many refuse to be identified when talking about their experiences.

However one girl, Debbie, claims she was kidnapped and forced into a camp - where she was raped on her very first night.

In accounts gathered by BBC Panorama from dozens of youths, it appears that for many of them the training in the camps begins with rape.

Debbie said she was raped three times on the first night, but claimed that the abuse didn't stop then.

She told the programme: "I was raped again at night and they said no-one can complain because its part of training."

She claims she used to share a blanket with an 11-year-old girl. The little girl was also raped night after night.

President Mugabe has visited the camps. Ministry insiders have told Panorama that his government knows what goes on inside them.

Food is often scarce. Youths are beaten until they succumb to orders. They are taught that their mission is to keep President Mugabe in power.

Panorama has also learned that some of the recruits are taught to torture his opponents.

Daniel was plied with alcohol and drugs, and learned how to electrocute his victims.

He said: "I would just touch, krr, krr - tell us information."

Asked if he thought it was OK to torture people, he added that it was "nice", because "your mind is disturbed".

During covert filming inside Zimbabwe, Panorama also spoke to a camp commander who told the programme that youths in his camp had been sent to kill opponents of President Mugabe.

He said: "In the area I am covering I heard of two. My superiors instructed that the people must be eliminated."

What is more frightening is that President Mugabe now wants every Zimbabwean youth to undergo training. We have been told they will be used to intimidate political opponents in next year's elections.

The commander added: "These guys are going to be used by the ruling party to keep the opposition out of power."

We put these allegations to Zimbabwe's government, but so far it has refused to respond. (emphases added; BBC link via the German blog "Nornirs Aett." )

The world would be a better place without this guy; meanwhile, Mugabe and his regime should be shunned. Anyone who so much as gives them the time of day should be shunned as well.

Prior items on this blog about Zimbabwe under Mugabe:

05/13/2003: Political correctness in Zimbabwe: bloody and real

05/31/2003: Zimbabwe threatens planned opposition demonstrations (e-mail links)

06/09/2003: I am getting younger, and I still can punch
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:03:36 PM --

 
Another proud day for the Fatah Tanzim Brigade
It turns out there was something odd about the Palestinian boy with the bomb belt the Israelis caught the other day. No, not that he seemed to be a kid -- that's old hat. What's different this time is that the suicide bomber recruit has Downs syndrome. The German newsweekly SPIEGEL summarizes:

An Israeli officer, Lieutenant Tamir Milrad, told a Haaretz reporter: "The boy told us he didn't want to die, he didn't want to blow up." He said he wanted to be a "hero." His dispatchers were said to have promised him that he would have sex in heaven with 70 virgins.*

The 16-year old has Downs syndrome, a Palestinian witness said according to** the DPA agency. He was known to many in Nablus... Haaretz and AP also report that the boy's family describe him as mentally very slow. His brother is to have said: "He doesn't know a thing." [...]

According to Haaretz the Fatah Tanzim Brigade of the Balata refugee camp has acknowledged sending the boy off with the explosives. (via New Joerg Times; links added)

It may be pointless to make distinctions among them, but Fatah Tanzim hereby takes the prize as "most utterly morally bankrupt" Palestinian terror group. ("Just wait till next week!" cries the competition.)

Minor quibble: SPIEGEL runs the story under the uninformative headline "Israelische Armee fasst 16-Jährigen mit Bombengürtel" -- "Israeli army catches 16-year old with bomb belt." The 'mentally challenged' part makes the summary paragraph below the headline, but still...


=====
* Islamist lunatics will be relieved to know the boy was promised the usual 72 virgins, according to the Ha'aretz report.
**The link leads to the German newspaper Handelsblatt: username "newsrack," password "123"


Postscript: Brother furious
From the Jerusalem Post: "The would-be bomber's brother Hosni Abdu said he was furious with whomever persuaded his brother to become a suicide bomber. "The ones who sent him are stupid, because the army will give him two slaps and he will tell them who sent him," he said.

Keep an eye on that one, he's got the right stuff.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:54:01 PM --

 
Condolences
...to Diana Moon.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:29:54 AM --

 
A Court in deeper trouble than I had imagined
There's a reason "Justice" is depicted wearing a blindfold. It's not that we necessarily suspect she would tip the scales if she saw them. It's that she knows -- or ought to know -- that's the clearest way to assure us she can't.

It seemed open and shut to me that someone on close enough terms with a defendant to join him on a duck hunt weekend was automatically incapable of providing the appearance of impartial justice in a case about that defendant. It seems open and shut to me that a justice who vehemently argues otherwise is unlikely to provide the substance of impartial justice, either.

This weekend, Adam Liptak of the New York Times arranged an entertaining "fisking," by a number of legal experts, of Justice Scalia's refusal to recuse himself from the Cheney vs. U.S. District Court case (Scalia's Defense: A Case of Blind Justice Among a Bunch of Friends). Some excerpts:

[Scalia:] Our flight down cost the government nothing, since space-available was the condition of our invitation. And, though our flight down on the vice president's plane was indeed free, since we were not returning with him we purchased (because they were least expensive) round-trip tickets that cost precisely what we would have paid if we had gone both down and back on commercial flights. In other words, none of us saved a cent by flying on the vice president's plane.

Lubet: That answers the question of whether this was a gift. It wasn't a gift.

Gillers: We would all like to pay coach and fly on Air Force Two. It is simply disingenuous to say this is about money. It's about luxury and status. He got those things from a litigant with a case before the court.

Advantage: Gillers. I'd add that the flight itself was bound to offer just the kind of "intimate setting" Scalia protests was not available at the duck hunt -- and that I'm unlikely to ever know what Scalia and Cheney discussed on that flight.

[Scalia:] There are, I am sure, those who believe that my friendship with persons in the current administration might cause me to favor the government in cases brought against it. That is not the issue here. Nor is the issue whether personal friendship with the vice president might cause me to favor the government in cases in which he is named. None of those suspicions regarding my impartiality (erroneous suspicions, I hasten to protest) bears upon recusal here.

The question, simply put, is whether someone who thought I could decide this case impartially despite my friendship with the vice president would reasonably believe that I cannot decide it impartially because I went hunting with that friend and accepted an invitation to fly there with him on a government plane. If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined.

Freedman: After earlier stating it correctly, he misstates the legal standard here. The statute says not "would" but "might" and not "cannot decide it impartially" but whether "his impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

In other words, wondering whether his contact and friendship with a defendant might influence his decision in a case is precisely the issue here.

Brett Marston contrasts Scalia's sudden disdain for the political consequences and appearances of his decisions with the overweening concern he once showed for "clouds cast" by the state of Florida's courts on the 2000 presidential election:

Scalia just told us yesterday that the political branches can weather the assaults of the press and resulting public doubts (see above). So, again, why was it proper for the Supreme Court to worry about political consequences to George Bush -- especially when there were alternate, established procedures for dealing with the precise kind of controversy at issue? Recall that Congress -- not the Court -- is explicitly charged with the responsibility of determining the validity of slates of electors.

As E. J. Dionne asks in today's Washington Post, "...does [Scalia] belong on a court where he has to pretend to believe in deciding cases on the merits? If he can't see why his behavior in this case raises such serious doubts in the minds of his adversaries, what else is he missing?"

I think Scalia is overrated as a thinker, I think he confuses independence with arrogance, and I think he is a danger to the Court. On the heels of Locke v. Davey, I'm coming to the conclusion that Justice Scalia (1) all but defines his career by adopting positions few other judges would have the gall or stupidity to defend, and is (2) generally and predictably motivated by adherence to his political principles, not the legal ones we've hired him to think about.

This can't be just about Scalia, though. It was idiotic to give Justice Scalia the right to decide whether to recuse himself. This should have been decided by some or all of the other Supreme Court justices. I'm no lawyer: maybe that's not customary -- yet. Maybe that's too humiliating for this Court to enjoy contemplating. Good; I hope it's forced on them at the first opportunity. Between this and Bush v. Gore, this Supreme Court has all but forfeited the trust average American citizens place in it as a place where the law is paramount -- not politics or social connections.

For now, though, the Scalian Supreme Court motto seems to be: "Blindfolds? We don't need no stinkin' blindfolds."
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:53:11 PM --

 
Progress on paper trail for Maryland electronic voting
TrueVoteMD.org, teaming with Ben (& Jerry) Cohen's TrueMajority.org, has scored a victory towards getting paper receipts for electronic votes in Maryland. Steven Dennis of the local newspaper The Gazette reported on Friday:

Sen. Paula C. Hollinger, chairwoman of the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, told The Gazette that she supports the paper mandate and wants the machines upgraded in time for this November's general election.

Hollinger (D-Dist. 11) of Pikesville said the committee will amend the bill today to ask Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) to find money in the budget for the upgrade, which legislative analysts warned could cost tens of millions.

Especially if they let Diebold, the voting machine system maker, "charge out the yin yang" for any upgrades, as a Diebold employee recommended in an e-mail obtained by The Gazette last year.

The TrueVoteMD group got attention earlier last week with an advertisement in the Baltimore Sun captioned "Sheila Hixson and Paula Hollinger have the power to protect Marylanders from a dangerous voting machine", and urging Marylanders to "tell Delegate Hixson and Senator Hollinger to require a paper trail to safeguard America's voters."

For my part, I urge all readers to go to a Ben and Jerry's as soon as possible and consume a large ice cream treat of their choice.


=====
UPDATE, 3/24: After you eat your ice cream, you might also want to donate to the TrueMajority.org "computer ate my vote" campaign.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:52:27 AM --

 
Villepin on the roots of terrorism
Joachim Fritz-Vannahme, of the German newsweekly Die Zeit, provides a succinct critique of the EU foreign policy response to 3/11 (Warum erst jetzt? -- "Why just now?"). He's particularly hard on a comment French foreign minister Dominique Villepin made on Monday:

... And third, so the Frenchman, one must address the causes of terror, the frustration, anger, and hate that were the breeding ground of violence.

Fritz-Vannahme replies:

But does the dangerous mixture of dictatorship and demography, oil payments and social misery really work as an explanation of terror? Osama bin Laden, for instance, controls a forturne of around $300 million, if one may believe the findings of Spanish anti-terror judge Garzon. His billionaire family once paid him off when their relative's activities became embarrassing. The killers of New York and Washington enjoyed the privilege of a higher education at western universities. Impoverishment? Certainly, but only in the hearts and minds of these murderers. That's why heads of state meeting at the EU summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday houldn't listen to their foreign ministers, and should strike Point Three from their explanations for terrorism as quickly as possible.

That depends.

I basically agree with Fritz-Vannahme here. On the other hand, if Villepin was talking about the banlieues -- French Arab ghettos -- in France and their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, he may have a fair point: the bulk of anti-Jewish hate crimes in France are carried out by French Muslims, and a number of notorious terrorists hail from these neighborhoods. I have a hunch that's not what Dominique meant, though.


=====
TRANSLATION NOTES: breeding ground: Naehrboden; impoverishment: Verelendung
EDIT, 3/23: I don't usually do this: I changed the title and took out a bit of scripture I didn't have any business using here.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:30:20 PM --

 
Susan Lindauer update
Susan Lindauer is the Takoma Park resident recently indicted on charges of serving as an unregistered foreign agent -- a "spy" by some readings of the charge. Sean Sands of The Gazette (a local Maryland newspaper group) interviewed her last Friday. Excerpts:

Everything I did worked to implement the priorities identified by our own government," Lindauer told The Gazette. "I didn't create the priorities -- they created the priorities. I wasn't giving speeches on the Senate floor -- they were giving the speeches on the Senate floor.

"I was the one taking their speeches seriously enough to try to listen and do something about it." [...]

At no time, she asserted, did she spy on the United States, nor did she have access to information that could have jeopardized national security. She also denied being in the employ of Mukhabbarat operatives. [...]

She said she met her alleged co-conspirators, Raed Noman al-Anbuke and Wisam Noman al-Anbuke, for the first time in court in Manhattan on Monday. [...]

Sands didn't press Lindauer about the aspect of the case that interests me the most -- Lindauer's alleged efforts to support resistance groups in Iraq after the war, and the FBI's apparent efforts to coax her to do so.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:37:08 AM --

 
Do something for Iraq
The English blog Harry's Place is running a "Do something for Iraq" event acquainting readers with worthwhile causes they can help support to help Iraq. Click the "Do something" link for the complete list. Harry explains:

From today until Monday we will be providing links to campaigns, projects and charities that are directly helping Iraqi people - either in material terms or other forms of solidarity aimed at assisting the strengthening of democracy, civil society and human rights.

Our four day campaign is called Do Something For Iraq and we are urging all our readers to follow the links that will be provided in the coming days and choose at least one campaign or cause to support. We also welcome your suggestions of what we should be linking to - please send your ideas via email (on the top left corner 'Dear Harry').

Some of the links will be to charities that are doing good work that needs supporting financially - its time to put our money where our mouths are.

Herewith a partial summary:

Libraries: Help rebuild the library infrastructure of Iraq, an initiative of IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (via Norm Geras). The initiative is particularly interested in getting books about science and medicine.

Schools: "This site is dedicated to helping people gather and send school supplies to the children of Iraq."

Marsh Arabs: Saddam persecuted them and destroyed the marshland ecosystem that sheltered and sustained them. The AMAR (Assisting Marsh Arabs and Refugees) International Charitable Foundation needs donations to help a people survive and rebuild.

Bloggers: Iraqi bloggers are doing yeoman work providing grass roots perspectives on the real situation in Iraq. Many of them could use a donation.

Remembering:

The Iraq Memory Foundation has no “higher” purpose than to place the Iraqi experience of suffering and oppression, between 1968 and 2003, in the global context of the history of pain and suffering. It seeks to do this by filming and archiving the individual stories of many thousands of survivors and witnesses of atrocity. And it seeks to digitize, index and classify the totality of the documents recovered from the outgoing regime that deal with Iraqi pain and suffering.

Here's a page with links to Baathist Iraq official documents, including a professional rapist's ID card, and a registry of Kurd villages eliminated at the beginning of the 1987-1989 Anfal Kurdish genocide (or mere war crime wave, if you insist), listed in an elaborately decorated notebook. It's important that these historical documents are preserved and disseminated. Get details about donating here; the organization is applying for 501(c)3 tax-deductible status.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:13:22 PM --

 
Nephew's Metatheory of Scientific Theories
Offhand, I'd say that when a scientific theory must be defended from its critics by threats to sue their publishers for defamation, then that theory is likely to be hogwash. (Via Marginal Revolution's Alex Tabarrok.)
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:09:00 AM --

 
Rhea County, Tennessee commissioners unanimous: "We're a bunch of idiots"
On Tuesday, the Rhea County, Tennessee Commission passed a motion by an 8-0 margin...

asking its state representatives to introduce legislation that would allow the county to charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.

On Thursday, following nationwide coverage, the Rhea County, Tennessee Commission rescinded the motion by an 8-0 margin:

With an overflow crowd of vociferous supporters and foes of the homosexual lifestyle on hand, the commission filed in under police escort.

Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who made the original motion, moved it be rescinded. The vote was taken, and the commissioners quickly filed out - again under escort.

A good day's work, I guess. The comments about the initial vote at Newschannel 9 are by turns entertaining, scary, and inspiring... Good for many of them for speaking up. Incidentally, what's up with "lifestyle" all the time.

(Links via Inn of the Last Home; see also A Moveable Beast.)
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:18:57 AM --

 
Missions from God
Via the ever-interesting Interfaith Nunnery, I was fascinated to read that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has written a quite remarkable review of His Dark Materials, a play based on the book series by Philip Pullman.* The play is apparently quite the rage in London. If it's half as good as the books, I can imagine why: reading them was a genuinely exciting, provocative, and fun reading experience for me, I can't recommend them enough.

His Dark Materials is a fantasy trilogy** set in an alternate but in some respects recognizable world where a "Church" with otherwise unspecified theological leanings is cast as a ruthless, near-Orwellian ruler of England and Europe. From an early aside in the first book (The Golden Compass):

Ever since Pope John Calvin had moved the seat of the Papacy to Geneva and set up the Consistorial Court of Discipline, the Church's power over every aspect of life had been absolute. (chapter 2)

That's by no means the only or even the most interesting aspect of Pullman's world -- my vote there would go to the daemons and the daemonless panserbjorne. But it's an integral part of Pullman's polemic about religion, which is skeptical to put it mildly, and hostile not to put too fine a point on it.

Williams' review, though, is such a neat reply to Pullman that ... I may re-read the series. From his conclusion:

A modern French Christian writer spoke about "purification by atheism" - meaning faith needed to be reminded regularly of the gods in which it should not believe. I think Pullman and Wright [who adapted the books to the stage --ed.] do this very effectively for the believer. I hope too that for the non-believing spectator, the question may somehow be raised of what exactly the God is in whom they don't believe.***

It was in the course of developing this response that Williams said something that really interested me:

But what kind of a church is it that lives in perpetual and murderous anxiety about the fate of its God?

What the story makes you see is that if you believe in a mortal God, who can win and lose his power, your religion will be saturated with anxiety - and so with violence. [...]

What would the Church look like, what would it inevitably be, if it believed only in a God who could be rendered powerless and killed, and needed unceasing protection? It would be a desperate, repressive tyranny. For Pullman, the Church evidently looks like this most of the time; it isn't surprising that the only God in view is the Authority.

An especially threadbare, embattled, vicious one might look like Al Qaeda. Williams' question reminded me of Paul Berman's discussion, in Terror and Liberalism, of Sayyid Qutb, the intellectual forefather of Al Qaeda. Berman describes Qutb's reaction to the 'catastrophe' that the Islamic Caliphate -- the rule on earth by the Prophet's successors -- had been ended by the secular Turkish state. Qutb believed that this portended the worst,

"a final offensive which is actually taking place now in all the Muslim countries... It is an effort to exterminate this religion as even a basic creed, and to replace it with secular conceptions having their own implications, values, institutions, and organizations." (Berman, ch. 4)

Cobbling together Islamic and European reactionary thought, Qutb called for a "vanguard" of the faithful, charged with waging jihad against false Muslims and outside corruption alike. And, in time, the calling to desperately defend an almighty god twisted itself into a worship of death for its own sake. Qutb, on martyrdom and jihad:

"But the death of those who are killed for the cause of God gives more impetus to the cause, which continues to thrive on their blood. Thus after their death they remain an active force in shaping the life of their community and giving it direction. It is in this sense that such people, having sacrificed their lives for the sake of God, retain their active existence in everyday life...

There is no real sense of loss in their death, since they continue to live." (Berman, ch. 4)

A philosophy like this would be tailor-made for self-appointed prophets with a taste for blood and divinely based power. Enter, years later, Bin Laden and Zawahiri, and their authority via ever-greater acts of terror as jihad.

Christianity could of course be equally murderous when it considered itself threatened. Consider, for instance, the fate of the Cathars, a Christian sect in Southern France in the 12th and 13th centuries. Catharism was brutally repressed by Pope Innocent III's Albigensian Crusade and the beginnings of the Inquisition. At Beziers alone, at least 20,000 were massacred, Cathars and Catholics alike. (When the fate of the non-Cathar inhabitants was protested, the attending papal legate famously said, "Kill them all. God will know his own.")

These kinds of examples might serve as the nucleus of a counterpoint for Mr. Pullman: one may wish religion were about Faith and Morality, but in practice it often turns out to be about Authority instead -- and Authority "on a mission from God" to boot.

Pullman's books are about more than that: protecting childhood, the (desirability of an) afterlife, and what might be called the virtues of materialism are all themes. The trilogy's title comes from Book II of Milton's Paradise Lost:

Chaos Umpire sits,
And by decision more imbroiles the fray
By which he Reigns: next him high Arbiter
Chance governs all. Into this wilde Abyss,
The Womb of nature and perhaps her Grave,
Of neither Sea, nor Shore, nor Air, nor Fire,
But all these in thir pregnant causes mixt
Confus'dly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless th' Almighty Maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more Worlds,
Into this wild Abyss the warie fiend
Stood on the brink of Hell and look'd a while,
Pondering his Voyage ...****

Mr. Pullman and the Archbishop had a public discussion of His Dark Materials on Monday. I'm with Sister Andrea: that's a discussion I'd have loved to attend.

=====
* As "Sister Andrea" writes, there are spoilers in the review -- all but inevitable, given the reviewer -- so handle with care.
** The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass
*** Judging by his speech of a week earlier, Williams means Olivier Clement, a French Eastern Orthodox theologian. The idea of "atheism as purification" can also be traced to Simone Weil (via Naked Writing). According to some, Weil's beliefs and death echo those of the Cathars.
**** (Whoa, heavy! Couldn't resist. -- ed.) Via "His Dark Materials [an unofficial fansite]"

PS: I'd be remiss in not pointing out Michael Chabon's review of "His Dark Materials" in the New York Review of Books, and Gary Farber's interesting discussion of same. Gary also mentions the Archbishop's review, and was also impressed with Williams. I also should say that for detailed, knowledgeable discussion of Sayyid Qutb, you should visit Bill Allison's Ideofact blog.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:26:46 PM --

 
Century City
I think I like it.

Yeah, it's another lawyer show, but one where the case is about a client trying to grow a clone to harvest its liver -- and give it to his other clone, being raised as his son. Set in 2030, there are some trite, standard scenes, but also some fairly well argued cases on both sides of the question, and the promise of more of the same. Here's a tentative "way to go!" to CBS.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:00:31 PM --

 
New working definition of "gall"
There'll always be an England: the Guardian reports that

The Home Office is to appeal today against a court ruling that victims of notorious miscarriages of justice should not have to pay the bed-and-breakfast bill for their time in jail.

For example, Michael O'Brian of the "Cardiff Three," wrongly imprisoned for 11 years, was faced with having 37,000 pounds deducted from his wrongful imprisonment settlement. (via Harry's Place).

Heck, Amarillo, Texas does "better" (even if it did so kicking and screaming): even at the full 11,400 pounds per wrongful year (~$21,000), Mr. O'Brian would have been getting way less than the average Tulia, TX wrongful prisoner; the average settlement across 45 wrongfully imprisoned victims in that case was at least $28,000 per wrongful year* -- and a shameful bargain to Amarillo taxpayers at twice the price, I'd add.

Vincent Hickey, one of the "Bridgewater 4" (18 years) also affected by the appeal, commented

"I should have gone on hunger strike for longer than 44 days: then the bill would have been less."

Hickey's joking, of course; by the Home Office's logic, he should have starved himself to death -- that would have really saved some money.


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* $21K=(L)125/11; $28K=$5M/45/4, i.e., assuming all 45 went to jail for four years, which was not the case.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:27:09 PM --

 
Yglesias on Spain
Here is a recent post by Matthew Yglesias , "Spain," in its entirety:

It's looking like some Islamists. For the record, anyone who think this may be the incident that forces Europeans to get serious about terrorism is a moron.

Most Europeans were plenty serious about terrorism before this happened. So was the Democratic Party. It was George W. Bush who, along with Jos? Maria Aznar, Tony Blair, and Silvio Berlusconi who decided that terrorism was such a serious problem that it should be pretty much ignored except insofar as it was a useful rhetorical prop for the selling of an unrelated war.

Working my way from the end of that statement:

'Unrelated' is unsupportable; Al Qaeda is not the only organization or style of terrorism possible. The concern that Saddam had WMD that could be used via state- or other-sponsored terrorism turns out to be unsupportable as well. But even discounting for the (unconscionable) spin and self-deception before the war, that was not known to a certainty in advance.

Invading Iraq does not mean anyone 'pretty much ignored' terrorism; anti-terrorism operations remained and remain ongoing in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere in the world, including and often controversially here in the United States.

I certainly don't argue that Democrats aren't serious about terrorism. I am. I believe Kerry is, too.

"Most Europeans were plenty serious about terrorism" is a different matter, and depends on who the target is. I'll certainly stipulate that most Europeans were and are plenty serious about avoiding terrorism on their own soil, whether that helps or hinders Americans, Israelis, and others to avoid terrorism on theirs. This is not an argument about what most European governments are doing; most have indeed been 'serious' and have helped the United States materially with police work, military assistance, or both. Observing Germany and other countries, though, I have to say the underlying support among their electorates does seem less enthusiastic to me. Even supporting the U.S. war in Afghanistan nearly led to the German government's downfall, a lesson that had a clear effect on Schroeder's re-election campaign.

Obviously, the underlying concern is what impact the Madrid attacks will have on the elections in Spain.

Spaniards will be and always have been entitled to conclude that their country's participation in the Iraq war invited attacks, and that Aznar's party should not get their vote. But they could and should have drawn that conclusion, if so inclined, before the Madrid attacks, not after. If there are significant or even decisive numbers who change their vote on the basis of that attack, they will have given Al Qaedoid terrorists a "hack" into their own electoral system. Even Spaniards who were against the war -- apparently most of them -- should not welcome that prospect.

Aznar has been no statesman by prematurely insisting that ETA was responsible for the Madrid atrocities; I hope Spanish voters don't compound the error by insisting that makes him responsible for bombs detonated by murderers. 9/11 happened before the Iraq war: proof enough that there will always be some 'reason' good enough for terrorists to commit atrocities, regardless of what the rest of us do or do not do. The people of Spain and Europe will invite more 3/11s, not prevent them, if they concede terror groups the power to influence their votes by bombing trains.

We may see just how serious about terrorism the Spanish people are with this election; it may be that I'm a 'moron' to hope they will not kneel to terrorists of any stripe. But I trust that most Spaniards will not give terrorists that satisfaction.


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UPDATE, 11PM: Oh, well. Anecdotal evidence from this article, and the reversal of fortune of the PP and the Socialist Party over the last week (BBC) are suggestive; there's the counter that it was Aznar's 'manipulations' that led to his party's defeat, but it's unlikely I'll see data disentangling that from reignited opposition to Spain's involvement in Iraq.

Meanwhile: Bravo, Ms. Henley and all the Little Offerings. The Spanish Embassy is right around the corner from the Foggy Bottom/GW Metro stop. I had the same difficulty finding it after work on Thursday, went about 4 blocks the wrong direction and couldn't find a flower store open by the time I found it. I'll take care of it tomorrow.

Among the more interesting blogger reactions: Sgt. Stryker says Aznar's party had it coming for ignoring the will of the people about Iraq. That would seem to overlook that his party was ahead until the attacks. Jim Henley suggests even if the PP had won, Aznar's successors might not have stuck with the US in Iraq -- a theory based >in part< on an article about rightist Spanish resentments about their lost empire. Seems a stretch to me, but read for yourself. Much of the rest of Henley's post is about the blown ETA call. But it was not (and still is not) unreasonable to suspect ETA/ETA splinter involvement: an ETA attack on a Madrid railroad station was foiled on Christmas Eve of last year, and explosives were intercepted in late February.

EDIT, 3/18: >in part< added, in response to a complaint by Jim Henley. He led with it, but there was certainly more than that to what he said. Which was basically that Rajoy appeared to soft-pedal Iraq in the campaign.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:45:30 AM --

 
Gibson's passions

The Passion of the Christ revives, directly or by implication, almost every topos of anti-Judaism of the European Middle Ages.

Thus begins one of the most interesting discussions of Gibson's movie I've come across, by "Sister Andrea" of Interfaith Nunnery. It turns out that Gibson's account of Jesus' final days is drawn in large part not from the Bible, but on the Catholic lay traditions of passion plays and so-called meditationes vitae Christi -- "meditations on the life of Christ." In particular, an account by one Anne Katherine Emmerich looms large -- and modifies and elaborates the biblical stories in ways that tend to absolve Pontius Pilate and focus on the 'guilt' of the Jewish people. Read Ms. Andrea's post for yourself. She makes the essential point that

While the passion narrative requires suffering, guilt of Jews is not implicit in the form. A post-Nostra Aetate reading of the death of Jesus could easily keep the bloody torments that the form requires for the expiation of sin, while locating guilt either on Pilate or on the whole world, for whose sins Jesus Christ is purported to have died.

Ms. Andrea refers above to the Second Vatican Council's finding that neither all Jews indiscriminately at that time, nor Jews today, can be charged with the crimes committed during [Jesus'] passion.

I haven't seen the movie, and I'm not terribly eager to, so I don't have anything to add about it per se. But I've seen a number of Gibson's other movies, and I think they offer a perspective on this one: Gibson seems drawn to or at his best in movies in which his own character is martyred. In "Gallipoli," if I recall correctly, he's cut down by Turkish bullets in a senseless, self-sacrificing charge in a senseless, sacrificial battle. In "Lethal Weapon" he has to jam his own arm back into its socket, something that I'm informed (by the script, as I recall) is one of the most painful things imaginable; Gibson absorbs abundant other punishments as well. In "Braveheart" he tries to save his people, but is betrayed, and then drawn and quartered.

Some exceptions to this rule simply suggest a second rule. In "The Patriot," it is the death of his son that fuels Gibson's character's rage, and in "Ransom," his son's kidnapping triggers his sudden transformation into an avenging father.

Gibson seems to need a combination of righteous rage and searing physical or emotional pain to really make a role work for him; when that happens in the movies above, he's quite effective. But such roles may also fuel the need for ever greater doses of the "martyr drug." Perhaps this has culminated, for now, in what is by most accounts a singularly ugly depiction of the source of his faith. Good luck topping it, Mel.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:15:53 AM --